Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.
Speaker 2: My name is Bill Thomas. I'm a writer, consulting, producer,
and now podcaster. I am now trying to use my
experience as the brother of a murder victim to help
other victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book
on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders, and I'm the co
administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 3: My name is Kristin Dilly. I'm a writer, a researcher,
a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the
social media manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway
Murders Facebook page with my partner in crime.
Speaker 4: Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind Over Murder.
Speaker 2: I'm Kristin Dilly and I'm Bill Thomas, and we're.
Speaker 5: Joined today by author Lewis Byrd here to talk to
us about The Pale Blue Eye, an amazing book that
is soon to be hitting theaters as a movie of
the same name.
Speaker 6: Lou, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 7: So great to be here. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: We've had this interesting discussion about whether Lewis Bayard would
let us call him, Lou, and he said yes, which
we think is a big stepping stone towards the kind
of relationship we'd like.
Speaker 7: That intimacy, full on intimacy from the start. Guys, here
we are.
Speaker 5: All access, So Lou, go ahead and start off by
telling us a little bit about your personal and professional background.
Speaker 8: Oh dear, that's a long and tangled and sorted story.
But I am a writer of novels. I'm a novelist,
and I mostly write historical novels. I've written ten so far,
eight of them have been historical, and then some of
those historical. You're in the direction of mystery and thriller
and horror and all those gothic directions that bring me
here now to your doorsteps.
Speaker 5: And my favorite piece of Lou trivia is that you
once were on Jeopardy.
Speaker 6: Isn't that right?
Speaker 8: I am a one time Jeopardy champion. That is something
that will take to me.
Speaker 2: I do know that. I'm even more impressed.
Speaker 8: Yeah, thank you, thank you, Bill, thank you for being
impressed by that. I'm a little I'm embarrassed though, that
I lost the second one on Final Jeopardy. The answer
was bell Morale. So every time I watched the crown.
Speaker 7: I just feel a stab.
Speaker 8: I just feel a stab of regret about missing that,
because yeah, otherwise I would have won, for sure, and
then I would have been I would have gone from
there to being who knows, one hundred time champion.
Speaker 7: I'm sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you might got to be on the show Moral Hurdle. Yeah, decades,
decades as champ. People would have been sick of you
by now.
Speaker 7: It's like getting off. We're tired of him every night.
Speaker 2: The guy's insufferable and he's won like a gad zillion dollars.
Speaker 7: Yeah, my path?
Speaker 2: Were you getting sandbag with the question about bellmral Did
they ask the question in a weird way, which is
why you didn't get it?
Speaker 8: They asked it in a weird way, but somebody got it,
it just wasn't me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: In fact, she was the third place going into Final
Jeopardy and at the air right. Yeah, it was one
of those stories that actually is at thee or you
love Oh wait, the underdog wins.
Speaker 2: Wait she came from behind a head?
Speaker 7: No stop?
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you think you'd never want to work that
into a book?
Speaker 7: Spific experience for sure, but I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's the short version? Of how you get on Jeopardy.
Speaker 8: The short versions in those days. This is a while,
this was sixteen years ago. But you take a test
to take I guess it's an online test now, and
then you're invited to come in for basically kind of
audition where you stand up with a bunch of other
people who pass the test, and you stand up and
answer questions and a play round or a practice round.
And I think they're just looking to see if don't
fall apart in front of a camera. And then I
got the call a few months later and then had
to get myself out to California.
Speaker 7: Know, they don't pay for your travel or your hotel.
Speaker 8: Oh nice, Yeah, So I prevailed upon my publisher to
I forget what I asked them to pay for, because
it is either.
Speaker 7: The air for or the hotel.
Speaker 8: Because I said, if I can, I will promote the
book which just came out, which was in fact The
Pale Blue Live, which leases around to the topic of
today's show. But it came this happened right when that
book came out, and I thought, oh, this will be interesting.
And then in fact, in the very first round, the
Jeopardy round, there was a poke question which I successfully answered, Thank.
Speaker 2: God, Yeah, really that would have been embarrassing. There we are,
and are there clips somewhere on the internet that would
show you on Jeopardy?
Speaker 7: Why do you ask this? Bill was able to actually
find this? Do you want to find?
Speaker 2: This?
Speaker 7: Stuff? Is archive?
Speaker 8: This stuff is archived in places that I don't even
know about, So I'm sure you could find it if
you want to, if you have a lot of time
on your hands, you could.
Speaker 7: Look for this.
Speaker 2: We pride ourselves in our research team, which is the
two of us. I didn't mean that for that to
sound all stock ration weird. Now that you we've decided
to let me call you.
Speaker 7: Lou, Yeah, the gates are open. Everything is free game, yeah,
open gamey blue.
Speaker 5: We did want to talk to you about the Pale
Blue Eye, not only because it's a wonderful book being
involves Edgar Allen Poe and see it has a movie
coming out here in just a very little bit. But
I know we do have some listeners who probably are
not familiar with Pale Blue Eyes. So can you give
us like the five sentence summary of the Pill Blue.
Speaker 7: Eye Elevator's speech?
Speaker 8: Is this the elevator's speech carntment yeah, So The Pale
The Pale Blue Eye is a Gothic mystery thriller set
in West Point circa eighteen thirty, featuring a young Edgar
om Poe, who was in fact a cadet at that time.
So he becomes in effect a detective along with an
older professional detective in solving a series of crimes that
are taking place at West Point, involving the killing of
cadets and the carving of hearts out of their So
it's just a light, little holiday comedy really, Yeah, this
is how I try to describe it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's holiday appropriate.
Speaker 5: Just to make sure that we're clear on the line
here between fact and fiction. To the best of your knowledge,
was Edgar Allan Poe a detective in his spare time?
Is this something that he did on the regular?
Speaker 7: I don't think he was a detective at west Point.
That was just my conceit really, because I decided I
wanted to put Poe in the center of a mystery genre.
Why because he was the creator of that genre. So
I thought it would be fun to PLoP him in
the middle of it and have him fend for himself
as it were. So as casting around for a suitable
place part in his life to explore. And I realized
or remembered perhaps that he had been at West Point
for six months before being court martial out, and I thought,
would that'd be a fascinating place to have crimes to solve,
and this would be a fascinating place to have in
effect an Edger On Poe origin story, which is really
what the book is, is about how.
Speaker 8: Edgro and Poe became that guy, how he absorbed these
various themes, and where these various stories came from the title,
I should say, the Pale Blue Eye comes from The
Telltale Heart. If you remember that story, it's about the
narrator is this guy who decides conceives a pathological disgust
for this old man, and specifically for the old man's
pale blue eye, and that's what drives him to kill
the old man, stuff him unto the floorboards, and then
invite the police over so that he can gloat over
this perfect crime, only to hear the heart of the
old man beating underneath the floorboard. The Pale Blue Eye
came straight from The Telltale Heart, and so much of
Poe's work, his stories, both mystery stories and horror stories
inform the book itself.
Speaker 5: It's often been said that it was Edgar Allan Poe
rather than Sir Arthur Kinnan Doyle, who's actually responsible for
the invention of the detective genre as we know it today.
Speaker 6: Can you talk a little bit about like how Poe
contributed to the genre we understand it today.
Speaker 8: Sure, Poe wrote the first detective stories in the language,
in the English language, for sure, and I think Conan
Doyle acknowledged that at some point you would have to
ask mister Stasher about this, But I think Conan Doyl
was very clear that Sherlock Holmes came out of CEO
gust Dupin, who was the great detective hero of Poe's stories,
beginning with the Murders and The Room Morgue, continuing through
the Purloin Letter and the Mystery of Marie Roget these
are really the first detective stories that we know of
in the English language, So it's clear to me, and
I think it's clear that it would have been clear
to Doyle too that he got there first. And I
think Poe's great innovation is great understanding, was that there's
something just interesting about the act of solving a crime.
The stories themselves, if you read them, are almost action free.
All the crimes themselves happen off the page, and the action,
if we can call it, that, is just this guy
agus Dupin sitting in his chair in the folk Alexandra
Maniparis looking at newspaper accounts and just figuring out who
did it And was Poe's genius to really see that
was dramatic enough in itself. He didn't need chases, he
didn't need fights, he didn't need any violence.
Speaker 7: He just knew that.
Speaker 8: Just the watching a great mind apply itself to this
particular problem was interesting in itself, and we see the
results everywhere. It's impossible to overstate how influential he has been.
Poe has been in our culture. He's so much a
part of our culture that I don't think we always
see him. He's hardwired into our DNA. But every time
you see a mystery story, every time you see a
horror story, garthic story, you're seeing a genre that he
himself either created or definitively shaped. So really the book
was my homage to Poe. That's how I conceived it
from the very start.
Speaker 2: So some of these conceits that get labeled on later,
Like you're saying, the car chase or the physical confrontations
or the all that stuff that kind of is a
step away from this more kind of cerebral literally sitting
in a chair discussing the details of a crime, sometimes
a horrific crime, but in a real thoughtful way. And
it's funny. Even as you were saying that, I was
thinking about any number of modern era detectives in literature
and film and television and so on, And there is
a whole school of detectives that came along later that
are in that sort of let me walk you through
what I think happened analytical approach, which is much more
Poe was that kind of approach that he was helping create.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think Poe's approach sho it becomes the cozy
detective story in some ways, that sense of Hercule Barrow,
Miss Marple, Lord Peter Wimsey, very courteous and civil and
they're never in danger really really, they're just brought in
to apply their formidable brains to a problem. And that
was really I think that the thing that interested Poe
about crime itself was just how do we solve it?
He was being into puzzles he was big into codes, decoding,
cracking code. He just loved an intellectual challenge, and he
grasps that this would be a particularly interesting one.
Speaker 5: If I'm remembering it right, Didn't he call his crime
solving process ratiocination?
Speaker 7: Am I? Yeah, I've never even have pronounced that, Christian
is it ratchioscination ratios.
Speaker 5: I've never feel like it's ratiocination, I guess say, but
I'm not sure.
Speaker 6: I guess maybe we need to stand about that one.
Speaker 2: H Us out now define what that is.
Speaker 8: It's just basically the act of using your brain to
figure something out. It's just a fancy word for just
using your brain. And that's what goes on in his stories,
and that's what makes them interesting, is just seeing a
brain at work.
Speaker 7: I gus I said.
Speaker 8: I think that was one of his real insights, is
that there's drama just in that.
Speaker 6: I feel like it's almost a precursor to modern day profiling,
like a really early version of it.
Speaker 7: Good co.
Speaker 2: Yeah, something that just popped out of my head while
we were talking about some of those great characters and
that cerebral detective approach. For some reason, Peter Fawk jumped
into my head with.
Speaker 8: Oh yes, Colombo. Now, perfect example, perfect example, Bill.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, he turns the stylistic thing on its head. In
other words, a lot of those detectives like Poio and others,
even Arthur Conan, Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, they had a lot
of style clothes in terms of clothing and how they
carried themselves. And Peter Fowk turned all that stuff on
its head with the Columbo character. But the thoughtful walk
me through this kind of approach. He's very much following
in those footsteps as well.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, And in that case, and this was the genius
of this show.
Speaker 7: They showed you the crime up front.
Speaker 2: Yes you knew.
Speaker 8: Exactly who had been murdered by whom, Why you knew
exactly how the crime happened, and the drama And you're right,
this is so close to Poe is just watching a
really intelligent guy figure it out.
Speaker 7: He's going to do it by the end of the show.
He's going to figure it out. But you're just.
Speaker 8: Wondering how will he apply his formidable but of course
underrated intellect to this problem. And it's exactly the same
as what's going on in Poe's original stories.
Speaker 5: One of Poe's I think probably biggest conceits of all
was the fact that he felt he could take his
process and again, I really don't know if I'm saying
that we're going to go with it, go with that.
He took that and he tried to apply it to
a modern day true crime case during his time period,
and that's the Mary Rogers case. I know one of
his stories is based on Mary Roger. Can you tell
us a little bit about how Poe involved himself in
that case? Again, knowing that is more Dan's.
Speaker 7: Harry, so Dan, that is so Dan's Tash Hower.
Speaker 8: He wrote a book called The Beautiful Cigar Girl about that.
And this was a very notorious case in New York City.
I think it was eighteen fifties.
Speaker 9: This, yeah, yeah, okay, So what happened with this was
a notorious case of a beautiful young woman murdered and
they didn't have any immediate culprits.
Speaker 8: Poe decided to turn this into his own guessing game,
and he converted it into another dupant story. The Mystery
of Marie Roget basically transmographied all the post the press
coverage that was happening around Mary Rogers to a Parisian newspaper.
He just did a very slight gallic transformation of the
names and tried to come up with his own solution.
It's interesting, and I think Dan's Stature will be the
first to say this, it's his least successful dupant story.
Speaker 7: And I think because he himself is too close to it,
and he himself is trying to honor the very complicated
details that were happening at the time.
Speaker 8: But yes, he desperately was trying to solve that. He
was the armchair detective in that one himself, and he
did not solve it. I don't think it was ever
solved that. Yeah, it's one of those unsolved mysteries. Dan
Stature was attracted to those ones.
Speaker 7: His current one about Elliott Nass and the Torso murderer
in Cleveland another unsolved one or supposedly unsolved. Those are
almost sometimes the ones that a writer clings to because
there's possibility that you can be the one to finally
solve it once and for alls.
Speaker 8: Think of all the Black Jallia books that have been
written for people, yeah to figure.
Speaker 7: That or the Jack the Ripper, Right, So we're attracted
as readers and writers, I think to the one the
unsolved ones for sure.
Speaker 2: And Dan admitted we interviewed him a couple of months
ago and he admitted that he was hoping that he
would be Yeah, his research would be the key to
unlocking that case, because elliot Ness is a legendary figure
in law enforcement and yet wasn't able to solve this
horrible series of crimes. And I think we all have
a little bit of that armchair detective in us where
we think.
Speaker 7: Oh, I think that's the appeal of true crime, isn't it?
Isn't it.
Speaker 8: It's the appeal is, oh, I'm going to solve this.
I'm going to figure out whatever has eluded all.
Speaker 7: These these minds, all these genius, these genius, all the police,
all the other people.
Speaker 8: I'm gonna I'm going to crack this last That's the
intellectual appeal for people who haven't actually lost somebody to
a true crime.
Speaker 7: It's the same thing.
Speaker 8: It's the peal of Okay, this is a problem that
I will apply my formidable intellect to field a solution
that has eluded everybody else.
Speaker 2: And I'll figure it out. And people enjoy creating their
own theories, putting it out there and discussing it. I
was looking on social media today about the Delphi case,
and there's a lot of people who have a lot
of theories, and it's funny that they are continuing, I'll say,
to debate those theories even though a suspect has been arrested. Now,
of course the question becomes was he involved? And then
were these other potential suspects involved.
Speaker 5: Yeah, in case our listeners aren't aware, you and Dan
are pretty good friends, and you guys actually have moved
in the same circles in terms of subject matter.
Speaker 6: Who was writing about po first?
Speaker 7: That's a really good question.
Speaker 8: So yes, The Beautiful s Figar Girl came out the
same year as The Pale Blue Eye. Also that same
year book by Matthew Pearl called The Post Shadow, which
was all about the mysteries running Poe's death, And none
of us was aware of each other coming into this.
So it's just one of those harmonic convergences that actually
happens a lot, I think in the publishing world and
also in the movie and TV world. There just is
a weird kind of synchronicity that happens where two or
three different people happened to converge on the same subject.
So I only met Dan because our books came out
the same time. I thought, let's just get together and
chat about this, and Matthew Pearl reached out to me
as well around the same time he had written The
Da Vinci Code, and so it was, and they're both
lovely guys.
Speaker 7: So we wound up.
Speaker 8: We called ourselves the Poe Boys or the Poe Boy Sandwich. Yes,
but that was just accident. That's just accident. But I
think it also speaks to pose and during appeal. He's
just an interesting guy that people always want to figure out.
Speaker 7: Much like a prime itself. We always want to figure
him out.
Speaker 2: So when we turned to the Pale Blue Eye, how
much of that is based in fact and how much
is fictionalized?
Speaker 7: I feel bad saying this in a true crime podcast.
Speaker 2: Go right ahead.
Speaker 8: The only true part was that edgron Poe was at
West Point for six months. By the way, when I
say edgron Poe, he really went by Edgar A. Poe
through his life. There's only I think one time he
wrote his name is Edgar A.
Speaker 7: On Poe.
Speaker 8: So it's interesting that that's how he's Anyway, he was
there for six months, but there were no crimes that
I know of that were committed in that time. I
think in the eighteen twenties. He was there from he
was there in eighteen thirty. But in the eighteen twenties
there was a cadet who was sentenced to death, but
not for killing anybody. Trying to remember why, but I
think that sentence was commuted, so there were no deaths. No,
that was just me deciding to throw some shit into
the game and make some trouble, make some trouble that
Poe could helped to solve. And that's where that came from.
Speaker 2: It's mostly made up then, yeah, yes, but.
Speaker 7: There are real life characters in there.
Speaker 8: Sylvanus there who is the superinten of West Point, Ethan
Allen Hitchcock.
Speaker 7: I couldn't believe that the.
Speaker 8: Commandant of West Point had the last name of Hitchcock,
but yet there was. Yeah, it was like a gift
from God that name. And there is a Benny Haven's
tattern that the cadets would escape to drink. They weren't
supposed to leave the reservation, the reserve as they called it,
mosts or drink, but they would sometimes break out and
go to Benny Havens. There are songs that immortalized it.
There are these bits and pieces along the way that
are based in reality, but the crimes itself are my
own invention, inspired of course by mister Poe.
Speaker 5: I know that when you get into the process for
writing this book you do have to do a certain
amount of research to make sure that the things that
you're conveying are accurate. So what are some of the
things that you learned about criminology and detectivism that you
had applied to both Poe and gus landor.
Speaker 8: First of all, there wasn't a lot of either of
those things. The word detective was not even in the
English language when Poe was alive, So Jupan does not
refer to himself as a detective. That down came around
a few decades after that he was around for Holmes.
Speaker 7: I'm guessing it was. So there really wasn't a word
in the English language to convey somebody who spends his
time solving crimes, and that shows that the concept itself
had not really yet taken hold in our culture. In
addition to that, the science of which you're speaking was
very primitive. But the person to go back to, just
another generation back is to vdoc about whom I wrote
another book called The Black Tower. His name is usually
a FROs sUAS Vidoc. He was a legendary policeman, French
policeman who was originally a convict and worked his way
up the chain and became the founder of Surrete, which
was the first plain, closed detective force anywhere that we
know of. And he was the first one to really
start applying science to this. He was the first one
to take plaster impressions of footprints, He was the first
to look at ballistics.
Speaker 8: He actually theorized the possibility of fingerprints before they had
even proved, So he.
Speaker 7: Was the first one.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and this was a couple of decades before po
In fact, Dupan one of the stories alludes to Vidoc
in a rather sliding ways. He was a good guesser
but in fact, yeah, he had to kill that that
that father. But he Vidoq was the first one to
actually think about approaching this as a science. So that
was the intellectual foundation of what we would call detectivism today.
Is a guy like Vedoc thinking we can do this
in a systematic way. He kept card files of all
the criminals in Paris at the time so that he
could match them up to whatever evidence.
Speaker 2: He was.
Speaker 8: He was the first one really to make this a profession.
And then so yeah, Dupin's character kind of takes that
in the next level, and then Holmes takes it from there.
Speaker 6: But how did Vidoc come onto your radar?
Speaker 8: Then it was through po because because who is this Vidoct?
That that Dupin is dissing?
Speaker 7: Who is this guy? And then I followed him, followed back.
Speaker 8: To him, and I found Vidoc was the inspiration for
both Jean Valjean and Jevert Inser because he was both
of those people. He was the that's right, he was
the hunted convict, and then he was the genius detective
who would track him down. Vidock's memoirs were enormous best
sellers in their day We're talking the eighteen twenties eighteen thirties,
and themselves almost entirely affectional, so you could almost argue
that they are the first detective fiction in our culture.
But there were certainly a big influence on the people
who followed.
Speaker 2: So even though Vidoc was a secer of truth, his
memoirs are embellished, shall we.
Speaker 8: Say they were embellished. He had a ghostwriter who helped
him with out. I think he wanted to sell a
lot of books and make some money, and who can
blame him for that?
Speaker 7: So did elliott Ness. Apparently toward the end he also
had a collaborator, as Dan's book makes clear.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he wanted to pump up the jam a little
bit and make the stories about Copona a little sexier
than they were.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We've talked about elliott Ness's early successes and visibility
through the mass media of the day, primarily newspapers. Yeah,
and he understood how the press and media worked and
they wanted a good story that he actually had a
harder time in the second half of his life even meeting,
never mind exceeding the expectations of him as a solver
of crime or untouchable.
Speaker 7: Yeah, all that good stuff.
Speaker 8: That Actually, that part of Dan's book made me think
more highly of him, because you could see he's resisting
this iconography that they were trying to envelop him in.
Speaker 7: He didn't.
Speaker 8: He was like, no, I'm not that guy. And I
got the sense from Dan's book that he was troubled
by it all the way to the end.
Speaker 7: He really didn't want to go there. He also had
some financial needs, so as you said, he understood the process,
but he also understood the complexity of submitting yourself to that.
Speaker 2: Did you find yourself then traveling to West Point at
any point to get the lay of the Hudson Valley?
Was that?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I did go to West Point for a couple
of days. This was two thousand and five probably when
I went there, And this is right after nine eleven,
and so a lot of it was shut down. Oh yeah,
I had to get a faculty member just exquire me
around to some places, and a lot, of course the
old West Point is gone.
Speaker 7: It's true.
Speaker 8: Of all the books I write, I tend to write
about lost worlds, so you have to find them through books.
But one of the things that really struck me about
West Point is they really, at that time anyway, did
not acknowledge poem in any way. There was no if
you go to uv If you go to Uva, his
room is a shrine r edground. Post spent six months
at Uva, which is about the same amount of time
he spent at West Point. West Point doesn't even acknowledge
that he was there, at least they didn't.
Speaker 7: Then. There was nothing about him in the gift shop,
nothing about him on the tour.
Speaker 2: He washed out. He washed out, And I come from
a Navy.
Speaker 7: Family family myself.
Speaker 2: So if you wash out, it's like you never existed.
Speaker 7: It was an embarrassment to them. He was an embarrassment,
I think to them, as was James Whistler went there
another one a couple of decades later, and also unacknowledged,
So they didn't become great Milli Jerry leaders, and hence
why would we bring them up.
Speaker 8: I'm wondering now if it's changed, because I know that
when they filmed The Pale Blue Eye, they brought down
some West Point instructors to help coach the actors who.
Speaker 7: Were playing the cadets. Oh interesting, I know they were
willing to go that far, but it wasn't filmed there
because I think a lot of the campus is it's
still off limits.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be right back
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Speaker 5: Let's talk a little bit about the movie and when
you had first posted the poster and then you started
posting the trailers on Facebook, I nearly lost my mind.
Speaker 6: It looks fantastic. So when did you find out that
it was going to be. It's an actual go. This
thing is happening.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you talk a little bit about that process
of learning. Hey, they're making my book into a movie.
That's got to be an amazing feeling.
Speaker 7: It's pretty cool. It doesn't suck.
Speaker 8: So this started back in two thousand and six when
the book came out and a guy named Scott Cooper,
who had written and directed Crazy Heart, that was the
movie that one Jeff Bridge is an oscar, so he
put an option on it. And just for your listeners,
I need to explain, an option is not anywhere anything
like a green light. An option is just somebody saying,
you know what, this book looks interesting.
Speaker 7: Let me take it away for a year and see
if I can make something happen. Ninety nine percent of
the time, nothing ever happens because there are so many
things that need to align for a movie to be
made at any time. So after a year Scott went away,
and it's like, Okay, whatever I was, I've been instructed
by my agent never to put any amount of energy
into thinking that anything will happen.
Speaker 2: It's more likely not going to happen than it is
going to.
Speaker 7: Exactly exactly because it just takes so many things to align.
There's so much happenstance that needs to happen.
Speaker 8: So sixteen years go by and then Scott renews the option.
It's like, oh, you're kidding, same guy.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 8: He always had it back of his heads, something he
wanted to do, and it turned out that he had
an actor who was interested in doing it, and then
that was Christian Bale, with whom he'd already done two
movies prior to that. Suddenly Christian Bale has a film
project that falls through, he has a hole in his schedule,
and then suddenly it happens. And I had zero, less
than zero control over any of this, and I was
the last to know that. They didn't contact me or
my agents. I learned about it from an article, Hollywood
Reporter article that somebody sent me. Oh well yeah, So
I was like, it was nice, that's good. And then
they shifted around. There was a European film market thing,
I forget what it's called. Anyway, they were selling it
around there, and it got a record bid from Netflix,
and then suddenly it was happening. So it just I
was surprised, as anyone. I wasn't part of the I
wasn't in those rooms. I wasn't part of those negotiations.
I just learned about it after it was all done.
But of course it was delighted.
Speaker 5: Wow, And of course I was thrilled to hear that
it's going to be Harry Melling who's playing po.
Speaker 6: Had you did you get to meet any of these guys?
Speaker 5: Did you meet Christian Dale, Harry Melly, like any of
this or was this complete?
Speaker 6: Did it happen after you and then you learned about it? Yeah?
Speaker 8: Yeah, they were they, Yes, they cast everything with that.
I was not consultant in the casting, but of course,
as delight out Robert Javal, Gillian Anderson, I'll take them,
thank you.
Speaker 7: Yeah really, But I was.
Speaker 8: Actually already familiar with Harry Melling for those people who
don't know the name. He originally he was the original
Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter.
Speaker 7: Movies, which is fascinating.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but then he lost a lot of weight and
kind of grew up into this really marvelous leading man.
I saw him in The Queen's Gambit, he's one of
the chess players who's helping her heroine get through life.
And then I saw him in this wonderful Coen Brothers
western called The Bout of Lester Scrag.
Speaker 7: He plays this armless, legless guy.
Speaker 8: Who declaims poetry and is carried from town to town
by name Neeson.
Speaker 2: Kind of a wonderful, weird character.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yes, yes, And then I got to visit the
set for a day back in gosh, it was December.
Speaker 7: It was just a few days before it contracted COVID.
I remember clearly. Oh wow, yeah, yeah, I didn't get
it there. I didn't get there.
Speaker 2: Oh can't you blame them anyway? Come on, that would
make a good story.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 8: They were actually very ferocious about their masks. There was
somebody on the SAT who called herself the COVID Snitch,
who was looking to make sure everyone was wearing the
correct men pulling it down. But anyway, I got to
meet Bail and Melling both and Robert Davall.
Speaker 7: It was lovely.
Speaker 8: And I will say I've seen the movie and Harry
Melling is they're both. They're both great, because you know,
Christian Bale's gonna be great, but Harry Melling is superb.
Speaker 7: He manages the Richmond accent that Edgar and Poe would
have had. Oh and they've made him up.
Speaker 8: They actually shaved a half inch of his hairline back
to give him that bigger brow.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 7: In the final scene, he looks so remarkably like Poe.
It's ear wow. Okay, this just shows you what film
artisans can do.
Speaker 5: I was actually sitting in the audience with Dan and
we were talking about the casting of Harry mil We
were waiting for you to talk to Hugh Bonneville, and
I'd asked him do you think Harry Millan is the
best choice or who would you like to see his Poe?
Speaker 6: And his immediate answer was not John Cusack.
Speaker 8: Actually, yes, John Cusick has a dark place in my
soul because he put out this is right actually right
around the time the first option came out.
Speaker 7: There was it called The Raven.
Speaker 4: The Raven.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it was this Poe movie that just died on impact.
I think it played terrible in local theaters for two
and a half hours. I think it was the lasted
through the first actual showing and it was gone. And
there was actually an article that came out in the
time that that's killed any chance of a poem movie
happening anytime soon. So I feel like, yeah, he put
he stunk up the joint of it with that when
it took a while for the climate to clear for
another Poe movie. But that's all right.
Speaker 2: It happened when you were listing the cast. I was thinking, Gee,
it's too bad none of the good people were available,
because one spectacular name after another, all incredible actors, and
it just sounds fantastic.
Speaker 5: I wouldn't have been able to speak if I'd met
Robert Duvall. I wouldn't know what to say. I wouldn't
even know where to start.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Yes, it was fascinating just to watch him do
his thing. And yeah he's ninety one now, I think,
oh my gosh, Wow, he's well on in years. He's
well on in years. It's just I should say it's
a small part. It's basically a cameo part, but it's
just great to see him up on the screen. Yeah,
doing his thing.
Speaker 2: This is the part when I get to admit my
lifelong crush on Jillian Anderson.
Speaker 8: Oh you would need both Bill and I'm gay. I'm
still all over her. I just I'm fascinated by her.
Speaker 2: I think she's great, and my partner Pamela loves her
as well. We'll watch her in anything, because you know
she's going to turn in a real subtle, nuanced, yes,
amazing performance no matter what character you hand her.
Speaker 7: Who would have thought of her as Margaret Thatcher and
then you watch it, I.
Speaker 2: Know she was fantastic.
Speaker 4: It's amazing, amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and now I'm going to lose that detective series
she did in Ireland a couple of years ago, The Fall,
The Fall, that was incredible.
Speaker 7: So good, so good. Yeah, yeah, with Jamie Jordan.
Speaker 2: Right, Yes, he was the bad guy, he was the killer.
It was really good, spantactical she was.
Speaker 7: So she was so insanely sexy in that show.
Speaker 8: I think just as this again, the brilliant detective applying
her with but so just smokingly on sexy.
Speaker 2: And let's let it be noted for the record that
the gay Man is the one that said that she
was could journ.
Speaker 7: Me Bill, she could turn me. Oh wow, here we go,
I think she could.
Speaker 2: I didn't know we were going to get that confessional.
Speaker 6: So you said you've seen the film already.
Speaker 4: Does it remain fairly faithful to the book.
Speaker 6: Or does it take some artistic license that.
Speaker 7: Made you go no, I was part of I consulted
on the script. You to share successive drafts with me. Yeah,
he didn't need to do that.
Speaker 8: Was incredibly generous and secure of him, honestly to do that.
So I understood from the start, and I think this
is why he wanted to work with me. Is I
got that translating a book to a film your darlings,
a certain number of darlings have.
Speaker 2: To be killed in that process, very compressed.
Speaker 7: You have to pair, you have to pair.
Speaker 8: It's not alimined to run series. It's a two hour movie,
so I knew a lot of stuff would have to
go away. And I think it was clear in Scott's
mind that it had to be a slightly less supernatural
story than the book is, because the book is kind
of steeped and there's an acrostic poem, there's lots of
stuff going on, so it's a little less, but it's
still there's still that sense of revenance to use another
movie title of people who won't.
Speaker 7: Quite stay dead. So that's there, And no, I was.
Speaker 8: I was really pleased with how faithful he wanted to
remain to the book. And then I saw the movie
a couple of weeks ago, and it's I will just
say because I had nothing to do with.
Speaker 7: It's beautifully filmed, it's gorgeously photographed, and the score is
by Howard Shore, who did The Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 8: And this is why I'm encouraging all my friends to
go see it for the three weeks it's in a
movie theater, because it should be seen. It's one of
those movies you really do want to see in the
theater just to get a sense of its gorgeous, very dark,
of course, but beautiful, just stunning to look at.
Speaker 7: And so I'm very pleased with it. I couldn't be happier.
Speaker 2: So you aren't one of those authors that finds himself
sitting there in the dark watching the movie saying I
didn't write that.
Speaker 7: No, I'm savoring the bits that I did write.
Speaker 8: And to hear my lines coming out of Jillian Anderson,
for instance, well, to hear the people saying my original
lines is pretty surreal. I gotta say that something I enjoyed.
Speaker 5: The book is out now, of course, and you can
find it just about everywhere, including the storehouse of the
world Amazon, but we encourage you to buy it from
small indie booksellers.
Speaker 6: I always say, for example, in DC politics and pro
is probably one of the best of the indie bookstores
up there.
Speaker 7: In the city books as well.
Speaker 8: Yes, yes, but wherever you can find an independent books
that are please, whether it's this book or not, please
patronize them because if they're doing it's all a solid
by doing what they do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And so then the movie comes out when and
on what streaming services and what theaters.
Speaker 7: It'll be out in theaters select theaters near you on December.
I have no doubt what that means.
Speaker 8: I'll find out with that December twenty third, it'll be
in theaters for three weeks and then starting January sixth
week streaming on Netflix. So it should be available wherever
you have a Netflix subscription, So don't let your subscriptions
go idle.
Speaker 7: You'll need to be on top of this.
Speaker 2: Keep the TV warmed up. December twenty third, three weeks
in the theaters January sixth, twenty twenty three, Miss debut
on Netflix. Yes, yes, May I ask a nuts and
bolts question?
Speaker 7: Sure?
Speaker 2: When these options are exercised, do you get paid? Does
somebody send you a check and say or we want
to option your movie for the next year?
Speaker 7: You get paid usually with well it depends, but you
usually get paid something with an option. Some people will
ask for an option for nothing, and that occasionally happens.
It's all a thing that agents negotiate. But yes, you
get en up from payment.
Speaker 8: So I have not received any payment since I don't
get a share of the budget. Netflix doesn't pay me anything.
My money came strictly from that upfront option payment.
Speaker 2: So those dirt balls pay you the second time when
they optioned the movie.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it was actually pretty nice. We fixed our roof,
we got some dinning room furniture, oh wow, okay, paid
us some credit, a couple of credit cards.
Speaker 8: It came at a really good time. I got to say,
we had a kid in college and as stress, the
timing is really good.
Speaker 2: It was like more than an electric bicycle level payments.
Speaker 7: Yes, it was more than an electric but not as
much as a Tesla or or Lamborghini or any of
that staff or anywhere near that. But still it was welcome.
It was welcome and appreciate it.
Speaker 5: So can you tell us about some future projects or
are you keeping those on the DL for.
Speaker 6: A little bit.
Speaker 7: I'm working in a book right now that I am
that is on the d L by order of my agent.
But I just published a book last June called Jackie
and Me, not a gothic thriller mystery, but a kind
of courtship novel surrounding Jackie Bouvier and Jack Kennedy, as
told by Jack Kennedy's best friend, Line Buildings. So it's
a kind of.
Speaker 8: Interesting love triangle with a lot of I've actually moved interestingly,
I've moved away as an author from gothic mystery thriller thing,
not deliberately, it's just where I found up drifting. My
whole career has been basically drifting from one thing to another.
So it's interesting to be re established as this dark
gothic guy. But I'm just trying to keep the stories
rolling and keep everything happening.
Speaker 4: Oh, Jackie and Me was tremendous.
Speaker 5: I loved it, and I wish I hated not being
able to get to any of your book events for it,
but it.
Speaker 7: Was You're three hours away, Kristin. I would not expect
that of you.
Speaker 10: Now.
Speaker 5: I want to be able to come to them whenever
I can, and I just that was one of those
times where nothing seemed to fit right with my schedule.
Speaker 6: But oh no, Jackie and Me is terrific.
Speaker 5: Even though most of our true crime Holiday Gift guide
is crime related, I would say for any of our
listeners who want another something really good to.
Speaker 6: Buy, Jackie and Me is fantastic.
Speaker 7: I just loved it. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Although Kristin has been accused of emptying our listener's wallet,
says they go out and buy all these books, Boo.
Speaker 6: Keeps saying Stoff recommending stuff I need to read.
Speaker 7: I was going to say, authors will not complain about
Kristin doing this for them. They will not be the
last ones to complain. But thank you.
Speaker 2: As you move around stylistically, Lou, you're not thinking I
want to put that aside and I want to move
in this direction. It's more where your creative heart takes you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's a really good way of describing it, Bill.
I think it is where I'm just feeling energized now.
Speaker 8: And it's funny I tried to get twice now I've
tried to get a witch novel off the ground.
Speaker 7: I haven't direct.
Speaker 8: I I have a direct ancestor who was an accused
witch in Hartford, Connecticut, twenty years before the Salem witch trials.
Hartford had his own witch panic. She was one of
the people dragged into jail over it. I thought, oh
my gosh, I have an accused witch in my family tree.
Seriously need to write this, and it's been very hard
for me to get it off the ground. And I
don't know whether it's just I don't have the energy
for it anymore, or it's just I haven't figured out
the right angle.
Speaker 7: It's it's my book in the drawer.
Speaker 2: Yeah you are there, pubject Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yes, so it's still in the drawer, and I haven't
given up on it, so hopefully someday I can drag
it out.
Speaker 2: I'm going to put an offer out on the table here. Okay,
my partner Pamela and I have a beautiful eighteen eighty
Victorian house in Norfolk, Connecticut. We're not in Hartford, but
we're only forty five minutes away. Yeah, and it's a
wonderful old spooky house. Welcome to come up here if
you need a base of operations and haunt.
Speaker 7: You're saying it's haunted.
Speaker 2: There are things go bump in the night. I think
it's the I think it's Oliver the Docs, and but
I'm not sure.
Speaker 7: That you Bill is at my age, I'm the one
going bump in the night.
Speaker 2: I didn't know there was a Hartford witch scare. We're
four years in this house.
Speaker 7: Sixty two.
Speaker 10: Sixteen sixty two is when it happened. Yeteen sixty two, Yeah,
checking out scare. Wow, his eyes lit up. That would
be ms Dilly because when Kristen was up here with
her partner Mark, they were doing the Salem thing and
witchcraft definitely was a thread throughout her last New England vacation.
Speaker 5: You can only teach the Crucibles so many times that
it's suddenly becoming Okay.
Speaker 6: It's in me now.
Speaker 2: So well.
Speaker 8: On the one of the issues I found as a writers,
the Puritans are really tough.
Speaker 7: They're really weird.
Speaker 8: They are weird as people, and I think in some
ways we're closer to the people of Shakespeare's London than
we are to the Puritans. They were deeply supernatural, so
that they really thought the devil was walking abroad and
was visiting their world with their talents and recruiting individuals.
So which hunts were like national security efforts to protect
the community from these people. So it's hard to get
into that mindset. Really, they saw the world in very different.
Speaker 7: Terms than we do. Oh yeah, yeah, and weren't a
lot of fun. Let's be honest, they weren't a lot
of fund to hang out with. So that was part
of the issues.
Speaker 2: The Puritans and good time don't necessarily appear in the
same sentence all.
Speaker 7: That exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: But I think this idea that there could be a
physical manifestation of evil amongst them. This is the distrust
of strangers or you know, what they saw as odd behaviors, hysteria. Yeah,
and also I think they seem to have a problem
with a woman stepping out of line in any way,
shape or form. Yeah.
Speaker 7: I think the research shows that the people who were
targeted were outliers, were single women.
Speaker 8: Yeah, women who are kind of not acting according to norms.
So yeah, for sure, whatever those were, yes, exactly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And all you have to do is ask Nathaniel
Hawthorne about a many women who can't stay in their place.
Speaker 7: Well, I read the scar Letter as part of my research,
just because it's right in the heart of that they're
just weird. They're really weird.
Speaker 8: And so you always think, is that when I go
into a novel, is do I want to spend two
years with people. Yes, I have them in my life
for two years, and so that's always a consideration.
Speaker 5: The one thing before we let you go that I
didn't ask you about was your research process, because we
did talk to Dan at length about the amount of
time that he spent paging.
Speaker 6: Through old scrap books. Oh yeah, in Cleveland.
Speaker 5: What is your research process like and how deeply interposed
world did you have to delve to get to the
pale blue eye.
Speaker 8: I would suggest that my research process isn't as considerable
as Dan's, or is that of any nonfiction writer. My
feeling is that as a novelist, I learn enough to
be able to tell the story.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 8: As a result, I'm never what I would call an
expert on anything. I also am very clever to say this.
Speaker 7: I never think of this consciously in advance, but I
wrote a book about young Lincoln. I wrote a book
about young Jackie Kennedy, young Poe. So that means you
really don't have to investigate too much of their life afterwards.
You can be a little bit.
Speaker 8: Ignorant of that stuff because they're not that person yet.
And that's almost the attraction is catching them in that
liminal form where they haven't quite become the person we
know Jackie and Jackie and Me is not that Jackie yet.
She's still finding her way there. And the same with
Poe in the Payable Eye. He's not that Poe yet.
He hasn't quite found his vocation and he's calling. So
it's interesting to find them in that place. In terms
of West Point, I did a lot of There wasn't
a lot, honestly, I found, but I found a couple
of Actually there was a novel that was written that
did gosh forty years ago, fifty years ago, the Nanger
billion then grants. Anyway, I had a lot of great details.
But you just find them where you can.
Speaker 7: But it's all for me. It's on the stacks.
Speaker 8: You just go on the stacks and try to find
a contemporary, first person accounts of these things and just
try to learn what you can. Often the act of
writing the book tells me what I still need to know,
which is often considerable.
Speaker 7: So I'll be trying to tell those stories. Oh wait,
I still need to learn about this, and I still
learn about that. So there's always something I'm looking Right
now in my office, I'm looking at the big book
of notes I have for the pale lit eye. It
was a rather large it's a rather large notebook now
that I think about it.
Speaker 8: And I remember looking at these three British women who
were traveling around America around that time. You always go
to the foreigners, because that's what we are when we
go back with foreigners. And so they're showing they're going
to Niagara Falls, which was a huge tourist destination, and
they're they're showing what it would have been like to
live then, and it's really valuable.
Speaker 2: And that perspective from the alien, if you will, point
of view, would be if we were flying back to
the time and place, that's where we'd be starting.
Speaker 8: I forget who said is the past is a foreign country,
But that's what it is. We're all foreigners to that world.
You go back there humbly looking for just details and stuff.
I'm always looking for clothes, but people were wearing. I'm
always looking for idioms expressions that they would have used
back then. Actually, one of the nicer compliments they received
from the Palabe about the Payable Eyes that it feels
like a book that was actually written in eighteen thirty.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 2: Oh, that is a real compliment.
Speaker 7: It is a compliment. It is a company.
Speaker 8: It's not quite true, because I feel like if it
had been eighteen thirty book, it would be unreadable now
to most people.
Speaker 7: So you have to find some hybrid between now and then.
But it's nice to know. I should add too that.
Speaker 8: A lot of the book is written in edground posone voice,
which was the challenge I said for myself, and it
was really fun to make happen. Oh, and I should
add I also that your listeners might be interested. I
listened to recordings of post stories by We're Going Back
in Time Vincent Price, and that's what.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so these old time horror actors. I would have
these stories like playing alongside me. Yeah, as I was writing,
because I thought it just get me in the right place.
So yeah, it's lovely. I loved researching that book, I.
Speaker 2: Can imagine, So it feels good when The New York
Times calls Pale Blue Eye gruesomely entertaining. Yes, but I
don't know if that was what you were going for.
Speaker 7: Of course I was going for that absolutely. No, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
there it is. No.
Speaker 8: The New York Times review is particularly I'm still quoting
from that review. It was so lovely that I'm still
snipping from it as I go through life. I'm just
turning it into a permanent.
Speaker 7: But it's nice. No anytimes the time says it proves
of your work. It's a good thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this has some amazing reviews.
Speaker 4: So the book is The Pale Blue Eye.
Speaker 5: The movie and seem to be Netflix movie is also
called The Pale Blue Eye. And in addition to Pale
Blue Eye, give us the name of your book about
v doc again for our listeners who are interested in
going further back.
Speaker 7: Yes, it's called The Black Tower.
Speaker 8: Yes, it's in an eighteen eighteen Paris and involves the
potentially the lost Dauphin of France who was supposedly killed
during the revolution but may have survived. It's like an
Amstagia story of this royal figure who might have made
it out of all the devastations.
Speaker 5: So yes, And then for the Christmas loving person among us,
you also have mister Timothy.
Speaker 7: Ah, there we go. I love how we're working through
the canon. Thank you for this.
Speaker 8: Mister Timothy is about tiny tim not the curly hair
jubidour familiar to people of my generation, but the actual
Dickens character. And yes, it's again a sort of gothic
mystery thriller set during Christmas, but with a grown up
Tiny Tim. He's now a grown man living in London,
living in a brothel and teaching them madam how to
read and combing the Thames River for bodies. So he's
your grandmother's tiny Tim, really, But that was really by design.
That was my my again my homage to Dickens, but
also my desire to make Timothy tiny Tim a character
I could stand.
Speaker 7: I never liked Tenny Tim. That's my confession there. While
we're being confessional, I've confessed my feelings for Gillian Anderson,
and now I'm confessing my feelings about tiny Tim, which
is I never could stand him. So the book is
my way of kind of turning into somebody I God.
Speaker 4: Bless us, everyone, bless us.
Speaker 2: We can get you there, okay, And next time we
have you on, we want to talk about your research
into the brothel lifestyle.
Speaker 7: Yes, yes, what do you need to know? Bill? Just
message me privately what you need to know about that. Absolutely, Lou, we.
Speaker 6: Loved having you on.
Speaker 5: This was fantastic and we are encouraging all of our
listeners to read, especially The Pale Blue eye, but also
anything in your canon, because really at this point you
do have just it's a wide variety of wonderful books.
Speaker 6: So thank you so much for joining us on our
our episode.
Speaker 7: Thank you, this has been a blast. I've really enjoyed
my time here.
Speaker 6: That's going to do it for this episode of mind
Over Murder. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.
Speaker 1: Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois.
Speaker 2: Our theme music is by Kevin McCloud.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with Coral Space Media.
Speaker 2: You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Speaker 1: You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway
Murders on Facebook.
Speaker 2: And finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at
Bill Thomas five six.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder.
Speaker 4: An