WAMG Interview: Terry Hayes – Novelist and Screenwriter – THE ROAD WARRIOR

 Interview conducted by Tom Stockman May 19th 2014

Australian Terry Hayes began his career as a journalist for The Sydney Morning Herald, when as foreign correspondent in the US he covered Watergate and President Nixon’s resignation, among many major international stories. He then went on to become a successful screenwriter, having written the screenplays for THE ROAD WARRIOR, DEAD CALM, PAYBACK, and FROM HELL. He lives in Sydney with his wife and four children.

On Wednesday, June 4^th, 7:00pm at the Mad Art Gallery (#2727 South 12^th Street, St. Louis, 63118), St. Louis-area book lovers will be treated to an arresting evening of espionage, murder and mystery writers. Terry Hayes joins St. Louis crime novelist Scott Phillips for an on-stage discussion of Hayes’ debut novel I AM PILGRIM followed by an audience Q&A and book-signing.  Attendees will also be treated to free gifts, door prizes and free parking while supporting The BackStoppers

Doors open at 6pm at Mad Art Gallery, the 1930’s Art Deco designed Third District Police Station, in historic Soulard.  Guests will get the full station house experience with drinks served from behind the bars of the Sergeant’s desk and special seating in jail cells! Delicious BBQ dining by advance order** is available from Capitalist Pig Handcrafted BBQ

At 7pm, Terry Hayes takes the stage to reveal I AM PILGRIM. Called “Simply one of the best suspense novels I’ve read in a long time,”by NY Times best-selling author David Baldacci, Hayes grabs readers with a challenging police investigation that leads to a taut, terrifying race against time and bio-terrorism, sending the former head of a U.S. espionage unit on a climax-building chase across the globe; from the White House to Afghanistan; through a Nazi death camp and the barren wilderness of the Hindu Kush; all in search of a jihadist set on mass murder and destruction.

Mark Billingsley, Time Out Book Critic wrote of I AM PILGRIM:

“This book is an amazing accomplishment as a debut novel. …This will be a great summer read if you like thrillers with depth and pathos, if you like to see great characters thrown into impossible situations and definitely, if you like action and adventure with a soul”

Sarah Ward at Crime Pieces wrote:

“I absolutely loved it. It’s got to be a contender for my book of the year….the plot is intricate, carefully drawn out and, towards the end, completely compelling. At 700 pages long, I didn’t want the story to finish and I’d love to read more from this writer.”

Hayes is also the award-winning writer and producer of numerous big screen films, including Dead Calm, Payback, Flightplan, Road Warrior, and Bangkok Hilton; as well as Emmy-nominated television movies and mini-series. He will be interviewed on stage by St. Louis crime novelist Scott Phillips, author of nine books, including The Ice Harvest,  also a feature film, directed by Harold Ramis and starring John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton. Phillips’ newest novel, Hop Alley, will be published in May and available for purchase at the event.

Before his trip to St. Louis, Terry Hayes took the time to talk to We Are Movie Geeks about the event, his new novel, and of course his movie career, specifically THE ROAD WARRIOR

We Are Movie Geeks: You’re coming to St. Louis in two weeks – have you been St. Louis before?

Terry Hayes: Many years ago as a journalist – we’re going back 40 years. I guess it’s changed a bit though, hasn’t it?

WAMG: No, not really. Congratulations on your novel I AM PILGRIM. How did you get started in writing?

TH: I was a migrant kid – I was born in England and came to Australia when I was very young, which was a pretty weird thing for a child to go through. We didn’t know anybody in Australia and it happened to coincide with the time that I was learning to read. So to escape the loneliness and the emotional upset of all of that, I began reading a lot. I was one of those kids who thought, after years of reading, I should start writing my own stuff. The idea never left me so in some ways you could say I never grew up.

WAMG:  You’ve mostly written screenplays. Have you always wanted to be a novelist?

TH: Yes. I was 21 when I went to live in America but during those teenage years in Australia, there was really no film industry there. A few random movies had been made. Unlike America, nobody really thought much about writing movies so I though naturally of being a novelist. It’s a pretty hard job to convince your parents or the counselors at school that that is a valid profession so I went into journalism. My heart had always been into being a novelist, but my early twenties coincided with the rise of the new wave of Australian filmmakers and I sort of got caught up in that and became a screenwriter, more by accident than design.

WAMG: When you were growing up in Australia, were you a movie buff? Was it easy seeing films in theaters there?

TH: It was easy to see them. It was similar to America in that every suburb had a movie house that showed double features. TV was later in coming to Australia so you went to the movies. My parents took us a lot when I was young. If you were enterprising and managed to know when the manager was looking the other way, you could get in for free. I saw a lot of movies, but fortunately I read a lot of books too, so I was well-grounded in storytelling.

WAMG: How has I AM PILGRIM been received?

TH: Astonishingly, from my point of view! It’s been one of the great experiences of my life. Years ago, I was writing scripts with director George Miller and I was really taken aback by the reaction to THE ROAD WARRIOR. I remember standing on the Champ De’ Elysees in Paris and seeing it play at two movie houses with massive billboards and think “my gosh, for a guy from Australia, this isn’t bad”. I’d say that equal to that experience has been the response to I AM PILGRIM. It’s been on the best-seller lists in the U.K., in Holland, and Australia. It’s about to be released in Germany and Poland and of course America – 21 different countries. The critical response has been pretty overwhelming. I’ve been told I’m one of the few authors to get outstanding reviews in The Literary Review and in America the industry publications Publishers Weekly and Library Journal have given it fantastic reviews.

WAMG: What’s the biggest difference between getting a book deal and selling a screenplay?

TH: They’re both torture in different ways.  I’m aware of that I was blessed as far as the book deal was concerned. It’s extremely difficult to get a book deal but I had an advantage because I had written screenplays and had the world’s largest talent agency representing me so when I  sat and wrote a couple hundred pages of I AM PILGRIM, it went into the system of the William Morris Agnecy and then the head of the literary department in New York contacted me and told me I had a career as an international novelist if I wanted it, which of course I did. So, from that point of view it was easy. Selling scripts in Hollywood is a terrible task. It’s really difficult. Studios are making fewer and fewer movies every year. The budgets get bigger but the number of movies gets smaller and it can be a pretty grinding task even if you do work on a movie. POCAHONTAS, the Disney animated film from a few years ago had 28 credited writers on it – and that movie was 88 minutes long! It’s pretty hard being on a team of 28 if you’re a writer. You spend all your time negotiating other people’s sensibilities, not just your own. For a person who didn’t have my background, getting a book deal is also very difficult. It’s just the nature of popular culture at the moment.

WAMG: I AM PILGRIM is a globe-hopping adventure. How did you research the material? Did you travel to many of the countries you write about?

TH: Having been a migrant kid, I’ve always been a bit of a gypsy. I’ve lived in many of these places. The lead character is an American. My wife and children are American. I first went to America as a foreign correspondent when I was 21 and have lived there off and on for many years – it’s like a second home to me. So I had that advantage. I covered American politics and many American stories for years as a journalist. I had that advantage as well as an outsider’s view. I think an outsider can see things through a different prism. I’ve also lived in England and Switzerland and other parts of Europe – countries that are mentioned and used in the book. The only two countries that are in the book that I have not travelled to extensively are Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. I would have gone but I have four young kids and I know the dangers there.

WAMG: Part of the plot deals with Islamic fundamentalism. Have you received any backlash about your novel’s portrayal of Islam and life in Muslim countries?

TH: No, the book does deal with Islamic fundamentalism, but I think you have to understand that most people who follow the Muslim faith are as concerned about Islamic fundamentalism as we are. The main villain in the book is someone who has been radicalized by a horrific event in his childhood. He saw his father publicly beheaded in Saudi Arabia so it’s a character well motivated. He doesn’t represent Islam and in a way, most of the Muslim world understands that. He’s a pretty extreme character. I hope I’ve done their religion justice and accuracy. It’s a pretty horrific plot this guy unleashes and I don’t think anyone in the world thinks he should get away with it.

WAMG: When you were writing I AM PILGRIM was the idea of a screenplay in your mind? Would you like to see it made into a film?

TH: I’d love to see it made into a movie under the right conditions and circumstances. If someone said to me they wanted to buy the rights to I AM PILGRIM and they had signed a director like Uwe Boll and Chuck Norris was going to play the lead, well, that’s not the story I had envisioned. If someone said David Fincher wants to direct it and Brad Pitt or Daniel Day Lewis were going to star, I’d say that was a pretty good idea.

WAMG: That’s actually my next question. Who would you like to see play Scott Murdoch?

TH: Either one of them! Brad Pitt is a good looking guy and a very good actor. Daniel Day Lewis is a different type of actor. Either one of them could bring incredible power and strength to it. My young daughters keep telling me that Chris Hemsworth is the guy! An actor brings such an interpretation to the role and if you have a very good actor you’re not necessarily going to get my vision of it. You’re going to get that plus some more. If I AM PILGRIM is going to made be made into a movie all I’d say is that we give it our best shot and make it as a good movie.

WAMG: Your last screenplay credit was FROM HELL in 2001. Have you been working on this book this whole time?

TH: I wish! No, I wrote a script for Jerry Bruckheimer called SKELETON COAST that hasn’t been made yet. I’ve done lots of other work in between. I’ve done uncredited work on other people’s scripts. That’s the nature of Hollywood – that’s what the career is like for every writer there. If you talk to most of them, they’ll tell you that the best scripts they’ve ever written were never made into movies. Or it took ten years to make it into a movie. That’s the nature of the work. I remember talking to Mel Gibson once about some of the stuff he’s done. It’s very similar with actors. He just shrugged and said “Look, you take the best role that’s available at the time. You’re an actor, you keep working”. If you’re a writer, especially in Hollywood, you try to keep working and you work on scripts that you believe in and you want to see made, but that often doesn’t happen.

WAMG: Let me ask you a couple of questions about THE ROAD WARRIOR because that’s one of my very favorite movies.

TH: Well, thank you!

WAMG: I think THE ROAD WARRIOR is the movie I’ve seen in the big screen more than any other film. In the summer of ’82 I just saw that film over and over. Here’s one of my favorite quotes: “I remember a time of chaos. Ruined dreams. This wasted land. But most of all, I remember The Road Warrior.” – did you write those lines?

TH: Yes I did. I wrote all of the narration. “The light fades, the vision dims”, all of that stuff which has made its way into popular culture. What happened was George Miller the director came up with this brilliant idea to do this montage at the beginning in black and white and we don’t reveal who the narrator is. He asked me to sit down and write this narration. I wondered what images we were going to use to support it. We can’t just have some guy talking over a black screen. We didn’t have any money to shoot anything so I came up with the idea of using archival footage. We spent many weeks in an editing room, looking at newsreel footage of cataclysmic things that have happened in the world and stuff that could support the sort of thoughts that we brought to the beginning of the movie. So it was an interesting writing experience because I had to not only craft the words to suit the images but find the images that would suit the words. A lot of stuff that I wrote that I thought was really good, we just couldn’t find the images for. I speak to George Miller a fair amount and I’ve seen footage of his new MAD MAX: FURY ROAD which is astonishing – there’s no two ways about it – it’s a groundbreaking film. George brings to it such a fantastic visual eye.

WAMG: Did you spend much time on the set of THE ROAD WARRIOR and MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME?

TH: Yes, I was producer on one and George’s close collaborator on both so yes, I was on the set of THE ROAD WARRIOR every day. I was in the editing room with the head of Warner Brothers when we showed it to them – it was a full-on experience but that was Australia, you see. Back then especially, it was more of a cottage industry. In America you can’t have those experiences. Everything is compartmentalized. In Australia it was ‘all hands to the pump’. It was a great experience. The first movie I’d written and the first movie I’d seen made. I learned a lot about movie making.

WAMG: Was MAD MAX: FURY ROAD filmed in Australia as well?

TH: Some of it was but most of it was filmed in South Africa. It’s really something.

WAMG: You teamed up with Mel Gibson a few years later when you wrote PAYBACK. Are you friends with Mel?

TH: Yes, I’ve known Mel for well over 30 years now. I’m proud of PAYBACK. I’ve written some other scripts with Mel that never got off the ground. I know him extremely well and I think it’s been anguishing for most people who do know him to see what’s occurred in recent years.

WAMG: I think he’s a brilliant director. I think APOCALYPTO is one of the best films of the past decade.

TH: Oh yes. Leaving aside all the controversy. Leaving aside everything about his personal life, I’m not saying that should be discounted, but if you didn’t know that and just judged him on his films, the guy is a brilliant director. There’s no doubt about it.

WAMG: I gotta ask you this: Kris Kristofferson’s character in PAYBACK was named Bronson. Was that a reference to Charles Bronson?

TH: Ha! Yes – Charles Bronson was Mel’s neighbor – he had a house down in Malibu. Thinking up names for characters in movies is a difficult thing, but yes, I think that name fit pretty well.

WAMG: I think so too. When you’re in St. Louis next week, you will be interviewed by (St. Louis-based) crime novelist Scott Phillips. Have you read his novels?

TH: Yes I have. I’m touring 14 cities in 16 days and a cruel fate is that many of the people who are interviewing me have written novels, so I’ve had to sit down and read and read and read.

WAMG: What’s next for Terry Hayes?

TH: I’m working on another novel called Year of the Locust which is sort of a cross between Hunt for Red October and THE TERMINATOR. It’s a great story, very filmic in its basic sort of conception because in Hollywood the concept really is important. I’m having great fun with it. I think it’s a terrific story. It’s got the best submarine I think written since Red October, but it’s really the story of a family which is different. I AM PILGRIM is really the story of a loner, so that’s a nice change of pace for me. After that I’m going to do PILGRIM 2, then another thriller, and then PILGRIM 3.

WAMG: Sounds like you’re keeping busy. Best of luck with I AM PILGRIM and I hope you enjoy your visit to St. Louis on June 4^th.

TH: Thank you so much.