PROFILE | By Peter A. Smith | Photographs by Jarrod McCabe

Richard Russo , screenwriter Discussed: The language of Hollywood, book publishing technology, downeast accents, hot sex, real estate, and the Pulitzer Prize

Richard Russo is packing up for a Maine: Tick, the young girl in , the Week type of stuff. Then, I think, the last trip to Amherst, Massachusetts, to is based on your daughter’s experience in high we hear of him, he’s written something like a see the latest, most exciting addition school. Your daughters’ marriages played into game show before he moves on. I have been to Russoland, his one-month-old That Old Cape Magic. How much Richard blessed with working with really good directors granddaughter Molly. Because he’s Russo is there in Jack Griffin, the book’s and wonderful actors. It’s been lucrative work; also been flying to Los Angeles, protagonist? it’s been rewarding work in almost every way. traveling on book tours, and going But I’m one of those really, really rare on vacation to visit his daughter Richard Russo: I was a novelist who came to who’s been treated that way. Kate in England, Russo and his wife, screenwriting late, and Griffin is, essentially, Barbara, have been spending winters a young screenwriter who came to teaching in Boston’s Chinatown. Folks in and writing fiction later. I’d like to think that M: Like Jim Harrison or Richard Price? Florida must get a real kick out of I’m not quite as lost as Jack Griffin. He’s very hearing that, he says; just the mere much like an earlier character of mine, from RR: Yes, they both have done well. Russell thought of a “Boston winter” is sure my novel, Straight Man, Hank Devereaux. Banks and my friend Dennis Lehane have to elicit a snicker. These are both novels, essentially, about done pretty well. But you can almost let middle-aged, white guys kind of circling the your voice fall there. The number of writers He’ll be back in Camden this drain. They’re out of control, they’re trying who have been abused by Hollywood, the summer, where the coast is just the to mix things up, they’re about to lose the list goes on and on. So, I have been able to way he likes it—a little rough, a little very things in their lives that mean the most throw some gentle jabs at the whole world raw, a little more honest. to them, and they don’t seem to understand of screenwriting. Not so much the world of that. That part is not autobiographical. I screenwriting as the world of deal making, Russo is in the midst of a dozen haven’t been in that position, but to put which I haven’t had to do a lot of, but I know projects—putting finishing touches a character in that position, especially a it’s out there. on an essay for Granta, reviewing for middle-aged, white guy, and just watch him, the New York Times Book Review, just totally lost trying to find his way back to I’ve had my share of movies and TV pilots go editing The Best American Short the people and the things that mean the most belly up, so I know how quickly a producer’s Stories 2010, writing a new novel to him—it’s a wonderful device. outrageous optimism can turn in a heartbeat. about our obsession with the better When somebody says to you, “I think this draft places, shopping around a script is really a step in the right direction,” that about natural gas reserves in the M: The book takes some jabs at the academy often means, “You’re fired.” That’s the language Catskill Mountains, and polishing and you call screenwriting a “betrayal of of Hollywood, which is so wonderful. I had up three screenwriting projects. genetic gifts.” How much of that is drawn a chance to play with some both first- and from your own experience? secondhand screenwriting experiences. The protagonists in Russo’s novels are often middle-aged men stuck RR: I’m still doing a fair amount of in ruts, but the author, on the other screenwriting, and that’s another way in M: Is it a problem to do screenwriting and also hand, is on a roll. And he has a big which this is not autobiographical. For Jack, to work on novels? barrel laugh to prove it. he’s not been blessed with the kind of work that I’ve been blessed with, working on RR: So far, it hasn’t been a problem. I just Empire Falls or Nobody’s Fool. Jack has been did a panel with a writer buddy of mine out kind of a journeyman screenwriter who’s in Spokane, Jess Walter. He says that novel done a couple of marginal movies and then writing is like a relationship; screenwriting gone into doing TV, movies, crappy Movie of is hot sex. There’s an element of truth to that.

Richard Russo’s latest novel, That Old Cape Magic, will be out in paperback on June 1.

92 maine | themainemag.com PROFILE Richard Russo

They’re not mutually exclusive, when I’m M: Some of your other novels have places M: Your latest novel is something of a we’ll include the realtor story, and probably working on a novel and I come up against named North Bath or Thomaston. Does being departure from these small-town narratives? maybe one or two other stories. I’ve come to the wall and I have a choice either between in Maine affect your writing? think of it as a kind of anti-electronic book. staring at it and getting nowhere and saying, RR: What I was interested in is America’s Something that there would no reason to “All right, I’m going to take six weeks off RR: To be honest, I don’t think it has shown ongoing obsession with what we think of as sell electronically because the whole idea here and go write a screenplay.” You’re just up nearly as much in anything that I’ve finer places, no matter where we are. We’re would be to have a beautiful object in your so much better off with six weeks of hot sex published yet, as it is likely to in the future. always looking for the finer place. I’ve been hands. I think books may need to become than staring at something that you can’t fix. As I watched people that I lived with on the noticing for years that—and I love where I more beautiful as more words are backlit on If you go away for a while and come back, coast of Maine, as I observed them, and their live in Maine—but when you log on to your an iPad or a Kindle. Jeff Bezos at Amazon you’ll find that often, by not working on it, behavior starts making more sense to me, homepage in the morning, there’ll be a little would like to put bookstores out of business. you’ll solve some problems. So for me, the it seems only logical that Maine, whatever thing up there that says, “Ten Best Places He thinks of the book as obsolete, basically. two have crossed over in a fairly healthy way. we mean by Maine as a state, as a state of in the World to Live” or “Ten Best Small We’re going to find out in the next, probably, mind, as a physical place, as a place where Communities.” Like everybody else, I always five, six, seven years, all of us—writers, readers— people work, the kind of work that they do… click on those things. we’re going to find out whether he’s right. M: How did you end up coming to Maine? the longer you live in a place, the more you observe, the more it becomes part of your own My grandparents and my extended family RR: Nobody’s Fool had an option for a film. I rhythms. So I suspect that if you’re grew up around the corner from each other M: Are you thinking about starting a was getting to the point where I was finally seeing, in various ways, Maine turning up in in this small town in upstate New York. We bookstore? making some money as a writer. But, with my fiction andEmpire Falls set in Maine. So all knew there were other finer places in two little girls, I couldn’t yet quite make that was a little bit of That Old Cape Magic. the world to live, but that’s where we lived. RR: No. We already have two bookstores in plunge that would say, “All right, I can make That was back in the time when people Camden. We’re bookstore rich, compared to it as a full-time writer.” Colby College offered would work for a company like General most of America. I think it will be suicidal to me exactly the kind of job I was looking for. M: Writing about a place that’s territorial Electric. Now that we don’t identify with our lose bookstores. I think that the Internet is I took a part-time job, which allowed me to and strong-minded can take a lot of courage. employers, and now that families have to really good at selling very cheap things that continue teaching and allowed me to devote I feel like you’ve done Maine justice so far, but break up in order to follow jobs everywhere, people already know they want. In 1986, nobody more time to my writing. I immediately took then again, I’m from away. where we’re just dispersed all over the knew that they wanted a Richard Russo novel advantage of all of their flexibility and I was country, that’s contributed to an attitude because Mohawk was just being published only there for a few years. I’d had a number RR: Empire Falls was received in Maine with of “since nothing is permanent,” then let’s then. Who the hell was Richard Russo anyway? of academic postings by that time. I loved much more generosity than I could ever have keep looking for the next best thing and then Probably, nobody ever would have known that my job at Colby, but I was ready to stop dreamed, knowing how fiercely territorial the next best thing—always looking for that they wanted to read a Richard Russo novel repeating myself in the classroom. Mainers are about their place. They used magical place. The character in this book if it hadn’t been for really small independent to be made fun of and condescended to, by is somebody whose parents were that way bookstores handing customers the book. writers from away, and filmmakers from and he’s kind of that way, too. Happiness is M: Is that when you researched Empire Falls? away, television shows from away, and always someplace else. You haven’t quite they’re rightly suspicious, I think. I fully gotten there yet but you will be happy if you M: Like this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction, RR: In so far as it was researched, yes. The expected a drubbing, and didn’t get it. Even only just find a way to get there. ’s ? Hathaway shirt company was still in business though Empire Falls is set in Maine, I didn’t at the time. As I was writing Empire Falls, I try to do Maine. I made very conscious RR: Exactly. That was a small-press book sold was just becoming more and more outraged decisions, for instance, to include no Maine M: What will you be working on this summer? by hand in small independent bookstores. Richard Russo writes longhand in the morning, and puts words on disk in the afternoon. by the way those women were being treated. dialect at all. There isn’t a downeast talker They were bought out by a multinational anywhere in that novel. RR: I’m finishing up a long that company, Warnaco, and they were all told is set in Maine. It’s about a realtor. My wife M: The last 15 years of Pulitzers seems to that they could keep their jobs if they work I was writing about the rhythms of people’s is a realtor. It’s about somebody doing work have a disproportionate number of novels that reason not to fill up empty pages with words. just going to sell everything and move to extra hard and if their unions made extra work lives that were pretty much the same in Maine, that involves Maine, that involves are either set in Maine or written by authors I have long thought that what I like best about Maine.” There is that sense, I don’t know concessions. They went along with all of it between Waterville, Skowhegan, all those selling Maine. So, it’s allowed me to distill who lived in Maine—, Richard Maine is that it is essentially outside the whether it’s earned or not, I don’t know to save their jobs, and I think, really, what Central Maine towns, and were just very some slightly deeper, wiser understanding Ford, , … culture. It’s one of the few places in America. whether it’s just part of the air and the water. happened was that they became profitable close to what I was writing about in all those of Maine than I would have been capable Whatever is going on in the country is going There’s something about Maine that feels a again and the company took all of those profits, upstate New York novels. So, people said of a decade ago. You can’t make your RR: There’s a new license plate. It’s not The on in Maine. But, for some reason, you can little bit like the rest of America. put it in their pocket, and shut the mill down. about Empire Falls that “Richard Russo, he main character a Maine realtor without Way Life Should Be, it’s Come to Maine If almost feel it. You just cross the bridge from really got Maine right on the first try.” No, having probably a little more than surface You Want a Pulitzer. New Hampshire into Maine, and it does feel That’s a very familiar story to me, growing I don’t think I got Maine right, I think I got knowledge of what gets sold when you’re like some of the culture begins to fall away. I M: And that’s what brings you here? up in Gloversville, New York. But it was like class right. I think I got mill towns right. I selling Maine real estate. don’t know how that can be, but I appreciate watching the events of my childhood play out think I got the kind of work that people do M: Do you think there’s anything behind that? the fact that it does feel that way. RR: Yes. I love my country but the things in a particularly ugly way in Waterville. Of and the kinds of problems that they have as Another one of my projects is going to be a Or does the Pulitzer just favor small-town that make me craziest about this baffling course, there were other industries—textile, a result from the kind of work that they do. I coffee table book with really nice production Americana? It’s amazing how many people, when you’re nation that we live in seem less in my face paper, rope—and they were all on hard times got that right, but I’ve been watching that my values that will feature my daughter Kate’s out and about in America, you’ll hear people everyday in Maine than they do almost in Maine at the time. whole life, not just in Maine. art and her husband Tom’s design. I think RR: Maine has long winters. There’s really no say, “You know, if it gets bad enough, we’re anywhere else I go.

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