George Pelecanos grew up on these working-class streets. It's where he and his wife have chosen to raise their three children. It's where his stories come from, where his characters are born and where the music of their street slang originates.
The son of a Greek immigrant, Pelecanos has dedicated much of his life to countering the generally negative perception of life in the District by addressing it head-on in 14 incendiary crime novels in as many years, including "Right As Rain," "Soul Circus," "Hard Revolution" and his latest, "The Night Gardener."
Considered by many the poet laureate of D.C. crime, the University of Maryland film grad has placed Washington's vices in their historical context, as the byproduct of political greed, lower-class disenfranchisement and the moral decay of a consumer culture run amok.
In the process, he has quietly built a readership that includes some of the biggest names in his own field: Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly and Ian Rankin.
Pelecanos likes to keep a foot in film and TV as a hedge against the capriciousness of fiction. He recently served as writer and editor on the hit HBO series "The Wire" and has signed on with Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks to bring "The Pacific" version of "Band of Brothers" to the small screen.
Bankrate checked in with "the Dickens of D.C." in -- where else? -- D.C. to look back on his gradual rise to the best-seller lists.
Bankrate: You come by your blue-collar work ethic naturally, right?
Pelecanos: Yeah, my dad had a little lunch counter downtown. He was a Greek immigrant. And this is not a big surprise, but my dad loved what he did; he couldn't wait to get up at 4 in the morning and go down to that store and turn the key. And just like many men, I'm doing exactly what my father did -- I come into this office at the same time every morning, I treat it like a job -- my wife laughs at me because I get dressed -- and I'm very happy to have my own business. You've got to have the kind of personality that doesn't wake up in the middle of the night with the cold sweats wondering when the next paycheck is going to come in, or what about health insurance, what about a 401(k)? You've got to push all of that aside and just get to work.
Bankrate: Did you get your work ethic from your father?
Pelecanos: Yeah, I started working for my dad when I was 11 years old. In 1968 parents could say to their kid, "All right, go up to the corner tomorrow morning, catch the 70 bus down Georgia Avenue, then transfer to the F Street line and that will take you near your dad's place and then you go to work." At 11. They weren't worried about me; in fact, they pushed me to do it. It was, "What else are you going to do, you gonna play all summer? It's time to go to work." It was the greatest experience I've ever had. My dad never even went on vacation. He wouldn't close the doors because he felt, if the door's locked, they're going to try the guy across the street. So I got closer to my dad and saw that he was happiest in that environment.
Bankrate: Unlike many authors, your career has grown at a nice steady pace. Has that been a blessing or a curse?
George Pelecanos: It's been good on a number of levels. When I started out, the advances were very small -- we're talking $2,500 for a book -- and for that reason I was sort of left alone to work on my craft. They weren't really watching me; even at the publishing house, it was like, "Just let him go." So, I was trying different things, different styles and I think I got better as I went along because of that opportunity. Now, as I have gotten better, the audiences have grown, the advances have grown. It's the way it should be, I think. Too many people get overpublished to begin with and then their careers are over. I was never in this to make a pot of money and then retire or something; I want to keep writing to the finish line, man.
Bankrate: How did you survive during the lean years?
Pelecanos: I worked two jobs. I had a day job. Right about the time I started getting published, we adopted our first child. I was 31. I got a job that I was sort of excited about with Circle Films, which is a small film production and distribution company here in Washington owned by Jim and Ted Pettis, who are kind of heroes in the Greek community. They ended up owning 80 movie screens in Washington. I went to work for them to promote the film "The Killers," the first film by John Woo to be distributed in the United States. These guys had been distributing the Coen brothers' movies, "Raising Arizona," "Miller's Crossing" and "Barton Fink." So it was a great job. I ended up producing some independent films that were distributed by Sony Classics. I learned the film business from the ground up, then at night and sometimes very early in the morning, 4 or 5, I'd get up and write. In that way, for nine years, I did both.
Bankrate: Unlike many authors, you didn't get into the film business via screenwriting.
Pelecanos: No. A couple things happened. In 1999, my novel "King Suckerman" was my move to Little, Brown and the advances started to get bigger; it was $45,000 for a book which, at that point, was real money to me. Then, that book sold to Miramax, and as part of the deal, I negotiated to write the screenplay. The movie didn't get made, but that screenplay became a calling card for me in the industry, and I started to get offers to write for film. At that point, I decided to pull the trigger and go off on my own. Now I'm running my own business. I devote about half the year writing a novel and the other half writing or producing television or the movies.
Bankrate: It sounds like you're comfortable in both pursuits.
Pelecanos: It's funny. I was a film major in college; I thought I wanted to make films. Then, in my senior year, I got turned on to books by a professor who changed my life, really. Turned me on to crime novels. I had never really read novels at all, and the reason was that the books I had been forced to read in high school didn't really speak to my world at all; they give you "The Scarlet Letter," stuff like that. And this guy showed me the kind of literature that was really populist literature and I recognized a lot of the characters in it and I decided this is really what I want to do. So I left that whole film thing behind. But when I got back into the industry, because I needed a day job, it put me back on that path again, and through writing novels, I got back to screenwriting and producing. It's very interesting how it all worked out.
Bankrate: It's hard to imagine you as a cigar-chomping film producer for a decade.
Pelecanos: Yes, when I would go into a film meeting, the artists often distrusted me; they didn't know I was a novelist. I was a suit to them, you know? And I was definitely wearing two hats. When I would meet people in the business, I would never say, "Oh, by the way, I'm a novelist," because that would say to them: What, you don't want to do this job?
Bankrate: It seems that when novelists go into screenwriting, it adversely affects their fiction. Have you struggled with that?
Pelecanos: Last year, I dropped out of producing "The Wire" because I felt like this is overtaking my life to the degree that it's leaving me very little time to write novels. And when you have very little time, your work is going to suffer. So I had to choose something, and I'm fortunate in that I'm making a good living as a novelist now and I could make that choice. But I do have kids, so had the balance sheet been a little bit different -- if I was just making an OK living as a novelist and been tempted on the other side to make a better living as a screenwriter and producer -- I would have done that for my kids.
Bankrate: Do you have to choose?
Pelecanos: Well, "The Night Gardener" just hit The New York Times list, the top 15, which is the first time it's ever happened to me. Apparently it's a big thing businesswise because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; the bookstores around the country look at that list and say, "We'd better order 20 more copies of 'The Night Gardener' and put it in front of the store." I never really understood why it was important to happen; I always just thought it was an ego thing or something. But it really does do something for your career. I have made the choice to focus on my novels, and then, with what time I have left, I'll take on other jobs.
Bankrate: You recently shifted gears for one of those side projects, right?
Pelecanos: I recently worked on this thing called "The Pacific" with Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, which is the Pacific theater version of "Band of Brothers." They're going to be filming that next year. I took the job because my father had served as a Marine in the Pacific, he fought on Leyte and the Philippines, and I wanted to honor him. And that's the kind of job I like to pick up. The advantage of working in television is you pretty much know they're going to make it. They don't waste money in development; if they commission you to write an episode of a series like that, it's going to end up on the screen. The way I think of my screen career now is that it's another gun in my arsenal. It's always nice to have your throw-down gun in your sock, because you don't know when you're facing the blank page if you're ever going to be able to do it again. If I do sit down and that happens to me, I can always call a guy and say, "What's your next project? Can I write something for you?" It's nice to know my kids are always going to have food on the table.
Bankrate: Do you enjoy working from home?
Pelecanos: This is a perfect job for me. I have two sons, 15 and 13, and a daughter who is 9. A lot of guys give lip service to wishing they could spend more time with their family when really they're most comfortable at the office where everything is kind of taken care of for them. But I like being here. My wife and I split up the duties in terms of picking up the kids and taking them here and there. I'm here every day when they come home from school. My sons are athletes; right now we're in football season and I go to all the games. My older son will be wrestling this winter and I'll go to all the matches. It's a perfect life for me for what I want to get out of it in every way, not just business but my personal life. It's just great.
Bankrate: Do you feel that because success came later in life for you, you were better prepared to handle it?
Pelecanos: Yeah, because now I'm a middle-aged guy. There's no danger of me going out on the road and doing something stupid. I know who I am, I know what my priorities are. If somebody is flirting with me, for instance, I know what it is; it's certainly not because I'm a 49-year-old man, I'm the guy on the book jacket, that's who they're talking to.
Bankrate: Do you handle your own finances?
Pelecanos: My nephew pretty much runs the Morgan Stanley office up in Baltimore and he has all my money and he's real smart. He's done real well. I do mostly stocks. I'm very happy for him to just take care of it and check my monthly statement. |
