HBO and I have a deal to at least try to make a television series from the Leonid McGill stories. We're going to start with the first novel, 'The Long Fall.'
I love Elmore Leonard. To me, True Romance is basically like an Elmore Leonard movie.
I wasn't that into crime novels at all, but a friend introduced me to the work of Jim Thompson - I loved all his books.
'The Third Man,' directed by Carol Reed and written by Graham Greene, is, quite simply, one of the finest movies ever made.
I'm working on something that's not yet novel-shaped but is something of a film-noir-flavored 'Alice in Wonderland.' It will also very likely be a single volume story and not the start of a series.
I particular enjoy the crime writer, Walter Ellis Mosley. He does a series of Chandler-esque detective stories.
'Sunset Boulevard' by Billy Wilder, it's one of my favorite films. I love all the movies from the 1950s.
'The Big Sleep' is an unsentimental, surrealist excitement in which most of the men in Hollywood's underworld are murdered and most of the women go for an honest but not unwilling private sleuth (Humphrey Bogart).
Drawing Dead is a brilliant noir from one of Australia's most exciting new novelists.
And I always had this idea for making a movie about a femme fatale, because I like these characters. They're a lot of fun, they're sexy, they're manipulative, they're dangerous.
My dream role would be to play a femme fatale in a Quentin Tarantino movie.
'Double Indemnity' is one of my all time favorites. That's my favorite.
Although 'L.A. Confidential' is a long movie, there's never a moment when you think, 'I'm loving this... but when's dinner?' Each time I see it, I discover something I hadn't noticed before. It has a tremendous skill in developing all the subplots.
Believe it or not, but 'White Heat' and 'Little Caesar' keep dancing around in my brainpan while I'm writing 'Moonshine.'
I think Jack Nicholson in 'Chinatown' is a very funny character, but I would never call that a comedy.
