Special Guest: Award-Winning Author John Klawitter

Today, we at Texty Ladies have the privilege to visit with a premier talent, John Klawitter, a writer, director, and producer. You name it, he’s done it, from writing the Nestle’s Chocolate jingle, to making movie trailers for Disney, to writing Headslap with football great Deacon Jones.

More recently, two of his books won 2009 EPPIE Awards: one for Hollywood Havoc: The Trouble With Fat Boy, and a second for Tinsel Wilderness a collection of professional “lessons.”

Welcome to Magical Monday, John Klawitter, and congratulations!

JR: You are well known for your work at Warner and Disney, but before that, you were in advertising by day and novelist at night. How did you manage to balance the day job and family with writing on spec?

JK: Jacquie, I didn’t recognize it at the time, but the secret is a combination of three things: You have to be fanatical about your writing, you have to have patience, and it is critical to have a mate who doesn’t get jealous of the muse. When, in the early 1970’s I was in Detroit working by day as a producer/director on Ford for Grey Advertising, and by night on In the Interest of National Security (one of the first of my many unpublished early novels), I didn’t see anything unusual in what I was about And, most significantly, neither did my wife Lynn.

JR: Crazyhead is set in Vietnam, your old stomping grounds. Tell us about the process of writing this book, both the emotional journey, and how you ply your craft (plotter, fly into the mist, etc., how you approach revisions, and anything else you’d like to add).

JK: Crazyhead is an example of a novel that was published for what I consider all the wrong reasons. The years before Crazyhead was published (in 1990) were difficult times for me. I’d written and rewritten In the Interest of National Security a dozen times. It had grown to 1,200 single-spaced pages, but I wasn’t saying the things the agents and literary editors wanted to hear. I heard it all: Real writers don’t join the army. Nobody who went to Vietnam of their own volition has anything worth while to say about it. But, you see, Hemingway had his war, and Crane and Heller had theirs. I was determined to go to see it, to experience the full heat of the mad god Mars. And having done that, I couldn’t just blat out the anti-war crap the East Of The Hudson Literary Mob was looking for. I talk about how Crazyhead finally came to be in Tinsel Wilderness, a collection of essays on things remembered from my past.

I had a friend who gave me step-by-step instructions, and I followed them and bingo, I get a call from an editor at Ballantine, then a division of Random House. “Mister Klawitter,” the guy says, “We want to buy your book.”

My friend told me five or six things, and I don’t recall them all off the top of my head. The most important, I think, he advised I cut In the Interest of National Security down to four or five novels, and the first one I (re)write should be about the most shocking incident I knew from Vietnam. Well, I knew one particularly revolting mess, and I involved my protagonist, Mad Denny Haller, in that, and Random House/ Ballantine/ Ivy Books bought it.

JR: When you adapted Crazyhead to a screenplay, how hard was that? Do you think it’s easier to adapt your own work, or harder? Did you receive lots of advice that you did or didn’t take? Are you happy with how it turned out?

JK: I’ve done a lot of adapting, screenplay to novel, and novel to screenplay. Once you know both formats, it’s equally easy to go either way. I adapted KM Briggs Hobberdy Dick to screenplay for a Japanese film company, and that was fun. The head of the company met me at the Century Plaza with his concubine, a gorgeous woman, as interpreter. He pretended he didn’t speak a word of English, and after we’d come to an agreement, said “Thank you very much. Now let’s go to dinner.” I’ve heard others tell me of similar experiences, so maybe thats a common practice. In Hollywood, though it’s hard on the spirit, you can make a decent living adapting books that never make it to the silver screen.

About taking advice, if you’re talking about working with others to adapt a novel to screenplay, it is critical that you listen to everybody. If the guy paying the bills suggests something I don’t agree with, I disagree once, strongly but in a quiet voice and with my reasons. If he still insists, I do it his way. When I adapt my own novels to screenplays, I don’t listen to anybody unless they’ve paid money up front. It’s not much different than when you’re working with an opinionated agent or a strong-minded editor. If I’ve turned in my manuscript and they say change this or that and we’ll take another look, I politely decline. But I have to admit it depends on the situation. When I wrote Headslap, Prometheus Books supplied us with a very good senior editor, but he was proactive in that he started to get his shots in from the very first page. Well, the advance wasn’t much, maybe $1,500, and I’d (foolishly) put 5 years into Headslap. The editor learned he was going to have to fight me on every page over things that really didn’t matter that much, and he backed off.

But maybe I’m drifting a bit here. You asked whether I liked the final screenplay adaptation I wrote of Crazyhead. With screenplays, you never pass judgment, not even on your own work, until you see the final product up on the screen. Crazyhead has been optioned a number of times, but even though it’s considered something of a cult classic, it’s more about the human tragedy of war from both sides of the conflict, the clash of ideals and cultures, simple and complex misunderstandings, absurd miscalculations, idealistic crazyness, the ridiculous, foolish, wasteful and mad things war and different ways of thinking bring about. FFC and other filmmakers have been successful in selling their versions of the meaning of Vietnam. Some day there may be room for other, less simplistic versions, but so far I haven’t seen it.

JR: How did you apply your storytelling abilities to Deacon Jones’ biography? Or did you? Please explain the process of co-writing a biography.

JK: A few notions about writing with Deacon Jones. First, the process: I would meet with Deacon for hours at a time, several times a week. He would talk and I would write longhand on yellow notepads. That night or the next day I would transcribe the notes, making sense out of my scribbles. I didn’t use a tape recorder because I found that inhibited his delivery. Initially, I agreed to write an “As Told To” biography, you know, “BY DEACON JONES, as told to John Klawitter.” I actually wrote that, but the publisher’s reaction was very negative.

I found out that Deacon’s verbal and storytelling skills were enormous, but so much of it depended on overtones that readers were missing everything. Deacon would say “I’m gonna KILL that quarterback,” say it with fervor and humor and intensity, and it would just lie there flat on the page.

That’s when I got in real trouble. I vowed I would make it work, and to do that I had to make it a real biography, and that took hundreds of interviews, thousands of hours research, and an additional four and a half years. My reward? “Headslap, by John Klawitter and Deacon Jones.” After Headslap was published, I went back and culled many of Deacon’s sayings from my notes and edited them into The Book of Deacon (Seven Locks Press). Deacon comes from a heritage of black oral history that extends back to the old country, and his sayings reflect that…however, neither Headslap, nor The Book of Deacon actually does him justice as a storyteller. I’d like to go back and adapt both of them into audio books. But Deacon’s a busy guy, and I don’t know whether he could put up with the process…or even if he could. Like I said, my opinion has been that he freezes a bit on mike. You have to direct him, to take him to another place in his own personna, and that takes time.

JR: You have a series with Matt “ Hollywood ” Havoc. Tell us a little about your leading man and his trials and tribulations. What inspired you to write this series?

JK: Matt Havoc, the protagonist of the Hollywood Havoc series, is a guy very much like 99% of the professionals in Hollywood, the professional men and women you never see at the EMMY awards or the Oscars. If you’re lucky, their name blinks on the screen or crawls up bottom to top so fast you can’t read it. Being an average, ordinary producer in Hollywood is a lot of rejection, pain, attention to details, eating crap (from prima donnas and press), late nights, weeks away from home, hurried affairs, breakup, heartache, divorce, new affairs, and so on. Matt Havoc represents to me the indomitable spirit and humor of many of those who survive as Hollywood professionals.

The running story line is that Matt accidentally incurs the wrath of a terrorist intent on blowing up Los Angeles. Matt himself is a low-budget producer with aspirations of being a serious writer. His experiences are all hit-and-run, dodging the cops to steal a free location shot, haggling with cast and crew to get the best deals, and so on…so he is a slippery fellow, and so far has been able to survive the attempts his deadly enemy has made to kill him. Additionally, because he works for a very tricky boss, head of an indy film company that produces cheapo movies and manages to turn a profit, Matt knows a lot about hiding money and shifting it around.

JR: We’d like to know about your latest release. Do you have a book video? Excerpt?

JK: Double Dragon has published my last five or six books, and they put up excerpts of each one for easy viewing. I guess the best way to see any of this is by going to my website. If you click on any cover on the home page, it takes you to the Double Dragon site.

I also read my work “as told by the author,” and free excerpts of these audio books are available at audible.com. Just go there and type “John Klawitter” in the Search Box and it takes you to my books.

I’m currently doing a ‘book video’ as part of a pilot series I’m developing for Twisted Tails, the great series of short story anthologies J. Richard Jacobs is putting out for Double Dragon. (So far he’s done three, with #4 due out in March, and #5 this coming autumn.) The trailer is something special, unique visuals by Deron Douglas cut to song lyrics, music by Steve Zuckerman, a driving, appropriately wierd song for a television series I look on as the new Twilight Zone.

JR: What is your writing philosophy?

JK: I write from personal experiences, whether it’s about war, sports or Hollywood. If I write about an explosion, I’ve been near enough to feel the vibrations. Any closer, and I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale. When I write of personal relationships, that too. Beyond that, well, the story’s the thing.

Thank you John for taking the time for us today, and we’re looking forward to picking your brain for several workshops in the future. You’re always welcome at Texty Ladies.

Congratulations, once again, for two EPPIE wins!

Readers, you’re welcome to visit John’s website or facebook page. To learn more about John, take a look at an in-depth interview with him as he talks about his Disney and Warner Bros. days.

John and I wish you a Happy Magical Monday!

Upcoming events:

March 11: I’ll be posting an article about food on the cattle trail. Learn all about sourdough! That’s on Unusual Historicals.

March 16:I’m still working on getting the songwriter interview from Justin Saragueta (he’s busy these days, which is good!)

March 23: Interview with Marie-Claude Bourque, author of Ancient Whispers, an American Title V finalist.

Jacquie

Down Home Ever Lovin’ Mule Blues (See the Book Video featuring Justin Saragueta)

Jacquie Rogers *** Myspace *** Twitter *** Facebook

Faery Special Romances *** Book Video
Royalties go to Children’s Tumor Foundation,
ending Neurofibromatosis through Research

Tags: crazyhead, deacon jones, disney, headslap, john klawitter, warner bros