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WORD: Interview with The Bones author Seth Greenland

Seth Greenland is a longtime Hollywood script writer who has worked with comedians from Billy Crystal to Norman Lear. His first novel, The Bones published by Bloomsbury USA, is a wickedly funny literary satire about a Bad Boy comedian who is cast as the star of a television sitcom. WORD’N’BASS.com interviewed Seth about Hollywood, the challenges of writing his first novel, and his future plans.

WORD’N’BASS.com: Since you're a longtime screenplay writer did you find it difficult shifting to writing a novel?

Greenland: I didn’t find it at all difficult switching from writing screenplays to writing a novel. On the contrary, it was liberating to write a novel since it was a form in which I had complete freedom, unlike screenwriting where, if you’re doing it to earn your living, you are forced to hew to certain conventions. Hewing to conventions, as most writers will tell you, can become very annoying and ultimately deleterious to your health.

WORD’N’BASS.com: My first impression was THE BONES is a novel the book industry likes to call "Bad Boy literature." Were you aware of this early on and do you consider yourself a Bad Boy author?

Greenland: I was not at all aware of the "Bad Boy" genre insofar as the contemporary publishing world is concerned. I don’t get out a lot, actually, so that is not surprising. However, there is a tradition of Bad Boy Lit. I do embrace that one could trace back to Homer’s Odyssey, because what is that if not a story about a guy who steps out on his wife for twenty years and kicks ass the entire time he’s gone? Moving ahead a few thousand years, we find Macbeth, another seriously bad boy. And then closer to our own era, there is the bad boy behavior to be found in books like Under The Volcano and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. So I prefer to think of The Bones as part of a venerable tradition rather than a book to be placed in a trendy category.

WORD’N’BASS.com: Was Frank Bones (the protagonist) inspired by any real life people you've known?

Greenland: Frank was not inspired by any one real life guy. However, that said, Lenny Bruce is certainly the ur-comedian for those of the Frank Bones school. There are comics I love like Bill Hicks, Sam Kinison, and, of course, my old friend Richard Belzer, all of whom inspired me one way or another in my creation of the Bones (as Frank royally refers to himself).

WORD’N’BASS.com: What exactly does Frank represent to you?

Greenland: In the simplest Freudian terms, he is the untrammeled comic id, the voice in one’s head most people choose to stifle, but that he allows to howl like a banshee.

WORD’N’BASS.com: Your prose style is more fluid and precise than a debut novel I can recall. To what or whom do you attribute your development as an author?

Greenland: My development as an author is mostly attributable to the advent of e-mail. While that might sound glib, it is not. Let me explain - I have been writing scripts for over twenty years. When I noticed that I was enjoying composing e-mails far more than I was enjoying script writing, I took note. The ineffable pleasure I got from a well-composed missive was far more satisfying to me than the other kinds of writing I was doing. It was heartbreaking to me that the friends with whom I would correspond would read these things and then hit the delete key. I hadn’t written prose fiction since college, but this inspired me to return to that form and re-experience the beauty of the paragraph.

WORD’N’BASS.com: Did all those years writing scripts provide a training ground for writing literary fiction?

Greenland: What the years of writing scripts taught me that can be applied to literary fiction is concision. That isn’t to say one must be concise in one’s prose; I think some of the most entertaining prose can be the most elaborate -- witness Jonathan Lethem. But one learns to focus in screenwriting, to distill one’s thoughts, and that can be helpful in any kind of writing.

WORD’N’BASS.com: Do you enjoy writing scripts or novels more?

Greenland: I enjoyed the process of writing my novel more than I ever enjoyed writing a script for the simple reason that I could follow the narrative wherever it wanted to go, meandering, exploring cul de sacs, pretty much doing whatever I wanted, as long as I was entertaining myself. Further, when it was done, I had created something that did not need anyone else’s participation to come fully to fruition. A script is simply a blueprint but a novel, as Balzac will tell you, is a door stopper.

WORD’N’BASS.com: Do you view your long term career as a screenwriter/novelist or do you expect to focus mainly on one discipline in the future?

Greenland: I intend to continue to write novels and screenplays for the simple reason that I am a professional writer and this is how I make my living. If my children suddenly decided they did not need food, clothing, and allowances, and I had to choose one kind of writing to pursue it would be the writing of books.

WORD’N’BASS.com: THE BONES is a pretty scathing portrayal of Hollywood. How have your peers greeted your novel?

Greenland: My peers, many of whom are unhappy screenwriters -- a tautology, by the way -- have applauded the book and been very supportive of my having written it, since it confirms all the poisonous thoughts they have about our shared profession…  I can’t really gauge the larger scale reaction yet. One or two people may be pissed off. I’m sure I’ll hear about it eventually.

WORD’N’BASS.com: Do you have any anecdotes that exemplify the film industry's reception?

Greenland: Here’s my one anecdote: Sony purchased the film rights and hired me to write the screenplay. As Hollywood receptions go, they don’t come much better. How it will all resolve, however, and whether or not the film version will be made, is an entirely different story. But right now, I would have to say that they seem to dig it.

WORD’N’BASS.com: What's the biggest challenge converting THE BONES into a screenplay?

Greenland: The biggest challenge has to do with structure. The novel is not structured like a film, which is broken down into three acts. Several important new characters show up two thirds of the way through the book so the challenge is integrating them into the screen story in a way that doesn’t throw the balance of the movie completely off.

WORD’N’BASS.com: Did your agent close a deal with Bloomsbury shortly after pitching it or was it a longer process finding a publisher for THE BONES?

Greenland: The book was never pitched. I wrote it and then sold it. We took it out in January of 2004 and sold it in two weeks.

WORD’N’BASS.com: Will Bloomsbury also publish your sophomore novel?

Greenland: Bloomsbury has the right of first refusal for my second book.

WORD’N’BASS.com: What's your second novel about?

Greenland: It’s about a middle class guy who loses his means of making a living and, finding himself cast loose in George W. Bush’s America, must resort to nefarious means to support his family. It has nothing to do with Hollywood. I think, however, some dry cleaners could become very angry.
 

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