Novelist proud his 'tragic story' is on screen
By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer
 |
|
|
"Finish this story," he says midway through our phone interview. "Then quit your job and write a novel. You won't regret it."
Easy for him to say. Dubus, whose third novel, "House of Sand and Fog," was a finalist for the National Book Award, is basking in a run of good, well-earned fortune even he couldn't have predicted.
Dubus' intense, tragic novel is about a proud Iranian colonel struggling to reclaim his family's honor in the United States and a young woman recovering from a failed marriage and life of chemical dependency, who find themselves desperately at odds over a small California beach house. It became a huge best-seller after it was selected for Oprah's Book Club.
The movie adaptation of "House of Sand and Fog" opens nationwide Dec. 26 and has already earned director Vadim Perelman a nod for best directorial debut from the National Board of Review.
There has been considerable buzz about the film, and Ben Kingsley, who plays Col. Massoud Behrani, has rightly been mentioned as a potential best-actor nominee at the next Oscars.
Perelman's adaptation, which takes gentle liberties with the intricately written but not perfectly cinematic book, is an unusual winter film release — a dark piece that marches resolutely toward its inevitably tragic conclusion, pausing only for moments of intense, unsettling beauty. It has, to put it simply, much more common with "In the Bedroom" than "Elf."
That itself is no surprise. Dubus' father wrote the novel "In the Bedroom," which was brought to the screen by Todd Field two years ago.
(Another author in Dubus' family is his cousin, novelist James Lee Burke.)
But Dubus' enviable vision as a writer has less to do with his literary lineage and more with a life spent collecting unique experiences. He's held jobs as a private investigator, corrections counselor, bounty hunter, general contractor and carpenter. These days he teaches writing at Tufts University and Emerson College in Boston.
Here's what Dubus had to say about the film, his novel, the challenge of writing outside one's culture, his writing process, and the Oprah Winfrey experience.
Advertiser: The novel seems like a natural for the screen, but how did you decide on who to entrust with the adaptation?
Dubus: Generally, six calls a year is a lot, and I got 140 in 18 months from people who wanted to make a movie out of the book. My agent only forwarded the ones that seemed like they had a good chance of getting made. But they all said they needed to have a nicer ending. I said it's a tragic story and you're not messing with it.
Vadim (Perelman) told me when we met, and I remember this, if you go with someone else, 'they will take your baby, chain it to a radiator, rape it and kill it.' I asked him what he would do. He said, 'I will not hurt your baby.'
I went with him but I really didn't think he'd get it made because it was his first film and it's so dark.
Advertiser: How much input did you have along the way?
Dubus: I got more than the average novelist ever gets. (Perelman) sent me each draft to look at and I made suggestions on revisions,. Some he used, some he didn't.
It's not a literal translation of the book. There are scenes that were cut or or combined, and there are things that were explained in the novel that had to be presented in a different way. But I thought the film was very loyal to the emotional themes. I think he did a great job.
Advertiser: It's not your typical holiday release ...
Dubus: Some people think it's strange for this movie to come out during Christmas because a lot of the themes are dark and painful. But I think that's an American thing. You don't hear people in Europe making those kinds of comments.
Yes, the movie is sad, but doesn't it feel good to feel? I'd like it to be the feel-deep movie of the year.
I think we're lying to ourselves when we say we're paying eight bucks per ticket, a hundred bucks for dinner, 20 bucks for snacks to escape reality. I think we go to the movies to be taken more deeply into the human experience. If you really want to escape, get drunk and play poker.
I'm inspired and proud that a big studio (Dreamworks Pictures) is willing to put out a darker story like this. It sets an example in a town, and that's Hollywood, where a lot of art doesn't make it out alive.
Advertiser: What's your writing process like?
Dubus: I think there are two kinds of authors. There are ones who are more auditory. I think Faulkner heard the sentences he wrote. And there's authors like Hemingway who are more picturesque. I'm more like that. I see a picture and it becomes clearer to me as I write my way in. What drives me is curiosity.
When I teach, I tell my students to free-fall into their imaginations. When you do that you will find things that terrify you, shame you and exalt you.
Advertiser: Is it true you used to write in your car in a graveyard?
Dubus: Yeah. I had no office and a house full of kids and I wanted my time at home to be spent with my wife and kids. So I wrote in the graveyard.
My wife and I had a humble little life. She's a modern dancer but she made money for us doing upholstery. I teach writing, and I did carpentry.
When I was writing "House of Sand and Fog," my wife didn't even know what I was doing. But that's the way I work. I have a really strong instinctual feeling. When you're pregnant with that story you want to give the cells time to multiply and divide inside you.
Advertiser: Where did the idea for "House of Sand and Fog" come from?
Dubus: I knew an Iranian who was a colonel in the air force under the shah. He was the father of my girlfriend in college. He immigrated to the U.S., and when I knew him, he was working in a shoe store and at a gas station/convenience store.
I was helping him unload groceries at midnight one night, and he said, 'I have worked with kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers, and now I sell candy and cigarettes to college kids who don't know what I was and don't respect me.' That image has stayed with me for 20 years.
A few years ago I read in the paper about a woman who got evicted by mistake — and this happens quite a lot, more than you would think. The man who bought her house had a Middle Eastern name and I started thinking about the two stories.
Advertiser: What was it like writing from the point of view of an Iranian man and an American woman?
Dubus: Terrifying, terrifying, terrifying. But that's the job of the fiction writer, to inhabit the skin of people you are not. I had written from the point of view of women before in other stories and because we're part of the same culture, we have so much in common. It wasn't that much of a stretch to get inside that consciousness.
For Col. Behrani, I drew on my background with my girlfriend's family and with an Iranian man I met in Texas and became friends with. Every other Wednesday, I'd help him with his English and, because he insisted on reciprocating, he'd teach me Farsi the other Wednesdays. I didn't necessarily want to learn Farsi, per se, but I was very interested in learning whatever I could about other languages and cultures. We did that for about a year and I got to be conversational. So I had sort of a knowledge base of the culture and I felt I could make that hop without faking it.
Actually the most research I did was for the character of the sheriff.
Advertiser: Your book got a big boost from Oprah. Did you have any doubts, as Jonathan Franzen ("The Corrections") did, about being associated with her book club?
Dubus: The whole experience was wonderful. I found Oprah to be very intelligent, and very compassionate. I think the whole Franzen thing is elitist to the extreme.
For literary books, selling 15,000 copies is about average, 20,000 is good.
When Oprah chose my book, it was an immediate leap to 1 million. It's a cliche, but if five or 10 people read my book and really get it, it's worth it. If it can be 4 million people, isn't that even better?
Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 535-2461.
