Collins Far From Perdition

An unusual author, an unusual situation, Suzanne Locke writes

With Road To Perdition, Max Allan Collins has been put in the unusual situation of writing the comic book that inspired the film - and then being commissioned to write the film tie-in.

Busy bee Collins, who has written 12 Nate Heller private eye novels, as well as comic strips and novels for Dick Tracy and Batman, and the tie-in books for movies such as Windtalkers, The Scorpion King and Saving Private Ryan, is also the director of Mommy and Real Time: Siege At Lucas Street Market - and he still finds time to play in rock band Crusin'.

Having wanted to be a cartoonist since his school days, Collins calls 1920s gangster thriller Road To Perdition, illustrated by Richard Piers Rayner, his "comic swan song", the best comic book story of his career.

Faithful

One of the film's producers, Dean Zanuck, says he was hooked as soon as he read it - never having read a comic book before.

"I just loved it," Zanuck - whose father, Richard, is another of the movie's producers, enthuses.

"The father and son story had a powerful emotional impact on me, and the illustrations provided a great visual of the period. When I finished it, I said to my wife, 'I think something special is going to happen with this.'"

Collins says the screenplay, written by David Self, is "very good and quite faithful". But he admits he'd have loved the chance to write the script.

A Woo thing

"Their take on the story differs from mine slightly - my vision is more violent, wilder, a John Woo kind of American samurai thing, whereas this movie will fall more in the Godfather area."

"I'm cool with the fact that it's not my movie - it's my story but, as a movie director myself, I understand that the vision needs to be the director's. That's the nature of the medium."

Despite writing numerous film 'novelisations', since first being asked to write the Dick Tracy tie-in, Collins says he almost never sees the movies they come from.

'Certain niche'

"While some of the scripts I write from are dreadful, I really enjoy doing these novels, because it taps into my skills as a movie-maker. Unlike a lot of novelists, I know how to read a movie script, which is not easy, as they are rather blank documents.

"Movie scripts require a lot of reorganisation to make them play properly as a novel. I add lots of back story, flesh out short scenes into longer, richer ones - and usually throw out most of the dialogue and create my own.

"Plus I get to do a lot of different kinds of stories that normally I would not be allowed to tell. I have a certain niche, at the moment, in mystery fiction - the historical detective thriller - and my agent and editors would never put up with me writing a western, or a science-fiction novel, or a Tom Clancyesque thriller, or an espionage tale, or a horror yarn... all of which I've been able to do in these movie novels."

End of the road?

Perdition may be Collins' comic book swan song, but it may not yet be the end of the road for him. He plans to write two more sequels about the Sullivans - as novels.

"If you've read the novel, you'll wonder how a follow-up is possible," he grins. "But trust me, if I'm given the opportunity to do another story about those characters, I'll find a way..."

For your chance to win a copy of Max Allan Collins' Road To Perdition tie-in novel, head to the competitions page.