cart
Toronto crime fiction writer John McFetridge is currently a writer on the new CBS/CTV television series The Bridge. The producers of the hit HBO show The Wire also hired popular crime fiction writers such as George Pelecanos and Denis Lehane to write series episodes. We recently spoke with John about the show and his next book.
ecw: Hey John! how’s your summer? You must be writing like crazy for The Bridge.
JM: Yes, I've written an episode of The Bridge and it was filmed a couple of weeks ago. It's about some cops running an escort agency. It opens with a hooker falling on top of a car from a hotel. A little similar to the opening for Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere - the body falling. What's weird is I didn't put that in the script, but when it got rewritten by the head writer, that's what he put in.
ecw: Everybody Knows has a smashing opener. Whenever I see a BMW X3 I think of Armstrong’s line to the Bay Street john, “So what’s the matter, you couldn’t handle the X5?”
The Bridge got some press in the NY Times recently.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/arts/television/07onst.html?_r=1&pagew...
It sounds great.
JM: I'm also co-writing the next episode and it's about SWAT guys who steal money in drug busts. It's okay, but it's hard to write with no swearing or sex.
ecw: No swearing or sex?! I’m going to assume that means you can’t write cuss words or sex scenes for TV. Compared to Everybody Knows and Dirty Sweet does your next book [Swap] have more, or less, of both?
JM: Well, it's got plenty of both, that's for sure. I find that sex scenes can be some of the most revealing character moments, they can be the most heightened dramatic moments in people's lives so that's what I like to explore in the books. And I do want the characters in the books to speak as much like people I know in life speak. I want the books to be a reflection of the world I see exactly as I see it.
ecw: Pleasure and pain both lead to interesting character revelations in your books (also to some dark comedy). Your bio says that you “became fascinated with crime when attending a murder trial at age twelve with his police officer brother.” How did the trial change your perception of the city around you? How do you observe those aspects now in your everyday life as a writer?
JM: The trial was actually in Moncton, New Brunswick. Two men had kidnapped a boy and in the botched ransom payment they killed two police officers. What struck me at the time was the attitude of the two defendants, sitting at the table joking with each other and their lawyers, trying to act like nothing was bothering them and being full of bravado. I thought about that behaviour quite a bit. At the time I was a kid and I was just mad at them but later I realized that lack of empathy pointed to real sociopaths.
That's really influenced the way I look at the criminal characters in my books. I don't know if people become sociopaths after a lifetime of crime or if sociopaths take up a life of crime, but that's the kind of thing I'm interested in.
The police at that trial also showed behaviour that struck me even then. At first I thought they were cold and detached, as if they didn't really care (I was a kid, remember), and over time I realized they were acting like professionals, making sure that everything in the courtroom went according to the rules so that there could be no questions later, no appeal, and the two murderers would go to jail. If the police celebrated they did it later amongst only themselves. That kind of stuff informs the cop characters in my books.
ecw: Reviews of your books have noted that Toronto plays a strong central role in your books, guess that’s why I just assumed the trial was here in the big smoke.
JM: Nope. But as for Toronto now, I try to look for the story behind the story. When I hear that 175 garbage trucks a day cross the Blue Ridge Bridge from Sarnia to Port Huron and one of them gets pulled over and it's discovered there's a ton of marijuana in it, I wonder how it was the border guards got so lucky - 1 out of 175, those are not good odds. So there must have been a tip, someone must have said something. I seek out that kind of thing in just about every crime story in the newspaper.
ecw: maybe all 175 trucks are carrying a ton of weed?! Listen, I actually have lots more questions but your next book isn’t going to write itself. So, last one: If Swap was going to be made into a movie who would you want to direct and play the leading roles?
JM: Oh, that's a good question. I really liked what Steven Soderbergh did with Traffic, which was a terrific movie. Recently I met the Canadian director Sudz Sutherland and he would also do a fantastic job. I think Parminder Nagra (Bend it Like Beckham and ER) would make a great Sunitha playing off Chris Bridges as Get. Edie Falco is one of my favourite actors, but she's kind of busy these days so maybe Mary Lynn Rajskub could be Detective McKeon playing against type and Wes Williams (Maestro Fresh Wes) would make a great Detective Price.
ecw: Thanks John!