MONDAY
E-mail a friendGeorge Pelecanos
airdate March 29, 2005
Esquire magazine calls George Pelecanos "the poet laureate of the DC crime world." A best-selling author, award-winning journalist and indie film producer, Pelecanos published his first novel in '92. He's written for The Washington Post, GQ and numerous other publications. He also has a career in TV and film. He's a writer-producer on the critically acclaimed HBO series, The Wire, and was manager of Circle Films, which produced the Coen Brothers' first three movies. Pelecanos latest novel is Drama City.
George Pelecanos
Tavis: George Pelecanos is a talented writer whose long list of bestselling books include 'Hard Revolution,' Right as Rain,' and 'Hell to Pay,' the latter winning the 2003 Los Angeles Times book award. His 13th and latest novel is out and it's called 'Drama City.' There you see the cover on your screen. But he's also a producer and writer on the award-winning HBO drama 'The Wire.' Busy guy here. Here now a scene from 'The Wire.'
Avon: Some things just stay the same, man. I mean, the game is the game. And the thing is, since the towers is gone I'm gonna need to take my thing to some new places. You feel me? You know I'm gonna be home soon enough, right? Yeah, first parole hearing I'm out, for real.
Tavis: Ah, hell to pay. I've heard that line somewhere before.
George Pelecanos: I had to work it in there.
Tavis: Ha ha ha ha! You had to work it in. Nice to have you on the program, George.
Pelecanos: Thank you, sir.
Tavis: Um, before I get to the book, this show works, back next season for a fourth season. Every time I talk to an actor about why a particular show that they're a part of works, they almost to a fault, to a person, will say, 'It's the writing.' The writing really makes this show work, whatever this show is. If it works, the actors tell you it works because the writing. How important--you are a writer, of course--how important is writing to making this thing on 'The Wire' work so well?
Pelecanos: Well, David Simon came to me years ago and said he had an idea for a show that would be more like a novel than a television show, in that each episode would be a chapter in a novel, and you couldn't come in in the middle of it, you know, as you can't do with a book. And he was looking for writers that had worked in that format before, and so he got me to come on. We recently got Richard Price, Dennis Lehane. Ed Burns is a very good writer, and we got a nice team doing it.
Tavis: Mm-hmm. I would assume that the genre that you write about, crime and law enforcement and those kinds of issues, I assume that the stories never die. There's always another story to tell. I assume that. On the other hand, as I've said many times on this program, I have great respect for writers, fiction writers, because they really create something out of nothing. I've written 8 books, all nonfiction, and so I at least start with something that's happening in the world that I can actually write about. But you guys create this stuff out of the ether, but I would think if you're going to do that, that crime is one of the-- there's more stuff to choose from.
Pelecanos: It's a constant. I mean, a lot of times I just get my ideas just by looking at the Washington Post in the morning and going right to the Metro section. Um, with 'The Wire,' we based a lot of these characters and the main storylines on people who had existed in Baltimore. And in fact, we've got actors on the show who have done time that--uh, Ed Burns, one of our co-writers, was a former Baltimore homicide cop who--he had actually put 'em away. And then when they came out, he tried to give them an opportunity to do something else, so we've done that as well.
Tavis: You mean you say existed in Baltimore, I don't want to read too much into it but maybe I am. You didn't say lived in Baltimore, you said existed in Baltimore. Did you mean something by that or just a word you chose?
Pelecanos: Uh, no, just--
Tavis: Baltimore is a tough--you know, there's some sad stories.
Pelecanos: Very tough town.
Tavis: It is a very tough town. I just wanted to see if you meant anything by that word choice.
Pelecanos: No, no.
Tavis: OK, um, talk to me about this particular book 'Drama City.' Talk to me about 'Drama City.'
Pelecanos: 'Drama City' started out-- It was kind of a strange way to go about finding the book, but I had--I was on my way to Baltimore one day, listening to a hip-hop station, 92Q.
Tavis: Not you.
Pelecanos: Well, yeah, occasionally.
Tavis: Ha ha ha ha!
Pelecanos: I think I hit the wrong button.
Tavis: Hit the wrong button. OK, go ahead, all right.
Pelecanos: And, um--
Tavis: How did that happen? Go ahead.
Pelecanos: I have 2 sons at home, OK, teenage sons. So it's in the house--
Tavis: I'm gonna tell you a funny story. Finish your story, I'm gonna tell you a funny story about that, go ahead.
Pelecanos: So anyways, they had these guys on there who had come out of prison, and they were talking about how horrific it was for them to face what they faced when they came out. In other words, there's no job market for them. In many cases their families had turned their backs on them, they couldn't see their children. And I sort of got a little bit inspired by hearing that, because those stories are not often told in the context of a novel. Then I read in the newspaper very shortly thereafter about a program with prisoners who work with dogs while they were in prison, training them for the blind and the elderly and that sort of thing as companions, and they found that these guys had a lower rate of recidivism, which makes sense. They're probably pretty good people at base who made a mistake, but if you're good with animals, there's probably something good in you.
So all of a sudden, I had the makings of a book, 'cause I thought well, what if a guy comes out of prison who was in that program, instead of getting a job as a day laborer or something like that, he decides to continue with that and become a humane society enforcement officer, and by doing something good in his day-to-day, looks to that to help save himself? And the setup itself has a lot of conflict going, because I found when I rode with these guys, it's conflict every day. You're trying to take people's dogs away from them. Most of the time, they deserve it, but still conflict. And all you've got is a uniform and a badge. You're not armed or anything like that. You can't arrest people. So there's conflict there. I knew there would be conflict in his neighborhood because most of these guys when they come out, they go back to live in the old neighborhood again, and you're seeing people that you came up with who were still, uh, in the game. And so there's that, too. So I had a book.
Tavis: Yeah. I want to come back to a couple things you just said, namely the day laborer comment, 'cause I want to talk about how your career got started. You weren't far from being a day laborer yourself before you actually found your calling. So put a pin in that. We'll come back to that in just a second. But I promised this story about white guys who listen to hip-hop. So here's the moral of the story. For every white guy who's watching who's a writer, you should listen to a hip-hop station. Good stuff comes out of listening to hip-hop. Here's a shot up to hip-hop.
Uh, so George is listening to hip-hop and gets this great book, 'Drama City', to come out of listening to hip-hop, and I'm on TV today because there's another white guy, one day, to your very story, who had 2 sons who listen to hip-hop. True story. Guy picked up his kids from school every day, and every day they got in the car, they would turn off his news station and turn on here in L.A., the local hip-hop station. And I was doing radio commentary, little one-minute, two-minute commentary on radio every day here locally. And so he'd get in the car, the kids would get in the car, turn to the station. And a major television producer in this city would hear me every day do radio commentary because his kids would get in the car and turn on the hip-hop station, and that's why I'm here today. My whole career got started on television--
Pelecanos: Act of providence.
Tavis: Exactly. Because his two kids got in the car and changed to the hip-hop station every day. But who cares about that? When you said you listened to hip-hop-- It's a true story. When you said hip-hop station, I got a kick out of that. It took me back to how my career in TV got started, so here's to all the white guys who listen to hip-hop stations. That said, you mentioned day laborer. Your career was really interesting because you didn't really start out--I mean, since you've been writing books, you crank out one of these things every year.
Pelecanos: I try to, yeah.
Tavis: Every single year, you try to, but you didn't start out as a writer. You had to really find your calling when you were doing just regular everyday stuff. Take me back to how you found your way to what you're really, really good at.
Pelecanos: Well, I started working when I was 11 years old for my dad. He had a carry-out shop downtown, a lunch counter.
Tavis: In D.C.
Pelecanos: Yeah. And from there, for the next 20 years until I was 31 years old, I did those kinds of jobs. I worked in kitchens and bars. I was a dishwasher.
Tavis: Day laborer.
Pelecanos: Uh, sold women's shoes. Put myself through college selling women's shoes, which is not a bad thing.
Tavis: There's money in that.
Pelecanos: Well, it's the best job I ever had, for obvious reasons, you know.
Tavis: Ha ha ha. Mr. Bundy did it, and you can--ha ha ha.
Pelecanos: And, uh... You know, in college, I got turned on to books by one teacher. I wasn't even a book reader, and the reason I wasn't is that the books that I was reading, had always read, didn't speak to my world. You know, they weren't about working-class people. A lot of American fiction is about people who win, and the people who I knew, they didn't. They weren't losers, but they weren't looking for that pot of gold. They were just trying to get by every day, and maybe, once in a while, they had a little bit of inglorious redemption, but, you know, it was about going to work every day.
Tavis: Mm-hmm.
Pelecanos: I got turned onto these books. I took an elective course in crime fiction, and the guy showed me these books that were about common, everyday people who always didn't win, or not always won, but could draw something from life that was inspiring.
Tavis: Mm-hmm.
Pelecanos: And a lightbulb went off, in a way, where I said, 'Well, you know, maybe I can do something like this. Maybe I have something to write about.'
Tavis: Mm-hmm.
Pelecanos: But it took me another 10 years before I tried to do it.
Tavis: Yeah, but the rest, as they say, is history.
Pelecanos: I guess. It was hard work.
Tavis: It is hard work, I'm sure. And you have always stayed--you still live in-- you're born and raised in D.C.
Pelecanos: Right.
Tavis: You still live in D.C. Every book you write takes place in D.C. You have an affinity for the nation's capital.
Pelecanos: I love it. My parents grew up there. Um...I don't care about the monuments. I don't care about the federal government. It's the people. It's the Redskins and the Wizards and all these things that you hear all day long. You know, 'So-and-so came out of Spingarn.' 'Didn't your boy go to...' You know, that kind of thing, and...it's the people. Washington is a unique town in a lot of ways because, you know, contrary to the myth, it's not a transient city.
Tavis: I was about to ask you, 'cause you said the people-- the general perception is that the people change in D.C. Every 4 years. What people are you talking about?
Pelecanos: The people that have lived there for generations. They come up from the South, or, like my dad, came from another country, and those people that go in and out of town with the administrations, that's a very small percentage, so we've got a rich culture there. There's a lot to write about. When I started writing books, I felt that it hadn't been written about before. All Washington novels seemed to be about the Pentagon or K Street or whatever, and so I knew I was gonna have plenty of things to mine from.
Tavis: Well, um, speaking of D.C., how much you love the city, Eleanor Holmes Norton, your delegate, was on this program a couple nights ago, and we were talking among other things about taxation without representation. So as a-- as a D.C. resident, how do you feel about being there all your life and never being able to vote?
Pelecanos: People are understandably bitter about it. Um, it goes against the whole idea of this country, which is, you know, if you pay taxes, you should be able to vote. And the federal government controls the purse strings, which means that the kids get shortchanged, basically. Because when once the politicians have figured out that there's no upside for them in reaching out to the people who need help in Washington--in other words, you're not gonna vote for them--then, you know, they get pushed to the side. And that's why, by the way, that's why we have such a strong community effort in Washington. People have figured out that it's not gonna come from the federal government. Don't put your hand out. It's not gonna happen. That's why you got, you know, coaches and mentors, big brothers and sisters, and all these people that are heroes in D.C.
Tavis: Yeah. I've always believed that the folk who become the best writers are the folks who have the most rich tapestries that they've been able to weave in their own lives, and just listening to George Pelecanos talk about his own upbringing, you understand why this guy has such a wonderful mind to create these great novels. The latest is 'Drama City,' and if you haven't got a copy of it, I'm sure you will and enjoy it as you have the other 12 that he's put out. George, nice to have you on.
Pelecanos: Thank you, Tavis. Very nice. Thank you.
Tavis: My pleasure. Up next, Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon. Stay with us.
Back to March 29, 2005