George Pelecanos's Washington DC

Interview with George Pelecanos

George Pelecanos is a man of all trades: an independent-film producer, an essayist, the recipient of numerous international writing awards, a producer and an Emmy-nominated writer on the HBO hit series The Wire, and the author of a bestselling series of Washington, D.C.-set novels – his latest, The Turnaround, is new in stores from Little, Brown and Company. He also is a life-long Washingtonian. As a man who has seen the District of Columbia from so many different angles, we asked Pelecanos what he sees when he looks at the nation’s capital.

First off, to get the record straight, did you grow up in Washington or Silver Spring?

I grew up in both. When I was young I lived in Mt. Pleasant, and then we moved to Silver Spring, but right over the district line. It was very easy to take a bus anywhere, and later a subway, to see movies.

Your dad ran a diner in Washington?

Yes. Our neighborhood was blue-collar and working class, and most of my friends were ethnic, and their dads worked the kind of jobs my dad did.

What were the first movies that you remember?

The ones that were most influential to me in the ’60s when I was a kid were the hyper-macho gun-shooting movies. The first one that blew me away was The Dirty Dozen. My dad took me to it, and that was at the Town Theater at 13th and York. It wasn’t a palace but it had huge auditorium. There were a lot of beautiful theaters -- the Loews Palace, the Trans-Lux Theater -- where I saw the James Bond films and the Sergio Leone films. A year later the riots happened and all of that started going away. And by the ’70s all of those places were either shuttered or torn down.

When you were a boy, did the Washington you saw in films resemble the Washington you knew?

Not at all. The movies made in Washington were not about the living city or the working-class city that I knew. They were always about the federal government or the Pentagon – some guy with his finger on the red button. It was a world that never touched me or my friends and family. There have only been a few films dealing with the real Washington, but they weren’t very good. One was Good to Go. Chris Blackwell tried to break go-go, our local music, the way he broke reggae [in The Harder They Come]. The songs that you would know are those of the godfather of go-go, Chuck Brown and his Soul Searchers. “Bustin’ Loose” was his big one. When Spike Lee made School Daze, he put E.U.’s “Da Butt” on the sound track. Chris Blackwell tried to make a movie about go-go, and what did he do? He cast Art Garfunkel in the lead. Go-go is black music for black teenagers, and he put the whitest guy in a movie about black culture. D.C. Cab only shot a little here, some second-unit stuff. But it was never right. It was supposed to have been filmed at the Georgetown Metro station, but there is no Georgetown metro station.

Are they any films that capture the Federal Washington?

There are certainly some good local films, many of those films from the early ’60s, but they were all filmed on sets. To my mind there is no D.C. film. Interestingly we had one of the strongest art-house audiences in the country here. There was one place in particular, the Circle Theater on Pennsylvania Avenue, that showed a double feature every day, and they changed it every two days. For fifty cents and then later a dollar you could get your film education.

I ended up working for those guys who ran the place, Jim and Ted Pedas. They eventually had eight screens around the city. Then they decided they might try their hand at distribution. They found [the Coen Brothers’ first film] Blood Simple at a film festival and bought it for distribution. They also immediately signed up with the Coen Brothers to produce their next three films, which were Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, and Barton Fink. I went to work with them when they were making Miller’s Crossing. I had read in the trades that they had bought John Woo’s The Killer for U.S. distribution. I had seen that film at a film festival, and I was really jacked up about it. So I went to them and told them, “I want to work for you guys in helping to distribute this film and any other foreign films in the United States.” And after that I was producing films with them. We produced some films that were distributed by Sony Pictures Classics: Caught, which was directed by Robert Young, and a film called Whatever by Susan Skoog. From 1990 to 1999, I was in the independent film world but out of Washington.

So when did you start writing mysteries?

About 1989. I was writing books during my off hours.

You had recently edited a series of stories called D.C. Noir, and are now about to release its sequel, D.C. Noir 2. People normally think of LA, San Francisco and New York as noir cities. Is Washington also noir?

Well, we have a legendary crime problem, so yeah. But really noir isn’t about crime; it is about internal psychosis, claustrophobia. Noir can be in any city; it is really about what is going on inside the people.

You’ve had two main detectives–– Nick Stefanos, and Dereck Strange––both whom feel very much creatures of Washington. I understand that Curtis Hanson is making Right as Rain and has option on the Dereck Strange novels. Would you want to write the screenplay?

David Benioff wrote the script. He wrote the novel and screenplay for 25th Hour. He is a very good writer, and I am happy to have him handle that.

Would you want to do the Nick Stefanos books?

No, but I am trying to produce a stand-alone thriller. We are pretty far along.

You’ve written many novels and television scripts. Why haven’t you done as many screenplays?

They are not the best use of my time. Because I am so busy, I want to do new things every time I step up to the plate. What I don’t want to do is spend six to eight months adapting a novel that I have written and have it never get made. I can sit down and write a book out of my imagination and I know I’ll get it published.

If you were to write a screenplay, I bet you would have a good idea of the mistakes filmmakers often make in shooting Washington. What are some of them?

The misconception is that Washington doesn’t have its own culture. The federal city is only a very small part of who we are. The filmmakers don’t go into other parts of the city to do their work. And it is a hard city for film production; it’s difficult to negotiate the dynamics of shooting there. I was one of the producers of The Wire for 5 years and we were moving armies in Baltimore every day. It would be so much more difficult here.

If you did The Wire in D.C., what would change?

The federal government would change everything, especially when you include it as part of everyday Washington. I think just the presence of the federal government would be the strongest thematic element. [Washingtonians] can vote for president but we have no representation. And yet we pay taxes. There is a very strong bitterness here about that paternalism. Recently the Supreme Court just made the gun law here illegal, but 70% to 75% of Washingtonians are in favor of a gun ban. And the federal government just said no. They impose their will on us.

When people do shoot in Washington, they always use some known federal building in the establishing shot – the White House, the Pentagon, the Lincoln Memorial. What would be your establishing shot?

My favorite spot is at the top of 13th and Clifton. There is a high school called Cardozo Senior High School. It’s at Mt. Pleasant, where the ledge drops off and there’s a long hill going down. And since there are no skyscrapers in Washington––also by law––you see everything; you see the city below you and the monuments and the Capitol.

What about other shots?

Anything east of the Anacostia River is pretty much all black, so it rarely gets shot. Geographically it has some of the most beautiful parts of the city because it is on the high ground with a lot of green. There is a whole living part of the city that a lot of people don’t see. Frederick Douglass’ home is there. Yes, there are a problems, there is crime and drug use, but the majority of people are just citizens who are going to work every day and living their lives.

All of your novels seem to have an acute sense of place. How do you get the feel of the city?

I am just always out there––not going undercover or anything, just going around talking to people, and even more than that, just listening to people. A lot of what I do is just ride the bus or sit in a bar. And be quiet so I can hear what people are thinking about and also pick up the pattern of speech, which changes all the time. But the point is you have to be engaged. I don’t do this from memory.

If you had a guest visiting Washington for the first time, where would you take them?

I always take them to Ben’s Chili Bowl on U Street. That is our food market, and being Greek, food is real important to me. In fact, tonight I’m going to the 50th anniversary for Bens. Rock Creek Park is beautiful; it runs north/south in the city, and there is really nothing like it. For years, it has been a refuge for people from all over the city. You can just come and have a picnic all day. And the U Street corridor has really come around, especially in the wake of the riots. That area has really been reborn in the last 10 years. There is a great bookstore and great restaurants. For many, it is the dream realized. You see all walks of life, all colors, hanging out together.

Are there are other writers who capture Washington for you?

I love the books of Edward Jones. Any of his short stories would make a good film. They are all about the real Washington, so anything adapted from them I would love to see.

Any true stories?

I steal all that stuff for my own use.