What follows is an interview from 417 Magazine, which has been cut down and modified into an oral history. My lunchtime conversation with Mr. Woodrell took the better part of an hour. He
arrived at 11:30, and I interviewed him for this feature. Then we just
talked and ate a little lunch. Turns out he likes L.A. and lived at one
point in San Francisco. He lately had returned from speaking in
Jackson, Wyoming, in the valley of the Teton Mountains. He loves the
Russian writers, Lev Tolstoy and Feodor Dostoevsky, and he even drew some
inspiration, early on, from Isaac Babel's stories about the Red
Calvary.Someday I may transcribe the whole thing, which would be a long process, but for now I'll re-print what the editors of thought would work best for their issue. If you ask me, the talk was fascinating and worth devoting more words to. Another wonderful, in-depth interview with Mr. Woodrell is available on NPR, where he discusses Winter's Bone. A full list of his books is available on Amazon.
What It Feels Like to Ride with the Devil
by Daniel Woodrell, as told to Ben Pfeiffer
Woe to Live On came out in 1987 and disappeared with scarcely a trace. I thought that was the end of it. It's the lowest-selling book I've ever written, even though a lot of people love it. It slowly worked its way into people's hands. There was a woman at that time who was a reader for a producer in New York; he was looking for something about war. She pushed that book; he decided to try something else. But she remembered it. Ten years later she was working for Ang Lee, he's shooting Sense & Sensibility, and he allegedly says, "Get me a war movie next."
She remembered the novel and had a copy, because it was out of print. He read it and said yes. The first thing was the title. The people at the studio said they will not have a movie with Woe in the title. They had to go to a lot of trouble to find a title everyone was comfortable with. I'm not crazy about the title myself... The movie's is Ride with the Devil.
They were very nice to us all along: James Schamus, currently the head of Focus Features, but then he was our screenwriter, and Ang Lee. I got to go to the set a few times, and I watched them shoot the raid on Lawrence, 300 horsemen spread out, riding down a hill into an encampment. This was a pretty amazing spectacle. It was exciting to see actors and actresses using my dialogue. I could see how well the lines worked, if at all. It's the ultimate test of dialogue.
In the end, they were amazingly faithful to the original novel.
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