Eddie Muller
/How did you become a writer?
My father, who never went to college, was a sportswriter. So writing always seemed to me a viable career option. Even as a young kid I was a storyteller, making my own comic books and writing elaborate stories and reports for school assignments. I never imagined doing anything else, really. It’s how I’ve earned my living for the past forty years.
Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).
Obviously, my father. Sportswriters were an early influence. My dad’s reportage was included in several collections of “The Year’s Best Sports Stories,” which I’d read cover-to-cover. In my teens I discovered crime and mystery fiction, and Raymond Chandler was a big influence. Many of my colleagues will say the same thing. In school they’d made us read the classics, like David Copperfield and Huckleberry Finn. But it wasn’t until I read Chandler that prose connected with me in a visceral way. Because it was a vivid and romanticized depiction of a world we could recognize within our own reality. Later I’d come to prefer Hammett’s simple elegance, but they were both influential. I was really taken with Leonard Gardner’s Fat City (1969), which I read shortly after it came out. I was too young to comprehend it, but I loved the writing. I re-read it regularly. It’s the book that made me want to be a novelist. So the fact that Leonard wrote the Foreword for the paperback edition of my novel The Distance—that’s the most gratifying thing in my life as a writer.
When and where do you write?
I write mostly in the morning, and rewrite whenever I can. But I am really writing constantly. It’s like breathing. There was once a time when I waited for inspiration to strike … Ha! What a luxury. It’s not the when and where that’s unusual for me, it’s the how. I write differently depending on what I’m writing. If I’m writing scripts for my TCM introductions I do that on my laptop; likewise with any non-fiction work. Writing fiction, on the other hand, I tend to draft things in longhand. I’ll handwrite a chapter and it’ll be an indecipherable mess and then I’ll type it into the laptop and rewrite.
What are you working on now?
I just finished my first children’s book, which was fun. It’s noir for kids, and I agreed to do it if the publisher agreed to black-and-white artwork. Seemed like a great way to get kids familiar with a black-and-white world so they won’t be put off by classic films that aren’t in color. I also did a cocktail book inspired by film noir. Both of these came to me suddenly, because of the success of Noir Alley on TCM. I’m not sure anybody else is putting out a kid’s book and a cocktail book at the same time, under the same name. I’m also working on a comic book series, a screenplay, and the third Billy Nichols mystery (I regret that I’ve been saying that for too many years!)—in addition to the scripts I write for Noir Alley. There’s very little down time around here, but I’ve learned to be productive without stressing out. I make my deadlines.
Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?
No, not anymore. I feel fortunate. I’m sure there are many disparate reasons for writer’s block, but from my experience, and what I’ve seen in others, insecurity can play a big part in that paralysis. You’re questioning yourself too much, letting self-doubt be an impediment. I developed a degree of discipline early on because I’ve always made a living writing on deadline. I’ve been able to transfer that discipline to “creative” writing, which is where “writer’s block” is more common. It’s a writer’s job to produce the work, not judge it while it’s in progress.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
Many years ago, Bill Barich, a wonderful essayist and author of a great book called Laughing in the Hills, read a draft of my first novel and gave me the best writing advice I ever got: “Don’t be afraid to be obvious.” He could see me writing—with the words dancing and circling around the point instead of my finding the precise words to make the point and move on. It was a simple thing, but it freed up my writing. It made me realize that too many writers—especially those grappling with blockage—think about the writing, the words and the sentences, instead of the narrative flow. If you’re struggling to find the perfect words—just make your point, as clearly and concisely as possible. You many find better words later, but it’s more vital to move forward and not obsess.
The other priceless advice was bestowed by an agent, Sandra Dykstra, who told an audience of wanna-be writers, “The world is not asking for your work.” It sounds harsh, but it’s an essential truth that helps a writer not spiral into depression when they face rejection.
What’s your advice to new writers?
Enjoy the process. Especially when writing fiction, it’s as close to time-travel as we can get. You’re able to disappear into the place that you’re creating and when it’s going well you lose all sense of linear time. It’s the highest state a writer can achieve. And I’ll offer the same advice I give about everything—do it with passion and enthusiasm. Otherwise, why bother? These days I’d also add—think of the reader. Internet blogging has developed a generation of typists who think their “readers” have an infinite amount of time. They don’t. Be concise. Be clear. Be cogent. To me, that applies to 75-character tweets as well as 700-page novels. The internet has led to less and less editing of people’s work—which is not a good thing. But it creates more opportunity for writers who can get to the point in an artful fashion.
Eddie Muller, host of TCM’s Noir Alley franchise, is a contemporary renaissance man. He writes novels, biographies, movie histories, plays, short stories, and films. He also programs film festivals, curates museums, designs books, and provides commentary for television, radio, and DVDs. He produces and hosts NOIR CITY: The San Francisco Film Noir Festival, the largest noir retrospective in the world, which now has satellite festivals in six other U.S. cities.
As founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation, he has been instrumental in preserving America’s noir heritage, which to date has included restoring and preserving (with the UCLA Film & Television Archive) more than 30 nearly lost classics, such as Too Late for Tears (1949), Woman on the Run (1950), and The Bitter Stems (1956). Muller has also presented and lectured on film noir at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
His debut novel, The Distance, earned the Best First Novel “Shamus” Award from the Private Eye Writers of America. Muller is a two-time Edgar Award nominee from the Mystery Writers of America and has earned three Anthony Award nominations. Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star, which he co-wrote with the actor, was a national bestseller in 2007. His classic volume Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir was recently published in a revised and expanded edition (Running Press, 2021). He has twice been named a San Francisco Literary Laureate.
