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New York's Cult Literary Hero, Jonathan Ames, Hits It Big
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New York's raunchy underground literary star Jonathan Ames has had a cult following for years. Now, he’s writing scripts for Katie Holmes and Jason Schwartzman. Is he about to hit the big time?
New York novelist Jonathan Ames, 44, is getting green-lit all over these days. He wrote an HBO pilot, Bored to Death, based on a short story he wrote for McSweeney’s in the fall of 2007. After weathering the writer’s strike last year, the pilot was shot last fall and, in January, got the order to go to series; it begins shooting March 30 and is scheduled to premiere later this year. It stars Jason Schwarzman as a struggling Brooklyn writer—named Jonathan Ames—with a drinking problem who pretends to be a private detective in the vein of his heroes from Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett novels. (Ted Danson and Olivia Thirbly costar.)
Around the same time this happened, Ames’ novel, The Extra Man, went into production for an independent film starring Kevin Kline, John C. Reilly and Katie Holmes. Last week, this, too, began shooting in Manhattan and Brooklyn, causing a buzz.
When you write fiction everyone says it’s all true, and when you write non-fiction they say you made it up.
Yet throughout this Hollywood approbation party, Ames has managed to maintain his lit cred – his new collection of fiction and non-fiction, The Double Life is Twice As Good, will be published by Scribner this summer. Ames spoke to The Daily Beast about his suddenly booming career in film and television, buying his first TV set, home dentistry, and how performing in cabaret shows prepared him for life in the small screen.
How does it feel to have everything going your way at exactly the same time?
I don’t know if anything exactly happens at the same time. It’s by chance that it’s happening at what seems like the same time. Extra Man starts filming on February 23rd and we start shooting the HBO series on March 30th.
How did you learn how to write a pilot? Did any writer friends help you out? A Robert McKee workshop?
I did it by myself. I wrote a pilot for Showtime in 2004, so I had Final Draft [the scriptwriting software]. I just jumped in and tried. I keep it simple. I looked at screenplays and saw that you can’t let people talk for too long—basic principles like that. It’s story telling. And I thought a lot about a David Mamet quote about script writing: “Get in late, leave early.”
That could also be applied to party strategy.
Leaving late can also be fun.
How involved were you with the staffing of the HBO show?
I was very involved. It wasn’t like I was a fascist or something. Everything had to be okayed, but I’m involved every step of the way.
What’s it like seeing Jason Schwartzman as you?
I met Jason on another project and told him about this and he was really interested. I felt like he was perfect, and he is perfect. He’s an incredible actor, a wonderful musician, and all-around sweet human being. Some people are like honey -- you’re happy just to be around them, and he’s one of those. That doesn’t make him qualified to play me, but he’s not playing me.
But his character has your name.
I like playing with the frisson. When you write fiction everyone says it’s all true, and when you write non-fiction they say you made it up.
Did you ever want to use your reporting and observation skills to be a private eye? That seems like a secret wish of a lot of journalists.
For a long time, I had a fantasy about being a detective. The show is wish fulfillment. I don’t think of using my observing skills as much as following someone, getting into a fist fight, saving the girl, living in the late-‘40s in Los Angeles with the sun glinting off the road.
Although your show takes place in New York.
It’s a Marlowe fantasy—you can take it and bring it anywhere. San Francisco has Dashiell Hammett; L.A. has Philip Marlowe. New York hasn’t necessarily had a private eye to claim as its own.
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Jonathan Ames writes such funny stuff, I'm amazed at how boring this interview is. Of course he's at the mercy of the interviewer.
Why is everyone patterning their interviews after Deborah Solomon's in the Times magazine? Schoeneman isn't as rude and confrontation, but it does follow the same pattern of annoying non sequitors.
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