Gary Phillips, Author Plus

Welcome, everyone. Today, we’re talking with author GARY PHILLIPS. I feel rather stupid calling him just “author” because Gary is so much more than that. To tell you the truth, I feel a little inadequate around him. He has been described as the “epitome of the noir cool” and that he is. He is also an activist, a writer, an editor, a comic book writer (his first love), and so much more. To me, Gary is a wise editor, an amazing author, and a great friend.

So let’s chat.

JERI: Gary, looks like you started out as a “political campaign director, union organizer, and activist against police brutality and South African apartheid.” You know. As one does. Or tries to. But you succeeded. What were those early days like in our hometown of Los Angeles? Kind of seems obvious, but how did you find yourself in those roles? (And by the way, I have a degree in graphic design myself).

GARY: Growing up in South Central when I did often meant young men like myself didn’t always have the best interactions with members of the police department out of 77th and Southwest divisions. It wasn’t much of a stretch then to become involved in my teen years with efforts to put the spotlight on those practices (as this is some years before George Holliday captured the Rodney King beating on video) and work at the grassroots to push for policies around what we considered responsible policing. At the same time, I’d stumbled onto the mysteries written by the likes of Chandler, Hammett and Ross Macdonald as well as “underground” crime writers like Donald Goines. As my organizing work progressed, this organically took us into international issues and the struggle against the then apartheid regime in South Africa. All of that will come to affect the type of crime fiction I would write.

JERI: I suppose we find ourselves in certain moments, and we either step up…or we don’t. And I know this has informed your choices in writing your mysteries, and since this is a history/mystery blog, we are going to concentrate there. It seems to me, since I write historical mysteries, that my social commentary might be a bit subtle at times, and at other times the 2 x 4 approach is engaged to get that message across. I think it’s much better to couch that message in the depths of writing historically because after all, we do tend to repeat history…unfortunately. Is that what you find? Or are you simply outright inspired to write certain stories to get that particular message out there?

GARY: I agree about couching the message if not subtly, at least threaded in as smoothly as possible as part of the narrative. We are here to entertain, and really, isn’t what we can still learn about people and situations in the past fascinating? How such is rich material to be utilized by us to tell our stories. I mean, I didn’t set out to write a historical series, the One-Shot Harry books, per se so much as I became enchanted with who Harry could be, a crime photographer and sometimes private eye.

The underlying idea being there was, with a nod to Howard Zinn and a PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, a people’s history of Los Angeles to be mined for use in telling Harry’s stories. This was a history I’d learned something about in two ways. One was my pops, who was part of the black migration here on the tail end of the Great Depression. Him having a beer with his buddies as they played dominoes and talked about their days and nights on Central Avenue. This and others areas east of Western were where in a then segregated L.A., black folks had newspapers, nightclubs (my dad’s younger brother Sam was a bartender in the Zanzibar Room, the bar in the basement of the Dunbar Hotel which housed black entertainers). Restaurants, doctors’ offices and so on.

Secondly, I was a board member on the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, usually referred to as SCL. I rubbed shoulders with those who had come through the Red Scare, even a lovely man Named Bill Wheeler who’d been part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade – a premature anti-fascist!

What would become SCL was started in the ‘50s when lefties were being hounded and vilified (similar to today) and they didn’t want to throw out their books and pamphlets recounting labor and civil rights struggles they were part of, but had to secret them away. A radical electrical engineer Emil Freed gathered up those materials and kept them in garages and closets all over town. Away from those who would not only ban these chronicles, but destroy the copies. Anyway, that always stayed with me.

JERI: Shall we talk ONE-SHOT HARRY and ASH DARK AS NIGHT? Wow. What a set of hardboiled books! Can you talk about your character Harry Ingram and how you came to write these novels?

GARY:  As I’ve noted elsewhere, he’s inspired by two real life figures, Harry Adams, a freelance photographer for the black press and part-time barber here in L.A. in the ‘50s and ‘60s. And the infamous Arthur Felig, aka Weegee, who was a crime photog back in the halcyon days of mob rub outs in front of a chop house back in the day in the greater New York area. He inspired the late ‘50s TV show Man with a Camera with Charles Bronson and the Public Eye 1980s film with Joe Pesci. Therefore to put in motion my version of that guy in a socially and politically changing Los Angeles of 1960s, with a police force where some of the white officers were overtly recruited from ads in gun magazines in the Jim Crow south, and give him a lady love whose parents came through the Red Scare, how could I resist? Whoowee!

JERI: That’s some great background! Love Weegee’s work and how it influenced film noir cinematography. Yeah, it’s difficult but not impossible for me to create diverse characters in medieval and Tudor England, and in Victorian London with my mysteries, but a deep dive into research has really been the ticket. You like writing about L.A., as culturally diverse a place as there is. It’s what makes Southern California so dynamic, so fully realized as a place to live in and to write about. But. It still has its issues of racism and stratified politics. Can you tell me when you first started to think about writing about this place and what those efforts were?

GARY: As mentioned, having a background as an organizer and community activist exposed me to various people and neighborhoods. Also, at some point in all this I also had a freelance gig writing op-eds for a left-wing news service on topical issues. Nothing like grinding out 700-800 pitchy pieces on a tight deadline to hone the writing muscles. These experiences then would inform the thing itching in the back of my mind – to tackle writing a novel. For I was also continuing to read mystery novels by Patricia Highsmith, Chester Himes and Dorothy L. Sayers. Let alone Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle. This couldn’t help but fuel the desire to tell the stories I wanted to put to paper.

JERI: This dude even writes comic books. I mean, his own characters, his own take. When I was a kid, I bought comics on the sly, because I knew my mother wouldn’t have approved. But with your background in graphic design, you, like me, probably appreciated the imagery first and then realized the huge variety of stories you could tell. Let’s talk about that.

GARY: Ever since I was a kid I wanted to write and draw my own comic books. As you said, it was the visuals that captivated me. Jack Kirby, John Buscema, Gil Kane, Steranko… all those skillful renderers of sequentials, the panel to panel illustrations of the comic book. In those days of fandom, like-minded youngsters would get together to produce their own comics. I tried to break into that market but had to eventually admit my art just didn’t cut it. Conversely, I would get some encouragement about my writing. I didn’t need a 2×4 smacking me in the head maybe it was the writing I should concentrate on.

JERI: Yeah, I’m not really an illustrator, though I tried. There is so much in your life to talk about – the anthologies, editing, when Hollywood came calling – what would YOU like to discuss?

GARY: I’m digging your questions which are covering the bases to torture the metaphor.

JERI: I’m a huge film buff, and I especially love watching old crime dramas from the 40s and 50s set in L.A., trying to figure out just where they were filmed, some of our “lost L.A.” and some not so lost. I was influenced by more of the historical and swashbuckling films. Who influenced your work, or did they?

GARY: Well, I’ve mentioned a number of influences already and I echo on what you’ve said about those old crime films set in L.A. (or elsewhere) like White Heat, Armored Car Robbery (they rob Wrigley Field in South Central, and the stadium figures in One-Shot Harry), Narrow Margin (the ‘80s version with the late Gene Hackman ain’t too shabby either) and of course Doubly Indemnity. I also like the new crop of neo-noirs such as Armored, Den of Thieves, Heat, and  Molly’s Game. 

JERI: I’m a fan of the Turner Classic Movie channel (TCM) and one of their hosts Ben Mankiewicz. In his podcast, Talking Pictures, he asks a question of his guests, and I’ll ask that of you here: If you could get into the vault of movie props from any era and take one of them home, what would it be and why?

GARY: Had to really think on this. bypassing the obvious choice of the Maltese Falcon statuette. Giving it some thought then, what about that squarish odd-looking leather case everyone is after in Kiss Me Deadly? It contains the radioactive whatsit. Velda opens it and viewing the glow from inside is terrified before she and her boss Mike Hammer possibly escape – as nuclear annihilation or the calamities in Pandora’s Box are released. This was riffed on, among other homages, in Pulp Fiction and there was a sideways nod in an episode of original Star Trek, “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” That to look directly at the alien Medusan ambassador in its container you’ll go mad.

JERI: Man, you just hit on some of my faves right there. (The first thing in my mind was the Maltese Falcon. I have one at home! Not the real one. Heh.) Gary, it’s been so great to get to get to know more about the background of your work and you! And I want to thank you for taking the time for this interview. I’m sure readers would like to know what’s next for you? And where do you want them to buy your books and comics?

GARY: Thanks on this, Jeri. Next for me is a heist novel called THE HAUL, set in modern day and featuring a professional thief character I’ve written about before, O’Conner. This was in the novel WARLORD OF WILLOW RIDGE and the linked anthology CULPRITS: THE HEIST WAS JUST THE BEGINNING, recently reissued from Datura Books. As to where to find my work, wherever books and comics are sold. And you can check out my website at: gdphilips.com.