An Interview With Author Alan Rolnick About His New Book Landmark Position
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- October 25th, 2009 |
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Landmark Position is a wondrous funny book. Alan Rolnick uses Miami as the backdrop, and real estate as the arm, to accept the reader on a madcap journey that I can guarantee you will enjoy. When I put the put the book down and wrote the review, I just knew I craved to talk to this guy. Anyone that can create the outlandish characters and amazingly funny scenes that I encountered in Landmark Position, has to be a pretty interesting person to chat with. Alan agreed to an interview.
Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I grew up in Newburgh, New York, a little city on the Hudson River. It was a beautiful place, old, proud and mostly oblivious it had been rendered obsolete, cut loose from history’s moorings and set adrift by changing times. As a kid, I played in an abandoned brewery, took bus trips to Yankee Arena and collected autographs from Hector Lopez and Moose Skowron (we never could get close enough to Mickey and Yogi). One time, a big kid sat on my hand for the entire bus ride, leaving corduroy-striped welts that lasted a week, but it really wasn’t his fault I couldn’t communicate strikes.
In my teens, Beatlemania smitten. My brother Paul and I decided to be rock stars, action for guitars with car clean money, playing battles of the bands on the firemen’s picnic circuit. Paul was an outstanding guitarist and singer, destined to become an award-winning producer in New York. I wasn’t, but joined him thither after graduating from Johns Hopkins with a major in Frisbee. Unitedly, we made brilliant recordings that few heard, earned fifty bucks opening for Buffy St. Marie at Philharmonic Hall, and fortuitously took the equipment home instead of leaving it for next weekend’s gig at the Mercer Arts Center (which collapsed later that night).
Action up journalism to put myself finished my career, I became the guy at the New York Times who old computers to rank college and pro football teams. In 1983, the human pollsters awarded the Miami Hurricanes the National Championship, but my computer preferred Auburn. I’d been to Miami, fallen in love with the place, and decided it was time to go to law school (as my family had urged since I was cardinal, unremarkably with comments like, “he talks so much, he’s gonna be a lawyer”). The idea of living where balmy breezes caress you on the exit the door in December was particularly appealing.
Atoning for my computer’s mistake, I learned torts in locked classrooms and pulled all-nighters on the Law Review, success induction into the Elite of Chiding and Robe (which, fortunately, required act neither). After bill years of schooling, they put me on the day shift, employed at one of Miami’s apical legal sweatshops, representing robber barons in complex cases in federal court. Years later, I switched sides and began representing Davids against Goliaths in class actions.
Eventually, I decided it was time to communicate a rope around the places I’d met and the people I’d been, and begin to compose the kind of account I liked to read.
What is it with attorneys, are you all closet authors? In the past year I have read at least a dozen books by people in the profession, oh and they have all been real good. I have come to the conclusion that every lawyer must have a book in them.
Jeez, are thither that many? Seriously, tho’, lawyers have to compose to eat, and they’re trained to activity “fact patterns” into stories. Many of those stories are alien than fiction, and they do make you yearn to come up with your own. Storytelling is crucial in litigation, where success requires framing compelling themes, keeping witnesses in character, and distilling every legal argument to the pithiest possible paragraph. One classmate old to have he aimed for hearing the imagined words, “so, f___ you,” after every condemn of written argument. The centralizing experience of all law students is fatigue, so I’m not amazed he’s forgotten he said it.
Where did the idea for Landmark Position come from?
Miami’s a frontier townsfolk, where outsiders easily become insiders, bellying capable the bar, tipping back a mojito and quickly learning thither’s no arcanum handshake. I’d never been in much a place, and my legal training had dropped me off in its inner holy. Thither, I worked and tangled with kaleidoscopically colorful movers and shakers who were busy with Miami’s principal business, buying and selling the same dirt over and over again. I also got involved in litigating any of Miami’s more infamous Ponzi schemes. Having become a fan of Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen and Dave Barry, I craved to do my part to honor this single, semitropical nuthouse. It just had to involve a mad scramble for a piece of property, set against a backdrop of investment fraud. And it had to have a lawyer in the middle, doing real lawyering, citing real cases.
How long did it accept you to bring this project to fruition?
Five years. It just seems longer.
I was real impressed with Landmark Position, I love the dark humor. Are you happy with the artifact it turned out?
First of all, convey you for the kind words. It’s always hard to know if the material is employed! And yes, I’m real happy with the artifact the book turned out. Dark humor seems to grow chaotic here, a place so bright and beautiful it takes your breath away, even when random catastrophe is poised to achieve, advantageously, randomly. Miami is a city built by people on the run, from the cold, from persecution or personal dead ends, for whom making it to (and in) this magic city tends to foster a kinda self-involved insolation. It’s a narcissistic meaning of safety and triumph you can feel merely by movement your face to the insolate, until reality’s abrupt impact shatters your daydream. This happens a lot in Landmark Position, turn with the wrecking ball in the first environment.
As the characters careen around Miami, where most folks are from someplace else and ethnic politics dominates, they also collide with more capital questions about the American Creed and what’s happened thereto in our fractious times. Everyone’s immigrant account gets told, but Delia, and less, Benjy and Raj, are the only ones cerebration about what it all means. I really didn’t begin to explore Miami’s own origin account, how it came to be, who built it, and who came here when or why. But, as it flat, the account became a little more like “Hawaii” and a little less like “Hawaii Five-O” (tire-squealing car chase finished Opa-locka notwithstanding). Looking back, I believe giving the historical perspective makes it a richer account. It also means I don’t have to do it again.
Most authors communication their characters after real people, so how much Benjy comes from Alan?
Benjy’s a lot more mellow than I am, for one abstraction. I’d like to believe we apportion the almost mute inner conscience that propels him, even tho’ he makes light of it. I’m proud of him for that, because aquatics against the period he’s in isn’t easy. He also tends to deduct judgment a lot longer than I would, and suffers fools much more gladly than I do. He hates to lose, tho’, and will do what’s necessary to gain, and we’re real alike in that respect. I enjoy his easygoing disposition of the shenanigans of the connivers all around him. I have no idea where he got that. And that belief fund abstraction? Completely made up. All donations will be gratefully accepted.
Are we going to accompany more Benjy adventures in your next book?
Benjy will definitely be back. Once I figure out how to do this entire blade publishing abstraction, clues to his whereabouts will be provided at my site (Alan Rolnick).
I remarked in my review that Landmark Position would changeover nicely onto the screen, what are your thoughts?
It’s great to hear you advise that. From the beginning, I’ve cerebration Landmark Position would make a breakage film (with apologies to the Spanish Inquisition adumbrate). I accompany pictures when I set a environment, and I’m looking forward to rendering them in pixels as advantageously as words. Of course, destroying all those cars costs money, so we won’t be doing this one on a lace. Someplace on my desk, thither’s a legal pad devoted to casting choices and music cues. If it were a few years ago, I’d be chasing Dustin Hoffman to play Benjy, but I hope he’ll be interested in playing Benjy’s father Bernard, the legendary zoning lawyer and dealmaker.
I believe that you are currently employed on a film project, can you tell us a little about that?
I’m Executive Producer of the film “Canvas,” which is in theaters now and will be out on DVD early next year. Produced by Sharon Lane (a force of nature, to whom I’m privileged to be married), it stars Joe Pantoliano, Marcia Gay Harden and Devon Gearhart. The film has won a number of festival awards, as advantageously as praise for its realistic portrayal of a family struggling to cope with mental illness. Sharon fought for years to overcome apartment apathy toward this indie film and first-time Director Joe Greco. We finally raised the money and attempt it ourselves in South Florida during the legendary hurricane season of 2005, which almost blew us all out to oceangoing. Sharon has another drama in development that also plays to her expertise in managing and employed with adolescent actors. I’m onboard for business and legal affairs, and just might Exec Produce this one, also. I’m angling for a comedy after that.
You obviously are a multi faceted person, lawyer, movie maker, and now author. What do you do with all your ‘component’ time?
I honestly don’t have much component time. I’m unremarkably fighting to carve any out to keep up with our overbooked son, Max, who’s busy with school, piano lessons, football and baseball.
Alan, I deprivation to convey you lots for action the time to talk with me, and once again congratulations on creating a fantastic book, I hope that I accompany it on the NYT best seller list in the real near future.
Thanks, Simon. It was a pleasure.