The Return of Fredric Brown

About a month ago Secret Dead Blog interviewed Ed Holub, the director who's working hard to bring David Goodis's Cassidy's Girl to the silver screen. Now, I'm proud to bring you a Q&A with writer/director Lance Doty, whose current project is One Dead Man, an adaptation of Fredric Brown's The Lenient Beast. I hope this heralds a resurgence of Brown, who's one of my all-time favorite writers. (His work is the reason I feel comfortable blending mystery, humor, sci-fi and violence. Brown did it all the time--and brilliantly.) There's a recent French adaptation of The Lenient Beast (La Bête de Miséricorde), but Doty's film will be the first American adaptation of a Brown work since... well, you'll see.

Secret Dead Blog: When did you read your first Fredric Brown novel/story?

Lance Doty: My First Fredric Brown novel was Martians, Go Home which I read about ten years ago, or so. I thought it was a terrific little novel, then for some reason, I put the book back on my shelf and forgot all about Fredric Brown until I picked up and read a number of his novels within a period of about three weeks: Here Comes a Candle, The Fabulous Clipjoint, and eventually The Lenient Beast.

SDB: Can you tell us about securing the rights? Was it at all difficult tracking them down? Sadly, Brown departed to another dimension over 35 years ago.

Doty: It was very difficult, but God Bless the internet and a couple of hours free time. I stumbled upon a fansite dedicated to Fredric called Paradox Lost, e-mailed a man by the name of James Roberts, who passed on the query to the author Barry Malzberg (a very talented writer), who was serving as the agent to the estate. I ran into a bit of a stumbling block with regard to the rights because the book had been adapted and produced years ago in France. A previous agent did not pass on the legal documents (or lost them), so we were unclear of what or what we could not do. Eventually, I decided to make France a non-exclusive territory and all was settled.

SDB: I read Lenient Beast a good 10 years ago, and remember it being very fast-moving, but moody. What drew you to this novel?

Doty: The atmosphere that Fredric created with this story, the mood definitely, the idea of telling the story from the point of view of each character, to get inside their head, in thinking of the story in terms of a f film, felt very fresh to me. But the strongest component that stood out for me was the theme of conviction, to witnessing how far a person will go to fight for what they believe in, that idea, really grabbed me.

SDB: How far along are you in the production process?

Doty: Right now, I'd say we're in pre-pre production. My first choice for the role of John (the serial killer) read the script and liked it (I can't mention his name), we're now trying to figure out his schedule and will base everything else on that. We've raised the money, enough to shoot it as a low-budget film, but we do not yet have a start date.

SDB: The most recent Fredric Brown adaptation in the U.S. seems to have been Martians, Go Home, starring Randy Quaid. I have nothing against Mr. Quaid, but man, am I glad to see Brown's crime work finally making its way on screen. (Okay, isn't really a question. But feel free to comment.)

Doty: You know, [Brown] really is an amazing talent, very diverse, all of his novels feel very different, I love how he experiments with narrative. It's a shame that he is not a household name, I hope that somebody, somewhere can give this man the due recognition he deserves. Whether or not it'll come out in this film, I'm not sure. But I'll certainly do my part to make his talents known.