Scott Turow
Subject: Adapting novels to film
Bio: Author
Darren Schwartz
Subject: ‘Presumed Innocent’ film and miniseries
Bio: What Happens Next Film Critic
Larry Bernstein:
Welcome to What Happens Next. My name is Larry Bernstein. What Happens Next is a podcast which covers economics, politics, and culture.
The topic today is A Review of the New Miniseries Presumed Innocent.
Our first speaker will be Scott Turow who is the author of the novel Presumed Innocent which has recently been adapted into an 8-part Apple TV miniseries. I want to learn from Scott about adapting his novels to film. I also want to hear his views on copyright and whether it serves public policy to give authors control over their books and derivative work for their lifetime plus 70 years. And most importantly I want to hear from Scott about what he thought about the new radically different Presumed Innocent miniseries.
Our second speaker will be Darren Schwartz who is the What Happens Next Film Critic. I plan to ask Darren to compare the miniseries with the novel and the 1990 Harrison Ford movie. I would also like Darren to comment on how the change in our social mores forced a change in its plot and characters.
Buckle up.
Larry Bernstein:
Presumed Innocent came out in 1987 and we now have an eight-part miniseries. How do you feel about the continuation of your ideas in this new form?
Scott Turow:
I like to say that you're getting old when you're alive to see the remake. I feel great about it. Presumed Innocent has been the gift that keeps on giving. What was amazing was that I was contacted by Dusty Thomson, who's one of the chief lieutenants for JJ Abrams and then David Kelly within three weeks of each other.
Larry Bernstein:
You sold the rights to the film that starred Harrison Ford in 1990. As a contractual matter, did the film company that purchased those rights from you, did that give them indefinite rights to make this miniseries? Or did you maintain those rights to further development?
Scott Turow:
Warner is the original proprietor here. They retain the rights in perpetuity and their contracts throughout the universe, so in all now existing or developed in the future, but there's a lacuna in U.S. copyright law that gives a proprietor, that would be me, the right to revoke the US rights after 30 years. So Warner's reward for authorizing the remake was that they had to pay me again to keep me from revoking their rights. But ordinarily they would have the right to do this. Then the question would be, is this a remake covered by the remake provisions or not? Their answer would be, no, it's not a remake because this is television and the first production was for theatrical release. It all worked out fine for Scott.
Larry Bernstein:
That's good. We did an episode on copyright on the podcast a few weeks ago. David Bellos our speaker was unhappy that current copyright gives authors like Scott Turow lifetime plus 70 years for copyrights, and he would prefer it to be much shorter. In his mind, he thinks that 99% of novels and nonfiction works is used in the first few years and that the public should have a right to these characters to these stories immediately afterwards. Presumed Innocent being an outlier, Mickey Mouse being an outlier. How do you feel about given that you are the big beneficiary of the existing law?
Scott Turow:
Yeah, obviously that's right. I'm a big beneficiary of the existing law. I don't get the argument that the author shouldn't be rewarded if a secondary market develops for the work later on, what difference could that possibly make? The problem I think for a lot of legitimate scholars and corporate exploiters like Google is that the longer these rights last, the more problematic it is for them.
It can be a pain in the butt to get permissions, but I don't get the argument that I ought to be free to do it without rewarding the original creator. And it is far from unheard of for works to gain currency years after their original publication. My interest has been to make sure that the mid-list author, the person who's not making buckets of money as a writer, continues to be protected. Until somebody can explain to me why this change would be good for the mid-list author, I'm going to be against it.
As between me and Warner Brothers, I don't see why Warner should be able to come along and exploit my works for free in a different medium without paying me, even if it is 37 years after we first signed the contract.
Larry Bernstein:
Let's say Larry Bernstein wanted to write a novel with James Bond as the character, and Ian Fleming's estate owns James Bond just as your estate would own Rusty Sabich. And the argument is that it limits the creator powers of the universe to prevent others from using James Bond as a character in their novels. And that this is broadly defined as being something rich and available and should allow broad creativity. If an author was to include James Bond even as a peripheral character is a problem and we want to minimize litigation and transaction costs.
Scott, you've created this whole world in Kindle County with Rusty, Barbara, Sandy Stern, Nico, Tommy and Carolyn. And the question is, who should be the chief beneficiary of those characters? Should it be Scott or after a period of time should those characters be freely available?
Scott Turow:
I don't get the argument that the creator shouldn't be rewarded. That is completely out of keeping with the other models of property in our economy. If you own a share of stock and you want to sell it 50 years later, nobody comes along and says, “this is much too late.” Same thing with your front yard. It might be really good if we could use the front yard of your home, Larry, for a migrant encampment, and it might suit the public good, but that's not the way this railroad runs. It's always amusing to me that authors, they're different. They ought to be subject to different rules.
I personally think the problem with Mickey Mouse is the way that Disney has gone in and repeatedly altered the law for their own benefit through their huge lobbying power. Mickey should be in the public domain by now. It was created in what, 1934 and Walt Disney's long been dead, but they keep running to Congress to keep Mickey Mouse under their control.
Larry Bernstein:
Alright, let's move to the miniseries. What I think is interesting is you dream up something, you put it on the page and then you hand it to Warner Brothers and say do what you want. Then they come back with something that resembles aspects of what you did, but it is not the same. Mostly because it's challenging to put something on the screen that you've written by definition it's going to be different. What is it like for you as the artist to see other people manipulate your work for a different medium?
Scott Turow:
Well, I've been dealing with this for 37 years now since the first theatrical version of Presumed Innocent. It takes some getting used to. There are two great realities about film versus literature. One is they don't work the same way. Literature works from the inside. It tells you what the character is thinking and feeling. Film works from the outside; it shows you the character and the audience infer from that evidence what the character is thinking or feeling. Occasionally the character will tell you or you can take it from dialogue. That's the big difference. That to me says there's going to be some changes.
The other big difference is the film is far more accessible than literature and changes have to be made in recognition of the demands of that broader audience. My friend David Kelly was the creative energy. David's often criticized because he changes things as he did with Presumed Innocent to ring even more drama out of the show. As far as I'm concerned, is if people found that too melodramatic, they wouldn't watch. The guy creates hit after hit after hit, and he understands what the American audience wants. Could I do that in my novels? The answer is not without taking a pasting from the literary critics. So there are differences, the audience is broader and the two media work in different ways.
Larry Bernstein:
Rusty in Presumed Innocent and then in the 1990 film starring Harrison Ford it's taken from his perspective.
Scott Turow:
Correct, his point of view.
Larry Bernstein:
But in the mini-series, it's not.
Scott Turow:
Not exclusively.
Larry Bernstein:
Immediately things start to change when it loses Rusty's first-person perspective.
Scott Turow:
It's pretty rare though in film. This is something that Darren may want to weigh in on, it's regarded as claustrophobic to be following only a single character. Audiences are accustomed to watching the story unfold from multiple perspectives. And that's the norm, those point of view breaks.
Larry Bernstein:
In both the book and the Harrison Ford film you feel incredibly sympathetic to Rusty.
Scott Turow:
Right.
Larry Bernstein:
How did this happen? How come all the facts are pointing to me? This is just unbelievable. And immediately the reader, the watcher of the film feels sympathy for Rusty and believes in the narrator's perspective of what's happened. But in the mini-series, once we lose that first person perspective, Rusty becomes a suspect and untrustworthy.
Scott Turow:
Yeah. Well, the book is somewhere in between, and the reader is meant to understand eventually that Rusty is an unreliable narrator, either because he's deliberately withholding information, or because he doesn't completely know himself, which it also turns out he is somewhat self-deceived. It's certainly part of the suspense of Presumed Innocent for readers to suspect whatever their understanding of the world from Rusty's point of view that he's going to turn out to be guilty. And the same thing operates in the mini-series as well.
The movie has to sand the edges off of the literature. Harrison was literally the biggest movie star in the world when Presumed Innocent was made. Audiences identify with him intensely; they love him. And so, it would've been a neat trick to make the Harrison character as occasionally dubious as the Rusty character in my novel is.
Larry Bernstein:
One potential failure in film is the wrap-up. At the end when there's loose ends, a speech has to be made to explain what's been happening. We have that in spades in the original film and a little bit in the mini-series where novels can weave it in discussion. So, it's a big advantage to the author. I view it as a failure of the original 1990 Harrison Ford film that speech; how do you feel about that?
Scott Turow:
It's the compression that's necessary in the movie. When I arrived on the set of Presumed Innocent, I met Brian Dennehy, who I'm lucky enough to be able to say remained a good friend for the rest of his life. Brian said to me, if we filmed everything in your novel, it would take about 14 hours and we're going to be lucky if the studio gives us two hours. So yeah, you get the big speech at the end of Presumed Innocent, and it happens in the limited series as well. You have an ultimate scene and the information spills out in a tremendous rush. I'm not sure how much viewers get except the identity of the ultimate perpetrator because some strange things get said in that scene. But that's the nature of the medium, it's more compressed.
Larry Bernstein:
Brian Dennehy does a fantastic job in the original film. The character just comes alive as Ray Horgan the district attorney. Each character that you create, you have a certain imagination about how they're going to be behaved, how they're going to speak.
Scott Turow:
Bill Camp's performance as Raymond is highly appreciated by audiences, but also by me. Bill has got a lot of the same personal gravitas. The problem for me was that Sandy Stern disappears. That was one of David's major decisions. And my initial reaction to that was not you can't do away with Sandy Stern because one of the major issues frankly comes down to budgets. So, you get Bill, who's David's favorite actor, and you immediately start saying, well, how can we keep Bill on the screen longer? And then you say, we get rid of the defense lawyer.
There's inbuilt dramatic tension there because Raymond's supposed to be really pissed off at Rusty to start for the same reasons as in the novel but then he's persuaded to represent Rusty. And I said, well, all of that really seems good to me, except for one thing, you're going to get pasted by lawyers who were going to say a guy cannot be the prosecutor and then the defense lawyer in the same case. And I had six lines of dialogue that would've fixed the problem. So that in that original scene where Raymond is sitting on the curb, when Rusty arrives at the murder scene, Raymond should say, I'm going to get murdered politically with this. One of my prosecutors gets killed. I'm going to announce that I'm recusing myself from this case. I'm going to have nothing to do with it. It's your case. You make the decisions. And he could be just as mad at Rusty for not telling him that he didn't have an affair with Carolyn at that moment. And I passed that back to David in the writer's room, and I was ignored, which is very much part of what happens to the novelist when she or he makes comments.
What was fascinating to me is they knew their business way better than I did. I haven't seen a single review that said how preposterous. Just as David expected, they were able to get away with it.
Larry Bernstein:
I watched the 1990 Harrison Ford film with Darren Schwartz, our movie critic, as well as my father-in-Law, Bob Silberstein. And at several times in the film, Bob got upset. He's a former criminal lawyer, and we'd hit pause and I said, Bob, what's got you so energized? And he would say, well, this is a violation of the rules. In the miniseries, he complained and said that the opening remarks didn't have any facts. In the book during the opening remarks, there were several objections, “Tommy, you got to get back to the facts of the case. I'm going to strike this.”
You are a former prosecutor, you're very knowledgeable as it relates to criminal procedure. One of the things that you bring in your legal thrillers is that world. And then when it gets abused, it must be particularly upsetting to you.
Scott Turow:
I want to play within the rules of the legal system because I don't think they need to be adulterated in the way that they characteristically are in film and drama. What goes on in a courtroom is so dramatic by its nature. Why mess around with it?
I did a panel with E.L. Doctorow, the author of Ragtime and Billy Bathgate, and Ed, as he was known, was a very esteemed figure in the literary world. Ed says, “the best thing that could happen to the novelist is they buy the book. The author cashes the check and then they never make the movie.”
I thought about that when it was my turn to speak. I said, “as much as I respect E.L. Doctorow, I don't agree with that. Best thing that can happen to the novelist is they take your work and make something worthy out of it because it will serve as an introduction of your world to a much wider audience than literature ever gets.”
It goes without saying that the limited series has spiked the sales of Presumed Innocent. And my publisher's very happy about that as well.
Larry Bernstein:
You have a new book coming out that will also sell well.
Scott Turow:
I do. That's right.
Larry Bernstein:
Presumed Guilty.
Scott Turow:
This is still my world. You can say David changed this and David changed that. Almost all of those characters are people I created. And Tommy Molto, Peter Sarsgaard just knocks it out of the park as Tommy but that's my Tommy Molto. I created that.
Larry Bernstein:
Shifty.
Scott Turow:
Shifty, jealous creep who makes your skin crawl. I created that character and also did a lot of stuff with him in subsequent years.
This is my world. The wife and the conflict at home and how can they still be together after he is had this incredibly torrid affair whose depth she understands. All of that was me. The trial was me. It's my world. And there's a tremendous satisfaction in seeing it translated. And thanks to David and Dusty Thomason and the two wonderful directors who worked on this, Anne Sewitsky and Greg Yaitanes, it's viewed and appreciated and felt.
Larry Bernstein:
Going back to the differences between the two mediums. Sometimes the written word can be clear and get to the heart of something better, but other times something visually can be dramatic and can stay with you longer. Tommy goes in to give Carolyn a kiss and she backs off and startled because she finds him so unappealing. And that visual image can stay with you forever. Sometimes one medium has a real benefit.
Scott Turow:
For sure. A picture really is worth a thousand words.
Larry Bernstein:
There are things that happen where the criminal lawyer and prosecutor in you makes you scream at the screen. When Rusty says I'll defend myself, there's screaming going on in my household. What are you doing?
Scott Turow:
That's an example of David tightening the screws. I've read the scripts and I don't bother to object to this. This is where David's going. Raymond collapses in the courtroom, which is something that David borrowed from my book The Last Trial where he also controls the rights. Then, he's got this ultimate dramatic moment that Rusty, the accused is going to defend himself. The classic adage is a lawyer who represents himself has got a fool for a client, and yet it does provide a window into the extraordinary vanity and self-deception of Rusty Sabich. It gives him an opportunity as a character to make a great self-revealing speech to the jury which lands very well with the viewing audience.
Larry Bernstein:
There's an opportunity for a mistrial, and I'm screaming take it take it. Is that another situation where you also were screaming at the screen.
Scott Turow:
Less so. Taking a mistrial in a criminal case is a balancing act. The traditional wisdom among defense lawyers is anything you can do to keep the prosecution from convicting your client, take it, you'll deal with the ensuing problem later.
Larry Bernstein:
Meaning appeals?
Scott Turow:
Well, you're going to get retried in most murder cases.
Larry Bernstein:
Oh, for sure.
Scott Turow:
So, the question then is, am I going to be better off?
And generally speaking, there's certain advantages to the defense. All the witnesses have testified, so you've got transcripts of what they've said. They're never going to repeat their stories the same way. So, you're going to be able to impeach them. Prosecutors, it's like Sisyphus, does he really push the rock up the hill with the same energy on the subsequent days? So, they lose enthusiasm for the case? Sometimes plea deals are offered that are very advantageous. The balance is it usually favors taking the mistrial, but if the prosecution's blundered in ways that they may correct the second time around, then you say, maybe I'm better off going with this jury. But again, talk about having the fool for a client. Rusty says, no, I want a verdict. And part of that is how hard it is on the defendant. The defendant just can't imagine going through this again. So, he says, no, no, I want to go to verdict. The audience would be up in arms if there was a mistrial.
Larry Bernstein:
Carolyn is very different in the book. In the book, she is a hussy. She's the aggressor. And in recent times, the Me-Too movement, whenever a woman sleeps with her supervisor, she almost doesn't have a right to give consent. It's considered improper behavior by the superior. And throughout the book, you were very hard on her as being the aggressor and destroyer of men. Lip says in the book that if you did it, Rusty, I get it.
In the mini-series, she's much more sympathetic. She doesn't appear to be the aggressor. She's a pregnant woman who's being objectified. How do you think about the development of Carolyn? What does it say about our times?
Scott Turow:
It says a lot. Presumed Innocent was attacked by some feminist critics as misogynistic at the time that it appeared. And there's a great, from my perspective, New York Times podcast that came out last week with a lot of very appreciative discussion of the novel. In the early 1980s when I started writing, women did not have the same place that they have today in leadership positions. I will have to be forgiven from saying that it was a pretty common scheme for women to act through men because they didn't have any other power. And so it was the influence they had over men that became their power and particularly their ability to use their sexuality.
It's a different world. That's no longer true in the novel when Rusty and Carolyn part ways because she wants him to challenge Raymond for the job. And he says, “I don't want to do that. Why don't you do it?” And Carol and the woman of the 1980s can't conceive of that. In 2024, she would say, “that's a great idea. I don't even know why I'm wasting my time with you. I'm going to run myself.” It is a different world.
Larry Bernstein:
How did you feel about the decision to make Barbara African-American in the miniseries?
Scott Turow:
That is Hollywood today. There ended up being two real pluses in favor of it. The first was that at Carolyn's white. And so this is going to add a level of anguish to Barbara's reaction to the affair that not only is there something that he apparently can't get from me, but he can only get it from a white girl. So that's one part of it. The biggest part, of course, is that they were lucky enough to get the services of a great, great, great actor, Ruth Negga, and she's lights out. And as we really want the world to be, her race doesn't matter. There is a great scene where she says to Rusty, you don't remember your son is black when the son seems to be getting in trouble. But the race really slides out of the viewer's consciousness after the initial reaction to the biracial family.
Larry Bernstein:
Did you find the relationship between Barbara and Rusty sincere and loving? It seemed a little flat where in the original film Barbara's love for Rusty seemed sincere.
Scott Turow:
I'm not sure it's fully realized in the limited series, but she is stuck in the way women so often are stuck when there are husbands have affairs, which is she's a mom and cares first about her children. And in David's series, it's a more predominant fact in making Barbara stay than in my book where you're right, Barbara has got this thing for Rusty and Rusty's got this thing for her.
Larry Bernstein:
I end each episode with a note of optimism. Scott, what are you optimistic about as it relates to your world in Kindle County?
Scott Turow:
I finished this next book. I sat around and had been thinking, do I really want to write another novel? I'm past my 75th birthday. And the answer is yeah I do, but I will give myself the opportunity to say no with each subsequent book.
—
Larry Bernstein:
Darren, welcome back to the show.
Darren Schwartz:
Thank you, Larry. I'm really happy to be here.
Larry Bernstein:
How did you watch it? Were you alone?
Darren Schwartz:
I watched Presumed Innocent the series alone and watched several episodes multiple times.
Larry Bernstein:
My kids watched it, my wife watched it, I watched it. All of us watched it alone. What does it tell us about our society that we used to watch television together and now we watch it alone?
Darren Schwartz:
The question is what does it tell us about your family? It tells us that you guys like to be alone.
Larry Bernstein:
We watched the movie Presumed Innocent together. We saw it with my father-in-Law.
Darren Schwartz:
Bob.
Larry Bernstein:
And you and me. And it was different having us together. We took a bathroom break. Bob got angry when he felt some of the legal technicalities weren't real to life. He was frustrated when Rusty took the stand. He was angry when Rusty didn't take the mistrial. What do you make of watching in a group, particularly this important series?
Darren Schwartz:
Well, it was nice to have a legal expert in Bob there to at times recount his history.
Larry Bernstein:
He’s a criminal lawyer.
Darren Schwartz:
And have him point out what he thought were the inconsistencies. We paused several times, did some research on Wikipedia and it was a very collaborative effort.
Larry Bernstein:
Let's go to the series. Did you like it?
Darren Schwartz:
Love the series. I loved every performance. I'm not sure I loved the wife.
Larry Bernstein:
Let's get to the wife.
Darren Schwartz:
Fine. In Scott’s book Presumed Innocent as well as in the Harrison Ford film that came out in 1990, the wife was white. Here in 2024, the wife is black and his kids are interracial. Why do you think they decided to go with an African-American wife and what did it do to the plot and the relationship?
Darren Schwartz:
Well, first of all, most everyone in the movie originally was white.
Larry Bernstein:
Except for the judge.
Darren Schwartz:
It was more inclusive casting.
Larry Bernstein:
I spoke to Scott about the decision to cast an African-American wife. And he said that it's one thing for Rusty to cheat on his wife, but it's another to choose a white girl.
Darren Schwartz:
I don't think so. And that certainly didn't come off in the movie.
Larry Bernstein:
What didn't you like about Rusty's wife?
Darren Schwartz:
I didn't find her appealing. I didn't feel like they were compatible. It just seemed like they weren't really a good match. Would you agree with that?
Larry Bernstein:
In the book, the love for each other seemed sincere. In the movie with Harrison Ford, the wife felt very vulnerable in the relationship and she was constantly seeking reassurance of her place in the marriage, but her love was real.
In the mini-series, I felt that the relationship was there only for the family.
Darren Schwartz:
And in the Harrison Ford movie, there seemed to have been a reconciliation after the affair, and it seemed to be taken a little lighter. She seemed less bitter.
Now in this series. She seemed angrier about it, which is understandable. But I did think in the movie, his wife seemed to be more connected and more reliant on him. They seemed like a better match.
Larry Bernstein:
The 1990 Harrison Ford film Presumed Innocent was a very accurate representation of the book. The 2024 eight-part mini-series was not. How did you feel about the decision to abandon Scott's major plot points? Where are you on the adaptation?
Darren Schwartz:
I think the adaptation is great. It was good to do something a little different. The Nico character was incredible in the series, A little odd and quirky, couldn't really figure him out. I do like the fact also that it was in Chicago in the book, and in the movie, it was Kindle County and who knew where it was?
Larry Bernstein:
It was a Midwestern city. What part of that do you understand?
Darren Schwartz:
Well, I'm from Detroit. You had scenes of the Renaissance Center, then you had water taxes, which they don't have in Detroit. So being a now Chicagoan, I appreciated the scenes being in Chicago.
Larry Bernstein:
When you read Presumed Innocent, this is the third time for me. I don't read any books three times. And each time I can enjoy it anew. It's amazing how much you forget. You remember the key points. You remember, who killed him with what, but you don't remember the secondary B file. That stuff gets tossed to the curb. In the book, it hung on technical legal arguments about evidence about the interviews.
Darren Schwartz:
Procedure.
Larry Bernstein:
The intricacies of legal process, but in this new TV series, it's not about that at all. It's about character development.
Darren Schwartz:
It seems easier to do it when you've got an eight-part miniseries. They did a really good job with Tommy Molto and Nico because you really got a much deeper sense of who they were.
The book was groundbreaking in that it did have all the technical stuff. And if you look back and search how this whole genre started, people credit Scott with starting this genre on a very technical legal basis. Scott was on the cover of Time in 1990. I'm looking at it right now. He looks great.
Larry Bernstein:
What was the cover story title?
Darren Schwartz:
Making Crime Pay. Scott Turow Scores Big with a New Novel about Family, Money, and the Law. Scott has been given credit for starting this new genre of a legal crime thriller. And the question is, some people have asked, did Grisham do it or Scott Turow?
Larry Bernstein:
Grisham sold hundreds of millions of books and poor Scott only 30 million. May not be the first but he won.
Darren Schwartz:
How did he win? He won because he sold more?
Larry Bernstein:
What other metric is there?
Darren Schwartz:
There's critical claim. I'll put it this way. How many movies do you think Steven Spielberg did? 39. Guess what his total box office was $10 billion.
Guess how many movies Stanley Kubrick did?
Larry Bernstein:
12?
Darren Schwartz:
I think it's 13. It's a pretty good guess. And guess what? His total box office was?
Larry Bernstein:
$210 million?
Darren Schwartz:
400 million. I would take Stanley Kubrick over Spielberg any day of the week.
Larry Bernstein:
Guess what? I wouldn't.
The Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET.
Darren Schwartz:
Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove.
Larry Bernstein:
That was good.
Darren Schwartz:
Barry Lyndon. Have you even heard of Barry Lyndon?
Larry Bernstein:
I haven't.
Darren Schwartz:
One of the best movies of all time, panned initially. Now it's a classic.
Larry Bernstein:
So is Showgirl.
What was the first Scott Turow book you read?
Mine was One L.
Darren Schwartz:
One L also.
Larry Bernstein:
Were you interested in going to law school? Darren?
Darren Schwartz:
No one would take me.
Larry Bernstein:
You’d be amazed how desperate law schools are.
Darren Schwartz:
Like St. John's University?
Larry Bernstein:
What do you think of Jake Gyllenhaal?
Darren Schwartz:
I love Jake. I think he came to my worldview in Donny Darko, and he's made a lot of really good films, including Jarhead and that boxing movie. And there was a recent Guy Richie, Iraq War movie, which was fantastic. He's very talented.
Larry Bernstein:
In Season Two, Presumed Innocent the mini-series, do you want Jake back or not?
Darren Schwartz:
Yeah, absolutely.
Larry Bernstein:
Will you be bummed if he's replaced?
Darren Schwartz:
Well, who will replace him?
Larry Bernstein:
How about that guy from Superbad?
Darren Schwartz:
Jonah Hill.
Larry Bernstein:
Not Jonah Hill, the other guy, the thin guy Micheal Cera.
Darren Schwartz:
McLovin?
Larry Bernstein:
Could McLovin play Rusty?
Daren Schwartz:
He can't play Rusty on the heels of Jake Gyllenhaal.
Larry Bernstein:
People forget. It's been time.
Darren Schwartz:
No. Nobody, can't replace him.
Larry Bernstein:
You mentioned Fight Club. How about Brad Pitt?
Darren Schwartz:
Maybe.
Larry Bernstein:
In the eight-part mini-series, the relationship between the two prosecutors, Nico, the district attorney, who's recently just won a reelection, and Tommy, the prosecutor on this case is complicated. Their relationship is tenuous, and Nico doesn't have full trust in Tommy throughout and yet it works. Tell us about what you liked about that relationship, what you found off-putting and why you think it was successful in the series.
Darren Schwartz:
Nico's character is just a snake. He's in it for him. I don't think either of them are truly looking for justice.
Tommy had it out for Rusty. His performance was great. That one scene where he was up all night, kind of doing his dance moves, getting all juiced up, but their relationship was one of a shared mission. But at any time, Nico would cut Tommy at the knees if he had to.
Larry Bernstein:
In the eight-part mini-series, Nico uses effeminate mannerisms both in speech and in movement. Were you surprised by it? Was it effective?
Darren Schwartz:
It was just very multilayered and quirky and the voice was-
Larry Bernstein:
Crazy time.
Darren Schwartz:
But it was amazing. I asked Scott about it and Scott said that when David Kelly saw the first take, he said, I don't know what he's doing, but tell him not to stop.
Larry Bernstein:
I thought it was unbelievably powerful. it was successful because in just a few words or an eye roll, he could express all sorts of feelings. And I'll give you an example, Tommy, are you all right, if you need to stop? And in that one moment I said, oh my God, Nico, he thinks his prosecutor has completely lost it.
Darren Schwartz:
If Tommy was doing well, he is all in. And like I said, he was really harsh on him multiple times.
Larry Bernstein:
Another fantastic character in the eight-part series was Raymond Horgan the former district attorney. And in the movie, after he loses the election, he turns on Rusty. He blames part of his loss in the election on Rusty not being able to solve this crime.
But in the mini-series, it's totally changed. Raymond decides to act as his defense counsel. How do you feel about the decision to replace Sandy Stern, his lawyer in the book and in the movie with Raymond Horgan as the former district attorney now becoming his defense lawyer?
Darren Schwartz:
I watched the mini-series first and then at one point I was watching the series and the movie concurrently, which was interesting. But I love Raul Julia's character in the movie.
Larry Bernstein:
That's Sandy Stern.
Darren Schwartz:
But defense counsel, I liked the Ray Horgan character representing Rusty better. And what was also interesting is that Raymond was Rusty's best friend. Wasn't it weird that he must've been 20 years older than him.
Larry Bernstein:
That's fine. I'm older than you.
Darren Schwartz:
But four months, it'd be like if Bob was my best friend, your father-in-law, it's a big gap. I liked the fact that he was on his side because then it was like two on two in the series. It was Raymond and Rusty versus Tommy and Nico.
Larry Bernstein:
You're absolutely right.
They'd been two on two in the election. Now they're two on two in this case.
Let's talk about the victim Carolyn. In the book and in the Harrison Ford film, she's not a likable character. She's sexy. Oh boy. And Lip, the detective says she's bad news. She sleeping with everybody. She sleeps with the judge; she sleeps with the district attorney. She sleeps with the assistant district attorney. She self admits that she's sleeping her way to the top. And she's very cold calculating and callous, a destroyer of men. And if anything, the detective thinks that she had it coming and thinks if Rusty killed her, that's fine. I get it.
Darren Schwartz
He was okay with it.
Larry Bernstein:
She's bad news. That's not the case in the mini-series. Now she's human, she's pregnant, she is a prospective future mother. How do you think about the adaptation of Carolyn?
Darren Schwartz:
Well, interestingly, I did find her to be more sexual in the series. At least how it visually seemed. Now, in the movie, in the book she was sleeping around, but she was also into more freaky stuff.
In the series she wasn't sleeping around and therefore she was a more sympathetic figure. I didn't love the character in the miniseries. I didn't love the actress in it. I don't love how it was portrayed. And it seemed the performance in the movie was very consistent with how you just described her because she was like, boom, we're done. It's over. And the miniseries, it seemed like she relented a couple times and she let him back in and then that's when he went completely just stalkerish and tons of contact.
Larry Bernstein:
There's 34 years between the movie and the eight part series. That's a long time. Social mores change. Times change where you could have been flippant about these black widows attacking men.
Darren Schwartz:
The world is a little more inclusive. They want to do it differently and the times have changed and that's fine.
Larry Bernstein:
Given how different the movie and the eight-part series are. It's interesting that we go back to the core of what is the same and why it's the driving force of both. And to me that is that the prosecutor has been charged with the murder.
The worst thing a prosecutor could imagine is that he's going to be charged with the murder that he's investigating, and we all sympathize with that fear, and that is what remains at its core in both the film and the miniseries. Tell me about that great idea that Scott had to make this book.
Darren Schwartz:
The person who's entrusted to bring justice to represent the people to be the hero is now the anti-hero, has been wrongly accused and has to prove his innocence. It's a compelling story.
We have to give Scott credit as the person who invented this from a literary perspective.
Larry Bernstein:
You may recall that there was a heart attack in Presumed Innocent the mini-series. What did you think of the heart attack? Do you think it was appropriate to go down in the middle of your cross-examination? How did you think Rusty behaved saving his lawyer's life?
Darren Schwartz:
I thought it was completely out of the blue. Never saw it coming.
Larry Bernstein:
There was a little foreshadowing when he had a little bit of discomfort.
Darren Schwartz:
Right. But to have him nearly drop dead.
Larry Bernstein:
Are you okay Raymond?
Darren Schwartz:
And for Rusty to jump in, and they gave him credit for saving his life.
Larry Bernstein:
He was giving him mouth to mouth.
Darren Schwartz:
CPR. I loved it. I thought it was compelling. There are a few things that obviously caught you off guard, including the end. This is a nice little caught you off guard in the middle.
I've had some conversations with Scott about writing, and a couple of years ago I told him that in some of my writing that I do in a more amateur level. I said, how do you feel about the semicolon? If I remember correctly, that no one really uses punctuation anymore. I'm paraphrasing, it seems like the world's gotten dumber. But the semicolon has been a point of contention between writers. In the 1800s; there was a dual between two Oxford professors over the semicolon.
Larry Bernstein:
I would assume it was over the Oxford comma.
Darren Schwartz:
They got in an argument and they said, let's go shoot guns at each other.
Larry Bernstein:
Darren, I can't imagine why I would ever want to shoot you, particularly over punctuation or grammar.
There were odd similarities between the film and the miniseries. What did you pick up on that most people might miss?
Darren Schwartz:
One of the things they did differently between movie and miniseries is when Tommy was up all night and Nico walked in and said, I hope you weren't here all night. He goes, no, no, just in early, which he was for sure, he had pit sweat stains on his shirt. He takes his shirt off, and then opened a drawer and pulled out a folded shirt. He's got shirts just laying around.
Larry Bernstein:
Do you have folded shirts in your office drawer?
Darren Schwartz:
I do not. And in the movie, Raymond does the same thing. He's got a shirt on,
Larry Bernstein:
Different character. This is the district attorney.
Darren Schwartz:
The district attorney, different character.
Larry Bernstein:
He has to give a speech.
Darren Schwartz:
He was hot, he was sweaty, his shirt off, boom, shirt out, folded shirt, clean, out of the drawer. There you go. To show that the guys were working all night. Characters had the folded shirt, I didn't get, but I kind of liked it.
Larry Bernstein:
Lessons learned. How will you lead your life differently because of Presumed Innocent?
Darren Schwartz:
Well, I think murder's tough.
So how I would live my life differently? My takeaway is if you write an amazing book, you can make a movie, which is incredibly successful. And if you tell good stories, they can last forever. And if you're really successful and smart like Scott, then you can economically profit.
The movie was $20 million budget, made $220mm globally, maybe $90mm in the United States, and in 1990 that was big money.
Larry Bernstein:
The movie when it came out, I liked it a lot. It got three and a half stars from both Siskel and Ebert. And watching it now with you, the mini-series was much better. The 19990 movie was slow going. I found Harrison Ford's character as Rusty, solemn, unemotional.
Darren Schwartz:
Not dynamic.
Larry Bernstein:
He didn't have that same smirk like Indiana Jones.
Darren Schwartz:
Bad haircut too.
Larry Bernstein:
Or any sense of humor.
Darren Schwartz:
Nothing.
Larry Bernstein:
What does it say about the change in cinema in the last 34 years?
Darren Schwartz:
Acting mirrors what the audience wants; the acting has become much more real. I don't think there's that many movies you could look back on in the seventies or eighties and feel that their performances matched how people communicated.
In 1990 when I watched the movie, I didn’t find it stilted. It was normal back then. But clearly, Harrison Ford was boring as an actor. How about when he tried to cry? It was horrible. I was embarrassed for him.
Larry Bernstein:
He got teary-eyed.
Darren Schwartz:
But it was not effective. Maybe that was just how it was back then. For the miniseries, you had eight episodes and there were 40 to 50 minutes each. It's a lot of time to develop characters and to cover details. Certainly, the miniseries was much more appealing to me.
Larry Bernstein:
Thanks Darren and Scott for joining us today.
If you missed our previous podcast, check it out. The topic was Legalize or Criminalize Drugs? Our speaker was Kurt Schmoke who is the President of the University of Baltimore. Kurt served 12 years as the Mayor of Baltimore and 8 years as a prosecutor, and he came to oppose the Federal War on Drugs. Kurt discussed the success of the needle exchange program that he developed. Kurt also discussed the TV program The Wire and his participation in the episode about Hamsterdam which was an idea to allow open air sales of drugs in parts of Baltimore.
I would like to make a plug for next week’s show with Michael Walzer who is a retired professor of politics at Harvard and the Institute for Advanced Study. Michael wrote a very famous book entitled Just and Unjust Wars and I want to discuss with him his philosophy and how to evaluate the current conflict in Gaza.
You can find our previous episodes and transcripts on our website whathappensnextin6minutes.com. Please follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thank you for joining us today, good-bye.
Check out our previous episode, Criminalize or Legalize Drugs, here.
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