The Usual Suspects (Anne Stuart)

We were talking about movies on our question of the week, and it reminded me of how often popular culture inspires my books. People always ask writers where they get their ideas, and you can never come up with a straight answer. Sometimes (a lot of times) it’s a line from a song, a beer commercial, a book that ends the wrong way and you need to fix it, the scent of a flower on a spring night or the water on the lake.

But just as often it’s movies, television and theatre, so I thought I’d list some books and where they came from.

Some are really obvious. THE HIGH SHERIFF OF HUNTINGTON, a novella in an old Avon collection, is one of my favorites, and no one would have any trouble recognizing a variant of Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. I got to take a roaring bad boy and give him a happy ending (I gave him a nun and made sure he never got totally redeemed) and had the most wonderful time doing it.

And there’s DARK JOURNEY, a Silhouette Shadows novella, inspired by the most obscure version of Death Takes a Holiday. Not the Frederic March version, or the Brad Pitt one that ends the wrong way (the heroine’s supposed to go off with Death and live happily ever after in a house with a two hearse garage), but an early-seventies version with Melvyn Douglas and Monte Markham. I only saw it once but the mood stuck with me, and it was something I had to translate on my own.

Sometimes it’s less clear – Alan Rickman (there’s a theme here) inspired my first Silhouette Shadows novella, MONSTERS, but that was from Truly, Madly Deeply. An old thirties screwball comedy called Theodora Goes Wild inspired THE SPINSTER AND THE RAKE (and early regency), and for some reason Last of the Mohicans gave me bad boy heroes for A ROSE AT MIDNIGHT and TO LOVE A DARK LORD.

Then there’s the theatre – two of my best books were born from trips to Broadway. First, I got to see Frank Langella soon after he opened in Dracula, and ended up with THE DEMON COUNT (aided by a photo shoot in Vogue Pattern Magazine) and Michael Crawford a few weeks into his New York Phantom of the Opera run (NIGHT OF THE PHANTOM). The interesting thing about Broadway as opposed to movies is you can’t go back time and time again to wallow in the glory of it (at least, not if you live 400 miles away). So the initial inspiration really takes on a life of its own.

Sometimes it’s soap operas (Frisco and Felicia on General Hospital in the early ‘80s inspired the first Maggie Bennett novel, ESCAPE INTO DARKNESS). Sometimes it’s primetime (Don Johnson in LONG HOT SUMMER gave me two lovely books, HEAT LIGHTNING and BLUE SAGE).

Which brings me to Miss Tatlock’s Millions, the movie I love most in the world, the movie that very few people have seen. It was filmed in 1948, written by Billy Wilder’s longtime collaborate, stars Wanda Hendrix and John Lund and a cast of character actors including Barry Fitgerald and Monty Wooley. It gave me two books (TANGLED LIES and CRAZY LIKE A FOX), one of my favorite compliments (“it has a certain jungle charm”). You can sometimes find copies of it on eBay – it’s never been on DVD and the copyright’s presumably long gone, but it’s worth hunting down for the charm and black humor and perfect, longing romance.

The one thing I’ve learned is that inspiration from movies/tv etc. is like looking for love – if you go searching it tends to elude you. You have to be open to unexpected treats.

I went off to see Witness the moment it opened, expecting vast story ideas from Harrison Ford in a romance. Instead it was Blade Runner, a bloody sci-fi noir thriller that made me run to the typewriter (yup, it was the typewriter back then).
The Terminator is intensely romantic, Somewhere in Time is not (to my admittedly twisted muse).

So if you’re looking for story ideas, stay away from the usual suspects (though frankly, I could get a romance out of The Usual Suspects – I could get a romance out of the darkest movie). Look for something unexpected, and you just might find your next book.