It’s been twenty months
since David Louden released his second book, Bone Idol [bohn ahyd-l]. In
that year and a half plus he’s been busy working on a TV commission through NI
Screen, buying himself some land, and getting hitched in Las Vegas, NV. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the
Louden voiced in his new book, White
Mexicans, is a more mature, calm, peaceful man… but you’d be wrong.
CS: White Mexicans… what’s all that about
then?
DL:
It’s
an LA term for the British and Irish who come over to Hollywood
CS: So this is a
book about Hollywood
DL: No.
CS: Care to share
what it is about then? How’d you get to
it? What’s it about? Help me out here.
DL: Aaah… yeah…
sure. Ok, so when I finished Lost Angeles I really wanted to write
the movie that they were discussing in the middle third… maybe it was a bit
later, anyway… yeah. I’m a lover of
Exploitation cinema…
CS: Why?
DL: It cuts through
the bullshit. Exploitation cinema is
more equal for starters. There’s a
higher number of women in lead roles, minorities in lead roles, disabled actors
in lead roles. Anyway, the movie… Swasucka… I really wanted to write it
but knew that it would be a waste of fucking time. Who’s going to make a Blax-Naziploitation
movie about an African-American Hitler made in a test tube? So I started writing another story
instead. I got one draft out of me but
it was bollocks so I tossed most of it to one side and took the bits I thought
had heart and used them as the framework for Bone Idol [bohn ahyd-l]. I
thought “this is the book that’ll connect with people”. Lost
Angeles did pretty well, I thought Bone
Idol [bohn ahyd-l] was better so I was pretty sick about how piss-poor it
sold.
CS: How bad was it?
DL: It was BAD,
Clive. It made me go away and think
about my voice. What I had to say and
more importantly if anyone out there actually gave a shit or are they only
interested in sexy vampires, and cuddly werewolves and shit like that. So I started working on a Noir and after a
first draft I thought “this is alright, this could be a movie”. So I started reworking it as a movie.
CS:
You
told me about this. It was long, right?
DL: A fucking
monster. (laughs) The cunt was like, 210
minutes. I couldn’t edit it for
shit. So I thought, “ok, maybe not a
movie… maybe TV”. I pitched it to NI
Screen and they gave me the money I needed to develop it and in the end I
handed in a six episode mini-series.
CS: That doesn’t
explain much about White Mexicans though.
DL: Well I’m getting
to that bit, fuck. Script rewriting is a
tired, boring, lonely land to be stuck in.
I started writing short stories to kill the boredom while at the same
time I started a second draft of the project I’d started after Lost Angeles, but from a different
direction. Eventually I had enough for a
novella and when I noticed that many of my short stories tied into either the
same characters, the same themes, or even just the same world, I wondered whether a novella-short story hybrid could be
interesting.
CS: And is it?
DL: I thought Bone Idol [bohn ahyd-l] would be a book
people wanted to read. How should I
know? You read it. You tell me!
CS: Ok, so we’ll
forgo a synopsis on the short stories.
What’s the novella about?
DL: Narratively, it’s
Doug in Los Angeles
CS: Swasucka?
DL: No, a different
one. But to tell you what it is, is to
bugger up the first bit of the book so you’ll just have to read it.
CS: But it is an
Exploitation movie?!
DL: Totes. Aside from that, its about a lot of
things. I’ve tried to tie in some of the
BIG picture arguments that have been going on in the media, the world,
everywhere. Notions of identity. Relationships. The usual hypocracy, bigotry and all that.
CS: That’s definitely a big one here at the moment.
DL: The whole world
is one big diseased asshole. You’ve got
Police in America Northern
Ireland
CS: But that’s them
all over.
DL: Oh
absolutely. They’re trying their
damnedest to build a two tier society.
Them and then everybody else. We can do whatever we want though… as long as
it’s ok within their outdated binary understanding of the world as interpreted
through a three-thousand year old text which they don’t even bother sticking to
most of the time!
CS: You’re
passionate about this.
DL: Fuck passionate,
I’m fucked off! You’ve college kids in America
CS: And all this is
covered in White Mexicans?
DL: It’s maybe not
as clearly underlined, but yeah. There
are some issues that are hammered at and others that are left to you to mull
over. The full title is White Mexicans & Other Short Stories
That All Definitely Happened (astrix) and then an amendment that specifies
that I’m full of shit about them… you know… all…
CS: Definitely
happening!
DL: Right.
CS: So this book isn’t
biographical?
DL: It is and it isn’t,
Clive. I mean I did live on the Oldpark
Road as a kid and I did have a childhood dog, and there are characters who exist but the overarching narrative of White Mexicans is less true than
anything before.
CS: How was that to
write?
DL: Different.
CS: And what was the
reasoning behind it?
DL: Well after Bone Idol [bohn ahyd-l] sucked cock in
the sales department I looked around at all this sexy vampire malarky. I knew I couldn’t write a story like that, I’m
just not built that way, but I could write
about writing a story like that. So
I did, and in a way, the book is very aware that it is a book.
CS: Am I in this
one?
DL: No. You’re in the TV show. And if it does well you’ll have your own
Funko Pop so be nice to me.
Some of the short story
extracts from White Mexicans are
available to read through Literally Stories.
White
Mexicans is available in Paperback and on Amazon Kindle from Monday 13th July 2015 . Lost
Angeles and Bone Idol [bohn ahyd-l] can
be purchased now.
