Taken from JRE #1942 w/Mark Greaney:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2WnF73Otbw8vBvdrc1Tbc4?si=3d2033210244448a

Yeah, I enjoyed the Grey Man movie, but it was not as good as your book.

I liked it, and what I say, and I don't know how this makes me sound, it's like the movie is the best possible commercial for my writing.

And if you're a writer, you want eyeballs on your work.

And so it's, I love the movie and you know, there's bits of dialogue in there and things they did with the plot that I really liked.

And they do things that they have to do shorthand in a movie.

I get 100,000 words to write a book or 150,000 words to write a book.

So I have some luxuries that you know they don't have putting something on the screen but I like the fact that they're different in to them because there's still a reason to read my book.

If you saw the movie and enjoyed it hopefully it turns you on to the book and then you see something different in there.

No I definitely think there's that element to it because it is, it's for sure a Hollywoodized version of these gritty books that you write.

Like if you didn't know about the book and you just saw the movie, it's good.

said thank you I don't know if that's what I should say.

But Court Gentry in your books is just so much different than Ryan in the movies.

Yeah I mean they did a lot without dialogue which I appreciated and I liked you know you know He'd do a lot with a look, but I mean, when you, in a book you're able to get into the character's head quite a bit more, so it's a different experience.

If you could pick a person, like an actor, if you could start from scratch, no disrespect to...

I couldn't pick either 1 of them out of a fucking lineup to save my life.

Who would you pick if you could just say any actor?

You know, that's a tough question because that thing has been in Hollywood, The gray man's been in Hollywood since 2 months before the little paperback came out in 2009 So it's been bouncing around and I've heard every actor at 1 point Brad Pitt was signed on to it and really yeah Yeah, like back 2011 or something and then it fell apart and it came back and each time they would send me a script or whoever was doing it and at 1 point Charlize Theron wanted to do it and they rewrote it.

So they wrote a script for it and it was good screenwriters and I remember reading the script going like...

Was it the gray woman or the now or the gray non-binary person

Her name was still court gentry, but everything everything was different Then they never really explained is that short for Courtney or something?

They never oh my god But it was just a completely different plot.

I thought if they changed, you know, like if, and I love her because she had just done Fury Road.

So I mean, I'd love to write something for her to be in.

But as an author, you couldn't put out the gray man novel with her face on it and they open the book and it has nothing to do with a woman.

And as much as I love her, I was like, well, this isn't gonna sell books or get eyes in my work.

The screenplay was actually really good but I remember thinking if I went to the theater and saw it and had a different title I would not even know.

There'd be like 1 scene where I'm like oh yeah I did a thing on a plane too you know it was so different it was a completely different plot.

It was good I wish they'd make it and call it something else.

Yeah, make it and call it something else.

At 1 point, like, real early on, when it first got optioned, people were asking me who should play the character, and I thought it would be somebody who's not like yeah Rambo or anything like that so I was saying like Casey Affleck or somebody like that that you wouldn't expect you know in a big action film.

But wouldn't you need someone who's like physically formidable?

Yeah you know I don't the thing is I've written 12 books and I've never once had him working out.

I've never shown him working out, you know, or even really training because...

You talked a couple of times about him doing like calisthenics or something.

I've thrown it in a little bit because I'm like, all right, how does this possibly happen?

How does he keep these perishable skills up and his fitness up?

But you know, there's actors that I really like, like Max Martini.

He was in 13 Hours, it was a really good movie, and the Michael Bay film.

And so he's, you know, he's like a formidable dude, and a really good actor, but there's, you know, he does, I Like the physical presence of him.

Yeah, he might be good too because even though he's kind of recognizable It's not Brad Pitt like

It's Brad Pitt Yeah, that guy's in a movie You could say I think I've seen that guy in something before but but he's court gentry.

Yeah, exactly Well, I got a ton of people mad that Ryan Gosling was in it before it came out and they were like you need to get some unknown guy because nobody Recognizes a great man and I'm like you probably don't understand how 200 million dollar movies work.

What we're going to do is we're going to get this guy out, you know, find the guy at the mall and make him, you know, it's just not how it works.

It's too bad because I don't really know if it makes a difference.

I think they think it makes a difference, but I think if you have a movie that has an amazing plot and a great trailer and it looks wild, I think people get sucked into it anyway.

Yeah, and honestly, 1 of the best films I've ever seen in my life, which is an action film It's a Korean film called the man from nowhere and it's also in fortunately It came out after the gray men did otherwise people would think I'd ripped off the gray man because it's about a former assassin who's trying to lay low and he ends up having to rescue this girl.

Well, the book though came so much earlier than the movie.

Like how many years was it between you writing the book and then the film coming out?

It came out in 2009 and the film came out in 22, and so it's like 13 years.

I was still lucky, you know, everybody's like, I bet you hate that you had to wait this long, and I'm like, if I was an 85 year old man and they made a film out of 1 of my books, I'd be thrilled.

Especially a big blockbuster film with Ryan

Yeah, he really played an awesome version of the character you wrote in the book.

Yeah, and that's an example of a difference in the film that I liked.

My Lloyd in the book is not like a physical presence.

He's more of like the asshole mastermind of the whole thing.

But I mean, obviously, if they can get Chris Evans in their film They're gonna beef up his role and

it a more mono-e-mono thing and I thought that was fabulous

Yeah, and Chris Evans just really nailed it.

I went out and met the Russo brothers when they were going to write the script and spent a few days with them talking about the story and where the future story, because they wanted to be a French franchise from the beginning, but I wasn't involved in the day-to-day But I was sent scripts Joe sent me the script that he wrote and then I saw the the shooting script like right when they were shooting so That was my involvement with it And then I would be on Twitter and I'd see Ryan Gosling dressed up as a gray man on Twitter.

I didn't see it any way anybody else would have seen it.

And They're writing a spin-off series, which I know nothing about, but the guy who wrote Deadpool, Rhett Reese, I think is his name.

So now someone's taking your world and it's almost like the Spider-Man thing.

If they take a character like Zoya, who's this former Russian foreign intelligence officer.

You know, if they did something with her, that would be cool.

If they did something with Zach Hightower who's kind of like his on and off again sidekick You know, that would be cool, but I don't know what it is But they are doing a sequel with Ryan Gosling in the role.

They're writing the script or Steve McFeely's writing a script 1 of the screenwriters on Greyman

My whole point in coming here today was to walk out of here and not go, oh my God, I can't believe I just said that.

Is it a weird thing to watch someone change your script?

And to change the plot and change how the characters interact.

I think I went into it with the right mindset that this was a film representation.

And I know that the directors are really creative people, and the screenwriters and cinematographers and actors.

And they don't look at it as their job that they're engineers that are going to take a piece of paper and turn it into celluloid with everyone doing exactly the same thing.

There are places in there where I think, I really like what they did.

And there's places in there where it's like I think my line landed a little bit better, you know, like I and and that actually made me happy I wasn't mad that like they didn't do it my way.

It's more like okay I think I have something to offer still instead of you know all these big shots with all this money come and make something so like, you know, vastly superior to the little paperback that I wrote.

You know, it's like I think there's places where my stuff holds up and there's stuff in there that I think is fantastic too.

The toughest thing is the complaints from fans that aren't happy because of the changes.

So people just pigeonhole me all the time at a conference or something, and they'll be like, in the movie they did this, and in the book they did this.

And I was like, yeah, I wrote the book and I saw the movie, So this whole interaction is like, I don't know what to tell you.

You know, it's like, I can't speak for them.

And people will email me and they're like, you've screwed up.

You know, it was all for the money or whatever.

And you're like, I didn't have any creative control.

I'm not Stephen King or John Grisham or 1 of these guys.

You know, I had this little paperback that I got a little bit of money advanced to put out, and they offered, you know, to option it in Hollywood, and my answer was yes.

It wasn't like, let me look at page 94 of the contract, where I'm going to come back and say, I want creative control, and I want to play the gray man in the movie or whatever It's like that's how you don't get a movie made.

Well, Stephen King famously didn't like The Shining Yeah, which is wild right?

Yeah, it's Stanley Kubrick and it's Jack Nicholson.

It's an amazing movie Yeah, but the movie was very different than his book in his book the the character Jack it takes a long time before he goes crazy and he starts out saying yeah starts out just a troubled former alcoholic who's trying to get his life together and do right by his family and he gets this opportunity to look over this hotel and he's gonna write this book and then along the way he goes nuts.

Yeah that's the difference between a book and a movie like it I like I like that added stuff.

I think Tom Clancy didn't like Harrison Ford in the Jack Ryan films.

I think it was just an age thing because in his head he was pretty literal about, you know, he's at this stage when I wrote this book, he's a young CIA analyst or whatever and I think Harrison Ford was older and I'm not 100% sure about that.

But I do know that, you know, I've read places, Tom never told me this, but that he wasn't a big fan of those and I think those are the best ones.

I never saw any of his, what ones were his?

And I think he did a good, they did a great job.

Yeah, well, it's so interesting when you get a known commodity, like a famous celebrity that comes in and takes over a role that you've created.

As I described the gray man, the look is pretty similar and he didn't he didn't over bake it I feel like the scenes with the the girl and that he's protecting could have turned schmaltzy and cheesy, and they didn't.

In my book, I like it a little bit better because the girl actually has some agency in her own rescue.

She does some things to help herself, whereas this 1 she's just sort of like protected, you know, by gentry.

I mean, she kind of saves the day to some degree too.

The very first scene in the movie, Billy Bob Thornton is a CIA guy sitting in a prison with a dude saying here's the name of our secret CIA program And here's what it does.

Thanks, how that works, you know, and there's a yeah the funniest part was that there's a scene big action scene in Prague takes place in Prague and very man is handcuffed to a to a bench and he's shooting bad guys and he can't get away and there's cops and dead cops around him and then the bad guys, Chris Evans sending the bad guys in from all directions.

And at 1 point he reaches over to this cop and pulls a frag grenade off the guy's utility belt.

I'm like, the cops in Prague carry frags?

He throws it, blows something up, and I'm like, but it works in the movie.

It's like nobody's spending that much time looking at it unless you're the idiot They wrote it.


Speaker 0: The Joe Rogan Experience.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I enjoyed the Grey Man movie, but it was not as good as your book.

Speaker 0: Thank you for saying that.

Speaker 1: It just wasn't the same story. They Hollywoodized it.

Speaker 0: Absolutely. I liked it, and what I say, and I don't know how this makes me sound, it's like the movie is the best possible commercial for my writing. And if you're a writer, you want eyeballs on your work. And so it's, I love the movie and you know, there's bits of dialogue in there and things they did with the plot that I really liked. But it's not as gritty.

It's not-

Speaker 1: Not nearly.

Speaker 0: Yeah. And they do things that they have to do shorthand in a movie. I get 100,000 words to write a book or 150,000 words to write a book. So I have some luxuries that you know they don't have putting something on the screen but I like the fact that they're different in to them because there's still a reason to read my book. If you saw the movie and enjoyed it hopefully it turns you on to the book and then you see something different in there.

Speaker 1: No I definitely think there's that element to it because it is, it's for sure a Hollywoodized version of these gritty books that you write. But it's also good. Yeah. Like if you didn't know about the book and you just saw the movie, it's good.

Speaker 0: Yeah. They're 2 different things.

Speaker 1: But the book is so much fucking nastier. Thank you. And also Court Gentry. I

Speaker 0: said thank you I don't know if that's what I should say. You should, it's good.

Speaker 1: But Court Gentry in your books is just so much different than Ryan in the movies. It's just like.

Speaker 0: Yeah I mean they did a lot without dialogue which I appreciated and I liked you know you know He'd do a lot with a look, but I mean, when you, in a book you're able to get into the character's head quite a bit more, so it's a different experience.

Speaker 1: If you could pick a person, like an actor, if you could start from scratch, no disrespect to... Is it Ryan Reynolds or Ryan... Gosling. Gosling, yeah. Why do I always fuck that up?

I always fuck that up. I couldn't pick either 1 of them out of a fucking lineup to save my life. Gosling, Ryan Gosling. I really like the guy too, by the way. Who would you pick if you could just say any actor?

Who do you think you would go with?

Speaker 0: You know, that's a tough question because that thing has been in Hollywood, The gray man's been in Hollywood since 2 months before the little paperback came out in 2009 So it's been bouncing around and I've heard every actor at 1 point Brad Pitt was signed on to it and really yeah Yeah, like back 2011 or something and then it fell apart and it came back and each time they would send me a script or whoever was doing it and at 1 point Charlize Theron wanted to do it and they rewrote it.

Speaker 1: She wanted to be the girl?

Speaker 0: No, she wanted to be Court Gentry. Oh my god. So they wrote a script for it and it was good screenwriters and I remember reading the script going like...

Speaker 1: Was it the gray woman or the now or the gray non-binary person

Speaker 0: It was still the gray man. Her name was still court gentry, but everything everything was different Then they never really explained is that short for Courtney or something? They never oh my god But it was just a completely different plot.

Speaker 1: Thank God. They didn't do that

Speaker 0: I thought if they changed, you know, like if, and I love her because she had just done Fury Road. So I mean, I'd love to write something for her to be in.

Speaker 1: I didn't see Fury Road.

Speaker 0: Oh, the Mad Max. Oh, Mad Max.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 0: She was so good. But as an author, you couldn't put out the gray man novel with her face on it and they open the book and it has nothing to do with a woman. And as much as I love her, I was like, well, this isn't gonna sell books or get eyes in my work. The screenplay was actually really good but I remember thinking if I went to the theater and saw it and had a different title I would not even know. There'd be like 1 scene where I'm like oh yeah I did a thing on a plane too you know it was so different it was a completely different plot.

It was good I wish they'd make it and call it something else.

Speaker 1: Yeah, make it and call it something else. Don't call it The Gray Man. It's, that's such a weird choice.

Speaker 0: Yeah, yeah. At 1 point, like, real early on, when it first got optioned, people were asking me who should play the character, and I thought it would be somebody who's not like yeah Rambo or anything like that so I was saying like Casey Affleck or somebody like that that you wouldn't expect you know in a big action film.

Speaker 1: But wouldn't you need someone who's like physically formidable?

Speaker 0: Yeah you know I don't the thing is I've written 12 books and I've never once had him working out. I've never shown him working out, you know, or even really training because...

Speaker 1: You talked a couple of times about him doing like calisthenics or something.

Speaker 0: Yeah, yeah. I've thrown it in a little bit because I'm like, all right, how does this possibly happen? How does he keep these perishable skills up and his fitness up? But you know, there's actors that I really like, like Max Martini. I don't know if you know that is.

You'd know him if you saw him. He was in 13 Hours, it was a really good movie, and the Michael Bay film. Wow, look at that. That's amazing. And so he's, you know, he's like a formidable dude, and a really good actor, but there's, you know, he does, I Like the physical presence of him.

Speaker 1: Yeah, he might be good too because even though he's kind of recognizable It's not Brad Pitt like

Speaker 0: right

Speaker 1: every time Brad Pitt's in a movie. It's Brad Pitt Yeah, that guy's in a movie You could say I think I've seen that guy in something before but but he's court gentry.

Speaker 0: Yeah, exactly Well, I got a ton of people mad that Ryan Gosling was in it before it came out and they were like you need to get some unknown guy because nobody Recognizes a great man and I'm like you probably don't understand how 200 million dollar movies work. They don't. What we're going to do is we're going to get this guy out, you know, find the guy at the mall and make him, you know, it's just not how it works.

Speaker 1: It's too bad because I don't really know if it makes a difference. I think they think it makes a difference, but I think if you have a movie that has an amazing plot and a great trailer and it looks wild, I think people get sucked into it anyway.

Speaker 0: Yeah, and honestly, 1 of the best films I've ever seen in my life, which is an action film It's a Korean film called the man from nowhere and it's also in fortunately It came out after the gray men did otherwise people would think I'd ripped off the gray man because it's about a former assassin who's trying to lay low and he ends up having to rescue this girl.

Speaker 1: Well, the book though came so much earlier than the movie. Like how many years was it between you writing the book and then the film coming out?

Speaker 0: I wrote the book in 2007. It came out in 2009 and the film came out in 22, and so it's like 13 years. I was still lucky, you know, everybody's like, I bet you hate that you had to wait this long, and I'm like, if I was an 85 year old man and they made a film out of 1 of my books, I'd be thrilled.

Speaker 1: Yeah, It's a rare thing, right? Especially a big blockbuster film with Ryan

Speaker 0: Gosling? You're getting it. There it is.

Speaker 1: Chris Evans is great in that, too.

Speaker 0: Yeah, he was terrific.

Speaker 1: Yeah, he really played an awesome version of the character you wrote in the book.

Speaker 0: Yeah, and that's an example of a difference in the film that I liked. My Lloyd in the book is not like a physical presence. He's more of like the asshole mastermind of the whole thing. But I mean, obviously, if they can get Chris Evans in their film They're gonna beef up his role and

Speaker 1: yeah, make

Speaker 0: it a more mono-e-mono thing and I thought that was fabulous

Speaker 1: Yeah, and Chris Evans just really nailed it. Yeah, he played the perfect douchebag. Yeah asshole cocky confident psychopath

Speaker 0: Yeah, it looks like he was having fun.

Speaker 1: Yeah Yeah, It was great. It was great.

Speaker 0: I wasn't closely involved with it. I went out and met the Russo brothers when they were going to write the script and spent a few days with them talking about the story and where the future story, because they wanted to be a French franchise from the beginning, but I wasn't involved in the day-to-day But I was sent scripts Joe sent me the script that he wrote and then I saw the the shooting script like right when they were shooting so That was my involvement with it And then I would be on Twitter and I'd see Ryan Gosling dressed up as a gray man on Twitter. I didn't see it any way anybody else would have seen it.

Speaker 1: Are they doing a series? Are they going to continue?

Speaker 0: They're doing a second 1, yeah. Really? Yeah. Interesting. And They're writing a spin-off series, which I know nothing about, but the guy who wrote Deadpool, Rhett Reese, I think is his name.

They're

Speaker 1: writing a spin-off based on who?

Speaker 0: Someone in the series. And I really don't know. I'm not being cagey. Really? Yeah.

I just know that that's happening.

Speaker 1: That's even weirder. So now someone's taking your world and it's almost like the Spider-Man thing.

Speaker 0: Yeah, I mean it depends on what they do. If they take a character like Zoya, who's this former Russian foreign intelligence officer.

Speaker 1: I love that character.

Speaker 0: Thank you, thanks. You know, if they did something with her, that would be cool. If they did something with Zach Hightower who's kind of like his on and off again sidekick You know, that would be cool, but I don't know what it is But they are doing a sequel with Ryan Gosling in the role.

Speaker 1: Have they started that yet?

Speaker 0: They're writing the script or Steve McFeely's writing a script 1 of the screenwriters on Greyman

Speaker 1: And is it based on any of your books?

Speaker 0: It's gonna be based on 1 of the books.

Speaker 1: Which book? You don't want to tell?

Speaker 0: No, I don't know that I didn't ask

Speaker 1: permission. If you're allowed.

Speaker 0: I didn't ask permission. I get it. My whole point in coming here today was to walk out of here and not go, oh my God, I can't believe I just said that. I think we're good so far. That was close.

Speaker 1: Well, you know, you did a good job. You navigated it. Is it a weird thing to watch someone change your script? And to change the plot and change how the characters interact.

Speaker 0: It is really weird. I think I went into it with the right mindset that this was a film representation. And I know that the directors are really creative people, and the screenwriters and cinematographers and actors. And they don't look at it as their job that they're engineers that are going to take a piece of paper and turn it into celluloid with everyone doing exactly the same thing. So I never expected that.

There are places in there where I think, I really like what they did. And there's places in there where it's like I think my line landed a little bit better, you know, like I and and that actually made me happy I wasn't mad that like they didn't do it my way. It's more like okay I think I have something to offer still instead of you know all these big shots with all this money come and make something so like, you know, vastly superior to the little paperback that I wrote. You know, it's like I think there's places where my stuff holds up and there's stuff in there that I think is fantastic too. But it is really strange.

The toughest thing is the complaints from fans that aren't happy because of the changes. So people just pigeonhole me all the time at a conference or something, and they'll be like, in the movie they did this, and in the book they did this. And I was like, yeah, I wrote the book and I saw the movie, So this whole interaction is like, I don't know what to tell you. You know, it's like, I can't speak for them. And people will email me and they're like, you've screwed up.

You gave it away. You know, it was all for the money or whatever. And you're like, I didn't have any creative control. I'm not Stephen King or John Grisham or 1 of these guys. Right.

You know, I had this little paperback that I got a little bit of money advanced to put out, and they offered, you know, to option it in Hollywood, and my answer was yes. It wasn't like, let me look at page 94 of the contract, where I'm going to come back and say, I want creative control, and I want to play the gray man in the movie or whatever It's like that's how you don't get a movie made.

Speaker 1: Well, Stephen King famously didn't like The Shining Yeah, which is wild right? Yeah, it's Stanley Kubrick and it's Jack Nicholson. It's an amazing movie Yeah, but the movie was very different than his book in his book the the character Jack it takes a long time before he goes crazy and he starts out saying yeah starts out just a troubled former alcoholic who's trying to get his life together and do right by his family and he gets this opportunity to look over this hotel and he's gonna write this book and then along the way he goes nuts.

Speaker 0: Yeah that's the difference between a book and a movie like it I like I like that added stuff. I think Tom Clancy didn't like Harrison Ford in the Jack Ryan films. I think it was just an age thing because in his head he was pretty literal about, you know, he's at this stage when I wrote this book, he's a young CIA analyst or whatever and I think Harrison Ford was older and I'm not 100% sure about that. But I do know that, you know, I've read places, Tom never told me this, but that he wasn't a big fan of those and I think those are the best ones. I don't know, Red October was good.

Speaker 1: I never saw any of his, what ones were his?

Speaker 0: Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger.

Speaker 1: And those were all Harrison Ford?

Speaker 0: Yeah. No kidding. Yeah, yeah. And I think he did a good, they did a great job. Alec Baldwin was great in Red October.

Yeah. Too bad he didn't stick with it.

Speaker 1: I forgot about Red October.

Speaker 0: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I forgot about Patriot Games, too. Yeah, well, it's so interesting when you get a known commodity, like a famous celebrity that comes in and takes over a role that you've created. Yeah. Yeah,

Speaker 0: I was happy with Ryan Gosling. As I described the gray man, the look is pretty similar and he didn't he didn't over bake it I feel like the scenes with the the girl and that he's protecting could have turned schmaltzy and cheesy, and they didn't. And I like that. In my book, I like it a little bit better because the girl actually has some agency in her own rescue. She does some things to help herself, whereas this 1 she's just sort of like protected, you know, by gentry.

I mean, she kind of saves the day to some degree too. You know, you can pick little things. The very first scene in the movie, Billy Bob Thornton is a CIA guy sitting in a prison with a dude saying here's the name of our secret CIA program And here's what it does. Would you like to join? Thanks, how that works, you know, and there's a yeah the funniest part was that there's a scene big action scene in Prague takes place in Prague and very man is handcuffed to a to a bench and he's shooting bad guys and he can't get away and there's cops and dead cops around him and then the bad guys, Chris Evans sending the bad guys in from all directions.

And at 1 point he reaches over to this cop and pulls a frag grenade off the guy's utility belt. I'm like, the cops in Prague carry frags? That's some hardcore cops. He throws it, blows something up, and I'm like, but it works in the movie. It's like nobody's spending that much time looking at it unless you're the idiot They wrote it.

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How Author Mark Greaney Feels About "The Gray Man" Adaptation of His Book