I love Hap and Leonard and plan to write more about them, but not exclusively about them. I have always worked in film, or since the eighties, but my screenplays - though I got paid and did screenplays for Ridley Scott and John Irvin and Mark Romanek - seldom got made.

Joe R. Lansdale

Categorized in : Writing Made Film

Let me tell you, if you have never seen an agitated squirrel you have seen very little, nor have you heard much, because the sound of an angry squirrel is not to be forgotten.

Joe R. Lansdale

squirrels sound littles

Hallowed be thy name, oh Lord -- and shotgun do your stuff by Joe R. Lansdale

Hallowed be thy name, oh Lord -- and shotgun do your stuff

Joe R. Lansdale

lord names stuff

I thought I had the world by the tail. It took me a few years to realize the closest I was to having the world by the tail was being a dingle berry on one of its ass hairs.

Joe R. Lansdale

berries hair years

Don't try to skin your rabbit and keep it as a pet too. by Joe R. Lansdale

Don't try to skin your rabbit and keep it as a pet too.

Joe R. Lansdale

skins pet trying

First, there are some of my readers who only read Hap and Leonard, not the other stuff, and some who don't read Hap and Leonard, but a large percentage are crossover readers. And yes, I did refuse to go to Vietnam and it looked like prison was in my future, but they sent me to the psychiatrist and he gave me a 1-Y, which is unfit for military service essentially.

Joe R. Lansdale

vietnam military stuff

I have finally become my own genre, and now that's what publishers want. I have a wonderful publisher now, Mulholland, very innovated, very fine people working there.

Joe R. Lansdale

want wonderful people

I think I have broken into the mainstream, and I think that may happen in a broader way, but I want to do it on my own terms, not become a standard producer.

Joe R. Lansdale

broken may thinking

I know the Pollock novel. Read it last year and liked it. Daniel Woodrell is awesome. I especially like the book Winter's Bone, and the film made from it. Larry Brown is terrific, all his work, but for me Joe in particular, also a good film, but a much better novel.

Joe R. Lansdale

winter book years

I could always write in a wide variety. My moods change same as reader's moods change. I really do love writing the historicals, however, but if that's all I did I would go crazy, same with any of the other kinds of books. I need variety.

Joe R. Lansdale

crazy writing book

I love Crews, but had been writing a long time before I knew of him. I learned of him because a friend thought we were similar. The reason we are is we were both heavily influenced by Flannery O'Conner. She was wonderful.

Joe R. Lansdale

writing wonderful long

Enjoy it if you do, but don't tell me how to live or teach it in school, or not allow a woman the right to choose, and so on. Yeah, all of that slips into my work. I even got a death threat the other day for not being pro gun, which just proves my point. They can kiss my ass.

Joe R. Lansdale

kissing gun school

I would have fought in WW2, so I wasn't a pacifist in the broader sense. I prefer to be a pacifist, but I think there are exceptions and times to defend yourself or your country, but that war wasn't one of them.

Joe R. Lansdale

war country thinking

I wouldn't choose conscientious objector and I wouldn't go to Canada. I did what Hap did and almost went to prison. I think the threw me a bone as the war was winding down, and I think they accepted my sincerity for being against that war.

Joe R. Lansdale

down-and war thinking

I took what worked for me and found I had a system that others were interested in and seemed to work for a wide number of people. It was recognised by other martial artists, grandmasters and such, and they gave me the recognition. I'm proud of my work in martial arts. I still teach but only once a week in a private class, and I train a couple more days a week.

Joe R. Lansdale

couple class art

The reviews on it, and the new novel, Honky Tonk Samurai have been awesome, though I'm of the school if you believe the good ones you got to believe the bad ones, it's been mostly good ones. The previewers seem to be very happy and excited about it. I know I am. There are plans to continue if it does well.

Joe R. Lansdale

doe believe school

We couldn't get it off the ground as a film, but then we begin to think television, and Lowell pushed it out there and Jim and Nick were anxious to do Hap and Leonard anyway, and I had worked with them before, so it was a perfect story. I love the series. I hope there's a second.

Joe R. Lansdale

stories perfect thinking

It was the kind of talk that made me want to break off a limb and take to whacking her and that bunch of hypocrites across the back of the head.

Joe R. Lansdale

break-off hypocrite want

The logic of a madman is a sane man's confusion. by Joe R. Lansdale

The logic of a madman is a sane man's confusion.

Joe R. Lansdale

frustration confusion men

There's no one more obnoxious and self-righteous than the self-ma... by Joe R. Lansdale

There's no one more obnoxious and self-righteous than the self-made man. And no one more admirable.

Joe R. Lansdale

self made men

Scott Sigler's Infected is a bucking pulp pony that throws you this way and that, and just when you think you've got your balance, that ole pony bucks the other way. All in all, one hell of an exhilarating ride, and highly recommended.

Joe R. Lansdale

ponies balance thinking