Heroes in Business - David Morrell, Author First Blood, novel Rambo adapted from, Creepers new movie

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

40 years of First Blood. David Morrell, the Author of First Blood, the novel the movie Rambo was adapted from, and author of Creepers with a new movie coming soon, is interviewed by David Cogan Host of the Eliances Heroes show and Founder of Eliances entrepreneur community.  

Welcome back to Alliances Heroes, where heroes in business align. To be part of our super community and find out more about Alliances, visit www.alliances.com. you get that feedback coming and make sure it comes to us because that's what we thrive off of you can go to alliances.com to listen to past interviews and thank you for the feedback we continue to have when i head on the what national academy uh television arts and sciences ceo i mean we're still getting like uh feedback on that they're the ones that produce the emmys so thank you thank you thank you i'm excited about. We're going to be talking about First Blood, the novel on which Rambo was created. There's also a new movie, Creepers, that are coming out based on his book. So welcome to the show, David Morrell. And David can be reached at davidmorrell.net. We've got it on our website for those of you that are visually watching.

Also, too, is if you're listening right now in your car, davidmorel.net. So welcome to the show, David. Thank you. Happy to be here. All right. So, I mean, last year, what, was the 50th anniversary? That's a 5-0. That's not a typo.

Yeah. Anniversary of your novel First Blood, which, again, was Ramble was based on. And now we're talking 40th anniversary of the movie, yet people still know the movie as if it was yesterday. Why is that? It has a lot to do, I think, with the primal quality of the character being one with nature. And I was a professor of American literature. And the figure of the pathfinder, the person in the woods overcoming adversity, who goes back to a word I used earlier, a primal condition,

I think is sort of baked into our imaginations. I often link Rambo with Tarzan, for example, who's a similar character. And, in fact, a critic once compared, he said, the five major characters of the 20th century that came out of movies or books and then became movies are Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, James Bond, Rambo, and Harry Potter. And there's a lot of elemental quality in all of those characters. Now, I also too is, you know, I texted my son about who's coming on and I used the key also too called Marvel. Yet he got very excited about that. Why would he? Well, excuse me, I also wrote comic books for the three, for me, big

Marvel characters, Captain America, Spider-Man, and Wolverine. In 2006, a Marvel editor got in touch with me to ask if the creator of Rambo would be interested in writing about another military icon, Captain America. And I love comic books and just jumped at the chance. So I had the chance to write for the trifecta of, as I said, Captain America, Spider-Man and Wolverine. That's a really big deal. Well, it certainly fulfilled a lot of the childhood qualities in me. And I'm of a generation that was part of comic books before they got sweetened down by censorship. I came up through the Tales of the Crypt kinds of comic books, which were very graphic and eventually turned into the government didn't, they said that comic books were degrading. Isn't this always the case, degrading America's youth?

So they got dumbed down. But I remember vividly putting on roller skates, it was that generation, and roller skating to a local comic book store that not only sold new ones, but had secondhand ones that you could, it was like a rental deal. You could get like five for a quarter or something and then come back, turn them in next week and get another five and get a kind of a bargain for them. It was a

wonderful time. So when I had a chance to write again for, that is to say to write for comic books instead of being a kid reading them it was it was a joy well we're going to also talk about creepers and again we've got with us david morel author first blood in the novel in which rambo the movie was created and new movie creepers is also based on his book you're watching and listening to me david cogan host of the Alliance's Hero Show. You know the only place to go where entrepreneurs align. Alliance's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S dot com. All right. So, David, like where does the inspiration come from? How do you how does it how does it get into your mind and then you transform it into words?

Well, I teach writing on occasion at writers conferences. And what I tell writers is that the difference between what I call civilians and professionals, at least in terms of writing, is that a writer doesn't let anything that interests us go past us without wondering why. past us without wondering why. So I often ask myself, why does this topic that I read about or that somebody mentioned in conversation, why does it interest me? And I often write essays to myself to try to understand why I have that interest. And usually it taps into Graham Green once said, an unhappy childhood is a goldmine for a writer. And usually it taps into Graham Greene once said an unhappy childhood is a gold mine for a writer and usually it taps into all kinds of bad stuff that happened to me when I was a kid I was in an orphanage for example and uh and I I find certain things that interest me that tap deep into uh my psyche and and uh I write about them in a way that I think only I could write about them, which is, I think the secret to a career that somebody's books could only be written by that

particular person. And also, I mean, we're talking now, what, in 2005, you wrote the novel Creepers, eight hours of terror of a team of urban explorers experience in a long, long abandoned hotel becoming a movie. Well, it's urban exploration is what it's called. It's an immensely popular. When I was doing the research, I Googled urban exploration and I got maybe a half million website hits at the time. People love to go into old buildings that have been abandoned and see what's in there. And often they have been abandoned entirely.

They haven't been cleaned out. If it's a dentist's office, the dentist files are still there. If it's a doctor's office, the files are still there. I remember as a kid going into an abandoned apartment building and the furniture was still there. If it's a doctor's office, the files are still there. I remember as a kid going into an abandoned apartment building and the furniture was still there. There were plates on the table and what happened that they were no longer there, I have no idea. But it's an immensely popular topic. And so I wrote a novel called Creepers, which is the nickname for urban explorers. They don't like it, but I think it's pretty cool. And when you realize how popular internationally this is, and in the story it's eight hours in an abandoned hotel,

which dates back like almost 50, 60 years that it you can see why there's a movie potential here. And the thing the move, the book was optioned every year since 2005. And it took this long for the picture actually to get made. So a couple of questions in regards to that. So a couple of questions in regards to that. First, how does it feel like when you go to the movies and you're seeing the movie of which your book is based off of? Like what how what kind of emotions is it? And how said, well, maybe, you know, it would be fun to have some other people with us. But the distributor didn't want anybody else, just the family. I never understood why. So we went on a Wednesday afternoon at two o'clock, the film was

going to open the following Friday. And it was very unreal to see Sylvester Stallone, 40 feet tall, coming down that trail at the beginning of the film. And I was in, I was in shock because, you know, there's the book and then there's this huge luminous image on the screen. And I remember afterwards, a friend of mine called and said, so what'd you think of the movie? And I said, I have no idea. I, I, I, it was, it was overwhelming. And he said, well, is it a bad movie? And I said, no, no, I know for sure it's not a bad movie. I just don't know how good it is. And so I snuck into the theater when it opened on Friday and people went crazy. And it's one of those audience participation movies where Rambo is in the fight in the jail and the audience went crazy. And it was a much

better test to be with a crowd rather than with three other people trying to see it in a vast, empty theater. Quite an experience. And then also, too, is, I mean, again, your accomplishments, we can go on and on, but I need to ask you this, too, is this is let's do some snooping right now in your office. Behind you are a lot of books and papers and all that. All right. So God forbid there were to be a fire. What's the one item you would pull and save? Probably the first edition of First Blood. It was my first novel.

I spent three years writing it learning how to write often abandoning it and coming back to it anybody who says that they can predict the success of a novel as they write it is in another realm of reality and I just remember hoping that I would finish it. And I remember the moment when, in fact, the name Rambo came to me. My wife had been shopping

at a roadside stand and brought home some Rambo apples, which are very popular in Pennsylvania, where I was going to school. And people always laugh when they say Rambo came from a Pennsylvania apple. And the way all these things came together, well, it's, you know, as I said, 50 years, very magical to look back and realize how it could not have been if not for a lot of determination. David, how do you stay focused when you start writing? I mean, you know, I know there's this thing called writer's block and that, but I mean, it just seems now with so much noise, so much communication, so many ways for us to reach, you know, times have changed since when

you began writing. What's kind of the secret to just stay in the zone, especially when you're doing things so intense? Well, the key is a number of pages per day just thrown onto the screen or onto through a typewriter, but readable pages, that that was a doable goal. Sometimes I could do it in four hours. Sometimes I could do it in six hours, sometimes eight hours. It didn't always come easily every day, but I stuck to it. And a good friend of mine, Stephen King, told me basically that rule, and he was doing five pages a day. His joke was except Christmas and his birthday, but he lied because he was writing on Christmas and his birthday.

And if you do that and you're honest about the work and it's not just throwing it on the page, you have an accumulation of work that you can do something with. I know a lot of writers were very talented, but much, much more able than I am, but never, never applied, never sat and had the discipline. And it helps of course, that if there's a little bit of shyness to you, if there's a little bit of not wanting to relate to people, but instead of wanting to be alone. Where did you learn that? Where did you learn all that? It's in my, it's in that's in my nature. To be an introvert

as opposed to an extrovert is just part of me. I can demonstrate, but at heart, I enjoy being by myself. And I think that's a key component. And to have the self-discovery to understand whether or not people need socializing and to try to adjust to that to say, all right, I get it. I have to fight against that. I have to make sure I can sit down and actually do the work. But basically, it's a number of pages a day. So what's next for you? I mean, you've accomplished, you've done so much. You had, what, the first mini-series that you wrote that out, what, after following the Super Bowl and that? I mean, you have a long list of accomplishments. I love to be able to say that a novel of mine, Brotherhood of the Rose, became the only miniseries to be broadcast after a Super Bowl.

And it's never, no other miniseries to be broadcast after a Super Bowl. And it's never, no other miniseries ever. I have friends who've had number one bestsellers and number one, all kinds. But I can say I had, I say it as a kind of joke, I had the only miniseries after a Super Bowl. Well, I just keep going. It's a matter of my interest, of exploring what interests me and going deeply into it. I became very interested in the Victorian period. And so I spent two years reading nothing but books about the Victorian era so that I could write some novels, some mystery thrillers set in 1854 that would make people believe that they were actually there as they read about it. And so it's a kind of an intensity and immersiveness that is always with me and always exploring new elements.

How did you know you had this skill? I found that I was telling stories to myself almost from the beginning. I mentioned earlier that my childhood wasn't the best I've been in an orphanage. My father had died in the Second World War and my mother could not raise me and earn a living. So for a time I was in an orphanage and then she remarried. And the marriage was not a success. They fought a lot and I was in fear a lot. So I spent a lot of, when I went to bed, I put, this sounds like a bad movie, I put pillows under the blankets as if I were there. I was very afraid.

And I would crawl under the bed and I slept under the bed. And I told stories to myself. And interestingly, I was not the victim in those stories. I was the hero trying to rescue other people. the hero trying to rescue other people. And so I think in some ways I was psychologically hardwired to want to tell stories that distracted other people from whatever ailed them. So we've got time for one more question. I think it's important, especially since you part touched on it from your childhood. what kind of secrets would you share with children who want to be able to grow up, make a difference, make an impact,

even if it's the 10% of what you've done so far in your career and that to be able to do it? Well, it very much fits the theme of your program. I tell my grandchildren, I told my children, you have a choice. You can be the victim of your life or you can be the hero of your life. A lot of people like to be victims. They like to feel as if the circumstances are overwhelming them and it's very easy to succumb. But it's far, far better to become the hero. David Copperfield

said, whether these pages shall reveal that I am the hero of my life or only a second character. And so I determined very, very early that I was going to be the hero.

And I think it's a better way to be. Well, David, you have definitely fascinated and terrified your readers for years as you continue to create. That's a hero, David Morrell, author. David Morrell, author, first blood, the novel on which Rambo was created, and also to the new movie Creepers, based on his book. Make sure you reach out to davidmorrell.net. That's D-A-V-I-D-M-O-R-E-L-L.com. This has been David Coggan with the Alliance's Earbook Show.