There's Inspiration In B Movies [The Daily Oklahoman/Jan 25/1981/US] By Bruce Westbrook


While most folks snore snugly in their beds, Mike McQuay sits silently before a flickering TV set in his North Oklahoma City home in the middle of the night. With notepad in hand, he watches old B movies and works.

For McQuay, this is work because he's a novelist, and many ideas for his far-flung stories are born during the late show.

While Beach Blanket Bingo drones mindlessly for his concious mind, McQuay's inner imagination is at work, conjuring visions for such tales as Lifekeeper, his last science fiction novel published last year, or his series of Swain books due this fall based on a futuristic detective.

"I'd be lost without the TV or 16mm projector for other reasons. He believes considerably artistry can be found in low budget productions, especially horror films by such directors as George Romero, Brian De Palma and John Carpenter.

For this reason, it was a dream come true when McQuay's publisher, Bantam Books, asked him to write the novelization of Carpenter's next film, Escape From New York.

They sent a 300-page screenplay to Oklahoma City, and in six weeks McQuay turned out the novel, which should be about 200 pages in paperback.

The novel and film will be released this summer.

Big things are expected of the movie - one of Carpenter's earlier films was Halloween, a huge hit.

But what about the book?

Film novelizations aren't a respected form. They're largely done by persons other than the screenwriters [Escape was scripted by Carpenter and Nick Castle], and McQuay is the first to admit "you won't see a lot of good literature in novelizations."

But McQuay, inspired by his affinity for Carpenter's "incredibly visual style," worked hard on the book, and he's hopeful it will stand well on its own.

"I did it for the money, but once I got into it, I really enjoyed working with the property, and I wrote a book I'm proud to have my name on. Also, being a Carpenter fan, it was a real trip."

The films will star Kurt Russell, Donald Pleasence, Lee Van Cleef, Harry Dean Stanton, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau and Ernest Borgnine.

"It's set in New York in 1997." McQuay said. "It's bombed out, surrounded by a wall, and three million criminals are kept there." After a plane crash, the president must escape from Manhattan.

"I think it's the ultimate B movie," McQuay said. "We're talking about two hours of straight violence. It's gonna be a real stylish piece of exploitation."

McQuay was free to change the story, but said, "everything in that screenplay is in the book.

"However, I did flesh out the characters and the world Carpenter created. The movie didn't explain things, but I did. I gave meaning to what's going to be on the screen.

"The difference between film and books is incredible," he said. "In a film, everything is up front. In a book, it's interior monologues - what's going on inside the characters' heads."

Novelizations, he said, "are short work, and it's a good deal for people who need the money. I made about $1,000 a week. Of course, that was about 10 pages a day. I write about four pages a day on my other novels."

McQuay started writing at 12 - "I wrote a James Bond novel." In 1963, while in high school, he moved here from his native Baltimore.

He went to college with hopes of being a writer, "but realized I didn't know enough about life to write about it."

For several years he worked on aircraft overseas, then returned to Oklahoma City in 1971 to work on a Dayton Tire production line.

"At the factory I kept coming up with this idea for a novel. Then I met Dorothy Fontana, the Star Trek story editor, who talked to me about writing. I decided that's what I wanted to do. and I started Lifekeeper in 1975.

Four years later, after quitting his job, rewriting his book and getting a few science fiction stories published, McQuay sold the novel. "Then I knew I had arrived."

He's never had any formal writing training, believing "writers are born, not made."

Still, he teaches a creative writing course at Central State University once a week. The rest of the time, he's writing, thinking and watching movies, nurturing what he calls " a very visual style."

Much of a writer's success, McQuay said, "is tenacity. That's 90 percent of this business. There are 40,000 books a year published in this country. If you just stick with it, you'll do OK."