Interview:R.D. Hall

R.D. HALL INTERVIEW

Transcribed by

Bob and MiamiVolts

INTERVIEWER: RYAN GIBSON STEWART

Scene Two: 75 minute mark to end

RYAN STEWART: Yeah, that's very cool. It makes it very personal and it tells a good story too. Are there any others like that that you would like to share? You told me about Rondo Ferguson and the keyboard samurai. The keyboard samurai--that was a friend of yours?

R.D. HALL: Yeah, that was a friend of mine. Yeah.

RS: That's just his nickname or...?

RH: Yeah. That's the only two I've done so far. But I'll keep an eye out for them and I'll let you know when I do another one.

RS: They're fun. And usually you can pick them out. With "Rondo", you wonder where that name came from. And "keyboard samurai" sort of sticks out as well. I think I saw that on your MySpace page, and I mistook that as your nickname.

RH: You see, I put it up the day that came out, actually--the keyboard samurai.

RS: So let's go back to the Linda story, you were talking about Rondo, and you said he is named after Rondo Hatton.

RH: Yes, yeah.

RS: You said that was one of the things you added in there yourself? They gave you certain beats and then, of course, there were things you were going to add in there yourself.

RH: Well, they did want her working for a private detective, and I had this whole idea of him firing her. Some people have asked a little about why Linda looked so upset. I saw that as one of the questions. He's just a regular private detective. He works in morally gray areas, just like some of them do, but he didn't want any heat on him. So he tells her and the minute she heard "cops" she understood. So she killed people. The people they can't find, they're dead.

RS: So Linda was killing all these other people, right?

RH: Yes. So Linda didn't want any heat on her as well.

RS: And why was she killing them? Was Linda just going after their auras, driven to kill? Or was there some other personal gain from it?

RH: The way I saw her is that it is a little of both. I think she needed it. It was something she fed on. I think that at some point in her childhood, she changed. I don't know if she even desired food any more. I don't know if that was what she needed to survive, what with killing all the animals. She's a psychopath. Something just makes you this way.

RS: Well, her parents knew that. She was killing animals like the cool, little squirrel.

RH: Yeah, I love Jason's squirrel. That looks really good.

RS: Did you see that on his blog? He says, "I don't know how often people get to draw a withered squirrel, but certainly not often enough." He's so entertaining in his commentaries. So you think that Linda didn't even desire food anymore?

RH: Yeah, and I'll tell you a little bit about the novel I was supposed to write after this one. I found that Robert put me on the spot for that one. In the next one, it was Linda as a little kid on Christmas. This was going to be the beginning story, and I think they thought I tied it up so well in the second chapter that they didn't feel a need to do this. Anyways, she's a little kid on Christmas and she gets a puppy. Okay, she gets a puppy. You know where this is going...

RS: I'm really sad about it already.

RH: Yeah. She gets a puppy and she sees colors around it just like she sees around her mom and dad. So she grabs the puppy, and it withers up and dies in her arms. They wanted me to write this but I really didn't want to do it.

RS: She kills a puppy on Christmas?!

RH: Yes. And this is her, not realizing what she does. So they go back and complain to dog guy. You know what he does? He gives them another puppy. She gets another one and kills it again.

RS: Oh no...

RH: So they feel really bad for her. I'm now supposed to flash forward to kindergarten. She makes a friend and hugs him on the playground. You know what happens?

RS: Oh gosh. Murder at the school.

RH: This is what they wanted me to write. This is what was going to be the next one in the series, but I don't think there is going to be now. They are restructuring everything and there's going to be a whole new set of graphic novels. It should be really cool from what I understand. But, yeah, they wanted me to kill the puppies, and then her new best friend. And that was what would bring on her home schooling. She had to be home-schooled from that point on so she wouldn't kill any more of her little friends.

RS: And she was going to kill more at home school.

RH: Well, no. At home school she would be by herself.

RS: Yeah. She was home-schooled by her parents who wouldn't even go into her room anymore.

RH: I imagined the just got the school books and just threw them down under the door, and told her to slide them back when she's done with them.

RS: And I actually really appreciated that. It was pretty vague. I thought they were just scared of her. Because at the beginning of the novel, you get the idea that she's odd, and a little more odd than in the last novel, but you never really know why. It helps that we see that her parents wouldn't even come in the room, but you never really say why and I like that. I like that it was kind of vague like that.

RH: Yeah, and that was leading up to the whole story I was supposed to tell after that about the puppies. You get some jobs like that as a writer, and just decide you don't want to kill the puppies. It probably looks pretty bad on my horror credibility as a horror writer, out killing vampires and such but not the puppy.

RS: If only there it were like a little pink bunny afterwards, that would be perfect.

RH: Maybe it comes from having children. As soon as I was assigned that, I thinking of my little kids on Christmas, getting a puppy and having it dying in their hands.

RS: Oh gosh. Then, that would be my first thought too. My kids may have to read this one day.

RH: Exactly. Okay, we're on the Tavara story. We've changed this during editing, but when I first got the piece, the mystery woman was Angela Petrelli.

RS: And that came from NBC?

RH: Yeah. After that, I wrote it up and that's why, she may have appeared to talk like Angela would be if she were younger. Did you notice that?

RS: I did. I had the theory that she might have been Angela's mom. She's in her 40's and Angela would probably be in her 20's at the time. So I kind of thought she might be Angela's mom. Who knows?

RH: Yeah. I saw her whole sketch your death scene. She's one of my favorite characters, and I thought of her in the novel as a young Jackie O. By that time, she would have been married to Arthur a few years. Arthur's already built his wealth by that time, obviously. I just saw her as that kind of vibrant [personality]--carefree as far as the way she looked, but very determined. She had a plan. That's the way I saw her.

RS: That's kind of funny, cause Cristine Rose mentioned in a couple interviews that she always pictured all these people from the Company getting together at Woodstock, sharing these powers and getting high on free love--which is very different from the idea of young Angela as a kind of Jackie O. But either one works, she's such a multifaceted character that I could see either back-story working for her.

RH: I figure that she could be doing the hippie thing before she got married. She's doing the hippie thing. They're out and having a good time. They've got nice tie-dye auras.

RS: Very nice, by the way. Did you add that in there or was that Annette Kwok who added that in?

RH: Yeah, I threw that in there and I was so glad that she kept it. I'm glad she appreciated my sense of humor. Then, I think once she got married, Angela thought this is the way I need to be. I feel that she's a chameleon, and that she can fit into almost any situation she's going to be in.

RS: And especially if she gets a little bit of money from Arthur and his probably corrupt law firm. Who knows who she became?

RH: Exactly.

RS: And I am dying for an Angela back-story one day.

RH: You see, I thought you were going to get your wish. I really did, but at the last minute they told me this could not be Angela. So this must mean there's something else going to go on.

RS: So now they told you she's going to be Angela, you wrote it up as Angela, and then they took that back?

RH: Yeah. That's why she was named the mystery woman in the novel. I was editing when I learned this, and I like to edit as fast as possible cause I know the artist wants to get started, and I don't want to hold up the process.

RS: Right. I just talked to Robert Atkins and he said it was a marathon getting all the drawings done. He said had like eight days to do six pages, and on top of that he was working on another project. It's good that you had him in mind.

RH: That's what I like to do with anything I write. I know I've got to turn it over, and they've got to turn it over to someone else, so if I'm slow that's going to screw up the whole process. So I always try to be as fast as possible. We sent the edits back and forth, and I edited the stuff in probably a day.

RS: So what kind of changes did you make so the mystery lady wasn't Angela anymore?

RH: When she was first in the story, she was in a limousine. I changed her appearance from being like Jackie O. to be older, and I gave her a car of her own--a Plymouth Belvedere. Little law enforcement around the early 70's was using Plymouth Belvederes. She was a CIA, a spook. The changes from the original idea were a lot more cloak and dagger. Which is great, though. I think it added a lot to it, meeting in the rain and such.

RS: Yeah, that was very cool. Too bad she's dead.

RH: Yeah, yeah.

RS: So was Linda stealing all these powers from other people or was she just killing people and taking their auras?

RH: She could do it to anyone, powers or not, like she says in the last of the second novel, Bounty Hunter. So if they had powers, she could take them and make them her own like Sylar. But it was an aura; she just sucked the life out of them. She wasn't in the whole brain thing.

RS: So when she takes the powers, does she hold onto them? Tell me more about her power.

RH: Her power is two-fold. She can see these auras, since if that's what you hunger for you have to be able to see it. And you have to be able to see quality, that this is better than this. If you look in the novel, there's the poor bum that's on the park bench that has been so beaten down by life that his aura is very, very light, very thin, very weak. And you have the hippie, and his aura is psychedelic, very colorful. Then there is Ida May Walker, and she's a very good example. Her aura is very bright and vibrant. It just sparkles off of her because she has something special. In Bounty Hunter, we didn't get to see all these auras cause I didn't want to foreshadow too much. For the next chapter, I wanted to let you to discover more about what her powers were.

RS: I liked that you let us learn a little more about her each time. In War Buddies, her hand turns blue and we think maybe she can take powers, but who knows really what she was doing because she never got to use her ability.

RH: It was fun to tell this type of story in reverse.

RS: Yeah, which is amazing, cause you'd think it would be the other way around.

RH: It works either way as well. You can read them in either order.

RS: Yes, and they tell a great story. It was a great idea for NBC to decide to tell them backwards. I thought it was very fun.

RH: Yeah, I thought it was very fun too.

RS: And I still would like to see the dead puppies, so maybe someone else can write that.

RH: Oh no, I'll write it if they let me.

RS: So Linda keeps these powers? She took Ida May Walker's power, where she can see dead people. It's sort of the Haley Joel Osment idea.

RH: Yeah, that's really the only one I wanted to show cause that was the big reveal. I didn't want to show all these previous powers because this was the moment when you learn the extent of her ability. It's sort of the ah-ha moment.

RS: So she could conceivably have a bunch of other powers in her stash.

RH: Yes.

RS: She is dead, though.

RH: Yeah. I lean towards the idea that she probably just took the powers one at a time. That might explain why Linderman took her out so quickly.

RS: Okay. Going back to the mystery woman, she had hired Linda to do all this detective work, sort of like a CIA agent. Do we know what her motives were for having Linda do this?

RH: It's not to be known right now what her motives were. I don't know myself but I do know that they do plan on using that at a later point.

RS: Well yeah, but she's not alive...

RH: I think it may have something to do with them being out there or something--that there's this other entity looking into the abilities and wanting to know about them. That's why I was careful to say "evaluators". That way, you don't know where they are going. This could be a whole other government group that wants to get in on this thing the Company deals with.

RS: The mechanic, Jason Welkes from the bar and Pamela, we don't know anything about them?

RH: No, but that was cool. If they let me, I'd like to bring some of that back.

RS: Yeah, it would be fun to find out why she wanted them. Also, there is a lot of people speculation fueling from the only other person named Pam or Pamela on Heroes being somebody from the List. So a lot of people think that Pamela must be Pam Green, but you know, who knows?

RH: I just named the little girl, Pamela. So if they use it, great. If they don't, that's okay.

RS: And did Jason Welkes have any origin to it or is it just a name?

RH: It's just a name. I like that guy, though. He's kind of funny.

RS: I was digging his big 70's hair and sideburns.

RH: I think Robert knocked that one out of the park. I love his look on that. Especially when he says, "Only every time I look in the mirror." I can just see this guy with these muttonchops looking in the mirror and smiling at himself. It's like he's the greatest thing in the world. He's looking in the mirror, and going yeah...

RS: I'm God's gift to women. [laughs]. Okay. The other power I wanted to talk to you about was Ida May Walker's. So she can see dead people, right?

RH: Yes. Mediumship.

RS: So is that something she's always had? She's an old lady.

RH: I think that's part of her fate. I think that she could see all these things, but she just thought they were angels. That was because they never interacted. These ghosts were just doing the things they normally did. It's kind of like in Romero's Dawn of the Dead. The zombies went back to the places they always were and felt common in their life, such as the mall. The ghosts are just kind of doing that same thing. They died in that retirement home, so they are just sort of walking around.

RS: I was so sad when she died. She's this old lady, and she was so sweet. She kept calling them angels. That was so sweet.

RH: Yeah, I liked her character. By the way, the name Ida Walker came from NBC. I may have added the middle name, I don't remember. I know the speculation is that she has something to do with Molly. I don't know.

RS: That's very interesting. Ida's the right age to be her grandmother. And they've done this before. In The Ten Brides of Takezo Kensei, they through out that one of Adam's aliases was Richard Sanders, and there's a really popular character in Heroes named Sanders on the show. I like that it piques interest. I think the thing the drives Heroes is all the speculation and all the theories. They throw things out there like that just for fun, and it's just great.

RH: And I try to do that in my own work. I try to leave some speculation. That's why a lot people get a little angry, I think, when they read some of my work, because they don't understand why I didn't explain everything.

RS: You just have to understand, then, that the anger that people feel is just showing more love for the work. It's not real anger. It's a righteous frustration.

RH: Oh, I know. I feel the same way on many parts of the show, and some things that are not NBC too. You watch Lost?

RS: How can you not? I love that they don't just answer the question, and it's going to keep me watching. Okay, let's talk about the novel names. Where did the name, Moonlight Serenade, come from?

RH: It came from NBC actually.

RS: I didn't notice much moonlight or serenading, so I thought it must have to do with the Glenn Miller song. I don't know the background, so I'm not sure if there's any relation.

RH: In my original script, there's a band playing outside the retirement community.

RS: Ah, there's a man with a saxophone playing outside by the "Retirement Villa" sign.

RH: So that's the "serenade" part. That's where that comes from.

RS: Okay. I just wondered why they wanted that name. It's an interesting choice of name. Did they name Bounty Hunter too, or was that your choice?

RH: That was there's as well. They always send me the name, so I just go with their name.

RS: It was interesting that the Linda novels, such as Bounty Hunter and Moonlight Serenade, had names referencing part of the story. However, the Hana and Drucker novels... they were mainly elaborations of the plot, such as Hana and Drucker's Plot Discovered. It's kind of obvious what is going to happen in that novel.

RH: I don't know if they expected me to come up with another name or not, or if that's the name they wanted.

RS: Or if that was just the description and they ended up using it as a name. [laughs]

RH: Yeah, I probably could have edited that. I don't know.

RS: I think they are the most boring names in all the novels, but they are exciting stories.

RH: Heh. I remember looking at my wife and saying, "But I didn't name them!" [laughs] because I saw her complaining about [the names].

RS: So, in Moonlight Serenade, Linda is supposed to be about a sixteen-year-old girl? So, 1951 she was born?

RH: Yes, that's right. She's about sixteen in Moonlight Serenade. If she were alive today, she'd be in her 60's.

RS: I know you didn't do the drawing, but I just love her look, how 60's and 70's she appears.

RH: Yes, that was a lot of research too. I looked a lot into the styles and tried to suggest a lot of weird styles and as many pop culture fads of the 70's as I could think of. Also, I did enjoy the shoeboxes. They were fun and gave the story a sort of Psycho feel.

RS: Yeah, we had the squirrel, a rat, a bird. It's something I'd never seen before.

RH: Yeah, that drove the point home about what little Linda was like. [laughs]

RS: The beginning of the serial killer.

RH: Right. That's what it was, the genesis of something really, really evil.

RS: Is there anything else you would like to add about the novels you have written for Heroes or your other works?

RH: I think we're pretty good with those. I gave a lot of information. Is there anything else you would like to know?

RS: Yeah, what color would your aura be?

RH: [laughs] Tie-dye. I'm not much of a hippie, but I just feel mine would be tie-dye.

RS: [laughs] And I just know mine would be plaid. Or it would be pure black.

RH: Black as my soul. [laughs] That's something you would say if you were a horror writer. One of my favorite quotes is from Stephen King. Someone asks King, "Why do you write the things you write?" Mr. King replies, "It's cause I have the heart of a small boy." And as everyone goes "aww", Stephen adds, "and I keep it in a jar under my bed."

RS: [laughs] Yeah, he has a great sense of humor. He writes the end columns for Entertainment Weekly once a month or so. Those are fantastic, sometimes cranky and crotchety, and sometimes really cool and hip. I love him and think he's a fantastic writer no matter what he's writing.

RH: Yeah, the column is great. Anytime, anywhere I can read Stephen King I try to do so. He's just so conversational. He writes the way you would want someone to talk to you. I love the way he writes as well. He's a big influence on my work, actually.

RS: Who would you say would be your biggest influence?

RH: I have a lot of influences. I'm a big fan of J. D. Salinger. My son is named Holden after Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye. And I love James Joyce, which I guess comes from being an English major. My youngest son is named Finnegan. A lot of novel writers; but as far as comics writers, you can't beat Alan Moore. He's just amazing along with Morrison. When you read the Hana and Drucker novels, you probably see me wanting to be Grant Morrison. I kind of was really feeling the Grant Morrison vibe when I wrote those.

RS: There's nothing wrong with aspirations. That's very cool, and best of luck to you in the near future. You were sort of a breath of fresh air when your first Heroes novel came out, and your novels have a nice twist to them. Not necessarily a literary twist, but they are unique.

RH: I try to put a little of my own personality into anything I do. I have learned early on that you can't be anyone else than yourself. When I said earlier that I tried to be Grant Morrison, I knew I couldn't be Grant Morrison. I can only be the best R.D. Hall that I can be. And hopefully people like it.

RS: Exactly right. I truly believe that it doesn't matter who you are as long as you're true to yourself. It's more about your sincerity and your authenticity that comes across than who you are as a person. That's what people are drawn to. I think people like you because you're authentic and sincere, and it comes across in your novels so I hope you keep writing.

RH: I appreciate that. Thank you.

RS: Thank you.