Moore is feeling the electricity
Graham Moore has an impressive résumé at age 34: He’s a novelist ( The Sherlockian) and a screenwriter. He won an Academy Award for The Imitation Game screenplay, and he wrote the script for the planned movie adaptation of his brand-new historical novel, The Last Days of Night (Random House), with Eddie Redmayne set to star as young attorney Paul Cravath. Night tells the story of the real-life bitter rivalry between Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla in the early days of electricity. Here are highlights from a Facebook Live chat with Moore, who took questions from USA TODAY and fans.
Q What drew you to the story of the battle over electricity in 1880s New York City, the subject of your new novel? A One
of the things I got excited about was this period in history when New York was being lit up at night for the first time. It’s easy to look back now and take light bulbs for granted, but at the time, when people saw electric light for the first time, they were freaked out.
Q Why did you decide to tell the story from the perspective of a 26-year-old lawyer, not one of the inventors? AI
was fascinated by this great rivalry between Edison and Westinghouse and Tesla. The question I asked myself is: How did three different people think they were the one who invented the light bulb? Why did these three guys hate each other so much? Thomas Edison sues his archrival George Westinghouse for what was valued at about a billion dollars. In response, Westinghouse does something that seems totally insane: He hired to be his lead litigator on the largest patent suit in American history this 26-year-old kid named Paul Cravath. When I started reading about Paul and realizing that no one had ever written about this guy before, it seemed to me the perfect way into this story. Q This is a story about patent law. How did you go about making patent law sexy? A This one of the challenges of pretty much everything I’ve ever worked on: taking topics that at first blush could seem awfully esoteric and hard to get into, and telling them in ways that are broadly accessible and lively and fun and emotional. Q Can you tell us anything about your next project? Will there also be a strong genius character? A I’m starting to work on a third book. I do tend to like writing about very smart people, or at least very driven people.
Q Why did you start each chapter with a quote? A What
I wanted to do was tease out some of the connections between these 19thcentury scientific rivalries and the scientific rivalries we see today. I couldn’t help but notice, for example, that Steve Jobs would always say about Bill Gates: “Oh, that guy’s just a businessman. He’s not a visionary.” Which is exactly what Edison would say about Westinghouse. And Gates was always saying about Jobs: “Oh, that guy’s not a real engineer, he’s not a real scientist. He’s just a salesman.” Which is word-for-word pretty much what Westinghouse would say about Edison. ... So I included quotes from modern scientists to show how eerily similar these arguments have always been.
Q Who do you consider to be your audience? Whom are you writing for? A The
first person who one has to please is oneself. I believe in being one’s own toughest critic. So the goal is to write something that will not bore me to tears. Hopefully if it will keep me entertained even by the thousandth time I’ve read it, it will keep an audience entertained as well.