LEE CHILD REACHES OUT ON REACHER
Author Lee Child is the brains behind brawny Jack Reacher, the rootless tough guy and star of 21 thrillers, including Night
School, which lands at No. 1 this week on USA TODAY’s BestSelling Books list. In Night School (Delacorte), Child turns the clock back to 1996 as Reacher is dispatched to Germany by the U.S. government to stop a terrorist. Child, 62, chatted on Facebook Live recently and took questions from fans and USA TODAY. Here are highlights:
Q I love the Jack Reacher series, but Tom Cruise isn’t my mental image of the character you paint at 6-foot-5 and 250 pounds. Besides the box office draw, why Tom Cruise? He’s a good actor, but still ... And who did you envision when you were writing the series?
A It’s always very difficult to move a story from the page to the screen. Practically everything is going to change, including the physical appearance of the character. And you’ve got to go with the actor who wants to do it. And Tom Cruise really wanted to do it; he loves the character. So the question became, do we worry about the lack of physical similarity? Or do we in fact prize the way Cruise, who is a good actor, can bring out the inside of Reacher, the mental processes, the internal vibe, and get that on the screen. And I would rather have the internal character on the screen rather than a physical facsimile. In terms of my own physical image of Reacher, I think of Reacher as a big, ugly guy, and there aren’t that many ugly actors.
Q You’ve had cameos in both Reacher movies. What’s it been like filming them and hanging out with Tom Cruise?
A It was a lot of fun. It was Tom Cruise’s idea that we do the cameos with me playing a very tiny, tiny little part but a strategic part, a sort of symbolic part. In the first one, I was a desk sergeant in a police station where Reacher is released from jail, and Tom’s idea is that I would somehow judge him. The desk sergeant is looking at Reacher a little skeptically, which on a different level is the book writer looking at the movie actor a little skeptically. So I make the judgment and on he goes. And in the second movie, I’m a TSA agent at the airport and Reacher has to get through the airport on a phony ID, and so the TSA agent again judges Reacher. Is he going to let him through?
Q Will you ever write a book with a different main character?
A What I usually say is, “Would you like me to?’” And most people say, “No, no, stick to Reacher.” And that’s probably what I’ll do. I’ll stick to Reacher.
Q How many Reachers do you have left to write?
A That’s a really deep, existential question, because I believe in a way the writer is the servant of the reader. It’s a twoway street. I write them and you read them and then the story exists. And so we’re in it together ... and if the reader wants more then I think, who am I to say no to them? When the reader stops wanting more, then I would stop. How many more could I do? As many as you want. It’s a great job. It’s a lot of fun. I can do it until I’m 100 years old, which actually is not all that far away.