Dennis Lehane

DENNIS LEHANE

Don't  confuse Dennis Lehane with authors who write with a pre-cast, pre-sold movie in mind. "A book is an apple. A movie is a giraffe," he told USA Today. "They have about that much in common." Nevertheless, Mystic River, Lehane's award-winning 2001 novel, has gone Hollywood in the best possible way: directed by Clint Eastwood with an all-star cast that includes Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Marcia Gay Harden, Laura Linney and Laurence Fishburne, the 2003 film has garnered the most ecstatic reviews of the year. The New York Times deems it "the rare American movie that aspires to--and achieves--the full weight and darkness of tragedy," while Rolling Stone hails it as "a dark masterpiece [that] takes a piece out of you."

Similar praise was heaped upon the book, Lehane's sixth overall but his first stand-alone (the first five featured detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro). A finalist for the PEN/Winship Award, Mystic River won the Anthony Award, the Barry Award for Best Novel and the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction, garnering comparisons to Chandler, Hammett and other greats. And although Sean Penn never entered Lehane's thoughts while he wrote his most acclaimed work, James Cagney did--plus Springsteen, Shakespeare and Dostoevsky.

Born and raised in blue-collar Dorchester, Massachusetts, Lehane remembers watching Cagney double-features every Saturday at his uncle's house; gangster epics like The Roaring Twenties and Public Enemy made a lasting impression. The sagas of friendship intrigued him, he said in an online interview, "friends who grow up to choose different paths and ultimately reap the rewards and suffer the consequences of those choices." What's more, after five sprawling, urban detective thrillers, the author was looking to write about "small-scale people living in a small-scale place whose lives--once they've been disrupted by an enormously traumatic event--play out on a kind of epic, if not operatic, stage." This recalled not only the Cagney movies but also Shakespearean tragedy, the great Russian novels and Lehane's own graduate thesis, a novella with fragments of the later work. To prevent a lethargic, overly depressing gravitas from sinking his project, Lehane strove to keep the tone brisk and energetic, listening to Bruce Springsteen, The Clash and the Red Hot Chili Peppers as he wrote.

The title refers to the body of water bordering the fictional South Boston neighborhood of Buckingham, inspired by Lehane's old childhood haunts, which he called "a world I didn't see too much of in books, film or TV . . . they tended to get it wrong." Dave, Sean and Jimmy are three Buckingham natives whose lives and friendship are defined and contorted by two devastating, unresolved events: one in their childhood, another 25 years later.

"I have always been fascinated with the stealing of someone's innocence," Clint Eastwood told Virgin.net. "That's what attracted me to this story--the fact that it comes back in adulthood and how fate takes the characters on this journey." The legendary actor/director/producer/composer sent his illustrious cast to Boston, where they explored the neighborhoods and met with Lehane. The screenplay, written by Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential), "floored me," said Lehane, who enjoyed an easy collaboration with cast and crew. "I couldn't have translated that book with the same economy and artistry."