"THAT BROKEN, BRAVE, BEAUTIFUL MAN IS SOMEONE I WANTED TO WRITE FOR": RAYMOND CHANDLER'S TROUBLE IS MY BUSINESS' ARVIND ETHAN DAVID

Raymond Chandler's Trouble Is My Business adapted by Arvind Ethan David (script), Ilias Kyriazis (pencil and inks), and Chris Peter colorist) tells the authors short Philip Marlowe story with with cinematic style with the graphic novel form. We caught up with Arvind Ethan David to talk about Chandler and interpreting, correcting me when he had to.

SCOTT MONTGOMERY: What drew you to Trouble Is My Business?

ARVIND ETHAN DAVID: I’ve been a Chandler fan since my early twenties when I first saw “Double Indemnity” and “The Big Sleep” — two of the greatest noir films — and amongst the greatest films full stop — ever made.   So when it was suggested that the Chandler Estate were interested in graphic novel adaptations of his work, I said YES immediately. 

SCOTT MONTGOMERY: Marlowe is like Hamlet in that you can interpret him in different ways. How do you see him?

ARVIND ETHAN DAVID: Much as I love Bogart’s version, to me Marlowe has a broken vulnerability inside him that it’s important to recognize. In a way, not unlike Hamlet! He is dashing and funny, and brave on the surface, and full of high ideals wrapped in wisecracks, but he’s also an alcoholic, a war veteran suffering from PTSD and someone incapable of intimacy.  That broken, brave, beautiful man is someone I wanted to write for. 

S.M.: What was the biggest challenge in adapting the short story and how did you deal with it.?

A.E.D.: Writing dialogue that could stand alongside Chandler’s.  He was one of the greatest prose stylists who has ever worked in the English language, alongside Wodehouse, Nabokov, Amis and Rushdie.  Just keeping up was a challenge.  As to if I dealt with it or not, that’s for the readers to decide. About 20% of the dialogue in the book is original David rather than repurposed Chandler.  Let’s see if people spot it. 

S.M.: What made you decide to move the setting to 1946 when the story was published in 1939?A.E.D.:Chandler wrote this story twice — first in 1939 in Dime Detective Magazine, and then he rewrote and expanded it as the eponymous lead story in a collection in 1950.  It is when he rewrote it that the lead detective became Philip Marlowe (he was originally a sort of proto-Marlowe called John Dalmas).  After 1939, everything Chandler  ever wrote featured Philip Marlowe, and he kept writing Marlowe from 1939 when “The Big Sleep” comes out through to 1958 when he published “Playback” (and arguably beyond, with his unfinished novel “Poodle Springs” featuring a married Marlowe). 

So in one sense, all I did was place the story where it seems to make sense in the Marlowe timeline, but I also had reasons of my own — first, to make Marlowe a veteran of the Second World War, and also to line up with some real Californian history that becomes key to the story of George… of which more below… 

S.M.: My favorite reinterpretation  was how you expanded the role of Jeeter's chauffeur, now a man of color named George, to where it almost has a buddy vibe with Marlowe. How did you come to that change?

A.E.D.: In the original George is a fascinating fragment of a character.  We aren’t explicitly told his race, but he is described as “tall, broad, dark” and with “wavy dark-brown hair and his teeth were very white and clean” with “snappy black eyes”   — which is all code for a black-man.  We are also told he went to Dartmouth, but has somehow ended up as a Chauffeur.  To me those were clues Chandler had laid down, and one’s that Marlowe was keen to follow up on… so I followed them too…. 

S.M.: You've teamed up with penciler Ilias Kyriazis and colorist Chris Peter before. Besides tier obvious talent, what makes  them great collaborators?

A.E.D.: This is my 4th book with Ilias, but my first with Cris (though Ilias and Cris have worked together before).  At this point Ilias and I have a short-hand, I know he can take anything I throw at him, however technically impossible or conceptually strange, and I also know he’ll come up with better visual ideas that I will. It’s a true collaborative partnership. 

S.M.: You stated that each character had a color palette. How did you and the artists come up with Marlowe's?

A.E.D.: The idea was the each of George, Harriett and Marlowe would have a color scheme that reflected their own internal worlds. Marlowe is all noir — black and white and grays, he belongs to the morally grey and depressed world of the movies that made him famous.  He sees stuff starkly in black and white.  Until he meets Harriet with her dusky red hair “like a fire under control but still dangerous” and her lapis-lazuli blue eyes. 

S.M.: Do you have plans to do this with other Marlowe stories? "Finder Man" would be great.

A.E.D.: Yes.  Watch this space….