NEW YORK, March 31 (UPI) -- U.S. author Dennis Lehane says he borrowed elements from B-movies and Gothic literature, as well as used his own fear of a contemporary McCarthyism revival and haunting childhood memories to construct his best-selling thriller, "Shutter Island."
Set in 1954, the book follows two U.S. marshals called to investigate the disappearance of a patient at a remote hospital for the criminally insane. While on the island off the coast of Massachusetts, one of the marshals suspects nothing and no one there is what they appear to be as a hurricane cuts off communication with the outside world.
"Gangs of New York" and "The Departed" filmmaker Martin Scorsese adapted the novel as a well-reviewed, big-screen potboiler starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Patricia Clarkson, Emily Mortimer and Ben Kingsley. It is in theaters now.
"There was an actual minimum-security mental institution on an island in Boston Harbor but it was connected by a bridge. It was called Long Island, which would have been a really crappy title. I just don't think it would have had the same shiver," Lehane told reporters in New York recently about his inspirations for the book.
"When I was a kid, my uncle who had worked there at one point, took us out there. It had stopped being a mental institution in the 1960s, then it was a home for the mentally handicapped and now it's a drug rehab place," Lehane, 44, said "Anyway, he brought us out there during the blizzard of 1978 and it was really barren because nobody was using it at that point and he told us sometimes, usually right about now when the sun was going down, the ghosts of the former patients could be seen in the woods and then because it's my family and that's our sense of humor, he vanished. And me and my brother were walking around the woods and truly thinking we saw people in mental-institution straight-jackets running past us. That kind of stuck with me, as it would.
"And 25 years later, I was walking along a beach and looked out and thought what if that place didn't have a bridge to it and it was maximum security? ... And I was off to the races with this idea."
Lehane went on to say he was also concerned the United States was moving into another era of ultra-conservative McCarthyism in 2003 when he was writing "Shutter Island."
"I was very freaked out by it and so I thought, 'Let's go back to the real McCarthyism and take a look at that.' And then how you do that in an interesting way that hasn't been done before? Do it metaphorically," he reasoned. "Go into a mental institution where everything's about repression and everything's about pressure pushing down on the brain and take a look at it. See what the hell happens."
Lehane admitted he also tossed a little "Twilight Zone" into the stew.
"That's something that Marty picked up on very fast," he recalled. "When we talked, he said, 'You're not just being influenced by the Bronte sisters or Patrick McGrath here, you're being influenced by B-movies. And I was like, 'You're damn right I am.'
"The dialogue is very much B-movie dialogue. If you read the book, it's very clear I'm riffing on the way people spoke in 1950s movies, not the way people spoke in the 1950s. I wasn't there. I don't know how they spoke, but you watch those old movies and everybody spoke kind of clipped and fast, and then you watch Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo in the early scenes of this and watch them riffing on the same idea."
When it comes to having his Boston area-set works adapted as films, Lehane noted he has been extraordinarily lucky. The film adaption of his book "Mystic River" was directed by Clint Eastwood, then nominated for the best picture, adapted screenplay and director Academy awards, earning Oscars for its stars Sean Penn and Tim Robbins. Ben Affleck also earned acclaim for his cinematic take on Lehane's "Gone Baby Gone," which starred Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan and Morgan Freeman. Co-star Amy Ryan was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for that film.
So, what does the author take into consideration when selling the rights to his books to filmmakers?
"I know this is going to sound ridiculously disingenuous, but the truth is I never sold any of the books for the money," Lehane emphasized. "My first law is the talent level of the people involved. It's Law No. 1.
"I'm a walking film encyclopedia. … I'm very aware of who the players are behind the scenes in Hollywood and the film world and that's who I sell to. That's who I want to be involved with ... That's been my overriding regard for whether I'll sell and then the issue just becomes, 'Hopefully, it's good, but I certainly know the intentions are correct.' And that's all you want. You're going to have failures once in a while. I've written bad books. I can't tell you which ones, but I'm sure there've been a couple of bad ones in there, but my intentions were clean. And that's what you want going into a film -- is that everyone's on the same page and if it's a failure, it's a failure."
