Lehane's 'Mystic' Mind

Hundreds of fans overflowed the pink plush fold-down seats of Science Center C Tuesday to get a look into the mind that created Mystic River, the acclaimed novel of crime and retribution that was made into a star-studded, much-applauded film in 2003.

“I would love to believe in a world in which justice prevails, but I don’t see it much,” said Dennis Lehane, the novel’s author, after a free screening of the movie.

In a 45-minute question and answer period, Lehane discussed his personal experience and outlook and how they affected the writing of Mystic River.

Lehane won the Anthony Award and Barry Award for Best Novel for the book, which was published in February 2001. He also won the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction and was a finalist for the PEN/Winship Award.

The film received widespread critical acclaim and saw two of its leading actors—Sean Penn and Tim Robbins—take home the Academy Award for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively.

In the opening scenes of the film, the three main characters—then 10 years old—are approached by a man claiming to be a police officer after they write their names in wet cement. The man, whose badge is fake and who is not wearing a uniform, insists on taking Dave Boyle (later played by Robbins) to his mother, shoving him in the back seat of his car. He then sexually molests the boy for four days, setting up the rest of the film.

The three main characters, also including Jimmy Markum (Penn) and Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon), reunite 25 years later when Jimmy’s daughter is brutally murdered.

Lehane said Tuesday that the major inspiration for Mystic River came from a childhood fight in which he participated.

After two police officers initially broke up the fight, Lehane said, he and the other youth resumed their melee. The police returned and drove Lehane and his adversary back to their homes.

Lehane said his mother was alarmed—not because the two boys were fighting, but rather because they never noticed if the officers had been wearing badges.

“I can never forget the look on my mom’s face,” Lehane said.

Lehane implied that his character Dave’s abduction was an alternate scenario of what he and his foe might have experienced had their failure to confront the officers about their identities proved more serious.

In addition to that experience, Lehane said he focused on the issue of child molestation after spending several years working with sexually abused children.

“When it comes to politics, I am slightly to the left of Canada,” Lehane said. “But on one issue, I am to the right of Pat Buchanan. That’s child predators. I think if you’re caught once—life. Chances are, when you’re caught for the first time, you’ve probably already molested six other kids.”

“I worked with sexually abused kids for several years,” Lehane added. “Once it’s in the blood, it never comes out.”

GOOD AND EVIL

Lehane said the underlying confusion of appearance and reality that plays out in the climax of Mystic River—which leads to no definitive “good” or “evil” characters—is also reflected in his political outlook.

“I don’t think human beings are any more dangerous than when they’re sure they’re right,” Lehane said.

Lehane elicited applause from the crowd when he emphasized his point by mocking the Bush administration’s insistence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction before last year’s invasion.

But Lehane also said he thinks society in general confuses desire for understanding with fair analysis of evidence.

“I had a conversation with a person who politically leans like me, but was convinced that Saddam somehow funded the 9/11 attacks,” Lehane said. “I said, ‘What evidence do you have?’ She said, ‘I don’t know, but I’m so mad.’”

“We’ve become a society of infotainment. We like stories, not facts,” Lehane continued. “We believe a myth, even though there’s no evidence. The idea of Mystic River—get the evidence.”

Writing a story with no archetypal characters also made the book more interesting, Lehane said.

“I always tell students, don’t write a villain who knows he’s evil, because that’s just boring,” Lehane said. “I don’t think even Hitler got up in the morning and looked himself in the mirror and said, ‘Let’s do some evil.’”

KEEPING SECRETS

Lehane said he learned the two most important aspects of writing when he was 16 years old. The first, he said, is that a writer never explains elements of a book that are not expressly written.

In keeping with this principle, Lehane bristled when one audience member asked about an ambiguous gesture that Bacon makes towards Penn in the last scene of the movie.

“There are a few things in this world that I will never explain, and this is one of those,” Lehane said. “It’s there to make you think, not for me to say, ‘Well, actually, it means this.’”

The second lesson Lehane said he learned is that once an author finishes a book, any interpretation of the work that is not totally irrational should not be dismissed.

Lehane challenged the audience to accept varying interpretations of his work after several attendees appeared to seek definitive explanations of the symbolism in Mystic River.

“I’ve begun to worry that in America, we can’t hold two ideas in our hand at one time,” Lehane said.

FROM PAGE TO SCREEN

Lehane—who did not write the screenplay for the film of Mystic River but said that he had been able to review the script before production began—also spoke about adapting his book to the big screen.

The majority of authors feel as if Hollywood screenwriters do not do their books justice, Lehane said.

“Most people who have film adaptations get really tight smiles on their faces when you ask them about it and say, ‘Oh yeah—it’s good,’” Lehane said. “In private, they say bad things about it.”

Although Lehane said he enjoyed the film of Mystic River, he added that he did not think the movie was capable of capturing the full force of his book.

“I respect the film and am a great admirer of it, but I don’t feel comfortable comparing it to my book,” Lehane said. “Even the greatest film is just a Cliff’s Notes compared to the book.”

“But I’m comfortable with that because I love the film,” he added.

Furthermore, Lehane suggested that he had never expected his words to be flawlessly transferred to the set.

“My feeling about Hollywood is like the joke about the man who came out of a whorehouse and said he didn’t feel loved,” he said.

Lehane admitted that a significant difference between books and movies is that in a movie, each scene has to advance the plot.

“There’s a scene in the book where Sean goes and talks to his father about the day Dave was abducted 25 years ago,” Lehane said, explaining that the scene does not appear in the film. “It’s the best scene I’ve ever written, but it had nothing to do with the plot.”

Lehane added that he lamented a subplot in both versions of Mystic River involving the character Sean and his estranged wife because it was too peripheral to the core of the movie.

“I fought for it, and I regret it to this day,” Lehane said. “It never worked in the book, and it didn’t work in the movie.”

One of the final questions for Lehane was about casting. While he said he had no role in that process, he was pleased with the choices of actors to play his characters.

“My favorite moment was when [Director Clint Eastwood] called me up and said he wanted to cast Laurence Fishburne as Whitey,” Lehane said. “I love Laurence Fishburne, and it’s so cool to have a black character named Whitey.”

In response to the final question from the audience, Lehane offered a piece of succinct advice.

“Read the book, damn it,” Lehane said. “Come on, Daddy needs a new pair of shoes.”

—Staff writer Alan J. Tabak can be reached at tabak@fas.harvard.edu.