He's best known on this side of the world for his cameo in Quentin Tarantino's 'Reservoir Dogs' (he plays Mr Blue, the character who claims to have been a Madonna fan until 'Papa Don't Preach') but Edward Bunker's life is far more interesting and bizarre than anything film could ever throw up. Born in Los Angeles in 1933, Bunker was to see more trouble before double figures than most people see in a lifetime. He was four when his parents broke up, leaving Bunker to fend for himself and get into up to three fights a day in foster homes. What followed was 34 years of encounters with the law, 18 of them behind bars, all vividly recreated in 'Mr Blue, Memoirs of a Renegade'. From serving time in San Quentin and Folsom, to being nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay for 'Runaway Train', his book is a witty, savage and erudite insight into a man who lived against the grain.
Harry Guerin: As I read Mr Blue it struck me that if someone tried to pitch your life for a film it would be dismissed as too far fetched!Edward Bunker: It's been quite unusual and full. I was born in Los Angeles in The Depression. My mother was a chorus girl, a Busby Berkeley dancer, and my father was a stagehand. My parents divorced when I was four and I was put in boarding homes, which I didn't like. I went overnight from being an only child - kind of pampered and spoilt - to a 'Lord of the Flies' situation with a lot of boys. I didn't like it and I ran away and rebelled and that set a pattern and the pattern went on. I became a chronic runaway, wandered the streets. I got into the juvenile justice system and I rebelled against the system. I went through that in a very few years and I went to San Quentin when I was 17.
While in San Quentin you made a vow to yourself that you would feed your hunger for knowledge.The first time I was in San Quentin I was there for just about five years and I read five books a week that whole time. Every Saturday morning I'd go to the library and I could check out five books. I read history, fiction, psychology, philosophy...everything.
So was reading an escape?That was more true when I was very young. When I was eight, nine, ten I used it more as an escape than later on when I was hungry for knowledge. Y'know what the hell? They locked me in a cell in San Quentin at 4.30 in the afternoon and they didn't unlock until 8.00 in the morning so I was in there about 16 hours a day.
You have an IQ of 152 but you say in 'Mr Blue' that for a smart guy you certainly made some mistakes. Did it get easier or harder to accept those mistakes as you got older?I kind of burnt out. People who were raised like me, precocious criminals, at about 40 they burn out. The Id doesn't push as hard, there's more control over the emotions. Crime is a young man's game. I never had any sense of revelation, like finding myself or a sudden changing or metamorphosis, y'know like some guys find God or things like that.When I got out 25 years ago I didn't have any different attitude than I had before: I was just going to play as it laid. Whatever happened, happened – I jut wasn't going to do anything stupid. But I had written a book, the book ('No Beast So Fierce') was being made into a movie ('Straight Time' starring Dustin Hoffman) and that changed my relationship with the world. Instead of being a guy with a bunch of arrests and a record that went back to the time I was five-years-old I was an author and I made different friends. I say that when you're a criminal you're not only locked up, you're locked out of society. And I wasn't going to be nothing and have nothing. The social contract works two ways.
You also met your wife Jennifer, who was your counsellor when you left prison.I wouldn't have made it without her. Because like I said I didn't have any different attitude and in many ways I wasn't equipped to handle the world. I just wasn't going to do anything stupid.
At the close of the book, you are in San Quentin and a race war is brewing. And yet, your life is on the up: your book 'No Beast So Fierce' is going to be published, you've had an article published in Harper's magazine and you're due to get out. What were you feelings at that time?I had written for 17 years and had written six unpublished books. I don't know how many people would have continued writing after that long, after that many rejections. My first manuscripts I have and they're pretty bad. Jennifer told me 'I would've told you to give it up if I had looked at those'. I don't think I'm a naturally talented writer in the sense of Norman Mailer or William Styron, I'm more like W Somerset Maugham who said you have an apprenticeship and you do it by perseverance and study. There are people who seem to have a great natural talent and there are people who do it by perseverance. And I believe that anybody who is moderately intelligent and likes to read and likes language and really wants to do it. If they preserve long enough they will succeed. I was just driven to writing, that's how I did my time.
'Mr Blue' balances horror and humour in equal measure. One of the funniest parts of the book is when you are adjudged to be criminally insane.When people look at my rap sheet and they run across that they say 'wow, that puts you in a different category altogether'. I went crazy. I went through a wild chase and when they caught me I didn't know what to do so I just told them I was John McCone of the CIA and I had to get to Dallas with information. It was just after the Kennedy assassination and I just played crazy from the door immediately. When they kicked me into the courtroom I jumped up and told the judge he was a Bishop.
And you told the judge that you were being persecuted by Catholics...(Laughs) Yes, the Catholic Church was putting a radio in my brain and I told the judge he was a bishop because he wore those black robes. So they sent a couple of psychiatrists and they found me crazy. My parole officer didn't believe it – he told the cops I was faking it. So I told them he was in the Catholic Church too. They didn't believe me, the police didn't believe me but when I jumped up in the courtroom they had to stop things. They came and asked me questions about how long I'd been in jail and I said 17 years – just nutty things, whatever came to mind so they had to stop and send the psychiatrists. They said I was crazy, as nutty as a fruitcake.
Why did you write the book?Even when I was doing some of those bizarre things I was thinking 'these are going to be great in a memoir some time'. So I always had an intention of writing a memoir. I wrote it because I have a son and it will explain my life to him someday. What I did was jus pick stories that I had been telling verbally to people for a long time and I limited it to just thirteen stories that I knew well. It was a pretty easy book for me to write.
Was it a case of making peace with yourself?I had done that a long time before. I thought it would be a good book and might teach people something about the criminal justice system and how people get where they are.
You were nominated for an Oscar for your screenplay for 'Runaway Train' starring Jon Voight and your book 'The Animal Factory' has recently been made into a film starring Willem Dafoe and Edward Furlong. Can you tell me a little about the plot?Essentially 'The Animal Factory' is the story of a friendship, a bonding. It's about an older convict who has been in prison a long time and kind of runs the place - as much as anyone can run San Quentin. And this bourgeois middle class kid comes in for drugs and they would eat him alive only this guy kind of takes him under his wing and befriends him. I guess it's a love story without sex. The book at the time got great reviews from quality reviewers like the New Yorker. It shows how prison changes the kid. When he comes its an impossible thing for him to stab somebody, by the end of the book he stabs a guy and thinks nothing of it.
Are you happy with how the film turned out?I thought that Steve Buscemi did a very good job of directing. He didn't exaggerate the violence and it really gets the psychology of the characters really well. It's very character driven and the reviews have been great. I think it's a very good movie and as good a look at prison as anyone will see – the reality of prison.
What projects are you currently working on?I've just finished adapting my other two books 'Little Boy Blue' and 'Dog Eat Dog'. I've finished 'Little Boy Blue' and I think it's a very good script and I'm in the last act of 'Dog Eat Dog'.
Harry Guerin
'Mr Blue', winner of the Macallan Dagger Prize, is out now in paperback from No Exit Press.
