With a forthcoming novel, several film projects in the works and a writing credit on a hit TV show, author Noah Hawley is juggling just about every type of project known to fiction writers – not bad for a guy who didn’t study writing or have literary aspirations. The Skinny’s Jennifer Elks visited Hawley on the set of the Fox series, Bones, in Los Angeles, to uncover the secrets behind his success.

Hawley, an easy-going guy with a wry sense of humor, moved from New York to San Francisco in 1994. While music is his first love – he is an accomplished guitarist and songwriter – the author says his disdain for the music business led him to try fiction writing.

“I started writing fiction on the side because it didn’t involve carrying heavy equipment or living in a van with three filthy, penniless men,” Hawley says. “You do it by yourself and at the end of the day you have something to show for it, and it’s very creatively satisfying without the bullshit of the music business.”

After settling in San Francisco, he soon befriended local author Po Bronson (Why Do I Love These People? [2005]), who invited Hawley to join the Writers’ Grotto, a collective of local writers and filmmakers. Hawley penned several short stories and articles, and three novels before finding a winner with his fourth, a paranoid thriller called A Conspiracy of Tall Men, published in 1998.

When progress on his next novel, Other People’s Weddings, stalled in 1999, Hawley learned about screenwriting from Bronson, who was working on some TV and film projects. Soon, he felt ready to tackle the medium and quickly cranked out his first screenplay, The Alibi, about a man who runs an alibi service for people who cheat on their spouses. Hawley soon got a film agent and sold the script to Summit Entertainment. Now called Lies and Alibis, the film stars Steve Coogan, Rebecca Romijn, James Marsden, Selma Blair and James Brolin and will see limited release in June.

Hawley says he hopes eventually to buy back the rights to his second screenplay, The Yes Man, which is buried in a “rights quagmire” after being sold in 2002 to a production company that has since closed its doors.

It wasn’t long before he had an opportunity to direct. Hawley wrote and directed Being Vincent (2002), a short about identity theft, as part of Fox Search Lab, Fox Searchlight’s director development program. The film included original music written by Hawley.

 One of his dozen or so interviews was with Bones creator Hart Hanson. “I really liked his script because it was funny and smart and it mixed some genres,” Hawley says. “And it seemed like the most transparent in that I could be involved in production and editing and all of the other elements of making a show. All the other shows that made me offers have been cancelled, so it ended up working out.”

“I had been aware of Noah's writing for at least a year before Bones was ordered to series,” Hanson said via email. “I keep a list of writers whose scripts I've responded to and why. Near Noah's name I wrote: ‘Facile, good characterization, a sharp comic eye, energetic scene writing.’ Noah came onto the show and proved me correct – he had great ideas [and] he's a remarkably fast writer, sometimes turning in two or three drafts in the time it takes other writers to write one.”

Professional praise aside, Hanson does have his issues with Hawley. “Noah's most annoying characteristic is that women love him, and when he plays guitar, he uses a lot of those diminished minor chords that are melancholy yet manly.”

Bones is based on the experiences of forensic anthropologist and novelist Kathy Reichs, who serves as a producer and a technical adviser on the show. Dr. Temperance Brennan, the lead character on Bones and in Reichs’ books, is also a novelist, whose heroine’s name is Kathy Reichs. Hawley says it’s been a challenge learning to develop plot lines where crimes are solved using forensic science.

“We have a researcher and a lot of forensic books, which I don’t like to look at because the pictures are gross,” he says. “But I like to joke that all of us on staff have never passed a science class so you’re trying to think, how’s [the character] going to figure this out? And we’ll say to Kathy, ‘I want the bones to have been debrided with lye, how can you tell it’s lye?’ And she’ll say, ‘You take red cabbage and boil it, and then you’d treat the bone with it.’ All that sort of MacGyver stuff is really cool.”
“It’s a sad day as a fiction writer when you realize the most widely read book is going to be read by fewer people than who go to see the least-watched movie.”

“Part of the process over the last five years has been thinking as visually as possible, and in directing for the first time, I learned a lot,” he says. “Half the time you don’t have to say anything at all – you just need the scene and the actors and the setting and where you came from and where you’re going, and the look or the moment says it all.”

Hawley found himself doing more and more screenwriting and after selling three pilots, his agent encouraged him to pursue writing for a TV show. Once the author was sold on the idea, his agent wasted no time shoving him into the pool, and Hawley was off to Hollywood.

“In May, they have what’s called the ‘upfronts’ in New York, which is the big announcement of what the fall season will be like,” Hawley explains, “and it’s just a frenzy – agents trying to get the show runners to read their writers and you’re doing interviews and you’re racing around and ‘Can you meet in half an hour?’ ”

     
   
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