Bill Schutt & J. R. Finch's "Hell’s Gate," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Hell's Gate: A Thriller by Bill Schutt and J. R. Finch.

The entry begins:

I’ve been a huge movie buff for as long as I can remember so I guess it’s no surprise that when I wrote my first novel it would be highly cinematic. There are certainly scenes and dialogue in Hell’s Gate that were inspired by Apocalypse Now, Mimic and especially, The Thing (1951). I’ve always been impressed by the wonderful overlapping dialogue in the latter film and we both worked many long hours to get the dialogue in Hell’s Gate to sound natural. These are witty, intelligent people (good and bad) who are thrown into some extremely strange situations and where they face some ‘things’ that no character has ever faced in a novel before. As such, we had a ball imagining how they’d react. Our book also has a very dark tone and I listened to a great deal of Bernard Herrmann while writing Hell’s Gate (especially soundtracks to films like Psycho and Vertigo). Happily, both Mr. Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock show up as characters in the Hell’s Gate sequel we’re currently finishing. It’s an honor to pay homage to these giants.

As for who would play our characters if Hell’s Gate were made into a film, well, that’s a dream question for a film lover like me. I can certainly see Ryan Reynolds playing our smart talking hero R. J. MacCready and I think Zach Galifianakis would be perfect for Mac’s long-lost, and slightly warped best friend, Bob Thorne. The part of Yanni Thorne (Bob’s indigenous Brazilian wife) is...[read on]

My Book, The Movie: Hell's Gate.

--Marshal Zeringue