Tom Pepperdine interviews Timon Singh about his writing process. Timon discusses the challenges of interviewing Hollywood actors , arranging trans-Atlantic interviews during office hours, and who is the most disliked action star from the 80s era.

You can find all of Timon's information on his website here: www.borntobebad.co.uk

And you can follow him on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/TimonSingh

And you can find more information on our upcoming guests on the following links:

https://twitter.com/Therealwriting1

https://www.instagram.com/realwritingpro

https://www.facebook.com/therealwritingprocesspodcast

Hello, and welcome to The Real Writing Process.

I'm your host, Tom Pepperdine.

And this episode, my guest is Timon Singh.

This is an unusual interview for me because although Timon has

written two books, he doesn't consider himself a writer.

But he had an idea so strong that he's now been published twice.

Those books are Born To Be Bad and Born To Be Bad: Part Two.

A selection of interviews with some of Hollywood's finest actors who

have been immortalized as the most iconic villains in movie history.

His interviews offer a fascinating insight into how these types of

roles can affect an actor's career.

And include the kind of behind the scenes anecdotes that rarely get discussed.

This interview was recorded in mid August, 2021.

A few weeks after Timon's second book had been published in the UK.

Okay.

So good evening and a welcome Timon.

Thank you for joining me.

Hey Tom, how's it going, buddy?

It's going very well.

First question as always, what are we drinking?

We are drinking Tam-Tamnavulin?

Is that how it's pronounced?

Tamnavulin, the Speyside single malt, scotch whiskey that is double cast

and has been finished in Sherry casks.

Oh very nice.

Lovely.

Cheers.

So uh you're a longtime scotch drinker?

That's smooth.

No.

I mean, this is a thing that I only really got into whiskey I think when I turned 30.

I'm 37 now, and before that I never liked whiskey.

You know, When all my peers were drinking Jack Daniels and Coke, I was like, no.

And then it was, I think I turned 30.

It was just in a bar with a friend who really is into whiskey and

started introducing me to like the differences between, peaty,

single malt and a sweet bourbon.

And, you know, your listeners might be going well, this is very obvious

stuff, but I knew nothing about whiskey.

And now, I'm not saying I'm an expert, but it is definitely my

tipple of choice now in the evenings.

When you've got a movie on, I'll just sit there with a nice dram

of single malt, or a, or actually what am I saying, I'll, I'll drink

a blend, I'm I'm not pretentious.

I'll drink whatever's going.

Whatever was on offer in Sainsbury's that day.

And so this is a reward drink?

This is very much an end of the day.

This isn't a Hunter S Thompson, smoking and drinking as you're hitting the keys?

I don't think I have Hunter S Thompson stamina.

I would be slumped over a keyboard.

It is definitely an end of the day thing.

I'm not a functioning alcoholic.

I would just be a full-blown alcoholic.

Okay.

And where do I find you right now?

Is this your writing space, where are we?

You find me in my kitchen, sat at the kitchen table.

I don't actually have a writing space.

This table used to be in the living room and I wrote my first book in a

mixture of places around the house.

In the spare room, that's now my wife's office, I did a whole bunch of interviews

for my book and writing up there.

And then when she took it over for work, like I got kicked out.

So it was wherever this dining table was I would find myself.

So either in front of the window, in the living room, and now it's in the kitchen.

So this is where I mostly did my second book.

Okay.

And how is it?

Cause you know, kitchens are very much the central hub of a house,

and you have two not small dogs.

The kitchen distraction isn't as big as you would think.

I've got music going on in the background anyway, or movie on in the background

and the dogs just wander in and often just scooch under the table and nap.

If anything is they're snoring that's a distraction.

Well that's

all right.

Okay.

But that's certainly livable.

And as you mentioned there, you know, you've written two books now and they're

both on the theme of movie villains.

Born To Be Bad and Born To Be Bad Part Two.

So imaginative.

I know, but beautiful.

But the thing is, it is nice that it is a part two.

And when you originally came up with the idea, did you ever think it was going

to be more than one book or how did it come up that this should be a book?

I didn't even think it would end up being a book, knowing my ability

to never finish things half the time.

But it came about, I was at The Cube, Bristol's little microplex and they

were doing an anniversary screening of Robocop and it was packed out.

Everyone was talking along with the dialogue and I'd had a few drinks and

it suddenly occurred to me that all the actors playing the bad guys, look

like they were having a much more fun time than Peter Weller, who plays

Robocop, and who's very vocal about what a miserable time he had playing it.

And that they were all actors that any Hollywood executive would never

have cast as villains in their right mind to be in an action film.

Got Ronnie Cox, you've got Kurtwood Smith.

You've got Paul McClain from Rent and Ray Wise and all these actors that now post

Robocop have played a host of villains.

But before then, I don't think they really had.

So after the film I was cycling home, I was a bit drunk.

And I was like, you know, all of these actors who play bad guys,

they clearly have more fun than the actors playing the heroes.

What is it like for these actors wants the credits roll and

they've been in a film like this?

Does it lead to more jobs?

Are they type cast as villains for the rest of their lives?

Is that a good thing?

Is it a bad thing?

What is it like making these massive films and you're not the hero.

And generally not as regarded as you know, your Arnold Schwarzeneggers, your

Sylvester Stallones or your Bruce Willis.

And the next morning I still thought it was a decent idea, wrote down a short list

of actors that I would love to interview for the book and started chasing.

And so at this point, you've never written a book before.

Had you ever interviewed any actors or anyone at this level?

It all depends what you mean by this level.

So here in Bristol, I run a little film club called the Bristol Bad Film Club

and we show lots of cult and genre films.

And over the years, I have often reached out to directors and actors

about their experiences in these films.

And it's good to have an interview on the website that people that

see the film and enjoy it, they can find out a bit more information.

Or sometimes we get a video clip.

We show before the film.

um, A few years back, we had done a screening of Street Fighter, the 1994 film

adaptation of the infamous video game.

And I reached out to Steven E.

de Souza who had written and directed it.

And then also written small films like Commando and The Running Man and Diehard.

And I just, I tracked down a PA through an article.

And then the article gave me his email address.

So I just reached out and I was like, I'm just doing a thing for our website.

Here are 10 questions.

If you've got five minutes, would you mind answering them?

And a few days later, he sent back a link to a video file where he was sat,

the Street Fighter poster behind him, and he was like, thank you very much for

your questions, I will now answer them.

And in this lovely edited presentation, he just went through

and answered all my questions.

And it was incredible.

And I was like this guy is lovely, he's really friendly.

If I ever do something again, maybe I'll reach out to him.

And it was halfway through writing my first book.

I was like, I need someone to write a foreword for this.

Someone who's got some experience directing or writing

villains, someone like Steven E.

de Souza who wrote Diehard and Commando.

Hang on, I have Steven E.

de Souza's email address!

And it was just one of those Eureka moments, reached out to him

and he was like, absolutely, of course I would love to do that.

And now several years later, I've actually met up with Stephen a couple

of times at various film festivals.

I came round to his house.

Wow.

Yeah.

Memorabilia everywhere.

He's got Commando action figures in that place and yeah, it's great.

So that was my initial experience in interviewing people.

It was stuff for the bad film club.

And then at uni I'd written for the university newspaper

doing the film section.

So I've had to do the odd, local premiere and I'd done a few things for Den of Geek.

But yeah, nothing really major.

So this was like my first proper job interviewing people.

I guess that did give you the, the realization that

these are just human beings.

And that they are approachable and they are very proud of the

work that they've done, where,

For the most part.

For the most part, but we will get onto that.

But there's yeah, I think for a lot of lay people, who've just been fans of things

when they've never approached anyone.

It's, how do you make that first approach?

It just seems so imposing and so intimidating, but I guess when you've

had a success and a unintended level of success, I guess it does help embolden

you in approaching other people.

Did you feel that you were going to get success when you

started writing your list?

No, I was very doubtful I would actually get anyone.

And, I'm just a guy living in Bristol.

I don't know any agents or managers in LA.

So I had my short list and I, the way I started out was just going

to Google and I was like which of these actors has a personal website?

And that was it.

And one of them, I think it was Vernon Wells runs like

a wolf conservation charity.

And so Vernon Wells for any of your listeners who aren't familiar with

him, he plays Wez the big henchmen in Madmax 2: The Road Warrior,

he's Bennett in Commando, he's Mr.

Igoe in Innerspace, and he's played like a host of villains

through the years and stuff like the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

And he's a constantly working actor and lo and behold, it just had

his personal email address there.

And so I emailed him.

It's just I'm writing my first book all about actors who've played

iconic villains, their careers afterwards, can I interview you?

And he said, yes.

And that was my first interview.

But once that was in the bag, that opened up more doors and I shelled out for

an IMDB pro accounts because that has actors, publicists, agents, managers.

And then it was just like a war of attrition to get past these

publicists, agents and managers who, it is their job to keep people

like me away from their clients.

Unless they're getting paid, they have no interest in like letting

someone like me talk to their clients.

And I wasn't paying anyone because I couldn't afford to.

I owe a big thanks to all the managers and publicists who are like,

actually, this is something my client would actually enjoy talking about.

I'm going to let this one slip through the cracks.

So if I have any advice for people who wanted to write a book that

involved interviewing famous people, I'd go, if you can ask them

direct either by personal website.

Or if they've got DMS open on social media, try that approach.

If not publicists or managers, not agents.

Agents always want to percentage.

Managers generally care about their clients and will know whether

it's something that'd be up for.

A publicist to a slightly lesser extent, but also the money

is also a concern for them.

Agents should be your last port of call.

Yeah.

And when approaching these these actors and stunt people, it clearly comes

across in your books, how well-researched you went in, so what was your

approach to researching these people?

Was it just IMDB and finding like little trivia nuggets.

Did you have any books?

Cause I know you're such a film fan, you have a lot of

compendiums on how films are made.

Did you find any particular books that were really good for researching

the people that you interviewed?

There were a few things that inspired me.

So this is podcast called, I Was There Too by Matt Gourley where he interviewed

bit part actors in famous films like the woman with the pram in The Untouchables.

And actors who played Ewoks in Star Wars.

Actors that were there too, but aren't the big ones.

And I like that kind of friendliness of interviews and how he's just

asking them to talk about their experiences and looking for anecdotes.

And then the other inspiration was this book called Life of Action,

that's written by Mike Fury.

And it's very much he has tracked down stuntman or action stars or stunt

coordinators, just talk about their life, working in an action environment, putting

in their training stunt coordination.

And that is also an interview format book.

So I wanted to take the friendliness of Matt Gorley's podcast with the

writing style of Mike, which is kind of do it in an interview way.

So I am quite a genre film fan, so I did have that working knowledge.

But I wanted to start off the interview with a bit of background about who

they were and how they got into film, because everyone has a different story.

And then I knew there were various titles I would want to hit upon the way and

generally wrap it up, as a kind of a net result was appearing in these films, a

good thing or a bad thing for your career?

Were you stereotyped, have you ever worked again after appearing in the films?

And is playing villains more fun than playing the heroes?

So once I had that kind of general layout, it was just, doing a bit of

research on each title, knowing how they got into these films, so you

could slightly steer the conversation.

Especially with actors who'd been in older films and their memories

might not be what they used to be.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's interesting, you're phrasing there, sort of slightly steer the

conversation because I think it definitely comes across in some of the interviews,

sometimes they just want the platform to speak and they have things to say.

Yes.

How was that challenge to keep them on track.

And did you find there were some almost had an agenda, is that fair

to say when they were talking to you?

I think some often wanted to kind of get their side of the story.

Because often when you read about these films, it's always the director

and the star, and also the, the positives of being in such a big film.

So in my new book, I interviewed Robert Patrick, who played the T

1000 and every time they're doing a rerelease of the T 1000, there's Robert

Patrick talking about how amazing it is and what a great experience it is.

And when I was interviewing him, I was just kind of like,

we've talked about the T 1000.

But I was like, was there a point when this role was like

an albatross around your neck?

Because I remember you played the role again for a Universal theme park.

You showed up in a Wayne's World sequel as the T 1000, and then you had a little

cameo in Last Action Hero as the T 1000.

Was there a point when you were just like, I'm going to be the

T 1000 for the rest of my life?

And he was like, yes, that was a genuine concern that I've been

in a great big film like this, and this is all it's going to be.

I'm just going to be reprising this role, cameoing as myself.

And, he talked to after Terminator 2, there was a fallow period where

he made and I described it as a lot of VHS shlock and he agreed.

And it wasn't until he bumped into Peter Berg.

Director, Peter Berg, and he had just been cast in James Mangold's Copland.

And through Peter Berg, he managed to get a role in Copland, which

essentially gave his career a second jumpstart playing these kind of

shifty older gangster corrupt cops.

And then he's also just done a host of things.

The X-Files and he's been in the new Perry Mason series.

And I think he's just finished doing an HBO series of Peacemaker, the

character from the suicide squad.

So he's constantly working now, but when I spoke to him, he was like, I'm

so glad you're asking me about all these roles, like he did like double dragon.

Cause everyone that wants to talk to me, it's 80% it's Terminator 2 and the other

20% just want to talk about the X-Files.

So I think, for some of them, they're kind of like, oh, here comes somebody wants

to talk to me about these roles again.

But you have to be aware that lots of these actors did other things and

they really do want to talk about it.

Because sometimes these big films that they're in just cast a very

long shadow of their career.

So you've got to be very sympathetic to how that can be an albatross to them.

And so are they often quite defensive when you first start talking to them?

I don't think so.

There was one actor, the British thespian, David Warner from The

Omen and Time Bandits and Time After Time, and Tron and Titanic.

And at first he was like, I don't understand why you want

to talk to me because you're writing a book about villains.

I haven't played that many villains.

So I said, what are you talking about, you literally played Evil

in Time Bandits, and I just started listing off all these roles.

That whenever I thought of him, I was like, I think of David Warner and I

think about you torturing a strung up Patrick Stewart in Star Trek:

The Next Generation, and a strung up Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic.

And he was like, there was a pause, and he was like, "Okay, no maybe you're right.

Maybe I have played a few bad guys."

but someone like David Warner, who's been in I don't know, a hundred

films, to him he's probably, I haven't played that many bad guys.

But some of his most iconic roles I would argue, except maybe The

Omen where he's just a, a reporter.

I think of him is quite, you know, villainess persona.

But to him, he was very amused by the whole thing.

It's I played that many bad guys?

Maybe.

Now, that's really cool.

And when you're doing your interview, so you've done a mix, you've actually

done some in-person as well as over the phone and the internet.

I did very few in person, a few with British actors or people

that I nabbed at various conventions, but because often I needed to talk

to them for like over an hour.

Doing it via phone was the best way.

And so I would meet a few people at comic book conventions, like

Sarah Douglas from Superman 2.

I'd be like, "hi, I'm writing this book.

Would you be up for an interview at some point in the future?"

And she just gave me her telephone number and I was like, you don't know who I am.

You should not just be giving me your telephone number.

And I felt very concerned for her.

I was like, don't just give me your telephone number, ask me

more questions about who I am.

If I have any right to, but she was lovely.

She was great.

I interviewed Andrew Robinson who played the Scorpio Killer in

Dirty Harry at a, a convention.

Because at the convention he's just known for being Garrick from

Deep Space Nine, and there was a little bit of a lull in Star Trek

fans trying to get his autograph.

So I was just sat with him for an hour and I was like, can we just talk

about Dirty Harry and, Hellraiser and appearing in Cobra, as well

Deep Space Nine.

Because I'm a big Star Trek fan and I would love to talk to you about Star Trek,

but he was, yeah, he was great to talk to.

Playing the Scorpio Killer in Dirty Harry, that was a role where

he was so effective the casting directors didn't want to meet him.

Because they were terrified by the thought of meeting someone that sinister, so he

said he went for an interview at a studio.

The casting director's assistant came out, just told him to go

away because the casting director was too scared to meet him.

And he was like, that and that was my career for a good few years.

He was so good at that role.

People seemingly unfamiliar with the concept of acting

were too terrified to meet him.

When you're interviewing over a telephone, I guess you've

got a lot of people abroad, lot of people in the states.

So the time zone factor, and you had a full-time day job whilst doing book one.

How was that balancing act of arranging interviews around your job, at times

that were convenient for the states?

I would be very honest with you and tell you that when I was writing my first

book, my then boss was very generous.

He clearly knew I was organizing interviews and using the meeting room for

not work related meetings at the time.

It was tricky.

I mean, in LA, uh, 9:00 AM is 5:00 PM our time.

So we try and do things first thing, or when I got back from home.

Otherwise, staying up very late to do interviews.

And the worst thing is now is post pandemic.

Now we're all very familiar with Zoom.

Back then, Zoom wasn't really a thing, it was Skype.

I was using a lot of Skype, using a lot of credit on Skype to do calls to the US.

Now, oh God, I could just do it on zoom.

It would be so much easier.

Yeah, some of the dodgy phone lines I had to deal with.

It was hard, man.

It was really hard trying to organize it.

And there was, I think for the first book I did like close to 25

to 30 interviews and I did it fairly quickly over a quite short period

of time compared to the second book.

That took quite a bit longer.

Yeah, it was exhausting.

What year did you start your interviews?

What year did I start my interviews?

I think I came up with the idea for first book in April 2017.

I think it was all done and written by December 2017.

And then it came out six, seven months later.

So quite that was quite a fast turnaround compared to the second one

that I think took close to two years to write because I was really chasing

some people and desperate to get them.

And then I submitted it in April 2020, and it didn't come out till July 2021.

What delayed that, I wonder?

You say that I was like, what is delaying this?

All you've got to do is get someone to proof it and design

it your end and put it out.

It shouldn't be that hard.

And I was like, come on, let's try and get it out for Christmas 2020.

And it just took so long.

I don't know if they had a large backlog of books.

I don't know if it was COVID related, but it did seem an exhaustive amount of time.

And with your sort of going from the interviews to writing the book, how

did you edit, did you edit as you go?

So did you transcribe the full interviews and then go, I need to trim this back.

Or were you listening to bits and go, actually, I'm not even

going to type that bit up?

I transcribed the whole interview and then essentially I would then copy

it and then I would just hack at it until it was like a nice tight interview.

Because you would start off a thing by going, so tell me how you got started

in acting and they would tell you a half an hour long story, and you're

like, this just needs to be a paragraph.

But you're like, oh please just tell me more about your time and acting school and

all the acting exercises you want to do.

I'm very aware of who the audience is for my book, and it's a very niche book,

but it is action and genre film fans.

And they don't really care about the breathing exercises that he did.

They want to know what it's like to be on set with Sylvester

Stallone or something like that.

So it is all about a short story of how they got into acting in the first

place and then concentrating on the meat of the story to try and just make

it flow better and interesting to read.

Because you'll read back the transcription of the interview and

you're like, I don't think I have anything here that's vaguely interesting.

And you always do.

It's like a sculpture, it's just a big block of marble and you've just got to

chip away at it and smooth off the edges and get rid of all the ums and ERs while

they stumble around kind of answer the question that you asked five minutes ago.

So that is the challenge of writing a book that is predominantly interviews.

When you're writing it and crafting it and chiseling it down and refining

it, how did you pace out the book?

Did you look to make each interview have a similar length?

Did you have an overall word count in mind or was it just, I want this number

of interviews and I want them to all flow?

Basically that.

It was, I know what the odd structure of each interview will be.

And I know how I want to do it in the book.

It's just not got to be a slog reading each interview.

There's gotta be stuff of interest in there.

It's kinda gotta be funny depending on the actor.

Let me tell you, Steven Berkoff is not a barrel of laughs.

And yeah, just make it flow and just make it interesting and

stick to what your book is about.

And it is playing bad guys.

Some of them might want to go off on tangents and talk about other

things, but you just got to keep it focused on why you've written

this book in the first place.

Did you ever get a moment of self doubt of a crisis point where

you thought the entire project was unworkable and pointless and terrible?

Did you ever get a point of why should I complete this?

Cause you said right at the beginning, how you struggled to complete things.

There've been times when I've come up with a great idea for

something and then in the cold light of day or 72 hours later, you're

like, no, that's a terrible idea.

What are you talking about?

But with this book, the idea that it was a good idea would not go

away, for better or for worse.

So no, it kept going.

And the fact, there's something that's quite exciting about chasing agents and

kind of going, like, I really want these actors and I had a few white whales that

I couldn't even get for the second book.

And with the second book, I was like, look, unless I get this actor

and this actor, I'm not going to bother because otherwise I'm just

scraping the bottom of the barrel and I need some big names in there.

And otherwise I wouldn't be satisfied with buying a follow-up if it didn't

have some decent names in there.

So for the second book, there were definite moments where I was like,

I'm never going to get this person.

I'm never going to finish.

I need at least 20 names.

Who haven't I asked that I could ask?

And why isn't Michael Ironside returning my phone calls?

And why does this actor want an ungodly amount of money?

Does he not know that I have no money to give him?

So there were definite moments where I felt like I was slamming my head against

the table, but if you think it's a good idea, I think you'll see it through.

If you're convinced it's a good idea, you'll continue going with it.

And I definitely thought I would come to this realization, but at no point did

I actually go, this is a terrible idea.

You should just stop.

Certainly with the second book, I guess you've got the

legitimacy of I've already done it once, it was well received.

And did that give you a legitimacy in the eyes of the actors that you

interviewed for the second, this was your second book in a series?

Absolutely.

Not so much with the actors, but with their representation.

Because there were actors, I tried to get to the first book, like Rob

Patrick, and their team just went no.

And then once you approach them again and go, I'm actually a published author.

Here is my book.

Here's a link to it on Amazon.

You know, and it's by an actual publisher in America, please

let me talk to your clients.

And that does give you some legitimacy.

The first time round you are just putting any sort of legitimacy under your name.

Hi, I'm, my name is Timon Singh, I previously written

for Den of Geek six years ago.

Actually, I better not put six years ago.

And there was at the time I did a couple of weeks work for Cineworld magazine,

but I'll just put that in there.

Anything to make it look like, you are a legitimate quote unquote "author"

or "journalist," and that letting them speak to their client is not,

the worst idea they will have made.

Yeah.

And coming to approaching people.

Approaching publishers, because it was a US publisher that published you.

Did you have them in mind as you're writing it, or was it that you

finished the the project and you're like, I hope someone picks this up.

No, actually I think a couple of months into it, I basically wrote

a book proposal to what the book would be, what I was aiming it for it to be,

who I was aiming to interview for it.

And I had three sample interviews attached.

I think it was Vernon Wells, Sven-Ole Thorsen, who's been in most Arnie

films and tells some racy anecdotes, and Al Leong, the Asian stunt

man stunt coordinator who plays a henchman in most eighties action

films, like Diehard, Leathal Weapon.

He's there with his long hair, fu manchu moustache.

So I put my proposal together, those three chapters, and I sent them out to every

film and TV genre publisher I could find.

And most said no.

And then I got an acceptance from an American publisher and

it was a big American publisher.

And I was so excited.

I was showing off the acceptance letter.

And then I emailed an author whose books I have that had been published by them.

And I was like, hey, I've just got this acceptance letter.

Do you have any thoughts about them?

And he essentially said, don't go with them.

He was like, you've get so little money.

It's been a constant nightmare.

They're not great.

They treat you awfully.

And basically just said no.

And then he was like, you should try this publisher.

And I think I had reached out to them.

But immediately one of the big things was they would give you double the amount

of profits the other one was offering.

So I sent them the proposal and they said, yes, immediately.

They were like, absolutely.

Yeah, we would like to do this.

Sounds like great idea.

They're Bear Manor Media, they're based in the US, and they do

specialize in film and TV books.

And I did want to go through a publishing company for that legitimacy sake.

You can self publish a book and I'm sure the money is probably better

if you do, but I didn't know how I would get my book into shops.

I didn't know how I'd get onto Amazon.

I don't know how Waterstones would go about ordering it in.

I don't know about the barcoding or anything like that.

So I was like, this is my first book.

Let's try and make it something my parents can at least show their

friends and it's not something that's stapled together pieces of A4 paper.

So I went with them.

And yeah, they did all the, getting it out there, the design, the layout, clashed

with them a couple of times on stuff that, and I'm sure they'd be okay with

me saying, like the cover because their kind of format was like, we just go with

a photo of one of your interview subjects.

Photo, Timon Singh, title name, boom.

And I was like, no, that would look terrible.

I want people to look at the cover and go, I immediately know what that book is and

look at all those familiar characters on the cover that I know from my childhood,

the bad guys from Superman to David Patrick Kelly, from The Warriors Bennett

from Commando and actors like that.

So I was like, no, I want a hand-drawn eighties style book cover.

And I fought them on it and I was like, I'll pay for it.

Like, I know someone who can do it.

I'll pay for it.

You just put it on the goddamn book.

And they were like, ah, photos better.

And I was like, I'm just going to get this guy to do it.

And when it's done, I will show it to you.

And if you still think a photo would be better, we'll go with a photo.

And it was done.

My friend Ben Turner, who's a Bristol based illustrator, did it.

And he'd done loads of posters for us for the Bristol Bad Film Club.

They sent it over to the publisher and they were like, no, you're right.

This is much better.

And go with that.

So I think, yeah, arguments with publishers can come down to something as

simple as what's it actually going to look like, and I didn't want it to look cheap.

I wanted it to look a bit slick and a bit glossy.

I wanted people to judge the book by its cover.

Yes, absolutely.

As it should be.

And after that, there must have been a joyous pride in getting it

published and having that book launch.

And getting it out in the world.

But how long had it been out that you realize you wanted to write a second one?

Probably about the year, because once you've got a book out, the last

thing you immediately think about is, oh, and you know what I want to do?

Write another book.

I don't know how Lee Child does it, knocking out Jack Reacher book one a year.

I was like, I'm done.

I never want to touch keyboard again.

No one talk to me about writing a book.

And I feel like that after I finished the second one, but after the first one

came out, I was like, I'm really annoyed I didn't get this actor in it, and I'm

annoyed that I didn't get this actor.

And I'd be at convention selling books and people be going, did

you manage to get this guy in it?

Cause I really love him in that thing.

And I was like, yeah I do too.

He was working, I couldn't get him.

And they're like, oh.

That sounds like I've got to do a follow up.

If only to scratch that itch that at least the second time round, if I don't

get them this time round, at least I'll know that I couldn't have got them.

But yeah.

So I did have a, if I don't get this person I'm not bothering,

but I did get that person.

Who were the ones?

Give us spoilers.

So I got Robert Patrick.

Yep.

I got Kim Coates, the actor who most people know from Sons of Anarchy,

but he's in like The Last Boy Scout and he's in Waterworld and he's in Open Range.

He's great at giving good creep, as he would say.

And I also got Stephen Lang who played the bad guy in Avatar.

He's, you know, pretty big name.

But there was still actors I couldn't get for the second one.

Mainly Clancy Brown, the Kurgan from Highlander, I know he doesn't

like talking about that film.

But he's been in so many iconic films, Shawshank Redemption.

He's just been cast in John Wick 4, he was my white whale.

And I couldn't get him for love nor money.

I couldn't get past his people.

I was going to like his voice over agent.

He's just constantly working.

I just couldn't get him.

I don't know if they were like, he just doesn't do books.

But yeah, no, I just couldn't get him.

But luckily I got a great lineup for the second one.

Including, Scott Adkins, got Bai Ling, I got William Fichtner, I

got Xander Berkley from The Walking Dead and Air Force One and Heat.

And yeah, so I got some great names and Tony Todd, I got

Tony Todd, Candyman himself.

So I got some great names, but you know, there's always that kind of the one that

got away, still sticks in your crawl.

It only got published, was it last month?

End of June.

Early July.

Yeah.

But you wrote it over a year ago?

Yeah, almost two.

Yeah.

Do you feel you're done now or do you feel there's enough of

a list that you want to go again?

Oh, I'm done.

I'm done on the interviewing movie villains.

I think if there was another one it'd be scraping the bottom of the barrel

and I'd like to do something different.

And on the back of my first book I joined I reached out to this

producer and writer who are making a documentary about eighties action films.

And I was like, hey, I've interviewed most of these people, do you need a researcher?

And they brought me on as a co-writer and producer.

And before I knew it, I was getting shipped off to LA to interview all these

people in person for a documentary.

And I really enjoyed that.

So I think going forward, I would love to do more documentary

interviewing stuff like that.

Cause I really enjoyed going to Sony studios and hanging out with

screenwriters in their rooms and in their offices and going to people's houses

and yeah, I mean, it was a stressful busy two weeks, but man, I loved it.

So is this as a journalist interviewer, a vocation for you that

you feel that you're going to continue?

Have you got certain projects in mind or that you'd like to do?

I had another idea for a different book.

It was a book that I've done like six interviews for, I'm not sure it's

good enough or the idea's good enough.

I keep coming back to it.

Maybe one day I'll resurrect it in some way or another.

I just don't know how to do it, where it doesn't seem like a missed

opportunity of something else.

It would be a film book.

Should I say yeah, now I can say what the idea was, it was basically writing

a book about infamous productions that went disastrously wrong and

interviewing actors that were there.

However, I was like, the reason I wanted actors with obviously

a director would defend the production about why it went wrong.

And so with the producers, and so would maybe the writer.

Whereas an actor, especially if they're not the star, they're

just like, hey, it was a job.

I'm more than happy to tell you what went wrong.

But the more people I talk to, they're kind of like, you want

a more detailed oral history.

You want to talk to more people than just one actor.

So I've interviewed people like Jason Fleming, who was there for The

League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

I've got Lance Guest who was the lead in Jaws: The Revenge.

I've got an interview with Rainn Wilson about making Sahara, the big

Matthew McConaughey Indiana Jones-esque franchise that never happened.

And of course my good friend, Greg Sestero about the making of The Room.

A story that's been even turned into a film, but yeah, it's just, is one

person's take on what went wrong on a particular film good enough?

Do I need all those other people?

And also there were productions I just couldn't get interviews for.

There are films that I wanted to cover and no one on the cast would talk to me.

So it was, I don't want to do this if I can't do this film,

so that's why it's been shelved.

And I don't know if I'm going to take it off the shelf yet.

With the documentary that you did, you were talking to other elements

of the filmmaking crew, writers and directors and things like that.

Have you reached out to many writers?

Cause often it's the writer who gets screwed over on a film production.

Yeah.

I met Graham Yost who wrote Speed, Hard Rain and Broken Arrow when I was doing

the documentary, and he was generous to write the forward for my second book.

And we've kept in touch.

I did an interview with him for my friend's podcast, The Cosmic

Shed It was an anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landings.

Because he was a writer on the HBO miniseries From The Earth To The Moon.

And he worked, I think he actually, he's working on the new HBO world war two

series Masters of the Air because he was part of Band of Brothers as well.

So we just bonded when I was in his office about oh, let's talk

about Band of Brothers while the guys setting up the camera.

And then I cracked a couple of jokes about Speed 2.

And he laughed.

So yeah, the talking to writers is always fascinating because there

was, I talked to Sheldon Lettich who was the writer of Kickboxer.

Now politics aside, I have a question for you.

Donald Trump has said his favorite film of all time is Kickboxer, but he fast

forwards through the dialogue scenes.

What do you make of that?

Purely as the writer of Kickboxer and Sheldon Lettich, he's like

a former Marine I have no idea about his political leanings.

I get the feeling, he probably lent a little bit more conservative

and he was just like, that's nice.

He said, I have heard that.

And that is that's nice.

That's nice.

I guess it was a very diplomatic thing.

I don't want to I guess the cliche question is who was the

most difficult interview and I don't want to go down that road.

Who was the most surprisingly generous interview?

That you just like, wow, there's no filter.

There's no diplomacy here.

That's two different questions.

The one, I was surprised at how nice he was is Vernon Wells.

Because he always plays crazed people in his films and he was so lovely.

And he was just like, oh, if we have a meetup, that'd be great.

And I did eventually meet with him in LA and gave him a copy of the book.

And he is so funny.

So dry, typical Australian.

Actually, he is also someone that just has no filter.

And a lot of the actors don't either because when I interviewed them,

they weren't there with a publicist.

They're like, oh, I made this film 30 years ago.

I don't care.

So basically a lot of these actors had worked with some of the biggest

names in Hollywood and they're like, oh yeah, Arnie's great to work with.

He's good fun.

He's good fun.

If he shows up on set, he's fine.

He's always smoking cigars, but let me tell you who's a complete dick,

and they would just go off on one.

And there was a common name that seemed to crop up in all the,

let me tell you who's a dick.

And I'm more than happy to say it, Steven Seagal does not come off well in my book.

Alleged sexual harasser, Steven Seagal, who would have thought

it, is not a nice person.

And yeah, I was like, should you be telling me this?

And they were like, I don't care..

I worked with them 30 years ago.

He can dispute it if he likes, but by all means, yeah, there you go.

So I'm going to wrap up with a couple of questions just on the general

writing aspect of the book, because it's my belief that writers always grow and

developed with every book that they write.

And although you've only written two, was there anything that you

learned from your first book that was integral to the way that you

approach and wrote your second book?

I got a different proof reader.

There is ah, when my first book arrived, I opened it up and I immediately

spotted a typo in an image caption.

And it broke my heart.

Especially when you personally have read the book 20 times and you spell

checked it a billion times and at least two other people have proofed it.

Yeah.

I'd got someone to proof it and they had done a great job, but there was a typo and

I spotted a couple of other typos as well.

And it's like a punch in between the legs.

You just got to say.

So the second time round it's, I just proof-read the book double the amount

of times and got every grammatically pedantic friend I knew to proofread

it or just take a look at it.

You can never have enough people just take a look at your book, just to

look for the most stupidest typos, the things you become blind to.

And one actually came up in the design of this book.

So I'd written the entire manuscript.

It was all fine.

It was all proof.

Sent it over to the publishers.

And 14 months later they get round sending me the final layout.

And I'm just like looking at all the image captions with a magnifying glass, yeah.

Sign it off.

And then someone, then it comes out and someone says, oh, I'm

reading this great chapter.

In this book, in the Ralf Moeller section taken a picture of it.

And in the chapter header, it said Ralph Moeller and it's Ralf

Moeller cause he's German, R A L F.

What did I?

Did I write Ralph?

Went back to the manuscript, hadn't written Ralph.

Looked at the designs and the designer had just taken it upon him or herself,

just to change the chapter to Ralph Moeller, and I had not noticed.

Because I'd been so fixated on all the little things I had not even noticed that

the title of the chapter had been changed from Ralf Moeller to Ralph Moeller.

So I immediately just emailed the publisher.

I was like, what happened, what's going on?

Just stop all printing of the books.

I don't how this happened.

Change it now.

And let's just say that was a very stressful 48 hours.

It's all fixed now and all copies of the book, but I was just like, I

became so fixated on the small stuff.

Literally the biggest thing, big actor's name is the title of a chapter.

I hadn't even noticed.

So the more eyes you can put on your work, the better.

Because they'll spot something that you have seen a hundred times and

it wouldn't even have registered.

Okay.

And one last question in any kind of writing advice you've heard over the

years, was there any writing advice that you felt resonated and really helped you

in writing either or both of these books?

Here's the thing.

For someone who did a history degree and has written, a lot for

various publications over the years.

I've worked at a creative agency and copywriting and editorial processes

been a big part of my career.

I don't enjoy writing.

I find it hard.

That is why when I came up with the idea for a book, I was like,

oh, this interviews, boom, 80% of the work done right there.

I don't have to come up with ideas.

I'm literally just talking to people and I'm writing up their stories.

So people authors that you're going to interview that have written fiction.

To me, I can't think of anything harder than looking at that blank page

and just coming up with something.

I think that's the hardest thing, coming up with an idea.

When I came up with this idea for this book, I was so happy.

I was like, I've come up with an idea.

That's amazing.

Then it's like, why didn't I come up with this idea 10 years ago?

Oh, this book could have been out 10 years ago.

And then it was just like scouring of the internet.

This is such an obvious idea.

Has no one ever done it before?

Someone's clearly done this and probably a lot better, so I'm just

Johnny come lately to this idea.

But no one had, and I, I would say that's the thing just when you have the idea.

Just go for it, just go for it and keep writing that idea.

There's no advice I could give to anyone about writing.

Cause everyone's different.

People like write in the morning, people like write in the evening, people

go for a word count or page count.

I would just try and, just make something readable because it

was just about cutting down that interview into something manageable.

So I can't give any advice to anyone on how to write simply because

everyone's different and I'm sure my writing method would be a car

crash to some of your listeners.

Finish the thing.

That's always good.

Finish it.

Finish it.

And if you can then approach a documentary team, that's done a

book on the subject to kind of give you work, I'd recommend doing that.

That, that panned out.

Yeah, that sounds brilliant.

Okay.

That's all I have to ask Ti.

Thank you so much.

It's a pleasure.

And everyone go and buy both these books.

They brilliant.

They're fine.

There.

My mum says they're not her thing, but my wife has also not read them.

So make of that, what you will.

Get them in through your local bookshop, then don't give your money

to that, that large tax dodging conglomerate, although it is on Kindle.

So...

buy it twice.

So buy it twice, I get more money through Kindle.

Okay.

Excellent.

All right.

Thank you very much.

And that was the real writing process of Timon Singh.

If you'd like to find out more about Timon, his books and his

interviews, you can check out his website, borntobebad.co.uk.

You can also find him on Twitter under the handle @TimonSingh.

And this week, I'm going to ask you to recommend this podcast to

one person you know personally.

Reviews and retweets are great, but nothing beats word of mouth.

And if you like this podcast, I bet you know someone who'd like it too.

And don't just send them a link.

Message them specifically and discuss it.

It's almost Christmas and it'll mean a lot to them to show

that you're thinking of them.

And want them to escape the horrors of the world for an hour to hear a nice chat.

In return, if you have something you'd like me to promote message

me on Twitter, @therealwriting1.

Or email me therealwritingprocess@gmail.com.

Anyway, that's all for this week.

Until next time, my friends.