How Author Mark Greaney Feels About "The Gray Man" Adaptation of His Book

Yeah, I enjoyed the Gray Man movie, but it was not as good as your book. Well, thank you for saying that. I appreciate it. It just wasn't the same story. Yeah. Like they they they Hollywoodized it. Absolutely. And, you know, I liked it and and what I say, and I don't know how this makes me sound, it's like the movie is the best possible commercial for my writing. And if you're a writer, you want eyeballs on your work. And so it's I love the movie. And, you know, there's bits of dialogue in there and things they did with the plot that that I really liked. But, you know, it's not as gritty. It's not not nearly. Yeah. You know, and they do things that they have to do shorthand in a movie. I get 100000 words to write a book or 150000 words to write a book. So I have some luxuries that, you know, they don't have putting something on the screen. But I like the fact that they're different in to the because there's still a reason to read my book. They saw the movie and enjoyed it. Hopefully it turns you on to the book and then see something different in there. No, I definitely think there's that element to it because it is it's for sure a Hollywoodized version of these gritty books that you write. Yeah. But it's also good. Yeah. Like if you didn't know about the book and you just saw the movie, it's good. Yeah. They're two different things. But the book is so much fucking nastier. And also court. I said thank you. I don't know if that's what I should say. You should. It's good. But court gentry in your books is just so much different than Ryan in the movies. It's just like. Yeah. I mean, they did a lot without dialogue, which I appreciated and I liked. You know, he'd do a lot with a look. But I mean, when you in a book, you're able to get into the characters had quite a bit, quite a bit more. So it's a different experience. If you could pick a person like an actor, if you could start from scratch, no disrespect to Ryan Reynolds or right. Gosling. Yeah. Why do I always fuck that up? I always fuck that up. I couldn't pick either one of them out of a fucking lineup to save my life. Gosling. Ryan Gosling. I really like the guy, too, by the way. Who would you pick if you want if you know, just like if you could just like say any actor, like who do you think you would go with? You know, that's it's a tough question because that thing has been in Hollywood. The great man's been in Hollywood since two months before the little paperback came out in 2009. So it's been bouncing around. And I've heard every actor at one point, Brad Pitt was signed on to it. And really? Yeah. Yeah. Like back 2011 or something. And then it fell apart and it came back. And each time they would send me a script or whoever was doing it. And at one point, Charlize Theron wanted to do it. And they rewrote. Yeah, they rewrote. She wanted to be the girl. No, she wanted to be court gentry. Oh, my God. So they they wrote a script for it. And it was good screenwriters. And I remember reading the script going like, was it the gray woman or the no or the gray non-binary person? It was still the gray man. Her name was still court gentry. But everything was different. And they never really explained. Is that short for Courtney or something? They never. Oh, my God. But it was just a completely different plot. Thank God they didn't do that. I thought if they change, you know, like if and I love her because she had just done Fury Road. So, I mean, I'd love to write something for her to be in. I didn't see Fury Road. Oh, the Mad Max. Oh, Mad Max. Yeah. OK. And she was so good. But as an author, you couldn't put out the gray man novel with her face on it. And they opened the book and it has nothing to do, you know, with a woman. And and as much as I love her, like I was like, well, this isn't going to, you know, sell books or get eyes in my work. The screenplay was actually really good. But I remember thinking if I went to the theater and saw it and had a different title, I would not even know. There'd be like one scene where I'm like, oh, yeah, I did a thing on a plane to, you know, it was so different. It was a completely different plot. It was good. I wish they'd make it and call it something else. Yeah, make it and call it something else. You don't call it the gray man. It's that's such a weird choice. Yeah. Yeah. At one point, like real early on, when it first got optioned, people were asking me who should play the character. And I thought it would be somebody who's not like, you know, Rambo or anything like that. So I was saying like Casey Affleck or somebody like that. Oh, interesting. You wouldn't expect, you know, in a big action film. But wouldn't you need someone who's like physically formidable? Yeah, you know, I don't the thing is, is I've written 12 books and I've never once had him working out. I never showed him. I know. I never showed him working out, you know, or even really training because you talked a couple of times about him doing like calisthenics or something. Yeah. Yeah. I've thrown it in a little bit because I'm like, all right, how how does this possibly happen? Right. How does he keep these perishable skills and his fitness up? But, you know, there's there's actors that like I really like, like Max Martini. I don't know if you know that is. You know him if you saw him. He's he he was in 13 Hours was a really good movie and Michael Bay film. Wow. Look at that. That is amazing. And so he's you know, he's like a formidable dude and a really good actor. But there's you know, he does. I like the physical presence of him. Yeah, he might be good, too, because even though he's kind of recognizable, it's not Brad Pitt like every time Brad Pitt's in a movie, it's Brad Pitt. Yeah, that guy's in a movie. You could say, I think I've seen that guy in something before. But but he's court gentry. Yeah, exactly. Well, I got a ton of people mad that Ryan Gosling was in it before it came out. And they were like, you need to get some unknown guy because nobody recognizes a great man. And I'm like, you probably don't understand how 200 million dollar movies work. Don't. What we're going to do is we're going to get this guy out, you know, find the guy at the mall and make him that, you know, it's just not how it works. It's too bad because I don't really know if it makes a difference. I think they think it makes a difference. But I think if you have a movie that has an amazing plot and a great like trailer and it looks wild and like people, I think people get sucked into it anyway. Yeah. And honestly, like one of the best films I've ever seen in my life, which is an action film, it's a Korean film called The Man from Nowhere. And it's also fortunately it came out after The Gray Man did. Otherwise, people would think I'd ripped off The Gray Man because it's about a former assassin who's trying to lay low and he ends up having to rescue this girl. Well, the book, though, came so much earlier than the movie. Like how many years was it between you writing the book and then the film coming? I wrote the book in 2007. It came out in 2009 and it and the film came out in 22. And so it's like, wow, I was still lucky. You know, everybody's like, I bet you hate that you had to wait this long. And I'm like, if, you know, if I was an 85 year old man and they made a film out of one of my books, I'd be thrilled. So yeah, it's a it's a rare thing, right? So especially a big blockbuster film with Ryan Gosling. You're getting it. There it is. Chris Evans is great in that, too. Yeah, he was terrific. Yeah, he he really played an awesome version of the character you wrote in the book. Yeah. And that's that's an example of a difference in the film that I that I liked. You know, yes, my Lloyd in the book is not like a physical presence. He's more of like the asshole mastermind of the whole thing. Right. But I mean, obviously, if they can get Chris Evans in their film, they're going to beef up his role and make it a more mano a mano thing. And I thought that was fabulous. Yeah. And Chris Evans just really nailed it. He played the perfect douchebag asshole, cocky, confident psychopath. Yeah, it looked like he was having fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was great. It was great. I wasn't closely involved with it. I went out and met the Russo brothers when they were going to write the script and spent a few days with them talking about the story and where the future story because they wanted it to be a French franchise from the beginning. But I wasn't involved in the day to day, but I was sent scripts. Joe sent me the script that he wrote. And then I saw the the shooting script like right when they were shooting. So that was my involvement with it. And then I would be on Twitter and I'd see Ryan Gosling dressed up as a great man on Twitter. You know, I didn't see it any way. Any anybody else would have seen it. You know, are they doing a series? Are they going to continue? They're doing a second one. Yeah. Yeah. And they're writing a spinoff series, which I know nothing about. But the guy who wrote Deadpool, Rhett Reese, I think they're writing a spinoff based on who? Someone in the series. And I really don't know. I'm not being cagey. Really? Yeah. I just know that that's happening. That's even weirder. So now someone's like taking your world and it's almost like the Spider-Man. Yeah, I mean, it depends on what they do if they take a character that like Zoya, who's this Russian former Russian foreign intelligence. I love that character. Thank you. Thanks. You know, if they did something with her, that would be cool. If they did something with Zach Hightower, who's kind of like his on and off again sidekick, you know, that would be cool. But I don't know what it is. But they are doing a sequel with Ryan Gosling in the role. Have they started that yet? They're writing the script or Steve McFeely is writing the script. One of the screenwriters on Greyman. And is it based on any of your books? It's going to be based on one of the books. But which book? I don't know. I don't know that I didn't ask if you're allowed. I didn't ask for permission. I get it. My whole point in coming here today was to walk out of here and not go, Oh, my God, what? I can't believe I just said that. I think that was pretty far. That was close. Well, you know, you did a good job. You navigated it. It's is it a weird thing to watch someone change your script and to change the plot and change how the characters interact. It is really weird. I think I went into it with the right mindset that, you know, this was a reference, a film representation. And I know that the directors are like really creative people and the screenwriters and cinematographers and actors. And they don't look at it as their job, that they're engineers that are going to take a piece of paper and turn it into celluloid with everyone doing exactly the same thing. So I never expected that. There are places in there where I think I really like what they did. And there's places in there where it's like, I think my line landed a little bit better, you know, like. And that actually made me happy. I wasn't mad that like they didn't do it my way. It's more like, OK, I think I have something to offer still instead of, you know, all these big shots with all this money. Come and make something so like, you know, vastly superior to the little paperback that I wrote. You know, it's like I think there's places where my stuff holds up and there's stuff in there that I think is fantastic, too. But it is really strange. The toughest thing is the complaints from fans that aren't happy because of the changes. So people just pigeonhole me all the time at a conference or something. And they'll be like, in the movie, they did this. And in the book, they did this. And I was like, yeah, I wrote the book and I saw the movie. So this whole interaction is like, I don't know what to tell you. You know, it's like I can't speak for them. And people will email me and they're like, you've screwed up. You gave it away. You know, it was all for the money or whatever. And you're like, I didn't have any creative control. And I'm not Stephen King or John Groschim or one of these guys. You know, I had this little paperback that I got a little bit of money to advance to put out and they offered, you know, to option it in Hollywood. And my answer was yes, it wasn't like, let me look at page 94, the contract, or I'm going to come back and say, I want creative control and I want to play the great man in the movie or whatever. It's like, that's how you don't get a movie made. Well, Stephen King famously didn't like The Shining, which is wild, right? Because it's Stanley Kubrick and it's Jack Nicholson. It's an amazing movie. But the movie was very different than his book. In his book, the character Jack, it takes a long time before he goes crazy. And he starts out sane. He starts out just a troubled former alcoholic who's trying to get his life together and do right by his family. And he gets this opportunity to look over this hotel and he's going to write this book. And along the way, he goes nuts. Yeah, that's the difference between a book and a movie. I like that added stuff. I think Tom Clancy didn't like Harrison Ford in the Jack Ryan films. Really? And I think it was just an age thing because in his head, he was pretty literal about, you know, he's at this stage when I wrote this book, he's a young CIA analyst who or whatever. And I think Harrison Ford was older. And I'm not 100 percent sure about that. It's but I do know that, you know, I've read places. Tom never told me this, but that that he wasn't a big fan of those. And I think those are the best ones. I don't know. Red October was good. Any of his what what ones was Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger. And those were all Harrison Ford. Yeah. No kidding. Yeah. And I think he did a good if they did, they did a great job. Alec Baldwin was great in Red October. Yeah. And too bad he didn't stick with it. I forgot about Red October. Yeah. Yeah. I forgot about Patriot Games, too. Yeah. Well, it's like it's so interesting when you get a known commodity, like a famous celebrity that comes in and takes over a role that you've created. Yeah. Yeah. I you know, I was I was happy with Ryan Gosling like he. I just as I described, the gray man, the look is pretty similar. And he didn't he didn't overbake it. I feel like the scenes with the the girl and that he's protecting could have turned schmaltzy and cheesy. Yeah. And they didn't. And I like that in my book. I like it a little bit better because the the girl actually has some agency in her own rescue. She does some things to help herself. Whereas this one, she's just sort of like protected, you know, by by gentry. I mean, she she kind of saves the day to some degree, too. You know, you can pick little things. The very first scene in the movie, Billy Bob Thornton is a CIA guy sitting in a prison with a dude saying, here's the name of our secret CIA program and here's what it does. Would you like to join? Well, that's how that works, you know. And there's the funniest part was that there's a scene, big action scene in Prague. It takes place in Prague. And the man is handcuffed to a to a bench and he's shooting bad guys and he can't get away and there's cops and dead cops around him. And then the bad guys, Chris Evans sending the bad guys in from all directions. And at one point, he reaches over to this cop and pulls a frag grenade off the guy's utility belt. And I'm like, the cops in Prague carry frags. That's some hardcore cops. He throws it, blows something up. And I'm like, but it works in the movie. You know, it's like nobody's spending that much time looking at it unless you're the idiot that wrote it.