LOS ANGELES — Noah Hawley has a hit show as the award-winning creator of FX’s quirky crime drama Fargo. Now he's eyeing the best-seller lists: Before the Fall, his fifth novel, is poised for takeoff.
The summer thriller has the book world buzzing and has been snapped up by Sony Pictures, with Hawley set to write the screenplay. He's interested in directing the film, too.
“I was attracted to the dynamic of the accidental hero. In a way, like Fargo, it’s the story of a basically decent person who’s probably in over his head,” Hawley says of his main character, troubled artist Scott Burroughs. There’s “that sense of someone who didn’t ask for what was thrust upon him and now has to navigate a media culture where we often build people up just to tear them down.”
Before the Fall (Grand Central), on sale Tuesday, opens with the crash of a chartered plane off the coast of tony Martha’s Vineyard one summer night. It weaves the stories of nine casualties and two survivors — Burroughs, a middle-aged painter trying to rebuild his life, and the 4-year-old son of a cable news titan — as investigators search for the cause of the tragedy amid a media circus.
One of the plane-crash victims is media powerhouse David Bateman. Bill Cunningham, a larger-than-life anchor at Bateman's network, launches a vicious campaign casting suspicion on Scott, the reluctant hero survivor.
Hawley dismisses speculation that Bateman and Cunningham are based on Fox News executive Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly, but he does see Fall as a reflection of the modern news/punditry industry.
“We have these personas like O’Reilly or Chris Matthews or Megyn Kelly, the people who in some ways become the story as well,” says Hawley, whose work with FX and 20th Century Fox Television puts him under the same corporate umbrella as Fox News Channel. "It’s definitely a look at the dangers of personality-driven media.”
Although the small plane in the novel is filled with movers and shakers, “what was important to me was not to create these titans of industry in a two-dimensional sense, but to humanize everybody who was on that plane,” including Bateman, his wife and two children; financier Ben Kipling and his wife; a Bateman bodyguard; and the flight crew.
In addition to novels, Hawley has written extensively for TV and is expanding into film. He sees a common thread to those pursuits — storytelling. But each has its own demands, too.
“Writing a book is a different experience than writing a script. There is a solitude and an immersion to it and it allows you to do things you can’t really do in something filmed,” he says. “In a book, it’s a relationship. You’ve put the words on the page, but the audience is creating the images in their heads.”
The novel has received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which describes it as a “masterly blend of mystery, suspense, tragedy and shameful media hype … with a stunning, thoroughly satisfying conclusion.”
None of Hawley's previous novels, which include A Conspiracy of Tall Men and The Good Father, has made USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list. But his publisher has high hopes for Before the Fall.
In a letter included in the advance readers' edition, Grand Central Publishing editor-in-chief Deb Futter writes that Fall is "a book I think should be, deserves to be, and can be, the summer read…possibly the read of the entire year. Not only is it un-put-down-able, but it is smart."
New York native Hawley, 49, the married father of two, acknowledges that opportunities have expanded since Fargo, based on the 1996 Coen Brothers film, premiered to raves in 2014, winning the Emmy for outstanding miniseries. Fargo’s second season received similar acclaim and a third season is in the offing, although not before 2017.
“People take your calls in a way they wouldn’t necessarily have before, but it’s more than that,” he says. “What matters to me is the respect of my peers and the doors it opens for me creatively. To that end, it’s been a huge game changer.”
Hawley has directed a Fargo episode and the pilot for Legion, a potential FX series based on a Marvel Comics character. He is scheduled to direct a feature film for Fox, Man Alive.
Hawley also is busy with Fargo's third installment, which will begin filming in November.
Ewan McGregor will play the lead characters, two battling brothers: a real-estate mogul and his slightly younger sibling, a parole officer seething with resentment.
Season 3 will be set in 2010, four years after the first season and three decades after the third. Two leading law enforcement officials, a chief of police and an officer from a different jurisdiction, will be women, Hawley tells USA TODAY.
Hawley, who lives in Austin, Texas, and commutes to Hollywood, feels up to handling multiple projects, although he takes care to maintain “artisan” precision.
The creator of the short-lived TV programs My Generation and The Unusuals advises aspiring storytellers to persevere through disappointments.
“Just keep going. You can’t take (rejection) personally,” Hawley says. “The first novel I published was rejected 10 times, I think. So, it’s a bad book, right? And then the 11th person bought it, so now it’s a good book. Make the work personal, in that you’re telling the stories that are important to you. But then the business of it? You have to get that distance."
