January 26, 2010, 10:06 am : Allan Weisbecker – The Quintessential Interview with the Down South Pirate

Filed Under: Biography, Interviews, Surfing, Travel Tales
Discussion: C[0]mments

Editors Note: I first met Allan Weisbecker in Montauk, earning a brief interview with him following the printing of In Search of Captain Zero.

Ever the Long Island writing hero to this fledgling surf-mag writer, ACW was kind enough to indulge me with several unwritten stories and character links through a few lengthy phone conversations, emails and that one brief afternoon at Ditch Plains.

In all, he had given me hours of his time. I loved the book and, to be fair, am an unabashed fan of his works. All of them. His style and approach are always explained in notes and newsletters, and only improve his works once you understand his writing methodology. I placed a review of In Search of Captain Zero in Surfnews Magazine and received lots of feedback, almost all positive. Weisbecker became a widespread name and a sort of surf folk hero, if you liked him. Not all did.

I went to Pavones in 2001 and met with him there at his new home and he seemed squirmy and elusive. I was worried about him, but not close enough with him to find out what was really wrong.

We stayed in loose contact through email until I went back to Costa Rica in 2005, contacting him about staying at the guest house on his property. He wouldn’t be there, but asked me to check on his place for him, make sure everything was safe. Not knowing any better, I agreed to help him out…

I never made it to Pavones on that 2nd trip; the waves were perfect in Dominical and it was very rainy, making the drive South dicey. Lucky for me, or I may have walked directly into a grizzly scene from Can’t You Get Along With Anyone?.

Cut to the chase, we remained friendly over the years, and Allan has been extremely helpful to my writing endeavors. With his support I approached and gained entry into the Surfers Journal. I did a review of CYGAWA? for the Journal which Allan didn’t like, but he still granted me an exclusive interview, the first in reaction to CYGAWA? long before it hit the mainstream press. I read the first ARC (advanced reading copy) and interviewed him on a crisp 3-4 foot day in Montauk, NY at Gurney’s Inn just after its small release through Humdrumming Books, UK.

Thank you for all the help and support over the years Allan, Keep The Faith.

A conversation with Allan Weisbecker, October, 2006

Jeff Schad: Most readers will recognize you as the author of In Search of Captain Zero – your surf journey through Central America in search of an old surfbuddy missing in action. Now you’ve released your new book, Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? A Writer’s Memoir, and a Tale of a Lost Surfer’s Paradise. What’s changed about you since then?

Allan C. Weisbecker: Not sure how I’ve changed. “A sadder and a wiser man he rose the ‘morrow morn,” which is from Coleridge, comes to mind, or should. But as Kurt Vonnegut has said, “People don’t change, don’t apologize, and don’t learn anything.” This probably applies to me as much or more than anyone. At least the changing and learning parts. I’ve never had a problem with apologies.

I’ll no doubt just continue stumbling and bumbling through life, putting myself in precarious places, rising sadder if not wiser, as always.

JS: You certainly found yourself in a few precarious places, as described in the book.

ACW: Yes, both through circumstances beyond my control and through not paying sufficient attention to what was going on around me. When I was younger there was also the illusion that I was invincible, which was at least partially a result of the old North Shore (of Oahu) aphorism, “Surfers can do anything.” That dumb-ass sort of attitude will put you in some hairball situations, and not just in the water.

JS: Give us an example.

ACW: Morocco, 1970. A surfbuddy and I went there after our house on the North Shore was destroyed, demolished, with us in it, by the biggest swell to ever hit the Hawaiian Islands. (That we emerged from the destruction without a scratch was predictable – in our deranged minds.)

In order to keep surfing (getting-a-job avoidance) we just automatically got into hashish smuggling. Didn’t even occur to us that something bad might happen.

JS: Did something bad happen?

ACW: Of course not. We were too young and stupid for anything bad to happen. The bad stuff came later, after I smartened up a little. Not much, actually. A real little.

JS: Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? A Writer’s Memoir, and a Tale of a Lost Surfer’s Paradise is the sequel to Zero, correct?

ACW: Yes. Although I futz with chronological structure, the story starts the day after Zero ended, when I left my old buddy and essentially found the surf paradise I was looking for.

JS: Which was where?

At the end of the road at the bottom of Central America. A place called Pavones (Spanish for “Big Turkeys”), on the Pacific side of Costa Rica. Home of possibly the longest point break in the Northern Hemisphere.

Click here for an excerpt: “A Night at the Cantina”, for more perspective on Pavones from ACW.

JS: Where did you get the title Can’t You Get Along With Anyone?

ACW: It was the body of the email I got from my movie-writing agent as a result of my firing her for her behavior during the In Search of Captain Zero movie deal. I suspect that there is some negative subtext in her question, but book titles are where you find them and I’ll always be grateful for this one.

JS: It’s another surfy memoir.

ACW: After Zero I thought my memoir-writing days were over. As it turned out, what was coming makes Zero look like Fun With Dick and Jane.

JS: What makes the book tick?

ACW: Escalating deceit and treachery. On another level of that, it’s a look at the idea of finding a “paradise,” surf or otherwise. The reality as opposed to the myth. The types of people who show up in unspoiled places, with or without perfect waves. The agendas that surface, the sorts of pecking order games that emerge, and so forth. In the case of one person’s agenda, what happens when you’re faced with treachery that quite literally has no limits. What happens when meaningful options diminish to zero. What happens when you reach a personal End of the Line.

The book also deals with the writing process, the obsession and pain a writer goes through in his work. The cover design, with my bleeding forehead, is illustrative of that. Comes from a quote from the writer Gene Fowler. “Writing is easy. You just stare at the blank page until your forehead bleeds.” My forehead did some bleeding during the writing of this one.

JS: There are a lot of subplots, or through-lines, in the book. The story of the movie deals on your other two books is an offshoot of the writing-about-writing aspect, correct?

ACW: Yes, and a bit of comic relief from the bizarre relentlessness of the other through-lines.

JS: Your other books have been optioned by major movie stars. Sean Penn for Zero and John Cusack for your cult comedy, Cosmic Banditos.

ACW: Right.

JS: Since Zero is a memoir and Banditos an autobiographical novel, in essence these two mega-stars want to play you. Heady stuff.

ACW: It becomes a little less heady when you examine how the deals went. Penn, for example, never read the book he wanted to make a movie out of.

JS: How could that be?

ACW: Nor did he read the screenplay adaptation I was paid 200 grand to write. This is the producer of the project, keep in mind.

JS: He didn’t read either the book or the screenplay?

ACW: He spent more time writing me emails explaining why he wasn’t going to read than it would have taken to do the reading. I’m not kidding. I reproduce his comical emails in the book.

JS: What was the upshot?

ACW: Sean got upset with me for in effect pointing out how far his head is up his ass and in his last email wished me “something resembling death.”

JS: How did it go with Cusack?

ACW: I had to physically threaten him to get money owed on the deal.

JS: Come again?

ACW: It’s a bizarre story – also in the book – and as utterly evocative of the way Hollywood is as the Penn fiasco. I should say, however, that Cusack himself was not at the bottom of the problem, but rather it was a dishonest lawyer (sorry for the redundancy). John and I kissed and made up and all is fine between us. Good thing, too, since he’s a kickboxer and likely would have beat the shit out of me had the situation gone really sour.

In fact, I have high hopes that Cosmic Banditos will eventually make it to the screen.

JS: You describe Banditos as “a goofball comedy about The Meaning of Life.” How did that book come about?

ACW: In 1981 I did a classic segue-free transition, went from big time international criminal to Hollywood screenwriter. Almost literally overnight I went from barrel-rolling my Learjet over Colombian pot plantations to working with the likes of Michael Mann (Miami Vice, The Insider, Last of the Mohicans, etc.) and Robert Chartoff (Rocky, Raging Bull, The Right Stuff, etc.).

I knew I had to write about the decade of the 1970s, my lunatic life. It started out with an unbalanced expat fugitive hiding out in the jungles of South America (me, more or less) and naturally became a comedy about subatomic particle physics, a full-blown bandito named Jose, a nymphomaniac, a large dog who’d had a depraved puppyhood, and, of course, The Meaning of Life. I mean, these elements were inevitable, if you think about it, given the overall subject matter.

JS: Not really sure about that.

ACW: How else could it have gone? You tell me.

JS: Speaking of segues and of comedy…

ACW: With The Meaning of Life aspect, there is naturally a lot of tequila consumed and hand grenades thrown. Or accidentally dropped.

JS: In your new book…

ACW: As one of the more unbalanced characters points out, “It amazing how a violent explosion in a confined area will separate the men from the boys.”

JS: Speaking of segues and of comedy, in your new book you somehow work genuine belly laughs into the story of the “fiascos and catastrophic shit” you were relentlessly subjected to in your “sorry ass life and times.”

ACW: It was either see the humor in it or blow my brains out. Given that choice, what would you do?

JS: Never mind that…

ACW: Also, at a certain point relentlessness itself can become comedic. I remember one time I got caught in the boneyard at Sunset Beach in Hawaii on a rising swell and the way the sets just kept landing on my head I eventually found myself cackling at the ridiculousness of it. That sort of relentlessness. Like, “How the fuck did I get into this mess?”

JS: Speaking of segues and catastrophic shit…

ACW: There’s also the through-line about the getting it published. “It” meaning the book I was writing at the time and the reader (later, of course) is now reading. Is that what you were thinking? Sorry to interrupt, but that’s on my mind right now.

JS: Your no… nicer…to the publishing business than you are to Hollywood.

ACW: I’ve burned a lot of bridges with this book. I’m talking major conflagrations here. Hey, I burned bridges that I’ve never even crossed. I’m a bridge burning kind of guy.

JS: With predictable results, right?

ACW: One predictable result has been a problem finding a U.S. publisher, or even an agent, since I fired the last 27 agents that I had. No, wait. Twenty-eight.

JS: The book is in print in the UK, though.

ACW: Bizarre how that came about. Last summer some lunatics in Canada launched a stage production of Cosmic Banditos. Right. A play. I shit you not. My goofball comedy about The Meaning of Life ran for ten days at an arts festival in Vancouver. And it was a hit! They were rolling in the aisles, apparently. It was also reviewed by some nutcase up there. A smart, literate nutcase. Turned out he was connected with this Brit publisher. One thing led to another and boom! Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? found the light of print.

JS: Since your two other books are selling very well…

ACW: Last time I checked they were both outselling the Stephen King novel that was published at the same time.

JS: So why wouldn’t your old publisher (Penguin Putnam) publish the new one?

ACW: You read it, right?

JS: Right. You do happen to mention them.

ACW: Can’t I get along with anyone?

JS: There’s another segue here, I think… To the love of your life.

ACW: I don’t want to give away too much about the book, but the through-line that emerges as dominant has to do with male/female relationships. Right: Speaking of fiascos and catastrophic shit and wave sets landing on your head and blowing your brains out. And, again, the idea of paradise, as opposed to the reality.

JS: On the surface of it, you had it all, didn’t you?

ACW: Sure did. Two successful books, movie deals, famous actors wanting to play me, a gorgeous home I built within walking distance of my own semi-private warm water perfect wave in paradise, plus a beautiful, very sexy woman who surfs and was totally in love with my sorry ass. At 55 years old, I finally had it all. The Endless Summer meets 9 1/2 Weeks…

JS: Then?

ACW: Pulp Fiction showed up.

JS: There were warnings, though.

ACW: There were warnings all right… Had I been paying attention.

JS: In the book you talk a lot about paying attention.

ACW: An underlying theme is that people do not really pay attention to what’s really going on around them. Metaphorically, dawdling around at Waimea without keeping an eye on the outside. This applies to their personal lives as well as world affairs, whatever.

JS: You don’t have a lot of respect for our current president (Ed note: George W was in office at time of interview).

ACW: The book starts contemporaneously with the invasion of Iraq. As it turned out, this was convenient, in terms of symmetry: The greed and deceit and treachery, the death and misery, the incessant lies, the levels of denial everyone was living under.

JS: The war in Iraq–

ACW: I was talking about my personal life.

JS: Okay.

ACW: I suspect that our current president has a suite reserved for my sorry ass at Guantanamo. Do you know if there’s surf on that part of Cuba?

JS: Not sure. But moving on, give an example of your paying attention powers. Or lack of them, in your personal life.

ACW: In 1998 at Pavones, right after the fiasco that was the ending of In Search of Captain Zero, I investigated the shootout killing of an American expat named Max Dalton. This was for Men’s Journal magazine. When I returned to Pavones in 2001, I sort of forgot about the stuff I’d uncovered in ’98. Sort of forgot about the death threats I’d gotten and how I was armed to the teeth and how everybody lied about everything and how it was every man for himself down there in surf paradise. I wasn’t paying attention.

Hey. I forgot!

JS: You reprise the story of the Dalton murder investigation for CYGAWA.

ACW: I hadn’t planned on doing that but then the murder investigation and other events from ’98 came back to bite me on my ass, and did so in a way I could never have seen coming. In fact, I couldn’t have made up the shit that happened in my wildest fiction dreams. The section is also an object lesson in how it goes when greed descends on a perfect wave. One upshot of the investigation was that “it was the wave here that killed Max.”

JS: I understand you’ve sold your house and property in Pavones. Ever going back?

ACW: Possibly. When I’m tired of being alive on planet earth.

JS: You’ve got one of your lists regarding this, right? Like the list of women you’ve had sex with? In this case, it’s who’ll be out for revenge on….

ACW: You can say it. “On my sorry ass.”

JS:…revenge on your sorry ass.

ACW: Yeah, and that list is pretty long. Not as long as the Women I’ve Had Sex With List, thank God, but pretty long. Come to think of it, though, there’s one person who is on both lists.

JS: Care to name names?

ACW: No, but here’s a related question I’ve been mulling: What do you think Sean Penn meant when he wished me “something resembling death”? I mean what resembles death, aside from the dirt nap itself?

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Click here to go to a short excerpt from Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? A Writer’s Memoir, and a Tale of a Lost Surfer’s Paradise.