Lou Diamond Phillips, THE TINDERBOX: Soldier of Indira

[1:37]Zibby Owens: Hi. I'm Zibby Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books. This thirty minute podcast features a new author interviewed by me every single day, three hundred sixty five days a year for about thirty minutes. I am also the publisher for Zippy Books, which publishes 12 books a year in fiction and memoir. Our books are already out now. You can check it out on zippybooks.com. And we have a magazine called Zippy Mag where we have lots of wonderful essays and lifestyle features. That's at zippymag.com. We have classes at zippyclasses.com. And I recently opened a bookstore in LA called Zippy's Bookshop at 1113 Montana Avenue At 11th Street in Santa Monica. I hope that you are able to enjoy some of our other offerings, but this here podcast is the basis of all of it and started in 2018. And no matter what I do, this is basically my favorite thing. Enjoy.

[2:38]Lou Diamond Phillips: My episode with Blue Diamond Phillips is being re released today because, you know, La Bamba. And I've loved talking to him. Actually, Chris Bagellian, the author, introduced us, and it was such a thrill to learn all about his life and his background and all these things I didn't know. So I really hope you enjoy it. The second episode in my weekly children's book blast is with the actor, director, author, Lou Diamond Phillips, who I knew from La Bamba, but of course has been in a zillion other things. I interviewed both Lou and his wife Yvonne. I didn't know she was coming on, but it was a pleasure to have her. And the two of them are close collaborators, so it was fitting that she joined him. Here's a little more about Lou Diamond Phillips, and we're gonna be discussing his new novel called The Tinderbox. Lou Diamond Phillips is currently starring in the Fox series prodigal son, having recently starred in the acclaimed Netflix series Longmire based on the Walt Longmire mystery novels by Craig Johnson. Other recent credits include Amazon's Goliath, Syfy's Stargate Universe, CBS's Blue Bloods, and recurring roles on Fox's Brooklyn Nine Nine and Netflix's The Ranch. He received an Emmy nomination for outstanding actor in a short form drama or comedy for his roles in both Amazon's Conversations in LA and History Channel's Crossroads of History. Recent film credits include Warner Brothers the 33, created equal directed by Bill Duke, and Sundance Festival favorite Philly Brown for which he was named best actor at the Imagine Awards. As a director, he has recently helmed episodes of AMC's hit series Fear the Walking Dead, Longmire, and ABC's Marvel's Agents of Shield. As a writer, Phillips has co written the screenplays for Trespasses and HBO's Dangerous Touch. He wrote the Miramax feature Ambition. He recently produced his play Burning Desire, a romantic comedy in two acts, which received its world premiere at the 7 Angels Theater in Waterbury, Connecticut. Phillips I'm still going here. Phillips was also asked by his good friend, novelist Craig Johnson, to write the foreword to his collection of short stories called Wait for Science. Originally born in The Philippines, Phillips was raised in Texas and is a graduate of University of Texas at Arlington with a BFA in drama. Drawing from a lifetime of work in the film industry, Lou used his screenwriting experience in order to write an original science fiction novel called The Tinderbox Soldier of Indira. It is his first novel inspired by a reading of the famed fable of the same title by Hans Christian Andersen. Andersen. And now we will hear all about it. Well, welcome to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm delighted to have you here. Thanks for coming. Yay. Thrilled to be here. Thank you. So your latest book is called The Tinderbox Soldier of Indira. Indira, correct? Yes. Indira Gandhi, actually. Like Indira Gandhi. Yes. Okay. Perfect. That I know. So can you please tell listeners what this book is about and the amazing story of how the whole thing transpired, which you wrote in the author's note. Okay. Well, the original inspiration, my inspiration, so I'm gonna start there and we'll we'll back Start up there. Yes. To hers. Okay. My my original inspiration were her drawings. When Yvonne and I first started dating and getting to know each other, you know, you know how it goes, she started reading a lot of my work and she started showing me, sharing with me a lot of her art, which is amazing. And in that batch of original art was a series of drawings in manga style that was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's The Tinderbox. So, you know, looking at the drawings, I go back, I read The Tinderbox, which is like a three page, five page, you know, fable, It's short. Fairy it's very short. Not one of his more famous ones. And it just sparked, you know, this whole idea in my head. And her drawings to me were very evocative of kind of a post apocalyptic Mad Max kind of wasteland feeling. And it went from there. And I told her it was a great idea for a movie. And she said, run with it. And I did. I basically ambushed and hijacked her idea. And kept going back to the source material because as I've said in other interviews, I mean, I've always been a fan of art that begets art. West Side Story from Romeo and Juliet, a book called Grendel by John Gardner that was, you know, the bad guy's point of view of Beowulf, which is really hard to understand. I understood Beowulf a lot more after I read Grendel, you know, and just, you know, thought, let's create this fantasy sci fi world. And it's not that sci fi jumped out at me. It's that originally we thought it would be a good movie. And Game of Thrones hadn't happened yet when we first started this process. And so I said, well, we're going make a movie and we're going to set it in this sort of otherworldly fantasy thing. Let's kind of take a nod from Star Wars and do it in the A starless galaxy Exactly. And a galaxy far, far away where we could create our own rules and then, you know, have kings and queens and princesses and soldiers and whatnot. So that was where it all started. The story is very simple. It's a soldier on a foreign planet who falls in love with a princess. It's very Romeo and Juliet in that respect. Amazing. How did you, Yvonne, how did you feel about what happened to the drawings after the beginning? Well, my original concept was not sci fi or whatever the world this is. I basically started drawing it back in the nineties because I was really into the manga comic book style. And this is before the internet was available. So you couldn't Google images or just go to the store. It wasn't readily available. I remember that time of life. I understand. Yeah. So you need to go to the comic shop and you order something from a catalog and wait six to eight weeks for them to order it. And so I decided I was going to create my own content. And I'm not a writer and I'm very familiar with fairy tales. I'm from Germany. I grew up there and a lot of Grimms and Hans Christian Andersen and all those stories that I grew up with that I took one of the lesser knowns because we know The Little Mermaid and we know all the others. I went, okay, I'm going go a little bit lesser known. And I started animating a story that was already out there in Amanda's style. And he says it's kind of post apocalyptic and it was, but it was definitely not outer space. It was earthbound, it was still witches and princesses and maybe more Game of Thrones fantasy, Earthbound, not outer space. I'm sensing a little disquire So when he took the idea and said, oh, I'm gonna write a screenplay, I basically washed my hands with it. I'm not gonna animate or draw or illustrate a screenplay. And that was pretty much do whatever you want with it. Take the story. It's kind of a it's a full story. Expand on it. Do what you gotta do. I thought I was finished with it. And now here we are. Yeah, I mean, that's just it. I mean, it took on its own. I mean, it really evolved. Kind of took over. I think people have to understand that this has been a ten year process. The father of the hero is King Raza the forty seventh. And the reason he's King Raza the forty seventh is because I was 47 when I wrote the screenplay. And so we write the screenplay, and it's fantastic. And I'm very happy with it. She's very happy with it. And then we realized this is going to be really, really expensive. And nobody is going to let me direct it and us produce it. And we probably make a little money by selling it. But it's like that wasn't really what we wanted to do. I mean, it started out as a project for the two of us. And there was always the thought to novelize it just as part of the whole world, if you will. And then Game of Thrones happens. And my manager, JB Roberts, says, well, write the novel. I mean, at the very least, you've got that. And then if you sell the rights or whatever, you've created the world. And so now and I've kept bouncing ideas off of Yvonne and checking in with her on plot and just an overall feel for it. And went about the process of actually writing the novel and creating the world in more detail. So that even if it gets bought out from under us, this is what it looks like. We've established that. I love how your manager is just like, yeah, just go ahead and write the novel as if that's not a big deal. There are thousands and millions of people. That's all they wanna do in their whole lives is seldom one novel. Yeah, it's interesting because it is. It's easier said than done. Well, took me ten years because the day job kept working out. Kept acting getting a job. Got to the point where I could do a film or a TV show and write at the same time. But it wasn't as if I could devote eight hours a day to writing like novelists who do this for a living are. And I think the reason that JB recommended that is because I've written a bunch of screenplays. I've written screenplays that haven't been produced. I've written screenplays that have been produced. But whenever I've decided to write something, it gets done eventually. So he knew that I would do it, that it wasn't a frivolous suggestion. It just took a while. And I think what's interesting is that speaking of the collaboration, I really painted her into a corner. I stole the idea. She'd wash her hands of it. And then I wrote a novel. And it's like, Okay, illustrate this. And there's all this stuff in there that wasn't her idea. It wasn't what she imagined she would be doing. This is like how we learn the meaning of compromise in a marriage, right? And communication. And communication. I think it turned out that we did compromise because I ended up going back to really old school vintage sci fi. More, you know, Flash Gordon, Barbarella, as opposed to the high-tech sci fi that we see in Blade Runner and that today. So I still took my fantasy world and kind of did a big mishmash of everything else that tried a few new things that I wasn't as comfortable with and pushed the boundaries here and there for myself. And I think we got a good mix. So, it's not necessarily sci fi what is expected, but it's not exactly earthbound like it is today either. Well, mean, that's something that I don't know. People always tell you after the fact, right? I didn't set out to write a sci fi novel. Yeah. I didn't set out to write in any category whatsoever. I wrote the story as it came to us. And now people go, well, it's sci fi. It's You. It's You. Oh, is it really? Okay, great. Wonderful. You know, my heroes, you know, are teenagers. You know, they're 19 and 17, I think, or 19 and 18. And so, yeah, I guess that makes a You because it is very much a Romeo and Juliet story. But that wasn't the point. You know, I didn't set out to fit into any particular genre. And I think ultimately what happened with Yvonne's artwork is also a hybrid, which I think is wonderful because it certainly has that feel like the original Hans Christian Andersen drawings, but also a bit of Charles Vest and a bit of the Tenille drawings from Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland. But there are those touches of not only that really cool retro steampunky kind of sci fi, but a graphic novel sensibility as well. So I think people will really and she had to draw creatures that I made up. You know? She goes, I don't draw from my turf. I don't brush my shepherds. It's I'm reading the original Alice in Wonderland to my daughter who's seven. And I was reading it and I was like, I don't know if this came across my desk, if I would even cover this. Like, it's weird. Do know mean? It's a funny story. Like, who thinks of these things? And it like, there's less rhyme or reason in that book than probably any other book in all the different ways that it goes off. And yet, it's a classic and it's amazing. And there's like, I don't know, there's just no science to writing and things just take off and then they become successful and there's like no formula, really. I mean Well, exactly. And then, well, the truth of the matter is that's like, you know, one of the biggest criticisms is your formulaic, Right. Yes, exactly. If you're going to be original and you're going to do something, then you kind of have to follow your heart. And obviously, there are certain ground rules and some fundamentals when it comes to writing. And you apply those. But you just can't compare writers. Mean, Franzen is very different than my friend Craig Johnson or my friend Chris Bogelian. Both of those guys are different from one another. Their styles are different. Chris Bogelian, his style will change depending on his subject matter, which I think is just amazing. His depth and breadth of research and the worlds that he creates is wonderful. And by the way, both of those guys were instrumental in us getting to the finish line with this book. I mean, I was doing the series Longmire when I really started writing it in earnest as a novel. And showed Craig and his wife Judy the first couple of chapters. And you know, I say, know, am I wasting my time? Is this, you know, really something that you know, not this is not for you, you know? But they really liked it and encouraged me. And then and the three of us working on a project together. And he took a look at the completed novel and literally pointed us toward an agent gave us some advice and has been a steadfast mentor in this whole process as well. So, it's been a lovely journey. And we've acquired some great friends along the way. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince. Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that just feel good the moment you put them on and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high quality essentials. Think breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk, but without the luxury markup. It's that rare balance where everything feels elevated, but still easy. Quinn says beautiful everyday pieces like 100% European linen pants, dresses, and tops with styles starting at $32. Their denim is soft and easy to wear. I wear my jean jacket all the time. And their organic cotton sweaters are perfect for layering on cool summer nights. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And it's not just clothing. Quince has really become a destination for elevated essentials across home, kitchen, bedding, and beyond, making it easy to bring a more premium feel into everyday life. In addition to my jean jacket, recently got a white tank top dress with a beautiful cotton skirt that is absolutely gorgeous, and I can't wait for it to be warm enough so I can wear it every day, but it has been a cool spring. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com/zippy for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com/zippy for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Quince.com/zibby.

[19:08]Lou Diamond Phillips: That's amazing. I love Chris, and it was so nice of him to put us in touch. He's like and I was like, how did you how did the two of you meet? And he's like, oh, we met through Twitter, like, everyone these days. And I was like, what? I thought he was gonna say we go back decades or something like that. No. No, it's one of those, know, that makes no sense. If you wrote it in a book, they go, No, no, no, no. But it's funny. I was reading Flight Attendant, I think it was. And we both do a lot of reading. We're big readers. And she'll read something and then recommend it to me and then sort of goes on to MyPile and yeah. Oh that's great. And so when he started reading it, he's like, Is this guy on Twitter? I should see if this guy's on Twitter. Well, because once again, I'm reading the flight attendant and goes, This would make a great movie. Know, I'm a little late to the party. It's already a miniseries now. But I thought, you know, because I'm always looking for something to do or to direct a writer. And so, sure enough, looked him up on Twitter. There he was. Not only was he a fan, but he's a friend of John Fusco, who wrote both the Young Guns films. John and I have stayed in touch over the years. It And was one of those two degrees of separation. And we just happened to be going to New York within a couple of weeks of contacting him. Yeah, he was here. And so we had lunch. And one thing led to another. And that's how we're working on a project. And we're actually in the process of adapting one of his novels once again for a miniseries. And he wanted to take a look at some of my writing because it was like, you know, here, can we do this together? That's so And it's wonderful. Having a mentor is so important. And it's so funny because you wouldn't think, I mean, look how like accomplished you are in your professional life. And yet you need like a person or two just to be like, yeah, you're doing okay. You know, it's so fun. But I mean, it's when you're trying something new. Yeah. No, it's true. It's 100% I don't think you can assume to be a champion at everything you try. But I mean, my whole career has been defined by Jack of all trades kind of thing. I write, I direct, I do theater, film, TV. And so I've said it many times, it's all different branches of the same artistic tree. I'm a storyteller and I'm a communicator and whatever platform or format that takes. It's just getting down the technicalities of it. Wow, yeah, which medium to choose? Like you have all these cards in your pocket, you can just deal them out. However you want to spread your We'll see how successful this is. I mean, the reception has been incredible so far. Just not only the some of the early reviews, which have been lovely. No, you're a beautiful writer. You're really good. Mean, really are. And you never know when you open a book what you're gonna get. And you're a good writer. So that's great. As you well know. I'm not A lot of people automatically saw that. First of all, they thought it was a memoir, which ain't going to happen till I'm 90. I promise you that. But it's unexpected. I don't think people thought that I was going to write something not only fictional, but that was in this world. And I was liking it to when I did the King and I on Broadway. So many people thought, Oh, the La Bamba guy is gonna thinks he can be on Broadway. Well, know, I mean, I have a degree in theater. It's my background, you know. And even though I'm not known as a writer, I've always written. I mean, I actually set out to be a narrative writer, prose writer in high school. And then, you know, the acting bug bit. This whole acting career has really just derailed what your main goals are. I can't believe how much it's gotten in the way. Well, what's interesting is that Yvonne has done so many things in her life. We met when she was a makeup artist. Yeah, I obviously didn't become a graphic artist or an illustrator. I went into hair and makeup and special effects, makeup, all that kind of stuff. Again, artistic. Did you meet on a set? Or how did you meet? Yeah. No, she gave me a haircut, got all up in my grill. Yeah. But her art, I mean, it's just a gift. I mean, it's a gift. She blows my mind to this day. I've always thought, you should be doing this. And I've also said, you know, so many ideas. I've sold so many of her ideas. And believe me, our production company, which is Fractures Day, you know, from the Jabberwocky poem, so many of the projects that we have in various stages of development are her idea. There you go. Look at that. I'm riding her coattails. And I think at this point in life, she's, you know, not having an opportunity to embrace some of the things that I think she is intended to do. I mean, she's just so gifted and so smart. Well, how amazing to have a partnership where both of you can reach your full sort of creative potential. You know, it's amazing. A lot support. There's so many I feel like this never happens the first time. I'm on my second marriage. And like I feel like my husband, Kyle, and I have the same sort of like synergy where like the more we talk, like the more ideas go flying out in different forms. And I feel like I never hear that about people with their first marriage. I mean, like, maybe there's just too much. It's your first? Okay. So sorry. Well, I'm wrong. Well, you changed the trend for me then. That's amazing. In the book, the character obviously is a soldier. Does the I know you have a military background in your family. Did that play in to the creation of this character at all? Both of us, have Both of you do? Yeah, a military background. It's interesting. A couple of things come to mind. Mean, of all, Hans Christian Andersen's short story starts with a soldier coming back from an unnamed war clip clop clip clop. And that is the imagery of the book, the first image. And the fact that it's an unnamed war and the fact that he's a soldier automatically, in my mind, put him in a certain age range. Because I think a lot of great war stories are from people who have just experienced this, are still in the process of defining their own manhood, if you will. And I did a movie called Courage Under Fire with Denzel Washington and Meg Ryan, directed by the amazing Ed Zwick. And this was after he had done Glory. I asked him one day, I said, why do you keep doing war stories? And he goes, well, first of all, the bang bang's exciting. There's the big explosion, effects in the hardware and whatever else. But he's a very well read man, a very smart man. And when you think about it, you go back to even Aristotle who set a lot of things against war. Shakespeare set a lot of things against war. Conflict. Exactly. Because you have this conflict, you also have a setting in which you can discuss the more, I don't know, grand aspects of human character, of courage, of nobility, of integrity, of bravery, of all of these things in what is truly a life and death scenario. And Hans' story is a fairy tale and it needs a certain tale. There's some magic involved and some just outlandish fantastical adventures. But as a novel to me or even as the film, I mean, it had to be grounded in a real sense of humanity. It's like, why are we doing this? What are we talking about? And from all of that came the idea of creating this planet that's split in two. We have two different races of people who are fighting one another. It's sweet because Craig Johnson said, it was rather prescient, which I didn't think at the time. But here we are still again discussing race, discussing peace, discussing where we're at in this incredibly unsettled world. And though it's not meant to be a message piece, there is still very much, I think, a morality tale at its spine. The once and future king, King Arthur is really an anti war statement. So so, you know, having read, you know, my entire life, I thought, you know, I I can't I can't set off on this journey and just do a frugal story. There's gotta be something a little bit more to it. So is it going to be a movie after all that now that you've backed into it? Do you have any idea? Yeah. We don't know yet. It's for sale if anybody's got a $100,000,000 laying around. And what's interesting is that in the time it's taken to write the novel, that world has changed. What used to be a one off, now could easily be a miniseries, a limited series of sorts. I mean, I don't know how many books Game of Thrones totally was based upon. But there is it has created a world. And interestingly enough, I mean, a lot of the people who have reviewed it early on said that they so loved this world that they would revisit it. She came up with the idea for the sequel. So I'm working on that. Nice. Oh, are you writing a sequel? Oh, yeah. Yeah, already working on it. And literally bouncing it off of her daily. Come on, you're the mastermind of the whole thing. She is the mastermind. We had a certain idea and was toying around with that for almost a year. And then one day, she came up with a different idea that was out of left field. And I literally went, well, that's it. That's it, because it's unexpected. And once again, it's about something. And it's about something that's relevant. So working on that now, and just very, very excited This time, not trying not to get back into a corner with the drawings as much. We're already there. We're there already. Yeah. I would recommend approaching this a little differently perhaps. Butting heads a couple of times. Last question. Do you have any advice? I was going to say to aspiring authors, but really anyone trying to achieve things in this creative way and to be storytellers. For me, it starts with creating your own content. You want to do something, do it. Whether it's for whether you're trying to sell it, do it for yourself first. And somehow put it out there in the universe and something will happen even if it's many, many, many years later. Well, I mean, that's the point. That would go toward what I have to say. And I've said this to young actors. And that's never quit. Will never get an opportunity if you quit. Keep doing it, yeah. You never know what heights you're going to rise to. I mean, when I said I just wanted to be a working actor. I was actually a very good student in high school and whatnot. And when I decided to major in theater, a lot of my teachers, my counselors, Oh no, what are you going to fall back on? And my standard answer was My ass. So it's, first of all, you have to love it. You have to have a dream. But then the thing that so many people and I hate to say it so many people who have this overnight success American Idol mentality, it takes work. Writing especially, you got to do it. You cannot say, well, I want to be an mean, our 12 year old right now wants to be an author. We love that. It's like, well, are you writing? Are you doing it? And so some of it is just brass tacks. I mean, it literally is elbow grease. And you have to put in the work. And even if you have a dream as an actor or an artist, I mean, or a dancer or you have to put in the work. It's a craft. It's an art. You may be talented. God bless you if you are. But if you don't have discipline and you don't have commitment, then nothing's ever going to come from it. There are certain people who get a break because they are talented or they're beautiful or whatever. But if they have no staying power, if they have no commitment to the art, they tend to go away because I mean, especially in today's world, the cycle is so fast that you only flavor the month for a month. That's how it works. A month is a long time these days. A month is a long time these days in a 24 news cycle just like we've done in this last week. The thing about it is that I've done this for so long as an actor and I've never given up the writings because I love them both. And so it literally is just physically, actively going after your dream. I love it. Well, thank you both for coming on. Moms don't have time to and read chatting. Tell me again, you want me to FedEx it, I'll run down to the store. No. You you read it. You hold on to it and we'll make a personal calls. Know? Okay. Alright. Feel. Okay. Good. Alright. Have a great day. You too. Okay. Bye bye. Thanks. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also, sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.