An idea percolated in writer Anthony Horowitz's brain for 10 years before anything came of it. But what came of it changed his life. Horowitz is the author of such works as "Foyle's War," "The Power of Five," "The House of Silk" and the uber-popular "Alex Rider" series.
"Growing up, books by Ian Fleming and the Bond films were a HUGE source of happiness for me," recalls the British Horowitz.
"I can remember waiting and waiting for December when the movie would be released. I'd be the first in the queue standing in the rain to see the latest James Bond movie ... Everything that was missing from my life was in the Bond movies."
Roger Moore served as his bonded Bond.
"He was a great Bond, but he hung around for a very long time, and he was 57 years old when he played James Bond for the last time. I saw that movie, and I still remember sitting in the movie theater and thinking to myself, 'Why can't Bond be a teenager?' And that was the light bulb moment that changed my life."
The glow of that light radiated Horowitz's "Alex Rider" franchise, which has been turned into an eight-part TV series streaming Friday on IMDb TV.
"I didn't write that until 2000, but that was the inspiration for it," he recalls. "Of course I have to say, as soon as I began to create 'Alex Rider' my first instinct and my first job was to make sure that he was nothing like Bond, to make him completely different."
Writing has proved an obsession for Horowitz that began when he was 10 years old.
"I was a very unhappy child," he confesses. "I had very wealthy parents and I was very privileged. I wish I could be thankful for that, but nonetheless they sent me to a private school when I was 8 years old, and I was extremely unhappy there because if you were in an English boarding school back in the 1960s, you had to be one of two things: very clever or very athletic. And I was neither. I was an oversized child. I wasn't very bright. I wasn't doing well in class. And I didn't have many friends."
Two events changed things for him.
"The first was my discovery of the library. The school had a library, and that was my place of refuge and books became an escape for me — just reading adventure stories and absorbing them and living them. And at the same time, I discovered the ability to tell stories. So in the dormitory at night I would tell stories to the other kids. And suddenly I was popular because they enjoyed my stories. That was a transformative moment in my life. I was 10 years old. And I knew I was going to be writer. And there was no Plan B."
At first Plan A didn't go so well.
"I worked as a waiter at a cafe. I've been a postman, worked in advertising, I worked in an abattoir. I spent six months as a cowboy running cattle in Australia when I was 18. I've worked in shops, hotels, I've done plenty of jobs. I mean, I was in advertising for most of my proper 'career.' The others were student jobs. But I've had to support myself until my books took off and I was able to support myself by writing."
He lived in Paris for a year while still a teenager and traveled to India when he was 18.
"I arrived at the Calcutta station in India and I threw an ice cream that I'd bought into the dustbin. I'd bought an ice cream, I was really hungry and took one bite and I threw it into the bin.
"I think 10, 11, 12 children crowded in on that bin and began to punch each other out to try and get the ice cream. It was my first understanding of poverty, of child poverty, also my first understanding of the casual way of we in the West will throw away food without thinking to ourselves that it has consequences."
Horowitz, who still writes his first draft with pen and paper, advises would-be writers not to fear failure.
"I think all writers are fearful. I think it's the fear of being found out," he says.
"Every writer I know has said this: You worry that people are going to wake up to the fact that you're not that good. I'll write a book, and as I'm writing it I'm convinced it's the greatest book anybody has ever written — the greatest murder mystery, the greatest kids' book, the greatest thriller — whatever it is. Then I'm finished and the manuscript's on my desk and I think, 'Oh, my God, this is a terrible book and everybody's going to know it. And my career's over.'"
Horowitz has been married for 32 years to Jill Green, a producer on his TV projects. They have two sons.
His father died when Anthony was 22, but he's still haunted by the death of his mother.
"That was when I became an orphan. I was 30 or 32, but she was young and she died of cancer, and it was very painful. And she'd been a big supporter for me and I realized I was on my own," he says.
"I realized I have a wonderful wife, I have a fantastic family and they support me in every way, but I still to this day when something exciting happens, the first thing I want to do is to tell my mother."
While he's written more than 40 books, Horowitz's thirst remains unquenched.
"I can't complain about my sales and my profile, but I think I'm an arsonist," he says.
"I think that the writer and the arsonist have a lot in common. If you ask an arsonist what his dream is, in the beginning it's to light a match. Then it's to set fire to a newspaper. Then it's to set fire to a house. But an arsonist is only really happy when he or she has set fire to the whole world and every city is burning and, like Nero, they can watch the flames and play on their fiddles. I'm an arsonist. I want to set fire on the world."
TEENAGE CRUSH GOES BALLISTIC
Most everyone has experienced a teenage crush on some teacher. But FX on Hulu takes it one step further with "A Teacher," which begins streaming Tuesday. This is the tale of the affair between a female teacher and her male student. According to the series creator, Hannah Fidell, it's about more than hypertonic hormones.
"I was really interested in exploring consent and manipulation and victimhood and what that means in a narrative that I think that our culture is fairly obsessed with, if you look at all of the tabloid headlines and clickbait on the internet about female teachers having affairs with their students," she says.
"But what I was really curious about was, what happens after? What are the consequences for, especially the student, but for both of them? Do they both have to live with a scarlet letter for the rest of their lives? And how does victimhood present itself differently for a male victim as opposed to a female victim? So it's just such rich territory that there's seemingly an endless amount to explore."
TCM HONORS VETERANS' DAY
Turner Classic Movies will celebrate Veterans' Day with some of Hollywood's most enduring war movies, including "Sergeant York," starring Gary Cooper in an Academy Award performance, "Where Eagles Dare," with Clint Eastwood, "The Best Years of Our Lives" (which earned seven Academy Awards) and "From Here to Eternity." That film turned out to be a turning point for actor Ernest Borgnine, who played the villain of the piece, Fatso Judson.
Just before he died, Borgnine told me about how the role arrived just in time as he had been unemployed for some time.
"I'd read this book called 'From Here to Eternity,'" he recalled. "I thought Fatso was a character I could play with all my might. I was talking to my friend, Bart Burns, about going to the post office to see if I could get a job delivering Christmas mail. The phone rang. It was the casting director and he said, 'Listen, how soon can you come out here to L.A.? We got a part here for you in 'From Here to Eternity' and the part is Fatso Judson.' I couldn't believe my ears. After I did 'From Here to Eternity' I said to my wife, 'I can't afford to fly back and forth (from New York to L.A.).' So we moved and rented a home out here."
Two years later Borgnine won the Academy Award for his performance as the shy butcher in "Marty," which was filmed in New York.
DEBBIE ALLEN DIRECTS PARTON'S SPECIAL
"Dolly Parton's Christmas on the Square" arrives on Netflix Nov. 22 with an uplifting tale about a woman who returns to her hometown determined to evict her dwellers and sell out to a mall developer.
The show will feature 14 new songs by Parton and is directed and choreographed by the Emmy winning Debbie Allen. Allen is the author of two children's books, starred in "Sweet Charity" and "West Side Story" on the stage, produced and directed "A Different World," was a producer on "Amistad" and has directed series like "Family Ties," "Quantum Leap" and "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air." For five years she served as choreographer on the Academy Awards telecast.
"I'm a woman who is persistent," she acknowledges. "I'm a woman who is a child of the '50s and '60s where segregation was a way of life. I've grown up being told, 'No, you can't go to the movies or the restaurants or the dance class.' And I feel I've persevered and found my art. I learned early on that no doesn't really mean no. It just means find another way."
