PASADENA, Calif. _ Anyone who knew him would predict that writer Neil Cross would come to a bad end. After all, he was kicked out of school at 15. The same week he was "invited by extreme prejudice to leave home," he recalls.
That landed him on the streets and on the government dole. The heroic characters the British Cross writes about would've tugged on their bootstraps and risen above the circumstances. Not Cross.
He remained on the dole for seven years drifting. "Just making use of libraries and reading and writing. I lived in horrible bed-sits so the government paid my rent and a little bit of dole money, not very much because I was very young," he says. "It was hand-to-mouth but I was young so that was OK. I don't come out of this story very well," he admits.
"It was the end of the Thatcher years and they made it very, very difficult to continue on the dole. I thought, 'What can I do?' I was yet to discover a work ethic or any real ambition, or anything like that."
Cross, 49, who's most famous for creating "Luther," about the unconventional cop who's been featured in four TV series (and soon to be a fifth), wrote his first novel when he was 7. "All I've ever wanted to do was write, the only thing I've ever been interested in ... My other talent was being an adolescent. I was a great adolescent. I was never violent, never unpleasant, but I was unruly. I don't like being told what to do. I still don't like being told what to do. I detest discourtesy, and so many teachers were discourteous, they had no respect for those they were teaching, so I left school."
Left to his own devices, he had no idea how to become a writer. "I'd never been to London. I didn't quite know what one did to be a writer. Of course, you tell your friends you're going to be a writer. So I was faced with this choice. I thought, 'What can I do that involves me not working for a few more years?' I thought, 'I know, I'll go to university.' So I went really as a bit of a dodge. But I loved it."
He was 22 when he started college, where he majored in English and theology. "I went into theology as a kind of young man's punk-rock sneer. I went in the sense of 'know your enemy.' I wanted to know how these people think and what they believe, and, of course, I met the most affable, lovely, devoted people. And though it didn't change my mind about belief, per se, it changed my mind about believers _ some of the best people I met."
Following graduation with a master's degree, Cross found himself at a publishing house. "I ended up as the oldest and surliest graduate trainee at a trade publishing house. I went for the interview, and they said, 'What department would you like to work in?' I didn't know how publishing works, so I said, 'You can put me anywhere you want, just don't put me in the sales department.' So they put me in the sales department. I was there five years and actually published my first novel while I was there. I was able to see how it worked."
While his first novel, "Mr. In-Between," clicked, his second, "Christendom," flopped big-time. It was his wife, Nadya (whom he met at the publishing house), who suggested he quit to write full time. "I began to be reasonably senior at this company, and we had kids and a mortgage and debt service and my wife said to me one day, 'When are you going to write that book?' I said, 'I don't know if I've got another book in me. I'm busy, we've got kids, debts.' I was working long hours and so was she.
"And she said, 'Right, you might not feel like it today, but if you're not careful you're going to turn around when you're 50 and say, "I USED to be a writer." And it's going to break your heart. So you have to leave.' So I left."
Cross not only left the job. He left the country. He and Nadya and their two sons, 17 and 15, live in Nadya's native New Zealand. He loves it there, saying it's the perfect place to write. "'Luther' was mostly written with a house full of 6-year-old kids screaming around me. So I can write anywhere. Noise or chaos, none of that bothers me," he says.
When Cross first conjured up the volatile "Luther" character, he says he had no clue how to write it. "I can't write mysteries, I've never written mysteries. I don't know how you structure them. But I like crime fiction. I like crime stories. So how do you write a crime story without the mystery? So I stole the format from 'Columbo.' I stole it from 'Columbo' lock, stock and barrel. You know they're guilty. but how to catch them?"
His latest TV series, "Hard Sun," premiering Wednesday on Hulu, takes off from there. The six-part series is about two ill-matched cops who find themselves dealing with not only criminals, but a world that's running out of time. "They are not Mulder and Scully," says Cross.
"This show is a kind of mix of all kinds of genres. There's a crime show in there and a couple mysteries. I'm learning how to structure mysteries as I go on. So there's a crime element, a big, scary, urban, gothic, frightening crime. There's also a 1970s style conspiracy thriller in there, a bit of science fiction."
TV PRODUCER JUMPS SHIP
Producer Ryan Murphy, who's done so much for FX with shows like the anthology "American Crime Story," "American Horror Story," "Nip/Tuck," will be biting the hand that feeds him come July when he throws his hat into Netflix's ring. Murphy has signed a multi-year deal to produce series and films exclusively for Netflix. "I am a gay kid from Indiana who moved to Hollywood in 1989 with $55 dollars in savings in my pocket, so the fact that my dreams have crystallized and come true in such a major way is emotional and overwhelming to me,' he says. He'll continue his work with FX on his existing shows.
TV SERIES PATTERNED AFTER PATTERSON
James Patterson's book "Instinct" has been transformed into a TV series for CBS premiering Sunday. Did they religiously follow the book? Sort of, says writer/executive producer Michael Rauch. "There are parts of the book that are, incredibly, exactly the same. One of the things that James Patterson said when the whole deal worked out was, 'Use as much of the book as you want, or use as little of the book as you want,' which was incredibly liberating to me to not feel like here's this the largest selling author in the history of the world, and feeling like I had to be true to every word. So a lot of what the setup is was in the original book. And then I took certain character relationships and went in a different way, both based on my experience as a writer and also with the hope of longevity for the series. And also, the book was about 350 pages. I had a 50-page script. So it was really getting rid of the stuff that I thought would possibly take away from the strength of a pilot."
PBS COMMEMORATES 'MISTER ROGERS'
PBS is celebrating the 50th anniversary of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" with a special, "Mister Rogers: It's You I Like," airing on many PBS stations Tuesday. (Check local listings.) David Newell, who played the delivery man on the show, Mr. McFeely, recalls Fred Rogers. "He saw himself as a communicator and not a teacher. In fact, there's a story I'll tell you about that how he communicated. He once was at a child-care center observing children as part of his education. And they had a tradition of parents coming in and showing the children each week what they did for a living, the parents. And one father came in who was a sculptor, and he brought this clay and then put it right down in front of the children and just started to make projects _ not telling children what to do but just doing it with such love and passion.
"And Fred always said he sort of modeled what he did from that. He said that attitudes are caught, not taught. And I think that's what Fred did on the program. He would show children places and topics and let them catch it. He never sort of spelled it out ... But that was very unique, I thought. And he was the real thing, I can tell you that. It came from inside. There was a true passion, and we were all glad to be part of that passion."
