Flashback: Maxim Jakubowski - Interview/ Guest Blog

MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI is a writer, publisher and former owner of the world-famous Murder One bookshop in London’s Charring Cross Road.

As well as being a writer and editor of various cult publishing imprints, he is acknowledged as a disturbing and controversial voice in contemporary fiction.

Maxim's collections have sold massively, he is a regular on TV and radio where he is an expert on crime, erotica and film, and a Guardian columnist.

He launched a new crime fiction imprint, maXcrime, for John Blake Publishing in March.

PDB) When and how did you get involved in publishing?

Maxim) I always wanted to be in publishing, but having been educated overseas, somehow didn't have the right background once back in the UK where publishing was still, in those days, very traditional and reliant on Oxbridge intake. So, as I had languages, I spent some years in business, principally on the export side, whilst following a writing career in parallel.

This gave me enough insights into the publishing trade and, as I used to write also for NME (albeit on books) allowed me to mingle in music circles and one day meet Richard Branson and he gave me carte blanche to set up Virgin Books, which I ran for several years, my first full-time publishing job.

PDB) I first heard your name in connection with Science Fiction Monthly. Were those halcyon days?

Maxim) I'd already edited several science fiction anthologies in France and contributed a lot to French SF magazines FICTION and SATELLITE when I was still living there, and was a contributor to NEW WORLDS with Mike Moorcock, a friend of longstanding since our teens, with stories and non fiction. I was commissioned to edit an anthology of modern French SF for New English Library and alongside began to review and write for SF Monthly which had the same publisher.

PDB) You once wrote a story about killing Tony Blair. What reaction did you get to that story?

Maxim)Sad to say, virtually non-existent. The story was a bit of a joke, as the character was intent on killing Cherie, because her vacuous and insincere smile annoyed him and Tony was not actually the target, but I thought it would also attract some interesting publicity. Only TIME OUT picked up on it, with a short echo (but then I was their crime reviewer at the time!).

PDB) There's a lot of doom and gloom being spoken about the state of the publishing industry. What are your thoughts?

Maxim) Ever since I've been involved in publishing, the trade has reputedly been sick but I do feel that right now things are somehow getting worse, with independents and chains in peril, and the gathering strength of online activity (Amazon, Google) which could have a significant negative impact on the future of publishing and the livelihood of authors. Very worrying.

PDB) Can you gives us a bit of information about MaxCrime?

Maxim) The list, which I am doing for John Blake, launches in March with the first novel to be published in the UK by bestselling Australian crime author Tara Moss and the first novel by my friend, the film director Mike Hodges, following those we will be issuing new novels by Mark Timlin, Kris Rusch, horror writer Conrad William

Kray widow Kate Kray, Donna Moore and Italian star Barbara Baraldi. It's a commercial crime fiction list aimed at the mass marker and covering the whole spectrum of the genre from noir to humorous, from historical to everyman in peril, etc.... Fingers crossed. Courmayeur’s Noir in Fest Festival - The genesis by Maxim Jakubowski Festivals in Europe are big business. Unlike conventions in the English-speaking world, European festivals are usually organised with the assistance of much in the way of subsidies, public and private funding, to the extent that the competition between cities and organisers is savage and that festivals almost take on a political nature. Versailles has an event devoted to films about aviation, Spoleto features opera, Pordenone silent films, Saint Malo has travel writing, etc... and woe is the town or city that does not feature an artistic festival of some sort on its calendar. At last count, there are almost 2000 art festivals in Europe alone every year, with subjects ranging from the popular to the most arcane. And crime fiction has its share: Gijon in Spain, Cognac, Lyon, Frontignan, and a much-lamented event in Grenoble and many others in France, Mantova, Trevi and Brescia in Italy. But one of the most important ones is Courmayeur’s Noir in Fest, which takes place every December in the trendy ski resort at the bottom of Mont Blanc on the Italian side of the tunnel under the mountains. Where all these festivals differ strongly from the Anglosaxon model is that they mostly organised by professionals rather than fans, although access is free to the general public and no costly registration is involved. Balancing the budget is not the organiser’s main aim, and as long as the event generates enough press and media, both regional and national, the funders appear to be satisfied as do the hosting cities and towns. I was invited in the early 1980s to Cattolica on the Italian Adriatic when the festival was still called Mystfest (and still continues to this day under that moniker, although with a different emphasis) when the year’s event was focused on Jim Thompson. I had earlier as a publisher revived Thompson in the UK in my short-lived Black Box Thriller imprint (alongside David Goodis, Horace McCoy, Cornell Woolrich, Anthony Boucher, Fredric Brown, W.R. Burnett, Marc Behm and others). This was a whole year before my buddy Barry Gifford also picked up on Thompson and some of my other rediscoveries with his Black Lizard list) and Stephen Frears was in the process of filming THE GRIFTERS from Don Westlake’s script, and was asked to speak about him. I wrote a piece on Thompson and his legacy for the festival’s programme book and also managed to bring along some rushes of the movie which was still being edited as a preview. The festival offered both film and literary events and allowed me to meet a number of Italian and French attending writers and critics, as well as Roger L. Simon, Stuart Kaminsky, Julian Semyonov and other mystery writers who had also been invited,. Lasting friendships were made amongst a most convivial atmosphere of sea, sun, Italian food and wine and culture. During the course of the following year Elisa Resegotti, who then organised the festival’s literary events, and her colleague Marina Fabbri would occasionally call me back in London asking for addresses and phone numbers of US and British authors or filmmakers they wanted to contact, as well as for advice and recommendations about future guests and possible movies they could screen. A year almost went by when I had another telephone call, which ended with a friendly “See you in 2 weeks, then”. My reaction was “Are you inviting me back?” After all, the festival (and most European events likewise) was in the habit of paying for guest’s fares (and their companion), and also paid for our hotels and meals, so this was a wonderful freebie to say the least. “Of course” was the answer and I was informed that I could pick up my ticket at the Alitalia offices on Regent Street. There was no need to ask me twice! On arrival at that year’s festival, I picked up the complimentary copy of the lavish festival souvenir book cum programme in my hotel room, and lo and behold I was now listed as one of the festival’s official overseas advisers. To cut a long story short, I’ve been attending the festival every year since for the last 21 years and it is always one of the highlights of my criminal and personal year. The initial directors of the festival were two major Italian film critics, Giorgio Gosetti and Irene Bignardi. Following my second year of attendance (other guests included James Ellroy, Derek Raymond, Agatha Christie’s grandson Mathew Prichard and J.G. Ballard amongst others), the organisers had a fallout with the city and transferred the festival to the Mediterranean resort of Viareggio, with Bignardi moving on to take over the Venice film festival (and later Locarno) and Giorgio promoting Marina to co-director. The two years in Viareggio were splendid, with guests including Krizstof Kieszlowski, Nicolas Roeg, Quentin Tarantino, Frederick Forsyth, Robert Bloch and many others, and the entertainment budget on the extreme side of munificence what with all guests being given passes to the best restaurants in town and as much time spent at bars and meals as at specific film and lit events. It was therefore no surprise that after 2 years in Viareggio, we heard that a handful of town notables responible for the funding had ended up in jail for corruption and the festival no longer the recipient of such generosity had to decamp. After some nervous months, Giorgio and Marina soon informed us they had come to an agreement with the town of Courmayeur in the Valle d’Aosta to move the festival to the mountains, and from June to December. In 2010 we will be celebrating twenty years in Courmayeur and what an adventure it has been.   TWO DECADES OF NOIR IN FEST by Maxim Jakubowski The Noir in Fest film and literary festival moved to the mountain ski resort of Courmayeur, in the Valle d’Aosta in December 1993. A small and wonderfully picturesque town at the foot of Mont Blanc, and just a few miles away from the Mont Blanc Tunnel which connects it to France, Courmayeur already had minor film connections as it was where Errol Flynn had begun filming his ill-fated version of William Tell with the great cinematographer Jack Cardiff before money ran out and the film crew had to do a runner (leaving canisters of rushes behind which the festival dug up some 70 years later and screened in the presence of Flynn’s widow); mountain scenes from a James Bond Italian rip-off movie starring Sean’s brother Neil Connery were also shot there in the 1960s, which gave the festival the excuse to screen the film, alongside other Italian spy spoofs of the same period, in 2008 with Neil present, and a most entertaining presence he was too (he retired from the film world early and is now a happily-retired Edinburgh property developer quite untainted by the family stardom.) The festival usually takes place a week or so before the actual ski season begins so the festival-goers and attendant delegates, guests and press are usually divided between a half dozen hotels and much socialising takes place throughout and often well into the night at the many cafes and hotel bars of the town. The formal part of the festival usually presents 10 or so brand new films from all over the world in competition, with added retrospective streams, shorts, children’s events and a slew of panels involving filmmakers and up to 12 or so writers, both local and foreign, presenting their latest books to have appeared in Italy. In addition, every year the festival presents the Raymond Chandler Award for life achievement to a writer present (although on a couple of occasions it has gone to a film person like Quentin Tarantino and actor Farley Granger). Past recipients have included Graham Greene, JG Ballard, Frederick Forsyth, PD James, Scott Turow, Robert Bloch, George Pelecanos, James Crumley, Ian Rankin, John Grisham, Spanish authors Alicia Gimenez Bartlett and Manuel Vasquez Montalban. Uruguayan Osvaldo Soriano, John Le Carre, Elmore Leonard, etc... The award is an actual Brasher Doubloon, a small but significant gold coin. The festival also hosts the awards for best Italian unpublished and published novels of the year, respectively the Alberto Tedeschi and Scerbanenco prizes. I was one year asked to be part of the film jury and was imprudently late for breakfast on the second morning, only to find out that my fellow judges had elected/nominated me as Jury President. On another occasion, as one of the few Brits present, I was invited on stage (on live Italian TV to boot) to accept the best actor award on behalf of Jeremy Irons, to sighs of heavy disappointment in the audience when they realised Irons had not made the journey and most were wondering who I was! By the way Jeremy, the award, a lovely silver sculpture, is still now in a box in my side room waiting for you to pick it up after a dozen attempts to get you on a London film stage have failed! So I am now part of an exclusive past jury festival president’s club, including recent veterans like James Sallis, Peter James, Dario Argento and others! There have been significant and lasting friendships made in the Courmayeur events and bars over the years, and the creme de la creme of international crime fiction have all made their way through Courmayeur’s narrow streets and, often, snow. Some years, things click better than others, but there have been memorable moments to say the least: Stella Duffy arm-wrestling with James Crumley, Val Kilmer and Richard Price behaving like spoilt brats, Peter Weller of ROBOCOP fame (but who also directed an Elmore Leonard film adaptation) raiding the Royal e Golf Hotel wine cellar and treating all writers present to expensive wines evening after evening, Mark Timlin returning from the bar so knackered that he took a shower fully dressed to sober up and woke the next morning six hours later still under the shower and with his room flooded, Don Winslow proving he is the funniest man in crime writing (not quite the image one expects from his somewhat dramatic books), Walter Mosley going shoeless and proudly displaying the holes in his socks, the late actress (and Wim Wenders muse) Solveig Dommartin outrageously flirting with every man present while passing through on her own honeymoon, Swedish author Asa Larsson giving an interview on a raised stage and realising too late she had been liberally displaying her knickers to the whole audience and finding the whole thing a delightful hoot, John Grisham giving his Chandler acceptance speech in Italian and revealing later that he had been rehearsing the 15 line opus for 3 months on end with his (Italian) barber, a trip to the top of Mont Blanc when my mobile phone rang just as we were exiting onto the viewing platform at the highest part of Europe simultaneously with Arnaldur Indridason’s phone, as we were both on the same network which was welcoming us into French airspace... Of such small Over the years, the festival has migrated from an old, crumbling cinema to temporary accommodation in a sports arena down in the valley below and for the last couple of years to a brand new cinema complex with all technical mod cons built specially for the festival, next to the Congress Centre where many of the debates take place. In addition, after the Royal salon the majority of the literary events have moved to the Jardin de l’Ange, a purpose-built Alpine wooden structure with an unbeatable view on the mountain peaks. And my expanding waistline is a side tribute to the quality of the food in the local restaurants! This year’s festival took place between the 7th and 13th December and proved to be one of the more convivial ones, thanks to guests like James Sallis, New Zealand actress Melanie Lynskey (HEAVENLY CREATURES, UP IN THE AIR), my colleague in crime Adrian Wootton, Jonathan Rabb, Matt Haig, Tarquin Hall, Italian authors Simona Vinci, Andrea Pinketts and Gianni Canova, German writers Sebastian Fitzek and Zoran Drvenkar, Jonathan Trigell, Spaniard Juan Madrid and of course, this year’s winner of the Raymond Chandler Award, the avuncular Cuban author Leonardo Padura, whose British publisher from Bitter Lemon Press flew over to celebrate with. Best film was given to Hong Kong director Johnny To for VENGEANCE; the jury’s special prize was awarded to BLACK DYNAMITE, a delightful parody and homage to 1960s blaxploitation movies directed by Scott Sanders written by and starring Michael Jai White, both of whom were present throughout the festival. There was an audience award for Daniel Barber’s HARRY BROWN, starring Michael Caine, and acting awards were shared between Serb director Emir Kusturica for his first film as an actor in L’AFFAIRE FAREWELL and the petite, but fierce and scary French actress Florence Loiret-Caille for her role as a semi-incestuous sister in LA DAME DE TREFLE. Florence and I shared a car back to Geneva airport at the end of the festival and in the flesh she is as shy and kind as she is possessed and demented in the movie. Ah, acting! So, if you happen to be in Europe around Courmayeur festival time, I urge you to give it a go. The setting is divine, the event is a must, and entrance to all films and literary events is totally free, so certainly something to consider. See you there in 2010 for the festival’s 20th anniversary? Maxim Jakubowski BIOGRAPHY MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI ( his Wikipedia entry is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxim_Jakubowski ) is a publisher - MaxCrime -and former owner of the world-famous Murder One bookshop in London’s Charing Cross Road. As well as being a writer and editor of various cult publishing imprints, he is acknowledged as a disturbing and controversial voice in contemporary fiction. His collections have sold massively, he is a regular on TV and radio where he is an expert on crime, erotica and film, and a Guardian columnist. He is literary director of the prestigious CRIME SCENE festival held at London’s NFT in July.   PRAISE FOR MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI “An unholy mixture of Jim Thompson and American Psycho” – Time Out “It memorably evokes the ghosts of Cain and Hammett and delivers some of the scariest writing since American Psycho” – City Life (UK) “The hard sexy edge of Henry Miller and the redeeming grief of Jack Kerouac.” – Mystery Scene “Proudly pornographic… the most comprehensive rendering of S&M variations ever to make it in to mainstream fiction” – The Literary Review    Books by Maxim Jakubowski Life in the World of Women (1997) It's You That I Want To Kiss (1998) Because I Thought I Loved You (1999) The State of Montana (2000) On Tenderness Express (2001) Kiss Me Sadly (2002) Confessions of a Romantic Pornographer (2004)