Authors@Google: Seth Grahame-Smith

>>Julie Wiskirken: Greetings everybody I'm Julia Wiskirken from the authors at Google
team in Los Angeles and today we're very excited to welcome Seth Grahame-Smith. Seth had visited
us once before about three years ago when things were just starting to take off for
him with the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and since then it's been a whirlwind of activity
and he was the co-creator, executive producer of the MTV series the Hard Times of RJ Berger.
He wrote the New York Times best seller Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter and he adapted it for
the screen it's coming out this summer. And he also wrote the screen play for Tim Burton's
Dark Shadows which is coming out in a few weeks. So and to end besides all that he has
another new book which is Unholy Night which just came out yesterday and he is here to
talk to us about it today. So let's welcome Seth.
[applause] >>Seth Grahame-Smith: Thanks Julie. Thanks
everybody for taking time out of lunch to come and hang out. I'm excited to be here
I had a great time last time I was at Google. Let me open with some pandering I guess. What
I do in books would be impossible without you guys. And we were just talking about this
a minute ago. But the type of books that I write are research intensive and I know that
sounds crazy because on the surface they're absurd and Abraham Lincoln did not actually
fight vampires as far as I know and the three wise men were not so far as I know swash buckling
marauders. But I like to weave in as much fact into my fiction as I possibly can and
in order to do that I need to do quite a bit of research and fifteen years ago I would've
God forbid actually had to go to a brick and mortar library and not just any library but
a research library specific to the topic I was trying to research. If I was doing Unholy
Night who knows I might have had to go to Jerusalem and combed through some old New
Testament Apocrypha and find out what I was writing about or if I was writing Lincoln
I would have to go to Springfield and comb through the archives at the Lincoln Museum
and Library. Now I can do it all from home. And there is a danger to that because you
have to not only go online and research things but you have to be careful about which sites
you trust and which you don't you have to get multiple sources you actually have to
do some legwork but thanks to you guys and what goes on at Google and it's just I don't
know it's just completely changed my world personally as an author. So it's just, it's
interesting to be here and talk to you guys. I typically like to do a Q and A more than
a lecture because I don't really like the sound of myself lecturing at you and you guys
have better things to do than sit here and listen. But I will tell you a little bit about
how this particular book came to be. Now last time I was here at Goggle I had just written
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and it was the sorta the beginning of the book getting
some notoriety. As a result to that I came to see you guys, I went on a book tour all
over the country and no matter where I went every book store, this is back three years
ago when there was such a thing as book stores I don't know if you guys remember-
[chuckles] >>Seth Grahame-Smith: You use to actually
physically go and buy books at brick and mortar stores. No matter what store I would go into
anywhere in the country this is 2009 so it was the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's
birth and it was also the absolute pinnacle the height of the Twilight phenomena in literature.
This is like just as the movies were starting to come out. So no matter where I was I would
see two tables in the front of every book store. There'd be the Twilight, True Blood
table right here and then there'd be the Abraham Lincoln biography table. And so I had made
this cynical observation, "boy if you could combine those two things you know,
[laughter] >>Seth Grahame-Smith: that would be a license
to print money right there [laughter]
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: that's what that would be. And so this cynical observation led me
as it always does into a real research mode. So I got on my browser--Chrome pandering.
[laughter] >>Seth Grahame-Smith: And low and behold I
fell in love with the actual life story of Abraham Lincoln which I didn't at that point
know that much about I knew, five dollar bill, honest, axe, top hat okay just the things
we always that are in our DNA from the time we're elementary school kids. If you grow
up in the United States that's the four things you know about Lincoln. What I didn't know
is that his story was a super hero origin story and I'm not talking about the one that
I wrote I'm talking about the real one. He is a guy with absolutely no education no money
no family connections he's awkward and gangly he looks funny, he can't read and his mom
mysteriously dies when he's nine years old and then that sets off a chain of events where
tragedy upon tragedy upon tragedy, there's not a two year period in Lincoln's life after
he's nine years old that he doesn't, some great tragedy befalls him and he has to pull
himself up by his boot straps get over his suicidal tendencies, his melancholy, his famous
depression and just go on and so I became fascinated with it and fascinated with how
that guy became arguably the greatest American possibly and certainly if not the greatest
one of the greatest American presidents. Where did he get that strength? Where did he put
the country on his shoulders and pull back together etcetera. So once I realized that
this was a superhero origin story it's like alright well now I know a way to make it work
with the vampires where it's not just going to be, a weird sort of conversion of all these
facts and fictions so Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter low and behold, it was gonna be scrutinized
because it was the first thing I was doing after Pride and Prejudice and low and behold
it worked and book came out did very well all of a sudden I got a call from Tim Burton,
"hey do you wanna make a movie?" and I said, "great, I think I can fit that into my schedule."
[chuckles] >>Seth Grahame-Smith: So I wrote the screen
play for, and then, Tim was the producer on that and then after I wrote the screen play
for Lincoln he said, "Hey I really like the screen play do you wanna write Dark Shadows?"
I said, "I think I can fit that in." [chuckles]
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: And in the meantime so before, I knew, before my head had stopped
spinning literally like the last time I was in the old Google building here in LA and
doing one of these my head had just started to spin and before it stopped I found myself
in London at Pinewood Studios on the set of Dark Shadows and here we were we were writing
and during that time I was also starting to write Unholy Night and Unholy Night had a
very different sort of, for a lack of better word genesis not pun intended but it wasn't
one of those things where it started as an observation. The idea for Unholy Night came
to me out of the blue. Stephen King I don't know if anybody here has ever read his book
on writing. But he talks about how there in his mind there are these men in the basement
that are sitting around a table talking about ideas and coming up with things, and then
when that ideas ready whether you're ready for it or not it goes into the vacuum tube
and goes upstairs to your brain and it just hits you. That never happens to me, my men
in the basement are probably all dead or lazy or something but
[laughter] >>Seth Grahame-Smith: I really have to whip
them into shape to like no let's work on this idea let's develop this idea. This was one
of those things where I was here in LA it was the middle of July or maybe June it was
summer it was hot and I was driving up Robertson to what is now an empty store but use to be
a Blockbuster to return a digital versatile disk you remember those DVD's right. And you
also remember Blockbuster before we, you know. So again back in the old days two years ago.
[chuckles] >>Seth Grahame-Smith: And I was pulling into
the parking lot on this and just this question just popped into my mind fully formed what
were the three wise men doing there really? And that was is it that was the question and
it wasn't as if I was driving around New England and looking at all the nativity scenes on
the front lawns and seeing the three wise men lit up in plastic form and say, "Who the
hell are those guys really?" This just came out of nowhere and it was an intriguing question
once again it led me into my research mode which was, back on my then updated latest
beta of Chrome which was phenomenal and not buggy at all and it was great.
[chuckles] >>Seth Grahame-Smith: And reading essentially
passages from The New Testament. Reading about how much do we know about the three wise men
from The New Testament turns out virtually nothing and that really excited me that intrigued
me it's like the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew that's only time you ever hear
them mentioned. All we know are basically the same four things we know about Lincoln
but in this case the four things are come from the east, there's three of them, they
stop at Herod's they go from Herod's to a manger in Bethlehem with gold, frankincense,
and myrrh pay their respects on their way never to be heard from again. Now that's,
that to me is there's a lot of room there to mess with that.
[chuckles] >>Seth Grahame-Smith: And so I got really
excited by the where'd they get the gold, frankincense, and myrrh? Could they have say
stolen it? Why were they going to that manager that night? Was it to pay their respects or
was it perhaps to find a place to hide because they had just stolen gold and frankincense,
so it starts the ball rolling in your mind of like who are these guys? And it the process
got rolling and I whipping my men in the basement into shape and they were getting on board
with it and we were all developing the idea and then I stopped because I got really scared.
Because I had just been through the experience of coming face to face with lifelong Jane
Austen fans who were like, "How dare you?" [laughter]
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: And coming face to face with some Lincoln scholars that were like,
"Yo, I don't even understand this, what are you doing?"
[chuckles] >>Seth Grahame-Smith: Now in all fairness
most of the people that are the biggest fans of PPZ are Jane Austen's fans like life-long
fans. And the vast majority of Jane Austen fans are totally on board with my bastardization
of it. Also to be fair the Lincoln community and there is such a thing this community of
historians and scholars and lovers of Lincoln are almost universally behind Abraham Lincoln
Vampire Hunter because they appreciate it for what it is and it's not cheapening the
legacy of the real guy it's just brining new people into the tent. So I've been really
lucky twice but I didn't think that I would be so lucky the third time. Because it's a
little different when you're dealing with the birth of Jesus-
[chuckles] >>Seth Grahame-Smith: than dealing with a
Regency era romance novel. As beloved as it is it's just a little different. So I really
had to sit and think about, "Okay what am I trying to say here?" And I made some very
concrete decisions early on before I wrote Unholy Night. Number one Jesus was never gonna
be more that a two week old infant I was not gonna get into the business of putting words
into the mouth of Jesus so that was number one. And in fact Jesus the word never even
appears in the book it's always the infant or the child even though it's all, everybody
knows who it is. Number two Joseph and Mary always had to be the paragons of virtue. I
wasn't about to have, I wasn't gonna do to Mary the mother of Jesus what I did to Lizzy
in PPZ where she is a blood thirsty sword woman and all that stuff, that was not her
turf. They were just Joseph and Mary as you know and loved them in the Bible. Faithful
devote committed believers. And then number three I wanted the book to say something about
faith. I didn't want it to just be like this romp where I'm using Christianity as my canvas
I wanted to actually have a message. Now my own personal religious history is a little
checkered I was born Seth Greenberg not exactly a Christian name. Then when I was three my
parents split up and my sort of wonderfully crazy mother who was an English major loved
the author the English author Kenneth Grahame, Wind of the Willows things like that and legally
changed my name when i was three to Grahame. So stay with me.
[chuckles] >>Seth Grahame-Smith: and then when I'm five
she marries an Episcopalian Smith and then rather than saddling me with the unfortunately
alliterative Seth Smith she's like, "Maybe we should hyphenate." So that's how I became
Seth Grahame-Smith when I was five and it's also how I started learning about Christianity
because I was this little five year old Jewish kid with all these Jewish relatives and all
this Jewish lineage who all of a sudden was an Episcopal altar boy, seriously, literally,
altar boy. [laughter]
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: And so I've always see myself as kind of straddling these two worlds
and this was a very interesting exercise for me because while it is about essentially the
birth of Christianity almost everyone in Unholy Night is either an Arab or a Jew. Cuz it turns
out there weren't any Christians back then. So it was interesting from that point to sorta
delve back into really religious text reading the New Testament going back and reading the
Old Testament for background and for mythology and then reading the Apocrypha that's written
centuries after The New Testament there's actually a great tradition that sprung up
in Europe especially about the three wise men and in Asia everyone wants to claim them
as their own even though they don't really appear in the Bible that much after, at all
after they leave. There's great traditions and festivals dedicated to them in Europe
in the book that's where the names of the three wise men come for Gaspar, Melchior,
and Balthazar are the traditional three names of the wise men and I don't know where they
came from but somebody decided that was the case so that's what I stuck to. So anyways
the point being I really wanted to say something about faith I didn't want to pander and be,
I'm afraid of Christian backlash so therefore I'm gonna overdo it. But I also didn't want
to offend anyone's sensibility so that's a real tight rope. I wanted devout Christians
to be able to read this and go, "Wow what a great fun ride and it made me think weirdly
differently about my faith." And I wanted staunch agnostic or atheistic to be able to
read this and go, "Wow what a fun ride." So that's a tough one and we'll see if it happens
that way or not but it was a fun one to write and it was a real challenging one to write
because unlike Lincoln I didn't have the crutch of everyday of Lincoln's life at this point
has been chronicled. I can go on there's a site called the Lincoln Log where you can
literally enter a date at any point of Lincoln's existence and there is a check that he signed
from that day for groceries or there's Lincoln wrote a letter to Mary about this on this
day you know everything and so if I get lost in the narrative I'm like well what was Lincoln
really doing okay I'll write about that. Now you have Scripture and a tradition of the
Nativity and you know that baby Jesus had to get out of Judea and into Egypt before
Herod got his hands on him but you don't know how he got there you don't know what happened
after he got there so that was where I had to invent within the lines of various pieces
of Scripture. So that's how the book came to be. It came out yesterday and I just don't
know. I'm in that zone right now where I got a an email from my publisher this morning
and she said, "Unlike a movie or anything like that the release date of a book is the
day where the author gets all dressed up in the tuxedo and gets ready and does his hair
all perfect and then nothing happens." [laughter]
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: Because books are different it's not a movie where I'm not checking my
watch to see where the grosses come in tonight and we'll know how we're doing. It takes time
you don't know and reviews make the difference and books are much more of a slowly chumming
word of mouth thing so that's why I'm here hocking my goods to you fine people, but with
that I was hoping to kinda turn it over to some questions and to see what sorts of things
interest you guys. I'm certainly interested in what you guys do we were just talking before
about, I was asking so what specifically happens in this office versus other Google offices
well it sounds like everything happens here it sounds like Chrome happens here and YouTube
happens here and it sounds those awesome new Google glasses that I'm sure you guys are
gonna let me try out before I leave [laughter]
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: happen here. And otherwise I'm gonna make one of those parodies you guys
watch out, that are [laughter]
>>Seth: But no it's really exciting but what's exciting to me is again I'm going back again
into pandering mode but it's pandering with truth it, what's exciting to me is that everything
you guys do in this building I use as a tool for what I do. The book trailers for my books
launch on YouTube, the one for Lincoln about a million and a half hits now it's crazy and
that book trailer that we just uploaded to YouTube completely set the tone for the whole
campaign for the book. I have to do a Hangout I have to I have my Google plus all set up
but I have to do Hangout so I apologize for not having done one yet. But I use your browser,
I use your video, I use in the future I'm sure I'll use your glasses too. But so it's
really cool. So if you guys have questions for me that would be exciting because I do
better in a conversation format than I do in a lecture format. Yes.
>> man 1: The obvious question when are you gonna start work on Sergey Brin the Batman?
[laughter] >>Seth: Oh man, listen
[laughter] >>Seth Grahame-Smith: Sergey Brin the Batman
I mean you think about it he's first of all he's one of the few guys in the world that
could actually afford to do that. [laughter]
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: Already has his own awesome plane from what I hear. Has bat glasses
with facial recognition and man that's a great idea. Listen I will do it, I'll start tomorrow
if I can get paid in stock. [laughter]
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: So hopefully Sergey's watching, yeah available anytime you know
how to reach me. [laughter]
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: Yes
>>woman 1: Hi Big fan of PPZ and looking forward to reading this book. I was just concerned
when you were talking about it the reaction that you might get from some Christian fundamentalists.
They can get pretty scary >>Seth Grahame-Smith: sure
>>woman 1: And I just kinda wanted to make sure that you're fully aware of what you've
done [laughter]
>>woman 1: Cuz >>Seth Grahame-Smith: Do you know what you've
done? >>woman 1: There's some crazy people out there
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: Yeah >>woman 1: and they can be violent.
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: And my picture is in the book.
>>woman 1: Yeah [laughter]
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: Yes, and I'm doing this I'm being recorded right now.
[laughter] >>Seth Grahame-Smith: I'm not and I'll tell
you why. Is because I think that for two reasons. Number one there is always gonna be a group
of people you're never going to affect your just never gonna change an opinion. The fact
that the wise men were even characters in my book that Mary and Joseph were even characters
in my book is gonna be offensive to some people. I respect that. I think however, when people
read the book and they understand that the journey that Balthazar goes through in the
book especially because he's our way in he's the wise man who we care about the most in
the book. He goes on a very positive pro-faith journey. And that was a choice and again I
made a conscious choice that I wanted to be exciting and entertaining and I wanted to
be dark and bloody and cool but not offensive. And what I did was I wanted the book again
to have a very pro-faith message. Balthazar when he begins is a staunch an atheist as
your even gonna find. He doesn't have any time for the old stories he doesn't have any
time for all that superstition and whatever. And he's got a very painful past that we sort
of come to know throughout the course of the book. By the end of the book he is not only
saved the baby Jesus but he's saved himself in order through his understanding of his
openness to belief, his openness to faith, and his openness to acceptance and so I think
that when people read the book and they understand that. I think that they'll realize that it
is not at any in any way a critique or criticism of faith it's actually a positive message
about faith. Just done in a very genre kinda crazy way so believe me I thought about that
a lot during the process and the last thing I wanted to do was pit myself against any
religious group or anything so. >>woman 1: The only other point that I would
make about that is that I'm not worried about the people who actually read the book.
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: Sure >>woman 1: I worry about the people who don't
read the book who know basically that the cliff notes the summary of what it's about
or just the fact that he even goes in that area in any kind of comedic manner. Those
are the people to worry about cuz they're the ignorant ones. They're the ones who are
not gonna read it and say. "Oh well this is actually pro-faith and it's not that bad."
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: Yeah, I think that there's very really little I can do about that to
be honest- >>woman 1: Absolutely
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: with you. There's really little I can do. I mean
>>woman 1: Except for get a body guard. >>Seth Grahame-Smith: No, No look I think
that first of all it would be flattering if people cared enough about the book to get
that worked up about it in a way because it's hard for books to get noticed these days.
And I'm sure there are people that are in my life that would be like, "I would welcome
some controversy we would sell more books." Of course I have to deal with the fallout
personally but when Harry Potter came out there were probably 5% of people out there
that said it's about witchcraft we gotta ban it we gotta burn it we gotta keep our kids
away from it. I'm guessing that's the same 5% of people that are just gonna be like,
we gotta ban this book we gotta burn this book cuz it deals with scared text and there's
nothing I can do except repeatedly say the truth of, "This is pro-faith and read the
book, please read the book." But again I've been pleasantly surprised twice now by the
reaction of people who I was afraid of being really critiqued by and attacked by. They
either haven't critiqued and attacked or they've read the book and have actually come around
to enjoying it so, yeah. >>man 2: Coming off of adapting a book to
a movie was it hard to, were you tempted at all to write this keeping the future movie
in mind and setting things up to be stageable or did you really want it to be a book first
and who knows what will happen. >>Seth Grahame-Smith: That's a great question.
I mean it was a challenge to be honest with you not to write the movie of the book or
the book of the movie or whatever. Coming off of adapting Lincoln I realized that there
were a lot of things I could've made my life easier that could've made my life easier having
written Lincoln the book like, having a central villain for one. My book doesn't have a central
villain. Lincoln doesn't have a central villain. It doesn't have a thrilling climax it doesn't
have any of the real things that make a movie work and so the process for adapting Lincoln
was really laborious because a lot of that stuff had to be invented from scratch for
the movie. So I'm sure that subconsciously that effected, for instance, Unholy Night
has a very clear central villain, it has a thrilling climax, it has all the things that
were one to adapt it into a movie would make one's life easier.
[chuckles] >>Seth Grahame-Smith: But other than that
I was coconscious also of not writing the book of the movie. I didn't wanna I didn't
want this book to be the novelization of some future movie I wanted it to be a book and
so I actually in some cases went out of my way to write things that I knew were never
going to be in the movie they were just tangential or internal or but I'm sure that subconsciously
I was influenced. It's impossible to say that I wasn't. So how 'bout two more then I'll,
you guys can go back to work. >>woman 2: I've got one actually.
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: Yes >>woman 2: About your research on the Unholy
Night. I don't remember their being a whole lot about the wise men in the four gospels
in the Bible and I'm just curious did you look at all of those other gospels.
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: Oh yeah >>woman 2: And was there more in there or
did you just kind of invent most of it? >>Seth Grahame-Smith: No, Matthew and Luke
is really were it all comes from and then there's also a lot of later text that the
Apocrypha they're called that are just sort of, whether they be like the Gnostic gospels
or things like that or even like the Koran has, there are parts of the Koran that deal
with Christ's journey as an infant so it's interesting. You take all these different
sources and you sort of put together a patch work of a truth of a story. We know their
names are Balthazar, Melchior, and Gaspar and you know that while Joseph and Mary were
traveling with the baby Jesus that certain miracles occur that we don't necessarily hear
about in The New Testament at least not The King James or The New International editions.
So there are a lot of things in there that are interesting but most of what we know about
the wise men comes from oral tradition comes from just stories that are handed down through
the ages and legends that have sprung up around them and not very much in the Bible itself
which in a way was freeing but also in a way made the job harder because so much has to
be invented and yet be respectful and work within the framework of what's there so how
about one last question then we can, Yes okay. >>man 2: So for me as I was growing up there
was there are books that I distinctly remember and I think that it was just as I was reading
books and maturing that really stick in my head over time and I kind of always think
back to fondly upon those books and judge other books by those what kind of
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: Sure >> man 2: you know
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: Sure what are my sign post books the books that I hold up and. Well
as a kid you know my dad, my step-father was a used a rare book dealer and we had five
thousand books in our basement that we converted into a library and most of what he was interested
in was genre was horror, science fiction, fantasy and so I grew up being inundated with
Heinlein, Asimov, with Bradbury and when I was twelve it was King and King was king and
King is still king in my I'm an unabashed, not disciple that's wrong word especially
in this context but [laughter]
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: but King lover. Unapologetically to this day and I just read everything that
I get my hands on of King. One of the ones that really stuck with me early on was Skeleton
Crew and It those were big in the eighties for me another one though real one that got
under my skin in a big way that I think about all the time was Something Wicked this Way
Comes. Which was Ray Bradbury's the story of the traveling carnival. Mr. Dark coming
to town and it was really a great it's a book about boys aspiring to be men and men aspiring
to be boys and a story about regret and small towns it's just a beautifully written story
so I tend to judge myself and everything against King and those guys that sort of cannon of
genre authors. Okay one last in the back. Yes?
>>man 3: When you did your research did you need to consult to any religious scholars,
theologians or anyone like that? >>Seth Grahame-Smith: Yeah it's interesting
I didn't consult with I would say people of deep faith let's say during the writing of
the book but after I had written the manuscript I had several people of different faiths and
of devout faith that had no connection to me directly read the book and sort of give
feedback about it. And honestly the person this was another encouraging thing about my
impending assassination but [laughter]
>>Seth Grahame-Smith: Was that one of the more self-proclaimed evangelistic deeply devout
Christians really loved the book and I got a long letter back from her about, how it
had been handled delicately and about how so that was really encouraging to know. So,
well thank you guys for taking time and it's great it's honestly it's really cool to be
here and I'm huge fan of what you guys are doing so thank you and thanks for coming to
hear me yap thanks. [applause]