An Interview With Jonathan Blum and Rupert Booth,
Authors of The Prisoner — The Prisoner’s Dilemma
by Simon Morris
Q: Okay, let’s start with the big one. Who do you think you are, trying to write The Prisoner — Patrick McGoohan or something?
JB: Bwaaahahaha! I’ll settle for Anthony Skene, that’d be accomplishment enough.
Seriously, just in case anyone’s wondering, I have no desire to diminish Patrick McGoohan’s work, usurp his place, or anything like that. But in another sense, I believe that you don’t have to be God to make a Biblical epic. Anyone from John Huston to Mel Gibson, Michaelangelo to a guy who paints baby Jesuses on black velvet, can take these powerful images and themes and ideas and feelings and present a resonant interpretation and extension of them.
Patrick McGoohan is a true original. But he and George Markstein and David Tomblin and everyone else created a tale about individuality which, ironically, is bigger than any individual one of them. Patrick’s work is in some ways very personal and passionate; I can’t copy that note for note, and I’m not out to replace it, but the best I can do is make my take on these ideas personal and passionate for me as well.
I don’t think I can necessarily plot tighter than George Markstein or be as much of an extravagant visionary as Patrick McGoohan — but I might be able to plot tighter than Patrick McGoohan and be more extravagant than George Markstein, who knows?
RB: Well, it isn’t a sacred text. It’s an entertaining, complex and multi-layered TV series. There’s no way we are going to be able to “do” a McGoohan, but then we shouldn’t really try. We’re working in the universe he and the production team created… I say universe, okay, village, and hopefully we can capture some of the ethos of the series in those terms, but obviously we are writing from a different perspective as well as a different medium.
Q: So what sort of new material or perspectives do you think you can add?
RB: Nylon.
JB: Hmm, well the big advantage we have is nearly forty years of hindsight. We know where a lot of the trends being pointed to in The Prisoner have led since then — we can see the way in which instant information has transformed the world. And ironically we live in an era now where individuality is our top-selling consumer item. “Reeboks let you be you” and all that. That hadn’t mainstreamed yet at the time of The Prisoner — it was created in a time when the idea of working for IBM in a grey flannel suit for your whole life was still being challenged, but I don’t think they’d yet worked out how successfully the grey flannel suits would co-opt that sense of rebellion right back.
RB: To add to that, we also have a completely different world to reference, new politics, new leaders, new wars, so that’s obviously going to plug in to the storyline. That’s kind of traditional for The Prisoner though, since the series frequently took on the concerns of the time. Hopefully it’s not going to be too jarring to cover some current issues.
Q: How would you describe The Prisoner’s Dilemma? What’s its style, its approach?
JB: Hmm… “Sprawling” is a good word. Also “Byzantine”. A whole bunch of angles on a bunch of related ideas.
RB: Unpredictable, with any luck. We were both quite keen to make it… accurate as well, recognisably The Prisoner. And hopefully it has moments of Many Happy Returns-esque complete bastardliness.
Q: How much of a background do you have in the show? How long have you been fans?
RB: I first saw The Prisoner in the womb. Only in black and white though.
JB: I discovered it in the early ’80s, thanks to Maryland Public Television. Every time I’ve revisited it, I’ve been impressed in a whole different way — last time I ended up watching it back-to-back with some of the Emma Peel Avengers which were airing at the same time, and that really underscored just how glossy and spectacular the show is. The Avengers is obviously no slouch in the style stakes, but even they never did anything as relentless as Arrival.
Q: How did you get the job of writing this book?
RB: Jon Blum came up to me in a hotel room in LA and said, with a big grin “Hey, do you fancy co-writing a Prisoner book with me”. I thought for exactly one eighth of a second then replied “Yeeeaahhh”.
JB: What happened was, earlier that evening Mateo Latosa had taken me and my wife Kate Orman to dinner for a meeting, because he was interested in getting her to write an original work for Powys. He talked with a lot of enthusiasm about the Space: 1999 line, and how it was going… he mentioned that because they were happy with the results, Carlton had offered him other licenses, but he wasn’t sure if he could take any of them up. They’d offered him The Prisoner but he didn’t know how to pull it off, they’d offered him UFO but he wasn’t sure if there was a market… The conversation went on, but my brain had frozen at the word “Prisoner”. I think I offered him a book before we got to dessert!
I’d thought I could co-write the book with Kate, the way we usually do, but she didn’t think she could pull off writing for Number 6, which was very sensible indeed. I didn’t want to write it by myself, because I figured it would take a ridiculous amount of time. Fortunately, Rupe was in LA for the same convention as us… I’d been a fan of Rupert’s writing for years — I’d first encountered him before either of us turned pro, back when we were both doing Doctor Who fan videos ten years ago. He’d done a hell of a lot of short films, most of them surreal and blackly funny, sort of Salvador Dali meets The Goodies done on sixpence. He’d been breaking into short stories recently, and I knew he was a mad Prisoner fan… it seemed like a perfect match. We had about half our proposal in place before the end of the night…
Q: How did the co-writing work? Who did which sort of stuff? How did you manage writing on opposite sides of the world?
RB: Hmm. I should know this, I was there.
JB: With this book, usually we’d divide up bits to write, we’d each do a draft, email them to each other, then come up with rewrites. Which was mostly me putting my grubby fingerprints on Rupert’s stuff rather than the other way round. If you want a quick guide, most of the Number 2 material, most of the Irrationals, and the stuff with the Fish are Rupert’s scenes, and the first big interrogation scene is him with bits of me. The Minister, Number 101, and Number 54 are pretty much all me. So is Rover. A bunch of scenes are intermingled almost line by line. The last half of the book is much more me, because Rupert suddenly got a chance to do a sketch-comedy TV pilot which had to take priority, but the climax action is mostly him. Any bit where the characters talk too much is probably me!
RB: It was also often the case that there were things each of us brought to the initial plotting and thrashing out of ideas. Jon was very into Number 101 for example, so handled pretty much all of his material because he knew where he wanted to go with it. I came up with the whole gameshow angle and therefore most of the middle section where Numbers 6 and 18 are being put through the various tasks was mine.
Q: How did that co-writing process compare with your previous books or short stories?
RB: Jon was five million miles away rather than down the road like my usual co-writers.
JB: Well, usually I’m sleeping with my co-author, but we decided to skip that bit! With me and Kate, there can be a bit more friction… oh God, let me rephrase that. Since Kate and I are both experienced novelists, if we disagree we each defend our own judgement to the hilt, and go back and forth over things in incredible detail. But Rupert tended to assume I knew what I was talking about, the poor fool!
RB: Yes, I did definitely start out like that. Having said that, Jon generally tended to let me do pretty much what I wanted with the bits wot I wrote. I think the most discussion came about when we were evolving the skeleton, or as normal people call it, the plot. At that point, it was a case of anything goes, and indeed a lot of material went. Once we settled into actually bashing out the prose, we had defined guidelines that we had set out so there was less room for conflict.
Q: How aware were you of the legacy of the show? What did you feel like you just couldn’t do? Content limitations, limits on sex or violence, things you couldn’t nail down?
JB: The things I felt we couldn’t nail down were the sorts of things that are better left un-nailed-down anyway! I tend to feel establishing who really runs the Village or whatever would be a distraction from the real strengths of the series, its implications and psychology.
I do remember feeling very cautious about any physical contact between Number 6 and Number 18 — but not absolutely rigid about it. McGoohan seems to have been very unpredictable on the subject — he wouldn’t dance with his Observer in Dance of the Dead, but he dances with B in A B & C…
That said, there are a few things where we consciously went beyond things the TV show could get away with. Mainly in terms of serial content — we didn’t need to worry about everything being back at the status quo by the end of an episode, we can resolve the current story but leave implications hanging for the next book. And there’s at least one thing in this story which the authorities at Portmeirion would never have allowed them to shoot!
RB: Yeah, we had a budget massively bigger than Lew Grade’s cigar fund, so in terms of events, we could do what we wanted. And did. I was always the more conservative of the two of us, I think, wanting to keep it as closely tied to the series as possible, which wasn’t necessarily a good idea. We both agreed that we didn’t really want to explain too much, delve too deeply into the background of the Village and so on, work out what the hell Rover actually is. The reasoning behind this is twofold. 1. The show thrives on unsolved mysteries, it’s part of what has kept it going for so long. 2. It would be fannish bollocks.
Q: How much of a period piece would you say The Prisoner has become? Is the book consciously “’60s”, or does it try to be timeless?
JB: I think the show was trying to be timeless even then. Look at the Villagers’ dress-code — aside from a the women’s make-up and hairstyles, there’s almost nothing there which would look any more out of place in 1930 than in 1970.
In terms of content… one of the ideas of the show is the idea of the Village as a prototype for the world of the future… which means that they’d be going through test cases of what we’re living with now. The scary thing is, at the same time they were making The Prisoner DARPA was developing the basics of the Internet, we were getting the growth of the modern mediasphere… it really was the birth of the Information Age. So things which people think might be anachronistic were already there, in their early stages.
RB: The series is dated in trems of excecution. Of course it has, it was made in 1967. Very well made, I hasten to add, it’s something that stands up now in many ways, but it is still very recognisebly a product of its time. The novel doesn’t have the constraints of being made on 35mm film with limited technological resources, so hopefully is able to use what IS timeless about the series: the central concept, many of the themes, Wanda Ventham…
Q: Is The Prisoner still relevant, or is the whole I-am-not-a-number thing too obvious now?
RB: It’s not about being a number or not though, is it. It’s about individuality and maintaining that in the face of coercion. I think that the fear of numeralisation is a very 60’s psychosis that means nothing to most people today, it’s part of life.
JB: Well, the very nature of the Village does sort of blunt the relevance a bit — people will just assume that anything the Village is doing is something over-the-top and fantastical, too grandiosely evil for anyone to take seriously… which can obscure your point if what you’re having them do is actually going on right here right now.
But if anything, we had a bigger problem, in that things we kept coming up with which we thought were ludicrously satirical then more or less happened! It was really hard to keep the book a step ahead, as it slid from parody to today’s headlines to yesterday’s news. God, I don’t envy satirists these days. I mean, millions of people get their news about WMDs from a TV network co-owned by a company that made nuclear bombs. How can you send that up?
But anyway, I think it’s hugely relevant, but the tricky thing is convincing people that it’s not simplistic.
Q: What would you say Prisoner’s Dilemma is about, thematically?
JB: The ways in which we define each other, I guess. We were exploring the questions thrown up by the series’ viewpoint… it’s not enough just to be an individual, what matters is what sort of an individual you are. The show sees it as a virtue to be true to yourself… but what if yourself is a selfish bastard? What else factors in there?
RB: Basically, it’s about trust.
Q: How does the book slot into the TV series?
JB: The book range as a whole is supposed to fit just before Once Upon A Time. The order of the TV series is obviously up-in-the-air… but in most of the usual orders, the episodes just before the final two show Number 6 at his most cool and copeful, someone who’s really good at playing the Village game, who can be smooth and even charming and manipulate the authorities right back. Then, by Once Upon A Time, he’s this almost monsyllabic, obsessively pacing figure whose only interactions with other Villagers are downright bizarre. I figure the books can show him developing from one state to the other, and we give him a big nudge in that direction as the book goes along…
RB: I always held the firm belief that it is set between the words “I am not a number” and “I am a free man” in the title sequence.
Q: So how do you try to evoke in prose a show which ended with a bunch of white-robed goons in theatrical masks doing a musical number?
RB: By going for lots of long walks and thinking heavily.
JB: Sort of Dangerous Visions – era New Wave SF prose tricks, really. I’d love to go back and put more description of the colours in.
Your Questions
From Mira Frenzel:
Q: What is this “Rover and the ducks” idea mentioned in the acnowledgements?
RB: That was cut from the sequences of 6 and 18 having to do various Villagers “favours” to get their co-operation. I can’t honestly remember the exact train of events but it was something to do with a Villager wanting to get hold of a duck. Maybe to eat? Who knows! Anyway, I was somewhat at a loss as to how Number 6 was going to get his hands on these ducks without access to any weapons and the idea was suggested to me that he would somehow set Rover on them. I think it was junked before it got very far into the writing so I can’t really be any clearer. Sorry!
Q: Why Roadrunner cartoons?
JB: Because it’s the sort of unexpected, personal, humanizing quirk which genuine individuals tend to have. If Number 6 is really going to be an individual rather than a stereotype, he’s got to be able to surprise you. Even if you’re sure you know him.
I knew going in that it would be a bit controversial, and would sit wrong for some people… it doesn’t fit with the mental picture some people have of Number 6, and also more importantly I didn’t actually want to take away the man’s wonderful ambiguity, where he could be practically anyone under the Number 6 persona. So when I wrote that bit, I deliberately made it so that he could simply be making something up to make Number 18 feel he trusts her… there’s a line in there specifically to suggest that. After all, John Drake came out with fake personal details like that from time in his various cover stories… just to wave around another can of worms.
I think I might also have been thinking of an episode of M*A*S*H in which high-culture snob Charles Emerson Winchester III confessed to a liking of Tom and Jerry…
But anyway, that was entirely my idea, so don’t blame Rupert for it!
Q: Were you setting things up for future books, or is this book basically a standalone?
RB: Well, the war, the bell tower…I think the influence on those events is pretty clear! Aside from that, my main influence was drawn from the media. I brought in the idea of the reality/game show aspect, it suddenly seeming very obvious for a place where your every move is watched by a camera and the greeting is “Be seeing you”. So I suppose, we’re talking Big Brother really. Jon then picked up on that and ran with it with the chat show.
Mainly, I wanted to be influenced and guided by the series itself. The Prisoner is a very focussed piece of work, there’s nothing else like it, and so for that reason, I feel that you can’t deviate from the form too much or it becomes unrecogniseable.
From Frodo Baggins:
Q: Did either of you watch The Prisoner during the writing of the book? If so, which episodes?
JB: I watched the whole series straight through — I’d last done that about three years earlier. This time for variety’s sake, I watched it in production order, which gave me a whole new perspective on how the show developed! It started out outlandish, got more conventional for a while after the first six episodes were made, and then went into complete fairytale mode starting around Do Not Forsake Me…
RB: I did exactly the same thing, sat through it all from start to finish, but made a point of trying to analyse how Number 6 is constructed as a character. It was then that I came to the horrible realisation that the majority of the characterisation comes from McGoohan’s performance. Aside from that, it helped to crystallise my ideas for the tone of the novel. I wanted to draw on the variety of styles present in the show, from post-Danger Man “secret agent paranoia” stuff, epitomised by episodes like Arrival to the barbed social comment of Free For All, the gorgeous abandon of Fall Out and the moments of absolute kick-in-the-groin evil (“Susan died a year ago, Number 6”).
Q: Who came up with the mindwipe idea?
RB: I can’t remember.
JB: I think that was me. In the outline, there was only 18’s initial mindwipe, and then the one after the first attack on Juliet. But then I thought, no, we can be really nasty here…
Q: Why the number 18? Was there any signifigance (aside from being six times half that), or was it totally random? Or am I thinking too deeply in thinking there was a signifigance? And why were all the chosen numbers chosen — 54, 101, and the late Villagers 23, 81, and 292?
JB: A couple of the main characters were designed to reflect different aspects of Number 6, and I gave them numbers which were multiples of 6 — 18 and 54. Number 42 was also a multiple, but that was a coincidence — that’s a The Kumars At Number 42 nod, of course. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Number 101… Well, there’s both an Orwell reference in that, and also a joke in that the number looks like it’s binary.
The others were sort of pseudo-random. It’s strangely tricky to come up numbers which are hard to confuse — I had real problems remembering who was supposed to be who in the old Prisoner book A Day In The Life, so I paid some extra attention to making sure the numbers weren’t too much like any other numbers in play! I think generally I tried to avoid using numbers with the same value in the tens place.
Oh, and we followed the rule that there is no Number 7 in the series, nor any numbers with 7 in them. We did stop short of asking the typesetter to skip any page numbers that had a 7 in them — but we did have fun with the gaps in the story!
Q: I noticed that sometimes the word “Number” was omitted, for example “6 said,” “looked at 54”. Was this out of laziness, or an author discrepancy, or to fit into speech better?
JB: On my part at least, it was an attempt to cut down on the tremendous repetition of the word “Number” within sentences. It also sounded a bit more natural when read out loud, I thought — something I picked up from my wife’s writing is that once we finish our first draft, we get a group of our friends together for a weekend and read the whole book through out loud, everyone taking a chapter, looking for anything that sounds awkward or just plain goes on too long.
RB: Yep, agreed. It’s tremendously tedious to have to read the word “number” again and again, so it just became a form of shorthand really.
JB:The one phrasing thing which was a deliberate affectation on my part is the use of “Village” versus “village”. As Number 6 observes in the first chapter, he capitalizes it when he refers to the place, but to the people who run the place it’s a generic noun rather than a proper one. For them to call it the Village with a capital V would be like calling it Here, or This Place. To him the Village (and its society) is an entity in itself, to them it’s just what the world is. It also fits in with George Markstein’s original outline document, where they avoid capitalizing it.
(God, do you think I’ve thought about this too much for the last couple of years?)
Q: Why is Pi trying to be French?
JB: That was a fairly late addition, I think, and a bit of a surprise to Rupert! It was me mucking around with one of his scenes to change some of the slang and make it more unexpected. I also thought it might be more in keeping with the time-bending nature of the Village if its teenage rebels weren’t strictly contemporary in style, so they wouldn’t be long-haired hippies of the sort who are conspicuously absent from the show (even Number 48 is surprisingly clean-cut in look). So instead I thought of the ’50s beatnik / Parisian existentialist sort of image.
In terms of Pi’s character, it’s also to reinforce what a poseur he is. A bit of a character note to keep the Irrationals from being a sort of undifferentiated mass.