Quarry On TV – First Look!

October 20th, 2015 by Max Allan Collins

Here’s a first look at Quarry on TV, with a trailer released by HBO/Cinemax. It’s on various sites but we lifted this from Red Carpet Crash, which has a good write-up on the series.

The trailer is getting a very positive response on the Net, and I like it very much myself – great noir-ish mood and a fine evocation of the early ‘70s.

Fans of the novels will need to keep a few things in mind, when the series premieres sometime in the first half of 2016. The first season explores and expands the Quarry back story. We see him come home from Vietnam, and meet his wife Joni and watch the Broker weave a web to pull the young Vietnam vet into the contract killing business. There are new elements, but many, even most, of the characters come from the novels.

The major difference is the Southern setting – the show is set in Memphis and shot there and in New Orleans. While the books are solidly Midwestern, this shift of locale creates mood and color appropriate to Quarry.

One thing you may have noticed in the various publicity materials is that Quarry’s real name is given as Mac Conway. The initial drafts of the pilot script avoided revealing a real name, but it quickly became unwieldy – it was necessary to give the character a “real-life” name, Quarry being (of course) the Broker’s code name for him. Graham Gordy and Michael Fuller, the creators of the TV version, told me the “Mac” was a salute to a certain M.A.C.

* * *

Here’s a write-up about the last straw that caused me to quit the BATMAN comic book, many moons ago.

Check out this lovely piece about my “disaster” series. Nice things are said about me, so clearly the writer has a lot on the ball.

M.A.C.

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9 Responses to “Quarry On TV – First Look!”

  1. Joe Menta says:

    Great trailer, Max, congrats! It’s dark, moody, and dramatic, but mysterious enough to make viewers want to tune in to learn more. Anyway, enjoy this time, what fun for you. Have the producers asked you to make yourself available at the appropriate time for interviews and behind-the-scenes pieces– you know, all that stuff cable channels like to produce in support of their new series?

  2. Terry Beatty says:

    Looks great! Have been wishing for something like this since I first read THE BROKER, many moons ago. Congrats.

  3. Bill Crider says:

    Looks great. I sense a hit. (Not the Quarry kind.)

  4. Max Allan Collins says:

    Thanks, everyone!

    I just read the first draft of the first script for a proposed second season. Excellent!

  5. Tom Zappe/St Louis says:

    Will you be doing novelizations of the TV series, or would that be too convoluted?

  6. Max Allan Collins says:

    Very doubtful that I’d do novelizations.

    I do holding publishing rights, but we’d need permission from HBO/Cinemax to use script material. Were I to do that, I’d insist on making everything consistent with the world of the novels, which means no Memphis setting. Additionally, the show follows storylines in which Quarry isn’t always on screen, and the books are first person, so that’s problematic. Finally, there are elements from the novels themselves which would confuse issues — the second season (if it comes to pass) draws upon QUARRY’S CHOICE, or at least that’s the plan.

    Probably not a good idea.

  7. Joe Menta says:

    Yeah, just keep writing your regular Quarry novels, with the mythology you established. Robert Parker didn’t alter the Spenser books to reflect the TV stuff, and Lee Child hasn’t started describing Jack Reacher as looking like Tom Cruise in the Reacher books. People understand the difference between the original source material and works that adapt it. It’s exciting that the books will surely get a new, wider audience shortly, though!

  8. stephen borer says:

    Ditto on the congratulations!

  9. Sean Kelly says:

    Omedetou Gozimasu from Japan!! I hope Cinemax pulls together a plan similar to HBO Go so I can watch it here.