Eric Red Talks Stopping Power
Stopping Power is Eric Red’s intense chase thriller where California realtor, Stephanie Power, experiences the worst, most harrowing 12 hours of her life on a road trip to Houston, finding her teen-age daughter, Libby, has been taken hostage by a ruthless sociopathic bank robber, Ilsa Bakke. Stephanie is forced by Ilsa to drive Bakke’s getaway car to decoy Texas law-enforcement away from the criminal or Ilsa will kill Libby. Stephanie now needs to keep one step ahead of Texas cops who are willing to shoot her on sight, and try to stay alive long enough to outsmart the treacherous Ilsa to rescue her daughter.
Eric Red is best known as a director and screenwriter, having written screenplays for such films as The Hitcher (1986), Near Dark (1987), and Blue Steel (1990). He wrote and directed the hard-driving crime thriller, Cohen & Tate (1989). He also wrote and directed the werewolf thriller, Bad Moon (1996), as well as Body Parts (1991), The Last Outlaw (1993), and 100 Feet (2008), among his other films. He is also a novelist who has written such books as Don’t Stand So Close (2011), It Waits Below (2014), Containment (2014), White Knuckle (2015), and his werewolf westerns, The Guns Of Santa Sangre (2013), and The Wolves Of El Diablo (2017). He has also created a western series of novels with his character, Joe Noose: Noose (2018), Hanging Fire (2019), Branded (2021), and The Crimson Trail (2021).
Stopping Power is Red’s latest novel and it was my great pleasure to be able to put some questions to him regarding his new book…
GREG ESPINOZA: Just want to say upfront I’m a big fan of your work, particularly your scripts for The Hitcher (1986) and Near Dark (1987). I consider Near Dark one of the last relevant vampire films since it premiered almost 35 years ago. I had occasion to view 100 Feet and The Last Outlaw in the last year or two. I could see some echoes of Cohen & Tate (1989) in Stopping Power in the tense captor/captive relationship between Ilsa Bakke and Stefanie’s daughter, Libby.
ERIC RED: Thank you, Greg. Calling a vampire flick relevant is high praise indeed.
As a road thriller, you could say Stopping Power is in a similar wheelhouse to Cohen & Tate because it is a “three-hander” with a trio of characters in cars on a perilous journey and their psychological warfare trying to survive the trip. Both do involve a relationship between kidnapper and captive who develop Stockholm Syndrome bonds during the narrative. And both are set in Houston, Texas, where the movie was filmed. But Cohen & Tate is about men and Stopping Power is all female, so the emotional dynamics are quite different, and so are the stories. Stopping Power is a black and white thriller where the lines between good and evil are clearly delineated with no question about who we’re rooting for, while in Cohen & Tate the heavy had gray shadings so we root for the bad guy at a few points. Obviously with The Hitcher and Near Dark the road thriller is in my blood, and I enjoy returning to it when I can.
GREG ESPINOZA: I’d read that Stopping Power was originally written as a screenplay and Jan De Bont (Speed) was attached to it. Is this accurate, and what was the genesis of the original story?
ERIC RED: Stopping Power was actually in production as a 60-million dollar Hollywood movie starring John Cusack, Jason Issacs and Melissa George that was filming for two days in Berlin, Germany before the financier Intermedia collapsed and they pulled the plug. I wasn’t expecting that, let me tell you, and can now legitimately say everything has happened to me in the movie business! It was originally conceived to be a modest budget action flick produced by this German stunt production outfit Action Concept, but then lo and behold Intermedia got involved and the next thing I knew we had De Bont and the budget ballooned to 60 million… and then kaput. At the time I was busy directing my ghost movie 100 Feet with Famke Janssen in Brooklyn and Hungary, so I was doing other things and didn’t take it too hard. But while that version of the movie never got made, I always loved the story and kept thinking about it and getting new ideas, figuring out better ways to tell it. I began writing novels around this time. Over the years I began thinking Stopping Power would work better with a mother and daughter and would make an exciting novel in the no-holds-barred thriller-of-relentless-suspense genre. And a novel would allow me to really get inside the heads of the characters and describe what they were thinking and feeling in moment-by-moment fashion. It’s never possible to novelize a script without adding many more layers and new material to make it work as a book and by the time I finished the novel, I had changed the script radically, but the screenplay was the inception. In a way, I’m glad the movie didn’t get made because the book is better. If it does get made into a film, as I hope it does one day, the novel version is what would be adapted.
GREG ESPINOZA: The protagonist in the original version of Stopping Power was male. What prompted you to change Dan Power (in the original version) to Stefanie? I think it was an inspired choice. You also changed the original locale from Berlin to Texas.
ERIC RED: Had seen this type of set up done with men but never with women. The narrative lost none of the high-octane propulsive suspense, but the dramatic dynamics are interestingly unusual because women deal with situations differently then men. A father having his daughter kidnapped is high-stakes indeed, but a mother having her daughter kidnapped, by a female criminal at that, supercharged the emotional stakes because the bond between mother and child is arguably even greater; many believe it’s the strongest bond in the universe. I explored the father daughter relationship thoroughly in the script drawing a lot on my own experiences as a single father, but a mother and daughter ultimately had more juice.
Wrote the original script in Germany. It was set in Berlin with an American tourist father who was an ex-race driver and his daughter. Germany was part of the whole Stopping Power gestalt, so in the book I changed the villain to a lady German because in the script the villain was a Japanese guy. Setting the novel in the U.S. grounded it more for American readers. The whole reason the script was set in Germany with an American tourist hero in the first place was it made the protagonist an outlier, his difficulty convincing the police he isn’t the bank robber more challenging because he is a foreigner with no local contacts or available I.D. to easily prove who he is. The Hitchcock mistaken identity set up with an innocent individual framed for a crime who is pursued by the authorities required they be from out of town. Houston served the same function in the novel as a setting because Stephanie and Libby are Californians on a road trip to Texas.
GREG ESPINOZA: I noted each chapter is time-stamped, making this the worst (roughly) 12 hours of Stefanie’s life. I really liked how you laid out Stefanie’s back story with her mad driving skills, and how you portrayed her “Mama Bear” determination. I also felt you effectively nailed the emotional beats near the end of the book when she talks to her Mother by phone.
ERIC RED: There’s that wonderful quote by Winston Churchill that a kite flies highest against the wind. The way our character is built by adversity and how when things are at their worst we are at our best are themes of the novel. Stephanie’s mettle as a mother is put to the test by a clash with a female criminal who is her polar (or bi-polar) opposite, a woman devoid of humanity who has taken another woman’s daughter. It’s a trial by fire for the Mom. During the story, Stephanie’s rare down moments living a parent’s worst nightmare allow her self-reflection, and she makes peace with her own parents both alive and dead, dealing with unresolved issues and coming-to-terms with herself, so that in the end Stephanie and hopefully the reader experiences emotional closure. That’s what the call to her own mother is about.
The story of Stopping Power demanded the parent be an exceptional driver because they must outrace a citywide police dragnet. How they could drive like that needed to be explained because people want to know. The two possible backgrounds that made sense were either a race driver like the father was in the script, or they grew up in the world of motion picture stunt drivers, as the mother does in the novel.
The time stamp adds real-time suspense to the present-tense story. It also keeps us clear on where we are in the novel because the book goes back and forth in time for flashbacks—when we jump back to the present, the time stamp lets us always know where we are during what’s happening now. Suspense requires clarity.
GREG ESPINOZA: The book reads very cinematically and I found much of it quite vivid and visceral, particularly Roland and Mannheim’s violent encounters with Houston cops. Ilsa and Roland Bakke make for a particularly psychologically twisted pair of uber-violent Euro-trash baddies. Was there a particular inspiration for them?
ERIC RED: Probably The Getaway with Steve McQueen, one of my favorite movies I’ve realized has been a major influence on my work; it’s a perfect film on every level. Like that flick, Stopping Power needed a second chase story and Ilsa’s husband accomplice Roland’s relentless pursuit of her for shooting him and stealing the loot was the logical way to do that. It balances the novel since Roland’s story gives us a break for a few chapters from the mother, daughter and kidnapper. Like we say in the movie business, it’s always good to have a cutaway.
The characters of Ilsa and Roland themselves sprang out of them being husband and wife and the psychological logic of why two such people were together. It’s a surprise when we learn Roland’s backstory to discover he started out as someone completely different from the thug we assume him to be, and was Ilsa’s prison psychiatrist. Since we know from the jump of the couple’s betrayal, showing their original love story how they got to that point gives their story more emotional punch. I see theirs as a dark love story, painted black. Two wrongs almost but not quite make a right with them before the fateful Texas bank robbery. They are drawn together by a magnetic attraction of inner darkness that joins and seals their fates. But while neither Ilsa nor Roland is redeemable, for a while they have a relationship somewhat resembling a normal well-adjusted loving couple before things go to hell. It’s always good to make your heavies three-dimensional characters so we get invested in them, even if we’re rooting against them.
GREG ESPINOZA: Stopping Power is a hi-octane chase story, I couldn’t help but note various nods to classic chase thrillers such as Breakdown (1984), Speed (1995), Vanishing Point, even a little bit of Die Hard (1988). I also liked your inclusion of various bits of Hollywood lore, which added texture to an otherwise solid premise.
ERIC RED: Hard to do a road-thriller and not echo other entries in the genre because the elements are much the same with highways, cars, roadside gas stations and such. Road thrillers all about driving to something or from something, usually fast. It was built into the Stopping Power set up that cell phones are the only way that the mother and kidnapper can communicate because they are in two different cars for most of the book, so those great mano-a-mano phone conversations with the hero and villain matching wits with each other in dialogue in Speed and Die Hard are channeled—unapologetically, because I love those movies. But wanted to switch it up with a female heroine and villainess, because their engagement as women gave it a different spin I hadn’t seen it before.
Living in L.A. for forty years now, Hollywood creeps into my work more and more… write what you know. In the book, the character of Stephanie’s legendary but irresponsible stunt driver father Sam Power gave me the opportunity write about the world of action filmmaking and stunt work freely based on my experiences directing movies and stunt people I know, which was a fun opportunity because it was relevant to the story itself. While Sam has passed when the book opens, teaching his daughter Stephanie stunt driving tricks-of-the-trade in her youth is the gift that keeps on giving and helps her survive her ordeal. Her relationship with her imperfect dad was complicated, but he passes something priceless to his daughter and granddaughter when they most need it. It’s a positive message about the transcendence of family love, I hope.
GREG ESPINOZA: I read and appreciated your comments on another site about your “10 minute” rule, and how it should apply to action, as Stopping Power hits the ground running and doesn’t let up. The real question I wanted to ask, and this might sound too obvious, is in writing something like Stopping Power do you feel like you have more freedom as a novelist? you don’t have to worry about being second guessed or receive studio notes: you’re wearing all the hats and you creatively answer to yourself.
ERIC RED: The first chapter of a novel or first ten pages of a screenplay are crucial for grabbing people’s interest and attention. Since scripts are a minute a page, that’s the “10 minute” rule you refer to. It’s my belief you have to hook people in those first ten pages so they absolutely must know what happens next. If you don’t, you’ve lost them. This has been my guiding writing philosophy since The Hitcher.
I don’t know about freedom. Certainly the only limits in a novel are one’s imagination. What you usually bear in mind in a script is budget, writing things that can be physically filmed within sensible production budget parameters. As a screenwriter, I have usually always written on spec so my first draft is completely my own vision uninfluenced by notes or input from executives. I do best writing original scripts where the first version is done my way. Those tend to be the ones that get made.
GREG ESPINOZA: Thank you so much for consenting to this interview. I’m a big western fan and I’m looking forward to checking out your western novels The Wolves Of El Diablo, and The Guns Of Santa Sangre.
ERIC RED: My pleasure, thanks again!
Wolves Of El Diablo, and The Guns Of Santa Sangre are a werewolf western novel series that gave me a chance the mash up westerns and horror, my two favorite genres. Hope you enjoy them, since I consider these to be my signature books as an author, two novels nobody else could have written.
Stopping Power is available for purchase as a paperback and a Kindle edition on Amazon.
