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Baton Rouge Business Profiles interview Chuck HustmyreLocal Author Eyes Hollywood
Here in town, Chuck is a regular contributor to the Advocate newspaper and South Baton Rouge Journal, though he is perhaps best known for his bestselling true crime book, Killer with a Badge, about convicted murderer and New Orleans cop Antoinette Frank. We sat down with Chuck to talk about Frank as well as the mutual interest he is cultivating with Hollywood.
CH: I'm not there yet. I'm working on it. There's an interest in it. We have a director and a producer lined up. I've got the script done. They're looking for an actor right now. They explained it to me: you can't get funding without an actor, and you can't get an actor without funding. So you have to get halfway commitments from both sides until eventually people agree to do it. Then it just starts rolling. But it's a long process. Ron Judkins (Hollywood sound and production mixer who has worked for Steven Spielberg) told me that producers buy ten times more scripts than they actually make. Ron has been out in LA forever, and he worked for Dreamworks way before Schindler's List. He said that he has tons of friends who are screenwriters, and nothing they've ever written has been produced. I said, "Wouldn't that be a black mark on you?" And he said, "Not at all." Because that's the way it is out there. The fact that you get paid 100 or 200 grand for a script that never gets produced makes people think, "That must be a good writer."
CH: Ron Judkins said he thought the book sounded authentic. Some of the shooting stuff in there I've actually done. I try to make the writing as realistic as possible. I saw a movie, Sahara, and they're cracking jokes under machine gun fire. It really doesn't happen that way. When someone is shooting at you, it's scary. You don't sit around cracking jokes. You're trying to survive. BP: What is your law enforcement background? CH: I started in 1981 with the Sheriff's Office in Baton Rouge. I was a Deputy Sheriff until 1988 and then I was a D.A. Investigator for the District Attorney here from 1988 to 1990. In January 1991 I started with ATF. Eventually I got injured, and retired in 2003. Now I'm a full-time writer. BP: How did you sign on to ATF? CH: Well, I had to apply. You have to take a whole bunch of tests, go through interviews. It was a grueling process that took about a year to get hired. Then you go to the Academy for about six months in Georgia and start working cases. I worked mainly violent crime and firearms and narcotic violations. I worked fugitive task force for a while. I later worked on an FBI task force for a year as an ATF agent. The most boring work I've done is working George Bush's detail. Because the Secret Service is a small agency, they need help sometimes for elections. So they were taking ATF and Customs agents and bringing them on. I was on George Bush's detail when he was Governor of Texas running for President. He had a few Secret Service agents, and the rest were ATF and Customs. I've been around the country with Bush. You're his bodyguard. You walk with him. You guard his hotel. You guard the site where he gives a speech. I had to listen to the same speech like ten times. His ranch in Crawford, Texas was in the middle of nowhere. We had to bring all our own food and use a porta-potty. It was miserable. BP: When you wrote "Killer with a Badge" didn't you get people to open up more because you're a Fed? CH: Right. The lead detective in that book, Eddie Rantz, and the lead prosecutor Glen Woods-I'm friends with them now, but I didn't know them then—both of them said after the book came out, "Hey I wouldn't have even talked to you if you weren't a retired ATF agent." If you're just a regular reporter or newspaper guy, they aren't going to talk to you. So yeah, it did help me with access. Another thing, Eddie Rantz—and I did think it was a nice compliment—said the scenes really made him feel like he was right there. And I think the reason is because I've done the things that Ed has, I've been in an interview room, I've interviewed criminals, etc. So I have a feel of what it's like. I'm decent at detecting deception. I've been to a lot of interviewing schools. I used to get confessions out of people all the time and send them to prison. There are little telltale things people do when they lie. BP: Let's talk about "Killer with a Badge." After Frank was convicted of killing fellow officer Ronald Austin Williams and two others, her father's body was found buried under her house on Michigan Street in New Orleans. There's something terribly wrong with this Antoinette Frank, wouldn't you say? CH: She's insane. She's a psychopath. That's not just my opinion. She's been interviewed by psychiatrists who said she was crazy. Eddie Rantz said she's absolutely crazy, the most coldhearted person he's ever met. Eddie was an armed robbery and homicide detective for 27 years. So he's met a few psychos, and he said she's just off the chart. BP: Yet she was still able to win praise from weak people and masochistic types? CH: Well, I don't know if she won praise from anybody. They liked her; they hired her. But they had so many warning signs that she would be a failure, and they just ignored them. BP: One of my favorite parts of "Killer with a Badge" is the interrogation of Frank by Eddie Rantz, Marco Demma, and Richard Marino. CH: Yeah. I have the transcripts of it. All of those interviews were taped. I've been involved with many interrogations, and I must say Frank is unbelievable. She couldn't keep a story straight to save her life. She needed to eliminate everyone to get away with this, and she couldn't. It threw her plan out of whack. BP: You write that Colin Danos was approached by Frank's defense attorneys, Robert Jenkins and Frank Larre. But Danos decided not to testify because Frank had tried to stick him with with overdue videotapes, like New Jack City and King of New York? CH: Yeah. Danos was her partner. He considered testifying at the penalty phase, not the trial, but the penalty phase where people say nice things about you so they don't kill you. But he realized after the video fiasco he wasn't going to do anything for her. He was trying to get away from her. That's why he went to another unit. He wanted to quit riding her because she was useless. BP: How about getting Killer with a Badge made into a movie? CH: I have some interest from some Hollywood script agents and film rights agents. They ask for copies of the book. I haven't heard back yet, but I hope someone will represent the book and try to sell it. That would be more of a TV movie. But there are tons of true crime movies of the week, so I hope it will sell. I want to write the script for that too. BP: I was thinking Omarosa from "The Apprentice" TV show would make a good Antoinette Frank. CH: Who? I don't watch much television. I'd like Halle Berry. But I don't get to pick her. I did give copies to John McConnell. He's been in over 20 movies. He says he wants to play Marco Demma. BP: How do you like writing screenplays compared to your other writing? CH: A book is a solitary thing. I hear that, with screenplays, everyone wants you to change things, and most of them aren't writers. It's like writing by committee. But that's fine with me. I don't want to move to Hollywood necessarily, but I want to write for films. And Ron told me sometimes they'll bring a writer in just to clean up a script. I would like to write feature movies. I like fiction, but it doesn't pay the bills. That's why I write for the Advocate. I wrote the article on the Holocaust survivor in about twenty minutes. BP: Did you always want to be a writer? CH: I was always interested, but I certainly didn't exhibit any ability. If you check my transcripts you'll see I did rather poorly in English. BP: How did you overcome that? CH: I don't think there's anything you can't learn from reading a book about it. I went to Barnes and Noble and picked up a half dozen; some were useless. There's "Story" by Robert McKee, which is about screenwriting, but his ideas applied equally to novels. The first time I read it I thought he was a blowhard, but when I read it again it made sense. Then there was John Bickham. Stephen King's book on writing is also really good. But there are dumb books out there too. I leafed through one the other day that insists that you write the last scene first. That's just stupid. BP: I agree.
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"I'm living proof that writing can be taught," says Chuck Hustmyre, a retired Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who is now a respected author and investigative journalist with over 200 articles published nationwide. Chuck says he taught himself to write by reading how-to books. "It worked for me," he says. "I tried a writing group once, but I found it rather negative."
BP: You mentioned that your novel, House of the Rising Sun, is being considered for a movie.
BP: Oh sure, I'm hip. Chuck, so many movies are about violent crime. As a former ATF agent you can write about that with an authenticity not many writers will have.
