Jason Allison's "The Killing Yards"

Jason Allison is a writer and former detective who spent twenty years with the NYPD. His award winning fiction and has appeared in journals and anthologies. The Killing Yards is his first novel. Bronx born and raised, he now lives in Massachusetts with his wife and their judgmental Golden Retriever.

Here Allison dreamcasts an adaptation of The Killing Yards:

It’s been said—though I can’t find the quote—that after Alec Guinness played George Smiley in the 1979 BBC adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy, John Le Carré could no longer envision his version of the character. Smiley became Sir Alec, and vice versa. This isn’t uncommon with screen adaptations of novels. In On Writing, Stephen King explains how he limits physical details in his character descriptions. That way, each reader can create their own version in their own head. To use James Ellroy as a reference, my Pete Bondurant is probably different from your Pete Bondurant, but Bud White will always be Russell Crowe.

I will now violate my essay’s opening paragraph by casting my debut novel, The Killing Yards. As a huge cinephile, it’s surprising that I haven’t already. Yards is a crime noir set in the early 1990s NYC nightclub scene, and its four main characters—Jimmy and Michelle Lettner, GM and owner of Abattoir; Serge Thanakis, Jimmy’s only friend; and Ben Hopkins, striving NYPD rookie—have existed only in my brain space. Until now.

Every great project starts with a script. Assuming Tony Gilroy has adapted my novel, let’s move to the director. Two names jump out straight away, but for different reasons. In a series of gritty, NYC-set crime dramas, James Gray has crafted brilliant character portraits of the city’s felonious demographic. His work is emotionally searing, if not quieter and more intimate than Michael Mann’s epics, which often depict driven men (usually criminals or cops) doing their jobs with monomaniacal precision. He’s all about depicting process cinematically; think Heat’s bank robbery shootout, or Collateral’s frenetic Koreatown nightclub assassination. Given The Killing Yards orbits Manhattan’s hottest nightspot, Mann’s flair for shooting packed dance floors soundtracked by thumping EDM gives him the lead.

Here’s where things get tricky. Casting the right actor elevates the entire project, like how Inde Navarette absolutely owned Obsession. Jimmy Lettner, recovering addict and Abattoir’s ex-con general manager, is physically unassuming and emotionally dishonest. He screams for Jeremy Strong, whose Kendall Roy epitomized misguided ambition. For his wife Michelle, who believes power moves quietly (and wears a D&G sweater), I’m torn between Rebecca Hall and Claire Danes. Hall crushed her role in The Town, and recently chewed all the scenery in Onslaught, but I’ve always thought Danes is tremendous, going all the way back to My So Called Life. This one’s a tie.

The only character I had an actor in mind for when I wrote him is Serge Thanakis, Jimmy’s right hand, a former (maybe?) narcotics trafficker, and Abattoir’s true protector. And that actor is Jude Law. Unfortunately, Jude is 53 now. Enter Theo James, who pairs style with menace in The Gentlemen. He brings a subtle physicality and looks great holding a gun.

Last we’ve got Ben Hopkins, the insecure, careerist NYPD undercover desperate to make a case (he’s got Daddy issues). I discovered Dominic Sessa in The Holdovers, but he really came into his own playing a young Anthony Bourdain as a lying, insecure jerk in this summer’s Tony. Sessa brings the right amount of arrogance and attitude, eyeing the camera sideways, wondering if you’ve figured him out yet.

There it is, my dream director and cast for The Killing Yards.

All I need now is $35-40 million, and we’re golden.

Visit Jason Allison's website.

--Marshal Zeringue