Eric Bogosian goes to the 'Mall' in new book

Eric Bogosian's first novel, "Mall," explores the day in the lives of characters in the modern-day arena of the mall

In this story: Not just plain folk Expressing the 'it' in his head RELATED STORIES, SITES

BEVERLY HILLS, California (Reuters) -- Award-winning actor and writer Eric Bogosian was strolling through a suburban mall in search of shoes for his kids when the thought occurred to him: Does anybody else think this place is a little weird?

He looked around and saw what looked like stockbrokers, housewives and sullen teens milling around familiar chain stores that one would find in most any U.S. shopping mall -- all buying unquestioningly into the corporate construct before them.

"Our public places have all been designed and created for us by this corporate mega-thing," he said in an interview.

"Why was this motley group of people really gathered here?" he thought. In cities where he had spent a lot of time, all sorts of people were unavoidably pressed together. Here in the suburbs the mall was one of the few places where local folks got a chance to intersect.

His creative wheels began turning: What if things are not as peaceful as they seem? What if one or more of these people are lunatics under their average-looking exteriors?

Thus the actor known for raw, edgy one-man shows and for writing and starring in the Oliver Stone-directed film "Talk Radio" plunged into his first novel, "Mall" (Simon & Schuster). It explores a day in the shadow lives of characters who find themselves inextricably drawn to the public arena of a mall.

"Here is the cauldron of most Americans' hopes, fears, desires. Here is American life. There's a little of me in each of the characters, they share my appetites, whether it be for sex, violence, drugs or answers," he said.

"Mall" chronicles the intersecting lives of a 30ish speed freak who kills his mother in the first chapter, a sex-crazed housewife, a sullen teen with existential troubles and a voyeuristic businessman who gets busted for peeping inside women's dressing rooms.

It was written in 1999 just after two violent incidents captured public attention. Two Columbine, Colorado, high school students had just opened fire, killing 12 classmates, a teacher, and themselves, and a distraught AIDS patient had recently blown his brains out on a Los Angeles freeway to publicize his complaints about the health care system.

Both ordeals were covered endlessly on television. At the time, Bogosian was cooped up for 12 hours a day in a hotel room on a project he felt was not keeping him busy enough. Feeling trapped, and with these events swirling in his mind, he decided to write a novel.

Bogosian is an award-winning actor and has appeared in such films as 1988's "Talk Radio," directed by Oliver Stone

Such desperate, violent acts "stop the world. Twenty-four hours later they hose down the highway and it's just another day. I wanted to convey strangeness of this type of situation in the context of the mall and the universality of it," he said.

Reading the book, written in a read-till-your-eyes bleed style, has been likened to a contact sport. It is neither sedate nor commercial. And although Bogosian is braced for a few bad reviews he basically does not care.

"Mall" was written "sincerely," he said, for his own artistic satisfaction and to entertain friends, many of whom are artists and writers, and all others who share his sensibilities: "People like me, my tribe."

He writes with his favorite writers in mind: John Updike, Don DeLillo, Philip Roth. "I wonder what they think. I don't know what they think. Maybe they don't think anything at all," he said. Funny, he added, backtracking, "I'm more of a Stephen King writer. I'm not literary with a capital 'L'."

His fans, it seems, might find it true to form. Bogosian's projects, including "Talk Radio," in which he plays Barry Champlain, a controversial radio shock jock who ends up being killed by a listener, tend to develop devoted cult followings but are not successful at the box office.

The core of his work is hard to verbalize, he says. He is driven to express the "it" inside his head by developing characters from human traits he finds troubling, then wrapping them in ironically comedic situations with tragic undertones.

Bogosian, dressed in black from head to toe, seems totally sane in a California sort of way, allowing as to how emotional stability "doesn't make for good art." He can be both placid and talkative, open and mum about personal trials -- as interested in his interviewer as in selling his project -- and prone to expounding in long, creatively explanatory tangents.

He sits in a plush chair in his hotel suite, legs crossed, talking, going off point, talking, sipping tea, gratefully munching on pastries. "I have to eat something or I will fall down," he said. Then, lost in a point, he spilled tea all over the nice chair, rubbing it in so nobody would notice.

"It will blend," he said nervously. Then with a worried look, he added, "This is such a nice chair."

He began life in blue-collar Woburn, Massachusetts, the son of a hairdresser and an accountant who loved reading and lively talk. As a small, talkative child of Armenian descent, he felt lonely because he did not fit in with his truck driver and biker peers. "They beat me up a lot," he said, "so I ended up staying home, escaping into books and dancing in the mirror."

After he was cast in a school play, he found he loved acting but "never imagined this was something you could do for a living" -- not for years, he said.

Artistically, he has remained between, and comfortable with, literary crowds and his blue collar roots. He reads James Joyce as easily as he watches hours of television. He is a devoted family man who once was busted in a mall for smoking pot while tripping on acid. "I was hard core," he said. "I hung up my cleats 16 years ago. Leave it at that."

He said he has accepted that he is not "a star," and that he cannot approach projects solely for the money.

"I tried to write an action movie and wandered around Hollywood trying to sell it. It was kind of embarrassing," he said. "In a way things turned out better than I could have designed on my own. What is a star? What is a star like?"

Copyright 2000 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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