Global superstar author Matt Reilly’s career has exploded since he wrote his first novel Contest in 1996. The former Mosman resident chats about his successful Netflix movie and new novel Mr Einstein’s Secretary.
Matt Reilly is such a relaxed character that it is hard to believe the 49-year-old has written 21 bestselling books and directed and wrote Netflix chart-topping movie Interceptor. While he is now based in Los Angeles (LA), Matt was recently in Sydney to promote his new book, Mr Einstein’s Secretary. During Matt’s trip, the queues for people to sign his books all around the country went for hours, and within a day of the book’s release, Mr Einstein’s Secretary was number one on Australian book sale charts.
I first interviewed Matt when he lived in Mosman in 2000 and he’d published a sequel to best-selling debut novel Contest. The story of how the former lawyer self-published the book after being knocked back by publishers is well-known. In the 27 years since that first novel was published, Matt has been prolific in pumping out the popular Jack West Jr and Scarecrow series, spurring a cult following across the globe with his charismatic heroes who always save the day – but still get hurt and often suffer tremendous emotional loss in the process.
A dream of wanting to make a movie out of one of his books prompted Matt to leave Mosman for LA in January, 2015 with partner and now wife, Kate Freeman.
“I’d sold my books to Paramount, Disney, Fox, Warner Brothers and they’d never got made,” Matt explains. “And I thought, ‘let me go over there, be part of the industry’. If you are there, it makes a big difference.”
It took five years for a movie offer to come, and in the end, it was Matt’s original script for Interceptor that Netflix financed, not one of his books.
“And then I brought (Netflix’s) money here and we filmed (Interceptor) on the North Shore, in Artarmon at the ABC studios near the tip!”
Spanish-born actor Elsa Pataky – wife of Australian acting legend Chris Hemsworth – plays the lead character in the action blockbuster which was number one on Netflix in 83 of 89 countries tracked by FlixPatrol.
“When? Elsa Pataky and I were in the studio.?? If the wind blew from the south, you could smell the tip,” Matt reminisces. Anyone who has ever been in that tip knows exactly what he is talking about. Including yours truly.
Interceptor was filmed while Matt was writing three other novels, including newest tome, historical epic Mr Einstein’s Secretary.
The novel is a stark departure from Matt’s usual set piece hero/ crisis/action/resolution formula. For a start, a female takes the lead. Who just happens to be Albert Einstein’s neighbour. It is set before the First World War and spans to the second, bouncing between Germany in crisis with hyperinflation, New York in the prohibition era and the rise of the Nazis in Europe. As usual, Matt undertook meticulous research to write the novel, which took five years and came in between three other projects: finishing One Impossible Labyrinth, writing Cobalt Blue, and making Interceptor.
“I do my own research,” Matt states. “If anybody were to ask me questions about any element in the book, I could answer them. I also assume these days people are going to be Googling things on their phone. And all the people, all the dates where they were at what time, that’s all historically accurate. What they said inside those rooms, I get to make up.”
The fact Matt can nail an historical epic, write action books, learn to be a director and personally answer comments on his Instagram shows he has great capacity and drive. Just how does he do it?
“It’s a skill. Directing takes up an enormous amount of your memory, managing many moving parts at once.
“I can sort of just compartmentalise it. I prepare the day before what I’m going to do the next day and in my head I have these sort of compartments. I am planning a science fiction script right now, (so I go) into that mode. And you just reset yourself.”
As for learning how to be a director, he was essentially self-taught. “I had been planning to do that for about 30 years!” he laughs. He was also adamant that he had to be the one to direct Interceptor. “Directing, you are the storyteller in a movie, it’s the director’s medium. And so if I wanted to tell stories on screen, I had to be the director.”
Now that he has the movie bug will he quit writing? Not a chance. “I’ll always write the books,” Matt declares. “I still enjoy the books. I enjoy doing the book signings and meeting the people who read my words. There’s so much distance with a movie, from writing the script to the finished product. There are so many people involved. With a book, it’s just me.”
Being back in Australia has made Matt remember his passion for the North Sydney Bears who he used to follow as a child. He still owns a house in Willoughby where he grew up and the fact he came back to Australia to film Interceptor so close to home is surreal.
“I moved all the way to LA, and LA is very vibrant and different and busy. I got Netflix’s money and I came back and we filmed Interceptor a kilometre from my house!”
While Matt has been very successful with all the associated perks – he is the proud owner of a DeLorean DMC-12 (yep, from Back to the Future), he has always worked hard to make his dreams happen.
“I think you could say self-publishing Contest was the best decision of my professional life, that’s for sure!” he laughs. “I think I’m walking, talking proof that you can grow up in suburban Sydney with a dream of making Hollywood movies and telling big blockbuster stories and you can do it.
“It’s not easy. People see the books come out. They see the book signing queues and you go on TV and you do a movie premiere with Elsa (Pataky) and Chris Hemsworth. “They don’t see the dozens of rejections you get every year. Hollywood is filled with the word ‘pass’ or ‘no’.
“But you only need one ‘yes’. Interceptor was a big, big yes. Self-publishing Contest and getting the (book) deal for Ice Station (were) a big, big yes. You’ve got to work at it, but I can’t complain at all.”