Todd Hill spent 20 years as a New York City journalist and movie critic. He has interviewed almost every A-List star you can think of including Robert De Niro, Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie. He recently took a 360-degree detour and wrote his first novel, Dutchess County. It’s about courtship, marriage and a slew of mistakes.
New York Resident: What inspired your novel?
Todd Hill: Like many people, I’ve been married and divorced. I had nothing new to add to that common tale but found myself making a series of breathtakingly bad decisions regarding my next relationships. My own experiences were not nearly as colorful as those endured by the characters in this book, thank goodness, but they were my starting point.
NYP: How much of Dutchess County is autobiographical?
TH: Not a lot. The male protagonist is a NYC film journalist and so was I. Nothing else is based on my life or anybody else’s.
NYR: The sex scenes may be unexpected for some readers, i.e., you can’t tell the book by its tame cover.
TH: Yes, there is a fair amount of sexual content. Characters think about sex, talk about it, but there is little actual sex in the book. What’s there is explicit though, so it makes an impression. This novel is about people in their 20s and 30s, married, in relationships so it’s contextually appropriate.
NYR: During your 24 years as a journalist which celebs were the most fun to interview?TH: Julianne Moore and Patricia Clarkson. Moore has a great sense of humor and Clarkson is quite sexy. It is the quality of their work as performers, however, that most attracted me.
NYR: What was the best compliment received during your journalism career so far?
TH: When you write for a living you get a lot of people praising you whether they mean it or not, and it’s often easier to dismiss all of it than take the trouble of making the distinction. That’s why I’ve usually been uncomfortable with praise. But when I was in college, at Ohio State in the mid-1980s, somebody took a column I had written for the school newspaper and anonymously stuck it on the bulletin board in the newsroom with the remark, “This guy really knows how to use the English language.” It was a genuine compliment so I haven’t forgotten it.
NYR: Were you ever surprised by criticisms?
TH: Critics get criticized. It comes with the territory. The only time it reached a notable level was when I gave a negative review to Mel Gibson’s film “Passion of the Christ” but the majority of hate mail came from people who hadn’t even seen it. Typical. Most memorable was a phone call from a minster’s wife who called me “a motherf@#%ing Satan.”
NYR: What is your greatest strength as a novelist?
TH: I find dialogue easy to write and if it’s crafted well it can go a long way toward establishing characters. Thinking critically about thousands of films over the years helped me with storytelling.
NYR: What are you most proud of accomplishing so far?
TH: Acting my age. But in terms of Dutchess County, I’m glad I released it to the world. I could’ve just stuck it in a drawer, which would’ve entailed a lot less effort.
NYR: What is your favorite quality about yourself?
TH: I make decisions easily, particularly big decisions. Virtually no thought went into my deciding to move to New York City in 1990, and it ended up being my residence for 20 years.
NYR: What project are you working on now?
TH: My second novel doesn’t have a title yet. I plan to go carousing cemeteries to read gravestone inscriptions for inspiration. I’m organizing ideas, plot points and blocking out chapters. The book will be about a man who kills someone accidentally and then spends the rest of his life attempting to atone for that crime. Matters of religion, faith and morality will play a large part in the story. I’ve already written that book’s last sentence, so everything I write will lead to that.
Todd Hill’s novel Dutchess County is now available at Amazon.com.