Eric Bogosian is one of America's great multi-dimensional talents.  "There's sort of three different careers, and any one of them could exist by itself, on its own two feet.  There was that solo stuff, and then I started writing plays in the late seventies."  Although his work has spanned genres, most readers will recognize Bogosian for his acting, which has included a memorable performance in Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry to co-writing and starring in the Oliver Stone movie Talk Radio (based upon his Pulitzer Prize-nominated play) to playing the bad guy in Under Siege 2 to his current role in Law & Order: Criminal Intent as Captain Danny Ross.  They may not know, however, that he had collaborated with Frank Zappa on a album, worked with Sonic Youth, and was a voice on Mike Judge's Beavis & Butthead Do America.  He started one of New York City's largest dance companies, The Kitchen, which is still in existence.  He starred alongside Val Kilmer in Wonderland and his play Talk Radio was recently revived on Broadway with Liev Schreiber in the role Bogosian wrote and made famous. 
Currently at work on his third novel, tentatively titled The Artist, Bogosian spoke with David Shankbone about the craft of writing and his life as a creative.
David Shankbone:  Which role are you most proud of?
DS:  What kind of roles do you typically go for?
DS:  And it's Woody Allen.
DS:  If you could only choose one of these careers, what would you most want to go with?
DS:  When you tackled your first novel, was there ever a time when you were like, 'I don't even know how people get an entire novel out of their heads,' and you had to actually sit down and plot it?  How did you approach your first novel?
DS:  I saw that.
DS:  Do you have an audience in mind when you write?
DS:  Do you think the audience is shrinking for that sort of narrative?
DS:  How do you break your novel out?  How do you get it to stand apart?  
DS:  Or if you have a particular point that you want to make.  Some sort of allegory or some sort of commentary on society.
DS:  Would you describe yourself as an experience junkie?
DS:  Yeah.
DS:  Would you say it comes from emotion and character?
DS:  Do you draw any inspiration from the current political climate, either in the country or in the world?
DS:  Do you think narrative is one of the more challenging aspects of writing?
DS:  Do you ever ask yourself that question about your writing? 
DS:  But do you ever ask yourself that question when you're writing, "Who cares?"
DS:  When you look at the arc of American culture, in your experience, where do you see it heading?
DS:  Something that's not apparent.
DS:  I interviewed a novelist named John Reed, who wrote this book called Snowball's Chance that was kind of a rip on Orwell.  We were talking about how limited the current narrative is--at least in the United States, where it's sin, suffer and redemption.  John said he could foresee at some point these multidimensional narratives almost on a Biblical level come to fruition.  Where you have various dimensions, and where it goes from the Internet to magazines to television and it ends up spanning different mediums.  It's an interesting idea, and when you really think about it you can see it starting to happen.  It's not being done quite yet, but you could envision it.
DS:  But update it.
DS:  --that this narrative is currently not popular.
DS:  Nobody wants to find out why a person's troubled anymore?
DS:  They just want to see what the effects are and how things resolve?
DS:  Which are critically acclaimed but not commercially successful.
DS:  [Laughs]
DS:  Well, it's been seen so many times that everyone knows where it's going; it gets to the point where you're like, okay, what is this?  "Dejected Man"?  Is this, "World Didn't Turn Out The Way You Thought It Would Man"? 
DS:  In the end, the stories become uninteresting because you know it's going to be either a, b, c, or d that makes the conflict.   Which is it going to be?  People tend to like to read things because they want their interest grabbed.  They don't want to read a book like when they watch a horror movie, knowing what is right around the corner.
DS:  How is that person going to die?  You know they're going to die.  Are they going to be slashed across the throat? are they going to have a sword plunging through their stomach? are they going to be shot in the face?
DS:  You know when you watch a horror movie the person's going to die; it's just a question of how.
DS:  When you take that to a literary level, it starts becoming too formulaic, and people don't care how.
DS:  Yeah.
DS:  30 Days of Night is a good example of that, too, where you did have a central character, but you didn't really go into the psychology of anything.  It was based on a graphic novel.  It's vampires in Barrow, Alaska.  You don't go into the vampires at all.
DS:  One of the criticisms that somebody told me was that they really didn't go into the vampires.  You had these creatures show up; they wanted to kill.  They were interesting, but you didn't go into what motivated them--it became more about survival.  You had all of these different scenarios and how people's lives affected how they reacted to this sudden threat that had entered their town.
DS:  It was sort kind of a pinwheel narrative, but you didn't get into, "What's driving them?  What can stop them?"
DS:  What is something you notice missing from your Wikipedia article?
DS:  What's it called?
DS:  How do you come across these projects?  
DS:  When you say, "were a more interesting person," who was that person?
DS:  It's not as much of a collaboration as it is you're working on their project?

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Eric Bogosian on writing and the creative urge