Paul Cleave wrote The Cleaner in 1999. He finally got it published in 2006. The first-person tale of a serial killer preying on the women of his hometown of Christchurch – but with a twist or three – kicked off an international career of crime novels, which has made him, by some estimations, New Zealand’s most successful book writer.
The television series of the book, which he also wrote and which is backed by major US screen production company Lionsgate, is finally heading to our screens and wherever it can be sold overseas. Based on the first in Cleave’s interlaced nine-book “Dark City” series, Dark City: The Cleaner has been in stop-start development for seven or eight years.
That’s a long time for a writer who clearly prides himself on being fast – once he finally got the green light two years ago, he wrote the six episodes in two weeks of 12-hour days, with AC/DC Live on high rotate on his stereo.
These days, Cleave says he’s fixated on Supertramp live albums. They are helping him on the horror novel he’s already 90,000 words into. He laughs when it’s suggested maybe the live album thing is because he likes the cheering and applause every five minutes or so.
Today, the 49-year-old has the sound system off, the cricket on one screen in his sun-filled home office and the Listener via Zoom on another. He’s in an athletic singlet and his arms look like they’ve just been to the gym. His silvery hair and beard look not long from the barber’s.
Yes, he is excited about the series finally arriving but mainly nervous. He’s a little worried that his elderly neighbour, who helps him with the garden, is eager to see it. Cleave’s books, which seem to have earned him a passionate international and multilingual fanbase, are not for everyone. The show isn’t, either. And the misogynist modus operandi of its anti-hero Joe Middleton has already been a problem. Cleave and his NZ producers were close to a deal with a British production company just as the #MeToo movement came along and gave them cold feet, Cleave says.
“Suddenly, there was this big reaction to fiction that touched on these kinds of topics. Suddenly, we just got dropped by everyone. It was ticking along quite nicely. I’d even gone to London to meet the folks who were going to make it … and then, #MeToo. If #MeToo had been six months either side, then the show would have been made back then.”
And Cleave wouldn’t have written it and it wouldn’t have been set in Christchurch.
The cleaner of the book has been lightened, if that’s the right word, for the television version. In the book, Middleton, who works as a janitor at Christchurch Police Station, is a serial killer and rapist. His sexual violence is downplayed on screen. He’s just a slightly quirky stalker murderer.
“It just wasn’t my call,” says Cleave when asked why. “Clearly, anyone who is a serial killer who does what Joe does … well, he’s going to do that as well. But no, he’s the one serial killer in the world who is not doing this. That was the compromise.”
“In the past, it’s always been, ‘This is my book, and no one really gets to tell me what to do.’ Ultimately, it’s my world and I get to set the parameters. But that’s not the case with TV. I can write the scripts and then they’re going to go, ‘These are our conditions.’ We all wanted the show made.”
“We” includes veteran NZ producer John Barnett who bought the rights to eight of the nine books in the Dark City series, the first of which got the backing of Lionsgate, as well as some NZ On Air funding.
The rights to the ninth belong to a household-name Hollywood actor whose name Cleave says he can’t disclose. He laughs when the Listener suggests, via the Barnett connection, that “from the producer of Whale Rider” would look quite good on the poster for possibly NZ’s darkest, bloodiest and nastiest crime show ever. It is directed by Rick Jacobson, an American with local ties who made the pulpy Spartacus and Ash vs Evil Dead TV shows here. It stars Cohen Holloway as Joe, as well as the familiar faces of Elizabeth Hawthorne (as Joe’s mother), Robbie Magasiva (as the lead detective on the “Christchurch Carver” murders) and a scene-stealing Chelsie Preston Crayford (as Melissa, Joe’s rival psychopath and credited as Chelsie Florence).
Cleave spent a little time on the shoot – “it became very clear, very fast that the set is not a place for a writer” – and has a cameo role. He was also heavily involved in Joe’s prominent voice-over narration that was added during the editing. But returning to the book, what did he think about the 20-something guy who wrote it? “I would see some lines where I would go, ‘Whoa! I really said that?’ Then again, I put many of those lines into the book because you can’t go, ‘What’s going to offend people?’ You’ve got to go, ‘What’s a serial killer like Joe going to think?’ He’s not going to think nice thoughts. He’s not going to see the world in a PC way. And I think to portray him like that is a disservice to the book and to that genre.
“There were certainly elements in the book that I wouldn’t write now. I’ve been published for almost 20 years, so I’d like to think that I’m a different writer than I was back then and I’m a better writer than I was back then. So, there are things that I just won’t touch. There are things I don’t find funny any more.”
Judging by those episodes, he’s okay with blood and gore …
“There’s not a lot in the books, there’s a suggestion of a lot in the show.”
Well, there is a scene where Joe meets his nemesis, Melissa. At gunpoint, she subjects him to – to put it kindly – a non-anaesthetised orchiectomy. She used pliers in the book but it’s – ho ho – nutcrackers on screen (“I hadn’t noticed,” says Cleave about the weapon change). There’s quite a lot of blood and pain afterwards.
“One of my real worries was that we weren’t going to be allowed to do that,” says Cleave. “Rick was like, ‘We’re filming it. Let’s just hope we can get this past Lionsgate.’ We got 95% of it past. I don’t really want to spoil the show, but I saved the gory bits for the bad people and there are very few gory bits to the innocent or the victims in any of my stuff. But when it comes to the bad people, let’s go for it … they have to go through hell. There are no real quick exits for them.”
It has whetted Cleave’s appetite for more television writing. He’s always wanted to do it and always thought he’d be good at it. It’s also better paid.
“And sure, there’s a big ego thing to it. I love the fact that I got my name on the poster and that it’s written by Paul Cleave. That’s a huge thing for me, just a seriously cool thing. But the most important thing for me was bringing people to the books.”
There’s a natural sequel to the first series in 2013′s Joe Victim but he can’t talk about what might be next. For now, he’s happy, if a little anxious, about the reaction, of having made the show he wanted to make.
“I remember seven or eight years ago saying that I wanted to make one of the darkest shows to come out of this country. I don’t want to hold back. I want to swing for the fences and that’s what we did.
“If you’ve loved the books, you’ll love the show. But certainly, I can see that there will be elements in it that people won’t exactly love. I anticipate some hate mail.”
Cleave says he hasn’t read a review of one of his books in a decade, other than positive ones his publisher sends. Making a television show means his writing comes in for attention from a whole new world. That’s scary.
“I don’t know what to expect. It could be the show comes out and people are like, ‘What the fuck was that guy thinking?’ I’m hoping that it’s going to be a big thing for me. But honestly, I’m petrified.”
Dark City: The Cleaner’s first episode is on Neon from Monday March 11 and screens on SoHo on that day at 8.30pm. It will screen free-to-air on Sky Open in May.
