Craig Johnson, author of the reader favorite Longmire series, talks about his writing process and gives his thoughts on the Longmire TV series.
Cowboys & Indians: Were you surprised that you were allowed so much input when they adapted your Longmire novels into a TV series? Because many authors complain about being eased out of the decision-making process once they sign the dotted line for a Hollywood deal.
Craig Johnson: Yeah, that was pretty much the advice that I got from all of the authors that I knew that had had films or televisions made. They said, “Yeah, they’ll hand you a check and that’ll be the last you’ll hear from them.” And actually, it was interesting because our producers were a little bit more hands-on in really wanting to make sure that they got as much of the feel of the place and the books as they possibly could.
C&I: You were impressed by Robert Taylor and Lou Diamond Phillips very early on as they were being considered to play Walt Longmire and Henry Standing Bear. But did you worry that they might not be exactly like the characters you and your readers had in mind?
Johnson: [Laughs.] Well, back when I was doing research for the first books, one of the things I discovered doing ride-alongs in Montana and Wyoming with a lot of sheriffs up here was that the guys that tend to do the job tend to be really big guys. Because when you’ve got counties as big as New England states, you don’t really have a lot of backup. So you’re pretty much on your own. And so larger guys tend to gravitate into those roles. So, in the books, Walt’s about six-foot-five and weighs 255 pounds. Henry’s maybe an inch shorter at about six-foot-four, or almost six-foot-five — and probably in a little bit better shape, so maybe about 220 or something like that. And so Lou’s a little bit smaller than the Henry of the books would be.
C&I: But ultimately that didn’t matter much, did it?
Johnson: I laugh about it because everybody thinks that Lou is maybe not that big, like a lot of actors in Hollywood that aren’t that big. But Lou is six foot even, close to 200 pounds. So I laugh about that because whenever I see posters of him in the Young Guns movies or something like that, he’s always standing either in the back of the group, or in a hole or down a hillside, because he’s about six inches taller than all the other actors. I think what Lou did was, he really captured the essence of the spirituality of Henry, which is the essence of who that character is. And he captures that with such incredible grace and agility.
C&I: You have your 19th Longmire novel, The Longmire Defense, coming out in September. Do you ever worry that, sooner or later, Walt and Henry might be ready for retirement?
Johnson: Yeah, the time element is always going to be an issue whenever you’re a novelist, because you basically get one crack at the story every year. And so then for a lot of authors, they actually have a year go by between books. I was fortunate enough to have Tony Hillerman give me a piece of advice early on. He said, “Well, you need to think about how you want to do this, and find some way to differentiate each novel from the next.” And so I thought, “Well, OK, what’s the thing that has the largest scale effect on us as Westerners?” It has to be the weather. And so when I first started writing the Longmire novels, what I did was — well, I call it “pulling a Vivaldi.”
C&I: As in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons violin concertos?
Johnson: Right. Each book would cover a season. And so it takes me four books, four years, to get through one year of Walt and Henry’s lives. And the advantage to that, of course, is, first, it gives me different environs for each book, because as I’m sitting here with the blizzard howling outside, January is nothing at all like July in Wyoming. But the other thing it did was, it actually retarded the aging process for all of my characters. Suddenly it took me four books to get through one year of their life. And so here I am coming up on book 20, and my characters are only five years older than when I first started, whereas I’m 20 years older than when I first started. At some point, I’m going to be older than the characters. And I don’t know if I like that idea at all.
Craig Johnson will once again be on hand for Longmire Days, the annual celebration of his novels and characters, July 20-23 in Buffalo, Wyoming. Ticket info is available at longmiredays.com.
This article appears in our July 2023 issue, which is now available on newsstands and through our C&I Shop.