Michael Connelly says that “cinema kills cinema.” ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ series, based on ‘The Verdict’, one of the writer’s novels, is sweeping Netflix
He knows the American legal system through and through. He is therefore distrusted by Michael Connelly (Philadelphia, age 65), one of the giants of suspense and intrigue who has sold more than 80 million books in 44 countries. Mickey Haller, the lawyer who turns his Lincoln Town car into his office, is one of Connelly’s iconic characters and the protagonist of the saga that inspired the series “The Lincoln Lawyer,” recently released on Netflix and most viewed on the platform. Adaptation of ‘The Judgment’, Haller’s second novel, which has been reissued in Spanish by AdN. The author believes that “cinema kills cinema”.
A journalist, Connelly cut his teeth into black chronicles before billing his successful “thrillers” based on true stories. “I talk to lawyers, detectives, police officers…and a lot of the stories I tell come from those conversations,” he explains. ‘The verdict’ is based on a little-known fact about a trial in which the suspect was found not guilty and was shot dead in the street shortly afterwards. “Sometimes there is no justice in the court, then you see the shortcomings of the system and that there are parallel judges,” the writer explains in a video conference from his home in Los Angeles.
“I don’t trust the American justice system. It doesn’t work well. There is a lot of corruption and a lot of lies,” he snaps. “One of the worst things that can happen to you is you end up in it because you drive drunk or drugged, for example. Money will be the key. How you are treated will depend on whether or not you pay a good lawyer,” explains Connelly.
“Everyone is lying. The police officers. The lawyers. The witnesses. The victims… A trial is a competition of lies. My job is to be the truth where everyone lies,” Haller says at the beginning of the novel in order to denounce and rise up a rotten and mendacious system “in which the search for the truth is a noble task”.
Some lies are reinforced and spread on the internet. “People don’t argue with each other. He believes everything, including ‘fake news’ if it suits his way of looking at the world. We need more critical thinking to better analyze what’s coming at us through the screens,” says Connelly.
With his eyes “fixed on Ukraine”, he worries about the future of the country and “why Putin and Russia have felt the need to do what they are doing”. But he is also concerned about the situation in the US: «I pour my worries into my novels through my characters. And underneath is the division of my country, more polarized than I’ve seen it in my entire life,” the writer says. “It’s impossible not to worry when you see two sides that are increasingly distant and incompatible. , with a very conservative right and a very liberal left,” he laments.
He does not believe that the series is killing the cinema, that he is committing suicide. “The cinema itself is the death of the cinema, because in my country it only offers superhero movies and exorbitant budgets,” he laments. “If people don’t go to the movies, it’s because they don’t react to what they want to see. They also demand stories from normal characters,” he says.
The cinema has treated him well, but Connelly is very comfortable with series “that allows you to develop a story with more time”. “You can have ten hours or more, and it’s an ideal means of doing it,” he congratulates himself. Clint Eastwood released “Blood Debt” in 2002, and Haller’s first novel, “The Innocent,” was made into a movie in 2011 starring Matthew McConaughey.
With nearly 50 titles, many “best sellers,” Connelly says “there is no magic recipe for success.” He attributes it to “huge luck, hard work, some talent for storytelling, and a good team that gets your characters talking through word of mouth and writing TV and movie scripts.”
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He tells of how his famous Lincoln lawyer turned up by chance when he met a lawyer during a baseball game who told him he was working from his car. From there came the idea of creating Haller, whose books “examine the cracks in the system.” In the case of ‘The Verdict’ and in the series, Haller inherits the business of a murdered colleague, Jerry Vincent; one is that of Walter Elliot, a Hollywood tycoon accused of murdering his wife and her lover.
Connelly’s star character is the famous and veteran Los Angeles police officer Harry Bosch, whose name is inspired by Bosch, and who co-stars with Haller – played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo in the series – in ‘The Verdict’, as they are half. – brothers. Played by Titus Welliver, Bosch has had his own series on Prime Video. “Because they are different studios, they don’t connect now, but I don’t know if it will be possible to negotiate in the future,” says the creator with little hope of seeing them together on screen. In the fall, he publishes ‘The Dark Hours’, a new Bosch case born from another conversation with a police officer. “He told me how rare it is for two sadistic rapists to work together,” he continues. In the book, he calls them “midnight men” and they are confronted by the police Renée Ballard, a detective born of Connelly’s tireless imagination, who promises new characters.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
