Edward Bunker: A Life in Crime

by Peter Walker

The second time I met Edward Bunker he reached over the table and, in the midst of telling me one of his seemingly inexhaustible stories about his life of crime, he gripped my arm. It was a sudden and unexpected thing for him to do and I'm not sure he was even aware he'd done it. His grip was powerful and, combined with the intensity of his expression, I briefly caught a glimpse of someone different from the affable and chatty person I was interviewing. Looking back at that moment now I'm still caught by conflicting emotions and questions. What kind of life has this man had? He's certainly experienced things that few of us could even dream of. I thought I knew about his life from reading his books but in that one moment I realised that this was only a half truth. To turn such experiences into some of the greatest books ever written on crime was one thing but to simply survive - and what you had to do to survive - was a different matter altogether.
Born in Hollywood in 1933 - reputedly during an earthquake - Bunker's early years were marked by a succession of foster homes, reform schools, detention centres and worse. He constantly ran away and developed an anti-authoritarian streak which was to stay with him for a long time. When he was eleven he was placed in Camarillo State Hospital for observation following an incident were he trashed a Juvenile Hall dormitory. The process whereby he becomes increasingly ensnared by the system and its brutal rules is portrayed to considerable effect in Little Boy Blue. The whole section in that book which deals with his life in Camarillo is one of its most aching and desperate. A more eloquent testament to the brutality we inflict on young people in the name of society would be hard to find. Bunker himself counts Little Boy Blue as his best book and certainly his most autobiographical. (The central character, Alex Hammond, gifted, angry and independent, given to sudden and violent fits of rage, is so like Bunker in these ways that, but for some understanding, a "child" is turned into someone locked out of society.)
William Styron (quoted in his introduction to Dog Eat Dog) put it like this: "For Bunker, crime is nurtured in institutional cradles and those who are abused and spiritually mutilated in their earliest youth, whether within the family or the foster home or the reformatory, grow up to become society's bloody marauders"
Bunker regularly ended up in institutions for much older 'boys' - and often ones indented for men - where the need to survive - the need not to become anyone's 'punk' and never to lose face - often left no option but to fight. Thus a vicious spiral would ensue. At fourteen, when on parole, he was shot whilst trying to rob a liquor store. He was sent to Youth Prison in Lancaster. There he stabbed a guard and spent time in LA county Jail. The judge just couldn't send someone so young to San Quentin. Upon release he tried to `go straight'. His lawyer was friends with Hal Wallis - the producer - and Louise Wallis took him under her wing for a time.
Try as he might to go straight he just couldn't get work or respect and he was drawn into a network of contacts and friends who were able to help Bunker in his criminal activities. At 16 years old he was arrested after a car chase (he was delivering hash at the time) and was sent down for a probation violation. He again did county time but escaped. His `luck' finally ran out when he was nineteen and he became the youngest person to be sent to San Quentin where he remained for 4.5 brutal years.
A photo from that time, taken in August 1952, with the description California Prisoner Number A-20284 E Bunker below it gives some clues as to what this was like for Bunker. He was to spend most of the next 35 years in prison. The Animal Factory is a product of that time and is one of the classic prison novels. Mr Bunker has this to say about it: It's a great dramatic story. The underlying story is about friendship. An old convict and a youngster. Its really about the youngster. A middle class kid and a year later when he escapes he's got big scars on his face from knife fights, `y know what I mean? And he'll limp from being shot in a brawl. I mean, have you ever seen a shooting with a .33? They roll around in the dirt and they're still fighting each other. There'll be a lot of scenes you haven't seen before. A knife fight not like any bogus knife fight you've seen where they dance around. No, when people get in a knife fight they get hand to hand and they cut each other up - I mean both of them.
San Quentin, Folsom, Terminal Island. The hard and sometimes bitter experiences of these places spills out from the pages. Decker, the middle class kid on a minor dope charge goes from a privileged life to prison life. Earl Copen, the hardened con, takes him under his wing. Possibly Decker is the kid Bunker might have been, Copen the man he was then. What is for sure is that Bunker started to write seriously and produced numerous shorts and articles and, in 1972, his classic No Beast So Fierce was finally accepted by the publishers.
Its title comes from Richard III: No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast and the book begins with a quote from William Blake: In every cry of every man, In every infant's cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind forg'd manacles I hear. It tells the story of Max Dembo's attempt and `failure' to negotiate `straight time'. The book opens with Dembo describing, for a man who has spent most of his adult life in jail, the fear of liberty. The hopelessness of his situation is driven home in endless no-hope job interviews, dive hotels and the need to grovel. As a result of helping out a junkie friend he ends up back inside for a nalline test. Whilst there he realises he only has one choice left open to him: I was going to war with society....I declared myself free from all rules except those I wanted to accept-and I'd change those whenever I wanted. I'd be what I was with a vengeance: a criminal. My choice of crime and complete abandonment of society's strictures was also my truth....Crime was where I belonged, where I was comfortable and not torn apart inside. And though it was free choice it was also destiny. Society made me what I was(and ostracised me through fear of what it had created) and I gloried in what I was. If they refused to let me live in peace I didn't want to...at least I'd have the integrity of my own soul, being my own boss of my own little patch of hell..
The second part of the book is one of raising tension as Dembo organises a gang to pull off a series of robberies. Eventually their luck runs out. The construction, plotting and effortless prose make this unforgettable. The rising tension and `excitement' (if that's the word) has the stamp of authenticity - not to mention a certain `buzz' over the need for such danger. The last robbery ends in disaster and Dembo is on the run right up to the end.
Bunker's writing and the attention it bought him paid off when he received a short sentence for armed robbery - he got 5 years when he was expecting 25 - and this proved to be his last spell in prison. The film rights to "No Beast.." were sold in 1975 and it was filmed as Straight Time with Dustin Hoffman in 1978. Bunker spent a lot of time in the movies and in particular was involved in Runaway Train in 1985 for which he wrote a fair amount of the prison dialogue and, famously, as Mr Blue in Reservoir Dogs. Animal Factory was published in 1977 and Little Boy Blue in 1981. There was to be a 15 year gap until Dog Eat Dog was published.
The first time I met Mr Bunker he was in the UK to promote Dog Eat Dog and was really pleased to meet me because he liked my review of the book in Crimetime so much. It is a little known fact that Max Dembo makes an appearance in Little Boy Blue. The central character in Dog Eat Dog - Troy - is, in many ways, the adult Alex Hammond. Out on parole he teams up with two friends - Mad Dog (who is actually mad) and Diesel. All three men would fall foul of California's `three strikes' rule if caught and, as with previous books, this simply hardens their resolve. Why go down for any offence, no matter how minor? Desperate men make for

desperate actions. As Troy says - Play the cards how they are dealt - fuck the consequences. There is a sub-text to the book which comments on the disintegration of accepted `rules' in the face of a general collapse in Californian society. Troy - having been in jail for a long time - is aware of the increases in homelessnes. Professional criminals complain about the random shootings and increase in gun use. Poverty and racism is dividing and destroying society. Troy wonders about the morality of his actions whilst pondering the fact that the car industry bought out a profitable public transport system in LA in order to make its massive profits. Ultimately what `morality' does the system have?
The action packed final chapters see Troy meeting his `destiny'. The ending of the book pays tribute to W.R Burnett's High Sierra as Troy tries to escape. The similarities between Roy Earle and Troy are strong - you may not accept their chosen `career' but you have to respect them.
The book is based on stories Bunker was a part of and heard about in prison. He loves a good story and here is his account of the true story upon which he based the end of the book:
Mr Bunker: Yeah, that's the same but the event that happened was really a true shoot out that a friend of mine told me....He was an escapee from a California prison and he'd pulled a robbery and couldn't get back to his car in Detroit. So he kidnapped a couple, just like I told it in the book. He ran at them on the freeway ramp and jumped in the car. He said the first time he ran he missed. He ran at them like a lion that charges. It was like when the Zebra gets away, y'know? He charged too late (laughing). So he went back and waited for another one.
Mr Walker: So what did he do? Jump in the window?
Mr Bunker: (laughing) Jumped in the back seat. Just as they stopped he's in with a gun. If the door had been locked he'd have been in trouble! Y'know what I mean? But it wasn't and he got in and he said the guy almost wrecked the car! It was a black couple. He was a minister.
(Later the next day, in the mountains, his friend's luck ran out. The car was pulled over by State Troopers.)
Mr Bunker: As soon as they put the light on him and he pulled over, if they'd had come right down he'd have given up. But they gave him time to think about it, y'know what I mean?...that he was going back to prison and he'd escaped. And he got out of the car and he took a bullet right there and he kept moving and he didn't see the guy go across the highway, there was a kind of fog there and the guy shot with a shotgun `cept he had birdshot in it instead of buckshot. Shot him once. Anyway when he came up to him, the other cop had been wounded and was emptying his 9mm, eleven shots, into the back of the car. Killed both of them. In real life he got away for a while. He dragged the bodies out, got in the car and drove to Chicago and dumped the car and got away. And over a year later, it wouldn't work for the purposes of the novel, in real life they caught him and he was back in the joint and he escaped and about a year or two later the F.B.I. came and you know how they got him? Well you know the cop who shot the people, I guess Bob shot him or something, the cop was out or he fell out and he [Bob] went over to see if he was dead and it was in the headlights from the car and he reached down to feel for a pulse and the cop saw tattoos on his hand and remembered those tattoos. Two years later they came and got him. Three life sentences.
Mr Bunker is involved in all sorts of projects now - not to mention his marriage and the son he is so proud off. He has scripted his great friend James Ellroy's Suicide Hill and is trying to get a film version of The Animal Factory off the ground. He was heavily involved in Michael Mann's Heat. The John Voigt character is based on Mr Bunker. Mr Bunker's biography is due out soon. He describes it like this: I'm doing it in a series of stories that are unconnected. My wife and I were discussing it. Its not an autobiography that goes one thing after another, although it seems to be in a kind of continuity, but that is in each individual story. I have some way out stories, about eight or nine, and I just can't decide. My wife says I should take half a dozen of the best, or four or five, and lock myself in a room and do those and hand it in. Maybe I'll do that. That's the book I'm working on. Next year's book.
How do you sum up such a life? The best account I've read comes from Paul Duncan's definitive interview with Mr Bunker: If God weighed what was done to me against what I did I'm not sure how the scales would tip. A life in crime indeed. Mr Bunker's books are published by No Exit Press. The quotes from Mr Bunker first appeared in "Crimetime" Issue 2.1 and were part of an interview. Paul Duncan's definitive piece on Mr Bunker is in "The Third Degree" published by Crimetime in 1997.

Peter Walker.

Page Revised:
03 Mar 2003.

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