BUNKER: AN EX-CONVICT HAS WRITE BACKGROUND

Anyone perusing the membership lists of the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild will realize, quite quickly, that many actors and writers have interesting and varied backgrounds.

But few, it is safe to say, can equal that of Edward Bunker--writer, actor and ex-convict.

Bunker is a man who, until a few years ago, was better known to the former wardens of places like San Quentin and Terminal Island than he was to the guilds’ membership secretaries. But that slowly has been changing.

He is the co-writer of the current Jon Voight movie “Runaway Train.” (It is not his first screen credit; he was co-writer, with Alvin Sargent, of Dustin Hoffman’s prison movie “Straight Time.”)

He is the author of four books and he is the man who, when applying for a Guggenheim Fellowship, was able to name William Styron and Mike Nichols as two of his four sponsors.

And, just to complete the record, he is the man who, at 17, was the youngest prisoner in San Quentin and who, for much of his life until he was 40, was in and out of penitentiaries for such crimes as forgery and armed robbery.

This past New Year’s Eve was important for him. Friends gave him a party to salute his 50th birthday--and to celebrate his first decade as an adult out of prison.

Now, with 10 years of freedom behind him and a new screen credit, Eddie Bunker, a big man with a face that is a map of his life, sees the future bright. Hoffman has optioned his second novel, “Animal Factory.” He is about to start a new book. And, at long last, his dream of making a living as a writer may be realized.

“I’ve always wanted to be a writer,” he said the other day. “When I was 19 in San Quentin, I used to talk with Caryl Chessman through the ventilation shaft. He was on Death Row and had just written his book. And I thought, ‘If he can do it, why not me?’

“After that, a part of me was always watching, always observing. Even when I was caught robbing a bank here in Beverly Hills, and I was lying there with a shotgun to my head, a part of me was standing aside, observing it all. I suppose most writers are like that.”

The man who changed Bunker’s life was Dustin Hoffman. He read his first book, “No Beast So Fierce,” and optioned it for the movie that became “Straight Time.”

“I was in the Terminal Island penitentiary doing a bank robbery term when that happened,” Bunker said matter-of-factly. “And he came there to see me. It was quite a moment, with all the women guards asking him for his autograph. He wanted me to act as technical adviser and to work on the script. I had five more months to do of my term, but they let me out early to work with him. 1976, it was. And everything changed for me.”

He and Hoffman became friends.

“And I admired him. Very much. He wanted to get the feel of prison for the movie, so he put on convict’s denim and walked out into the yard of San Quentin without an escort.

“That took guts, this little guy, this movie star, standing there unprotected. Someone might have jumped him. You get a reputation that way in the penitentiary.”

Bunker even had a scene in the movie with Hoffman.

“He coached me for it, a long talking scene. I enjoyed it. Who wouldn’t? And I like the movie, though I think it could have been better. I know Dustin thinks it’s some of his best work. That’s why he’s optioned my second book.”

Bunker made “about $180,000” from the book and movie sale. It was the last big money he earned.

“We had to live on that for a long time, my lady (wife Jennifer) and I,” he said. “She had faith in me, so she worked and I did some little things. I tried to get a teaching job, but without academic qualifications it was hopeless. So I kept on writing. And my last book, ‘Little Boy Blue,’ got really great reviews. That’s what brought me to William Styron’s notice. But the book belly-flopped. It had no promotion at all.

“So when they came to me with ‘Runaway Train,’ I really needed the money, so I said yes.

“Runaway Train,” which features Voight and Eric Roberts as two escaped convicts who wind up on a runaway train, was originally written by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. Two other writers, Paul Zindel and Djordje Milicevic, were involved before Bunker was brought in.

“As I understand it, Robert Duvall was involved in the project at one time,” Bunker said. “He was going to play the Voight role. But he felt the early versions of the script had structure but not meat. So Paul and Djordje did a lot of rewriting. But still the prisoner stuff wasn’t good. So Duvall suggested they hire me. I don’t know why, unless he’d seen ‘Straight Time.’ I’ve never met him. Anyway, they took his advice and hunted me down in Brooklyn Heights where I live and hired me. And they seemed to like what I did, because later they brought me out here and put me in a nice hotel and I worked with the director, Andrei Konchalovsky.

“I have to say he brought out the best in me. I changed a lot of the story. They wanted this man (Voight) to be a legend. Yet they had him as a wife killer. That’s a contradiction in terms in the underworld. You can’t be a wife killer and a legend. So I made him a bank robber.

“See, one of the troubles with people who make prison movies is that they tend to base their stories on the last prison movie they saw. It’s understandable. What else do they know? And there aren’t too many ex-cons around to correct them.”

While he was working with Konchalovsky, Bunker mentioned that he held a SAG card--from his acting stint with Hoffman. He had also played a small role in “The Long Riders” as a member of Jesse James gang. So Konchalovsky gave him a role in “Runaway Train” as a sympathetic prisoner.

“And I’ve got to tell you, acting is easier than writing. Though, of course, I’m not a real actor. But I can look mean. I’ve been faking it all my life, looking tough, because that’s the way to stay alive in prison.”

Sometimes, he says, he has to be careful not to scare people with that look. “Occasionally, I’ve become angry with publishers and banged the table and I’ve seen them looking scared, thinking I was going to jump them. But it’s hard not to get angry when your books aren’t being promoted.”

When he looks back on his troubled early life, Bunker sees his problems as being unavoidable. Deserted by his mother when he was 4 and made a ward of the court, he was rarely out of trouble afterward.

“I failed so often,” he said. “I was in San Quentin when I was 17 and got out four years later. Then I thought I could make it. And Louise Fazenda (the silent-movie actress who had a reputation for helping troubled kids) did her best to help me. But three years later I was back. And I was in trouble from then on.”

After selling his book to Hoffman, Bunker decided to leave Los Angeles and move east.

“I felt I knew too many people here,” he said. “And they’d get me back in trouble. One day, a guy who’d just robbed a bank came to my apartment straight from the chase, ran into my bathroom to hide with the money spilling out of his pockets. If the police had come, imagine the trouble I’d have been in. That’s when I knew I had to get away from here.”

Now Edward Bunker is about to start work on a new novel--set on Death Row. It will, he hope, be his magnum opus. He’s banking a lot on getting the Guggenheim Fellowship, which will support him while he writes.

“I’m optimistic,” he said. “You read a book like Jack Abbott’s (“In the Belly of the Beast”) and there he is, full of hatred for this country, saying how terrible it is. But here I am, a man who’s been in and out of prison much of his life, and now I’m writing for the movies. Where else in the world can you do that?”