Q: Your plays have been described as "dark" and "off kilter." Do you think this is a fair description?

A: I wholeheartedly agree that my plays are "dark" and "off kilter" if that will help sell tickets. Actually, I don't consciously go in that direction at all. In writing a play, I simply try to be true to my own perceptions of how human beings behave in certain charged situations. For example, in Something in the Air, the premise involves a viatical agreement, in which someone buys the life insurance policy of someone who is dying. I didn't invent that, it exists. And the play is about what happens when a decent man, down on his luck, buys into this "sure-fire" investment. The play deals with our society's preoccupation with striking it rich and our unwillingness to look at the deeper implications of our investments. So nothing in the play, I hope, is beyond basic human nature in an extreme situation. Which means—okay, you've got me. It's kind of dark.

Q: You called Something in the Air a contemporary film noir. Is this what you set out to write?

A: Something In the Air was quite consciously written as a film noir. I was watching those great forties movies about decent men swept up in a dizzying web of corruption, seduced by beautiful women, played out against a stark urban landscape and ultimately fighting for survival. This kind of highly theatrical approach seemed perfect for what I wanted to write about: a culture obsessed with quick and easy money. I wanted to explore what happens when a good man crosses a shadowy ethical line and finds his life spinning out of control. Which is what has happened to a lot of people enmeshed in the wild economic fluctuations of the past few years. Greed never goes out of style.

Q: Why did you start writing plays?

A: I started writing plays because I was having no luck writing fiction. I had a whole series of highly unfulfilling experiences working in a number of positions, including as a security guard and in various factories (at one point operating a plastic molding machine that made GI Joe's thighs), and I eventually drifted into radio and went to graduate school in broadcast journalism in Chapel Hill, N.C., where I was required to take a course in either advertising or theatre. So I ended up in a playwriting course—the only theatre course I ever took—and wrote a play, and as soon as I started writing dialogue I left broadcast journalism behind; because something opened up for me—creatively, not professionally—and I felt that this was how I could accomplish whatever I had been trying to do writing fiction. I'm of the opinion that writing dialogue is not something that can be taught, it's just a rather odd gift that can shoot you off in some strange direction so you don't actually have a real job.

Q: Many of your plays feature characters faced with moral dilemmas who are forced to reevaluate their lives. (Elaborate)

A: I guess this is true, that I tend to write about characters faced with moral dilemmas. I think we face these dilemmas, large and small, practically every waking moment—and our life is the sum total of all these moments where we are either kind or unkind to people or we shoplift or we don't or we go along with our peer group even if it gives us a knot in our gut or we go it alone and perhaps feel worse. Anyway, I do find myself writing about these moral dilemmas, and again, it isn't always such a conscious choice, because I usually start out being fascinated by a particular character, or group of characters, and they tend to lead me to these morally murky situations. And I think I keep coming back to that because the way we respond to these ethically and emotionally charged situations is how we know who we are.

Q: Do you think your plays help people reevaluate their lives?

A: I think it would be presumptuous for me to think anyone has reevaluated his life because of anything I've written. I believe my first job is to entertain, and I think it's perfectly fine to go to one of my plays and be entertained and not give it another thought, beyond a desire to find parking closer to the theatre next time. My son, who is 11, has long enjoyed seeing my plays, and he gets what he gets from them in terms of how entertaining they are. But I know there are times when people are disturbed and upset and feel the play has hit too close to home and, of course, I welcome that. If I can cause just one person to wake up at three a.m. overcome by a quiet, creeping terror, then my life is complete.

Q: Since you've been a playwright as well as a film and television writer for years, how do you balance your writing between the two?

A: The life of a writer is inevitably a balancing act. Sometimes you feel like you're tightrope walking over Niagra Falls juggling chain saws and other times it seems awfully long since the phone has rung. I don't think there's any secret to it, other than never straying too far from what you want to do as a writer, and relentlessly keeping at it past the point of reason. Writing plays keeps me hones as a writer, because there are times in film and television when it's a gig, I'm using my craft to accomplish someone else's goal, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I think it's important to know when you're writing for yourself and when you're writing for someone else.

Q: In writing plays it's inevitable to express your feelings about the world. Is it the same with television writing or are you required to write to fit the structured format required by television?

A: In writing a play, you rule the universe you have created. Not a line of dialogue can be changed without your express permission, you have extraordinary creative control, and if the play is a success, the success will be yours. But there generally isn't much money. Writing television, you are a slave to a very rigid format, you write characters that have generally been created by others, and you must adhere to a sensibility (on the major networks) that is by definition geared toward satisfying the advertisers. But there's money. Herein lies the balancing act. And having said that, there are opportunities to do truly great work in television, and there's a torrent of dishonest, hackneyed, manipulative plays coming soon to a theatre near you, so it's not as black and white a situation—TV is bad, theatre is good—as some people say.

Q: Who are you in your plays? When you're writing is there a character or a couple of characters who represent you? Has that changed over the years?

A: This is an interesting question, so I'll try to dodge it. I don't set out to put "myself" in the center of the play, but I do think that the character most entangled in the problem of the play often bears the closest resemblance to how I think of the situation. But more importantly, I think that I must be in every character for my play to work. Just as an actor must find the honest motivation in an "evil" character, a writer must get inside each character so there is real life on stage and it is not just a story about a sensitive, deeply misunderstood main character—the hallmark of many first plays. (Often that character turns out to be an artist.) I had to deal with this in Wonderful World. Max's sister-in-law, Patty, was a character that I initially sw as the source of the tumult in the family. But there's a scene where Max goes to Patty (urged on by his brother, Barry, Patty's wife) in order to sort out the escalating problems. And what happens in this scene is that Max—and the audience—sees a completely different side of Patty, and she is able to express the extent to which the rest of them have made her feel like an outsider. And in writing this scene, I found a great deal more compassion for Patty and, as abrasive as she is, by the end of the play we see that the problems in the family go far deeper than Patty. She was simply a catalyst for the eruption that occurred. Making Patty a vulnerable soul with a tough exterior rather than a nasty bitch hell-bent on destruction forced the play to be more truthful about what really happened in the family. As to wheather it's changed through the years—the characters that represent me in the plays—I think that perhaps I have a greater ability and desire to do deeper in all the characters than I did earlier on, which is more critical than which character is closest to who I am. And the bottom line is, playwrights are utterly naked in our plays if we're writing honestly, no matter how hard we may try to disguise it. The first day of rehearsal I always feel that I'm meeting people for the first time but everyone else around that table knows me extremely well, if they've read the play very carefully.