Warren Murphy was born in Jersey City, where he worked as a reporter and editor. After the Korean war, he drifted into politics, "but when everybody I worked for went to jail, I thought God was sending me a message to find a new line of work." The first Destroyer novel followed soon after. He has been an adjunct professor at Moravian College, ...
Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original, Shamus Award for Best Original P.I. Paperback, Shamus Award for Best P. I. Short Story
Movies
Lethal Weapon 2, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, The Eiger Sanction
Star Sign
Virgo
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Trademark
1
Frequently writes with a collaborator
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Quote
1
Some pest, writing a guttersnipe expose, once called me and said that he had heard I had a fistfight with Clint Eastwood during my writing of "The Eiger Sanction." I replied that I wasn't that stupid. Also, that of all the people I ever met in Hollywood, Clint Eastwood was one of only two that I didn't want to punch in the mouth. Clint spoiled me for Lala Land because when I worked for him, he was smart and funny and made decisions quick and straight and I thought everybody out there was like that. It took a long while of suffering with other film jobs before I learned there was only one Clint. Goodbye Hollywood.
2
[on writing with Shane Black] Shane Black, a very talented screenwriter, wrote the first 'Lethal Weapon'. He was a fan of my books and he invited me in to work on 'Lethal Weapon 2'. While I have great regard and admiration for Shane, it soon became apparent that we did not really work well together. My way of working is to make sure the story is absolutely in place before I write even the first word. My feeling is that Shane works more by the seat of his pants, writing right from the beginning. So after we managed to cobble together a first draft, both of us by mutual agreement left the project and it was finished by others, but let me be real clear: Shane Black is a major screenwriting talent, far better than I am... but partnerships have to work on a lot of different levels and ours didn't. More's the pity."
3
[on continuing The Destroyer series without writing partner Richard Sapir] Toward the end of the 80's, Dick and I were so busy with other work that we decided we would end The Destroyer. But then, tragically, dick died, leaving behind a one-year-old son, and I was faced with a dilemma. Writing the series without Dick Sapir would not be fun anymore, but I wanted to keep it alive for his family. So I contracted it out to various publishers.
4
[on Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985)] The movie was a near miss and the shame was that it was so easily correctable. You can't have a great hero without a great villain. James Bond has guys who want to blow up London or enslave the world or steal all the gold in Fort Knox, yet we wound up with a guy who was selling cheap rifles to the government. That's not going to drag people into the theaters.
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[on Remo Williams: The Prophecy (1988)] The TV pilot was better because it was based on a novella that Dick and I had written, and it got the basic point right in that it was about the growing father-son relationship between Remo and Chiun.
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Early on, when The Destroyer series was just getting started, Dick Sapir and I agreed that we did not want to keep writing the same tale over and over, which was the usual procedure in series books at the time. That led to us tweaking the rigorous confines of the action-adventure novel into a vehicle where we could write about myth and magic, androids and vampires, fantasy and its corollary, political satire, and just about anything else that caught our fancy.
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Please feel free to tell anyone who asks that I am not, repeat NOT, married to Bart Simpson's voice.
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[on the possibility of another movie featuring Remo Williams, The Destroyer] "Look, guys, what do I know? We'll have a destroyer movie when somebody, not me, is willing to put 25-50 million dollars to make one. From my lips to god's ears. Let's hope."
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[on co-writing Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)] Shane Black and I were contracted to work on the screenplay together. But partnering is very difficult, especially if one of the partners is a contentious pain-in-the-butt like I am. Eventually, we turned in a draft, took a story credit, and went our separate ways. Shane is, by the way, simply a great film writer.
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Fact
1
Was sometimes mistakenly identified in the media as the husband of actor Nancy Cartwright, who is the voice of Bart Simpson. Cartwright was in fact married to a different Warren Murphy (a financier, not a writer).
2
Won two Shamus awards from the Private Eye Writers of America, for his novel The Ceiling of Hell and for his short story "Another Day, Another Dollar.".
3
Announced that he had signed a Destroyer film production deal with Robert Evans independent production company in Hollywood. The deal covers film and television, as well as computer games and merchandising. [April 2006]
4
Announced the signing of a multi-book contract with Tor Books, part of the St. Martin's publishing group, for the publication beginning in 2007 of the long-running Destroyer series. [July 2006]
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Won the Edgar Allan Poe Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America, in 1986 for his novel "Pigs Get Fat.".
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Won the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1985 for his novel "Grandmaster" (co-authored with Molly Cochran).
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Helped develop the Bill Tilghman western film You Know My Name (1999) for Turner Pictures.
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Creator, with Richard Sapir, of The Destroyer (Remo Williams) who has appeared in more than 100 action/adventure novels.
Writer
Title
Year
Status
Character
Lethal Weapon 2
1989
story
Murphy's Law
1988
TV Series based upon characters created by - 1 episode
Remo Williams: The Prophecy
1988
TV Movie novel series: "The Destroyer"
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins
1985
novel "The Destroyer"
The Eiger Sanction
1975
screenplay - as Warren B. Murphy
Known for movies
Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) as Writer
The Eiger Sanction (1975) as Writer
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985) as Writer
$1.3 Million
