You don’t get much more private than longtime Gloucester resident Bill Monahan. The man who penned the script for one of Boston’s most iconic movies, The Departed, prefers to keep himself to himself, as they say back in Ireland—where his family originated. Of course, it’s a little tough to lay low when you’ve been anointed with a slew of big-time awards (including that trifling thing, the Oscar) and are one of the most sought-after American screenwriters of your time.
But Monahan, who was born in Dorchester before moving to and growing up in Gloucester, where he’s lived part-time since the 1970s, has managed to blend his continued connection to the North Shore through work. In fact, you might say that his home territory has not only inspired his storytelling but also all but become an actual character in it.
After studying Shakespeare at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and graduating, he moved to New York City and became a writer/journalist. There he honed his way with words while working for publications like New York Press, Maxim, Talk, and Spy magazines—at the latter, his specialty was as a polisher; toward the tail-end of every issue, he’d be brought in to rework any ailing jokes to make them funnier before they were sent to print.
The more he worked, the more his personal point of focus became the art of writing superb dialogue. That, he says, is a combination of listening to the voices, rhythms, intonations, and emotions in the conversations that are everywhere around you. “The reality is people don’t talk in soliloquies and/or profound statements, which is great because you’re writing a script, not a sermon,” he once told Fast Company magazine. “So, forget what your parents taught you—eavesdropping is the way to go. Learning colloquial speech is like learning a whole new language—become fluent.”
Given that philosophy, is it any wonder he would one day be known for writing a film that spotlights the language and milieu of the state he grew up in? He acknowledges that much of his inspiration comes directly from his own family.
“My dad has been dead for 20 years, but he’s appeared in [my] feature films twice,” he says. “The main character in Edge of Darkness causes anyone who knew my father to sort of grin. He’s really my link to Boston. It’s a whole culture, a whole world of the way these people speak in Boston, and the way I speak when I’m among them. It’s a fact of Massachusetts life that you can go through an ordinary day with your accent mutating, depending on who you talk to.”
But it wasn’t just the accents he grew up around that he’s captured in his work; he never did let go of his memories of Gloucester Harbor, either—its landscape, and community. His maternal grandparents had lived in the area in an old sea captain’s house, and his grandfather, he’s recalled, “had a whole vibrant network of relations in the best marine landscape on the earth.” He’d been head of Gloucester Lodge of Elks and a commander of the Veterans of Foreign War post in Gloucester—facts that Monahan included when he featured his grandfather as a character in essays and stories like Dining Late with Claude La Badarian, published in 2001 by the New York Press.
But for all of his public discussion of his roots, not to mention his longtime residence here, it’s unlikely you’ll see him heading up many local parades or making many overly conspicuous speeches or appearances. Monahan prefers to enjoy his home territory quietly, and without much ado or fanfare—a fact that may, as much as anything, make him a truly authentic New Englander character.
