Edward Heward Bunker (December 31, 1933 – July 19, 2005) was an American author of crime fiction, screenwriter, and actor. He wrote numerous books, some of which have been adapted into films. He wrote the scripts for—and acted in—Straight Time (1978) (adapted from his debut novel No Beast So Fierce), Runaway Train (1985), and Animal Factory (2000) (adapted from his sophomore novel of the same name). He also played a minor role in Reservoir Dogs (1992).
Bunker began running away from home when he was five years old, and developed a pattern of criminal behavior, earning his first conviction when he was fourteen, leading to a cycle of incarceration, parole, re-offending, and further jail time. He was convicted of bank robbery, drug dealing, extortion, armed robbery, and forgery. Bunker was released from prison for the last time in 1975, after which he focused on a career as a writer and actor. The character Nate, a career criminal who fences stolen goods in the 1995 heist movie Heat, played by Jon Voight, was based on Bunker, who was consultant to director Michael Mann.
Bunker was born on December 31, 1933 into a troubled family in Los Angeles. His mother, Sarah (née Johnston), was a chorus girl from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and his father, Edward N. Bunker, a stage hand. His first clear memories were of his alcoholic parents screaming at each other, and police arriving to "keep the peace", a cycle that led to divorce.
My parents divorced when I was four and I was put in boarding homes, which I didn't like. I went overnight from being an only child—kind of pampered and spoilt—to a "Lord of the Flies" situation with a lot of boys. I didn't like it and I ran away and rebelled and that set a pattern and the pattern went on.
Consistently rebellious and defiant, young Bunker was subjected to a harsh regime of discipline. He attended a military school for a few months, where he began stealing, and eventually ran away again, ending up in a hobo camp. While Bunker eventually was apprehended by the authorities, this established a pattern he followed throughout his formative years. By age 11, Bunker was picked up by the police and placed in juvenile hall after he assaulted his father. Some sources cite that this incident, along with extreme experiences such as the severe beating he experienced in a state hospital called Pacific Colony (later called Lanterman Developmental Center), created in Bunker a life-long distrust for authority and institutions.
Bunker spent time in the juvenile detention facility Preston Castle in Ione, California, where he became acquainted with hardened young criminals. Although young and small, he was intelligent (with an IQ of 152), streetwise, and extremely literate. A long string of escapes, problems with the law, and different institutions—including a mental hospital—followed.
At the age of fourteen, following his first criminal conviction, Bunker was paroled to the care of his aunt. However, two years later he was caught on a parole violation, and was this time sent to adult prison. In Los Angeles County Jail, he claimed that he stabbed convicted murderer Billy Cook, although circumstantial evidence from the National Archives shows that Bunker and Cook did not have overlapping stays there. Some thought he was unhinged, but in Bunker's book Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade he stated this behavior was a ruse designed to make people leave him alone.
Criminal life and early writing
In 1950, while at the McKinley Home for Boys, Bunker met one of the home's prominent benefactors, Louise Fazenda, a star of the silent screen and wife of the producer Hal B Wallis, who gave him support and encouragement. Through her he met Aldous Huxley, Tennessee Williams, and newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, whose guest he was at San Simeon. Fazenda sent him a portable typewriter, a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a subscription to the Sunday edition of The New York Times, whose Book Review he devoured. He also subscribed to Writer’s Digest and enrolled in a correspondence course in freshman English from the University of California, selling blood to pay for the postage. However, the following year the 17-year-old Bunker had the dubious honor of being the youngest-ever inmate in San Quentin State Prison.
The first time I was in San Quentin I was there for just about five years and I read five books a week that whole time. Every Saturday morning I'd go to the library and I could check out five books. I read history, fiction, psychology, philosophy...everything.
During his time spent in solitary confinement, Bunker was near the cell of death row inmate Caryl Chessman, who was writing his memoir Cell 2455, Death Row. Chessman had sent Bunker an issue of Argosy magazine, in which the first chapter of his book was published; in 1955 the memoir was made into a movie by Fred F. Sears. Bunker—who had dropped out of school in seventh grade—said that Chessman, along with other prison writers including Dostoevsky and Cervantes, inspired him to become a writer himself.
Bunker was paroled in 1956. Now 22, he was unable to adjust to living in normal society. As an ex-convict, he felt ostracized by "normal" people, although he managed to stay out of trouble for several years. Although Fazenda attempted to help him, after she was diagnosed with a nervous breakdown her husband pronounced many of her former friends—including Bunker—personae non-gratae in the Wallis household. Bunker held down various jobs for a while, including that of a used car salesman, but eventually returned to crime. He orchestrated robberies (without personally taking part in them), forged checks, and engaged in other criminal activities.
Bunker ended up back in jail for 90 days on a misdemeanor charge. He was sent to a low-security state work farm but escaped almost immediately. After more than a year, he was arrested after a failed bank robbery and high-speed car chase. Pretending to be insane (faking a suicide attempt and claiming that the Catholic Church had inserted a radio into his head), he was declared criminally insane.
Although Bunker eventually was released, he continued a life of crime. In the early 1970s, Bunker ran a profitable drug racket in San Francisco; he was arrested again when the police, who had put a tracking device on his car, followed him to a bank heist. (The police expected Bunker to lead them to a drug deal and were rather shocked by their stroke of luck.) Bunker expected a 20-year sentence, but thanks to the solicitations of influential friends and a lenient judge, got only five.
In the early 1970s he was a criminal associate of Sandra Good and Lynette Fromme.
No Beast So Fierce and early success
In prison, Bunker continued to write. While still incarcerated, he finally had his first novel No Beast So Fierce published in 1973, to which Dustin Hoffman purchased the film rights. Novelist James Ellroy said it was "quite simply one of the great crime novels of the past 30 years: perhaps the best novel of the LA underworld ever written". Bunker was paroled in 1975, having spent 18 years of his life in various institutions. While he was still tempted by crime, he now found himself earning a living from writing and acting. He felt that his criminal career had been forced by circumstances; now that those circumstances had changed, he could stop being a criminal.
He published his second novel, Animal Factory to favorable reviews in 1977. The following year saw the release of Straight Time, a film-adaptation of No Beast So Fierce. While it was not a commercial success, it earned positive reviews and Bunker got his first screenwriting and acting credits. Like most of the roles Bunker played, it was a small part, and he went on to appear in numerous movies, such as The Running Man, Tango & Cash and Reservoir Dogs, as well as the film version of Animal Factory, in 2000, for which he also wrote the screenplay. In 1985, he had written the screenplay for Runaway Train, in which he had a small part, as did Danny Trejo thanks to Bunker's help; the two had known each other when they were incarcerated together years before. The film helped launch Trejo's career. An obituary in the Los Angeles Times described Bunker's appearance onscreen: