Florida: 'A Paradise Of Scandals'

Steve Kroft Talks To Columnist/Novelist Carl Hiaasen

(CBS) 
After nearly 30 years at the Miami Herald, Hiaasen is the franchise player, an old-time columnist in the tradition of Mike Royko in Chicago, or Jimmy Breslin in New York -- as much a part of the South Florida landscape as palm trees and pelicans.

And that tenure has supplied him with the material for his best-selling novels like "Skin Tight," "Basket Case," and "Skinny Dip" -- wild parodies populated by phone sex scriptwriters, sleazy plastic surgeons, crooked politicians, and the lobbyists who own them.

How would he describe his writing?

"With the novel, which you're creating this whole different set of characters, and then you really have to get into the dark, deep recesses of the brain. I mean, I think that's where my own family trembles at times," he says.

And what are the deep, dark recesses of the brain? "I think when, especially when, you're writing humor and you're writing satire, and I've said that before, a lot of that comes from anger," says Hiaasen.

Do you need to be angry to be funny? "Some days, yeah," he says. "Yeah."

Much of that anger is reserved for the forces of development, which have transformed Florida from a quaint tropical postcard where Hiaasen grew up, to urban sprawl, strip malls and skyscrapers. Hiaasen sees it as a daily collision between nature and the unnatural, the appealing and the appalling, as manatees fight for space with manatee mailboxes, and developers pave over 450 acres of green space a day.

"The one word that no politician will ever speak, is 'enough.' Enough," says Hiaasen. "This is an economy that's based on growth -- growth for the sake of growth. We don't manufacture anything. We don't produce anything except, you know, oranges and handguns. This is all about growth, tourism and growth."

Why did he decide to start writing novels?

"Therapy," says Hiaasen laughing. "Actually, with the novels, you have this wonderful opportunity to write your own endings -- to have the bad guys get not only exactly what they deserve, but in some poetic, you know, miserable way."

And nature always gets its revenge. One villain was impaled by a stuffed marlin. A few have been fed to alligators. And another was romanced to death by a friendly porpoise named Dickie the Dolphin.

"Which was based on a real episode. In the real-life thing, the guy didn't die. But he was definitely -- a lot more intimate with the dolphin than he would have liked to be," says Hiaasen. "So, I said, 'This is, I got a bad guy in the book. This is a perfect way to get rid of the bad guy.' And I did. And I felt great at the end of it. I felt like lighting a cigarette when it was over."

Hiaasen, who says he can't write without his noise suppressors and fishing cap, takes the raw material of South Florida, and then molds and shapes it into comic mystery novels, often with only minor embellishments.

In last year's bestseller, "Skinny Dip," the heroine was flung off the stern of cruise ship, only to be saved by a floating bale of marijuana.

"Are these stories true, or inventions of your imagination?" asks Kroft. "Professional wheelchair thief."

"True," says Hiaasen.

"School board candidate whose legal residence turned out to be a tool shed," asks Kroft.

"True," says Hiaasen.

"The U.S. attorney who bit a stripper during a table dance," asks Kroft.

"It's real," says Hiaasen. "True."

"A South Florida mayor who tried to hire City Hall workers to kill her husband," asks Kroft.

"Yup. Yup," says Hiaasen. "I believe she's gotten a new trial since then. But there was testimony that she solicited for a hit man in City Hall."

"All those are true," asks Kroft.

"I wish I'd made them up," says Hiaasen, laughing. "I wish I made them up."