Explaining TODT HILL

Posted by NeilKleid on Monday, August 7 2006 at 6:10 am

I’ve always wanted to write a pirate story.

Not so much a “yarr” and “avast” story, but something that captures the adventure, mystery and excitement of the high seas, the thrill of hunting buried treasure and danger at every turn. Sure, pirates are what’s hip[ with the kids these days, but what really drew me, what really tempted me to begin laying out the geography and back story you’ll read about and walk around in while reading TODT HILL was borne from two things: Staten Island and THE GOONIES.

Let’s take the first part last.

THE GOONIES, for those who haven’t seen it, was a movie that came out back in the eighties that followed a handfull of “misfit” kids as they searched for buried treasure beneath their town, placed there long ago by the pirate One Eyed Willie. An all ages, feel good high stakes adventure, THE GOONIES was one of those movies you could watch over and over on a Sunday afternoon, dreaming of solving clues, finding hidden doubloons and defeating the bad guys and getting the girl. Adventure, comedy, excitement, suspense and romance all in one package - and it even featured one of the Coreys, for good measure! THE GOONIES, along with the recent PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN flicks, evoked the kind of storytelling I wanted to convey in TODT HILL - fun, exciting feel good adventure. But how I did not know… until I visited Staten Island this year.

See, my wife is from Staten, and on one of our earliest visits to her parents, she gave me a quick tour of the area and I was taken with what seemed like a patchwork set of communities. Low income housing gives way to pretty seafront and ornate, palatial homes run up against suburban ranches. I’ve always been fascinated with SI’s look. It’s the borough that most people don’t have much to do with… as many of my friends say, “its geographically undesirable.” But I think the general LOOK of the island is aesthetically interesting, you know? One one hand it kind of looks like this lush, green paradise from the Goethals Bridge and as you get closer, it’s like descending into a hilly, almost labyrinth-like suburbia. For some odd reason I get this feeling like someone pasted a few different kinds of neighborhoods together and connected them to the mainland with three bridges.

My wife drove me into the area where the “rich folks and mobsters live.” The houses and views were breathtaking - but again, it was like several types of homes connected together with no rhyme or reason. It was like looking at a mosaic suburbia. On an island.

The wheels started spinning.

I’ve always wanted to do a pirate book. Even before i saw PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN and started reading SEA OF RED. Something about the sea and plunder, probably. But I don’t want to do a straight old pirate story, you know… same thing with horror. Who the hell wants to do another vampire story or another haunted mansion story. And then there’s the prison story I’ve always wanted to do. All of them ideas I’ve wanted to construct but never had the spark to ignite it.

Until I visited Todt Hill.

A village constructed on the remains of a pirate cove, filled with hidden, stolen Peruvian treasure. Over the centuries, the islands grew around it, different types of families and different types of people moving in… all drawn by the call of treasure. Suburbanites. Businessmen. Corporate Pirates. And a legion of undead Peruvians, searching for the gold that’s rightfull theirs.

Todt Hill is the ultimate enclosed community, cut off from the rest of the world apart from a monitored high-security ferry. Families live and work alongside the mob, the pirates and the undead, all searching for the treasure, all combing the island to find a clue that might lead them to the prize.

Yesterday, the Tompkins brothers found that clue.

Category: Todt Hill

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