Author Max Allan Collins has won his share of lofty literary awards. He's also made successful movies based on his own stories. But last week in Chicago, the man from Muscatine, Iowa, sat with his family to watch his 1998 graphic novel, ``Road to Perdition,'' come to life on the big screen, and even given all his previous accomplishments, it was an incredible experience.

Then again, when a film starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman -- one that's being touted as an early Oscar contender no less -- has its genesis in your imagination, it's pretty amazing.

When Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes (``American Beauty'') introduced Mr. Collins to thunderous applause and a gun-fingered wave from the movie's star, two-time Oscar-winning actor Mr. Hanks, the area author admitted ``sweating bullets.'' But then the lights dimmed and the screen lit up, and from the first strains of the soundtrack and opening scene until the credits rolled by at the end, Mr. Collins lived the dream every writer has ever imagined.

Mr. Collins took a few moments between public appearances and a blitz of media interviews to tell us what the experience has been like:

Q: Dean Zanuck, along with his father Richard Zanuck, and Sam Mendes produced this movie. But it was Dean who first came upon your graphic novel. To quote him, ``I just loved it.'' He connected immediately to the dual father-son stories, he said. Combined with the action in the story and Richard Piers Rayner's illustrations, he was hooked. And when he finished reading it, he said to his wife, ``I think something special is going to happen with this.'' So, when did it hit you that this was something special?

A: I had no precognition or instinct that ``Perdition'' would be ``the one.'' But I do remember feeling I had hit a special tone in the writing, that the narration, the dialogue, had a nice, understated (Dashiel) Hammett-like poetry somewhat apart from my wiseguy (Raymond) Chandler-esque first-person private-eye narration. As Rayner's illustrations began to trickle in, I could see what an outstanding, evocative job he was doing. That, in itself, inspired me over the four years or so we worked on it.

Q: With your own experience behind the camera, you more than most, understand that movies are not the books they're based upon. When and how do director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Conrad Hall become the storytellers in this film?

A: First, I have to say that this is a great movie. Not a good movie. A great movie. I watched with my wife Barb and my son Nate, and I was sitting behind Conrad Hall and in the same row with Tom Hanks. I didn't know what to expect after having 40,000 words cut from my novelization based on the David Self script.

Indeed, there were times I wanted to crawl up on the screen and whisper lines of dialogue into Tom Hank's ear. But the way the story in this $90 million movie is told, I can indeed say: ``That's a Max Collins' story. It's faithful to my point of view and as a writer, I have no trouble at all with it.''

Q: Given the events of Sept. 11, what does it say about us, as a society, that gangsters continue to hold social relevance?

A: There are lots of reasons why we connect with gangsters and outlaws, not the least of which is our own outcast beginnings. Mostly, it has to do with the mob as a distorted, and yet, clear reflection of ourselves. The mob, whether Irish or Italian, is capitalism in its purest form, America's entrepreneurial dream.

Most immigrant groups turn to crime early on because they can't get through the doors. Other more respectable, legitimate enterprises are not open to them.

Frank Nitti was a barber. If my research is correct, he also is the pioneer in the Chicago outfit where infiltrating legitimate businesses is concerned -- the first true CEO of organized crime, in the Windy City, anyway.

``Road to Perdition'' is about Irish gangsters while the main focus of the media and popular culture has been on the Italian mafia. It's the same for all immigrant groups during early years of assimilating. Each is attempting to melt into this melting pot. And, quite frankly, the melting isn't going so well these days. But in the effort, we recognize the goals of the gangsters and outlaws as our own, against a backdrop that is dangerous and exciting because it is dangerous.

In Mario Puzo's ``The Godfather'' and the movies it spawned, for example, we are faced with moral dilemmas and the ambiguities that mirror, in big ways, smaller sell-outs within mainstream America. How is a major auto company that considers its bottom line before customer safety any better than the mob? Who are we buying our oil from? And, by the way, who are the customers of the mob? Who is it buying the drugs, the porn, the illegal alcohol and gambling? Us.

Q: You shied away for a long time from writing a story about John Looney, admitting a penchant for the 1930s to 1950s. What is it about those decades that captures your interest and imagination.

A: I grew up in the '50s, of course. Always had a sense of the '30s and '40s has having been the time of my parents' childhood and early adult life -- the Depression, World War II -- people don't realize how connected kids feel to the eras that they've just missed.

I watched a lot of '30s and '40s movies; I was fascinated by Big Little Books, the small fat books with a page of text and a facing single cartoon panel. The Dick Tracy comic books were reprinting stuff from the '30s and '40s. That got me fixated with tough detectives, their fedora and trenchcoat image pressed deeply into the grooves of my brain.

And then add TV into the mix. My earliest influence came from ``The Untouchables'' TV show. When I found out the Tracy-like Eliot Ness was a real guy, and that the villain of the piece, Al Capone, also had existed, it sent me scurrying to nonfiction books and old newspapers and magazines. I'm still pretty much doing that, not only in the creation of ``Perdition'' but in all my Nathan Heller historical crime novels such as the current one: ``Chicago Confidential.'' Ness is a recurring character in the Heller novels, and I've done four Ness novels, as well, all closely based on his real cases.

Q: What about for the folks who want to compare your ficitional account of a Rock Island mobster to the real story of John Looney?

A: I've taken more liberties with history in ``Road To Perdition'' than in my Heller novels. There, the mandate is to explore a true crime, depict it accurately -- albeit in the manner of a tough P.I. novel -- and, well, solve it.

Originally I intended to use John and Connor Looney as secondary fictional characters in a story that had more to do with Capone and Nitti, and Eliot Ness in a time period when Looney's reign was over and Connor was long dead.

But I finally decided to loosen up, and use the colorful Looney himself, exact dates be damned, largely because of his name -- which Hollywood changed to Rooney, 'cause it sounded too comic-booky! Why DreamWorks didn't go with the fact that Paul Newman is playing a real guy I have no idea.

But that father-and-son aspect of ``Perdition,'' the one that intrigued Dean Zanuck and his father, Richard, that aspect of it is more a homage to the classic Japanese manga, ``Lone Wolf and Cub.'' The popular Japanese comic book is about a renegade Samurai protecting his infant son. ``Perdition's'' father and son develop a relationship that comes of having no one but each other to trust.

Historically, John Looney did betray at least one, if not more of his lieutenants, so there's vaguely some historical underpinning to the Michael Sullivan character. The Quinlan riverboat burning happened, though not at the time and in the way I depicted it. I sort of used real historical events, weaving them through the fabric of the tale, but in a broader, more mythic manner than in my Heller novels.

The movie is compressed -- my graphic novel is 300 pages long, whereas the screenplay was around 110. But it's true to the spirit of the original story. As it plays out on the screen, I can say: That's a Max Collins story. Movies and novels -- even graphic ones -- are necessarily different. As one of the few novelists to have written and directed screenplays myself, I have a good perspective on that.

Briefly, it boils down to novels being interior -- you're inside of the characters, or at least the main character -- and experience the tale from the inside. A movie reveals the story in exterior fashion -- you watch the outside of the tale, and have to perceive the inside of it yourself. A graphic novel sort of splits the difference.

Q: What have been the highs and lows of your first experience with seeing your work made into a major motion picture?

A: I would not have novelized the movie had I known that as the creator of the story and the characters, I would not be allowed to embellish the screenplay. I did a 90,000 word novelization, full of history and backstory and 50,000 words of it were edited out. The saving grace is that readers have responded well to the novel, not knowing what they're missing.

Having said that, I'm thrilled with the movie -- the cast, the filmmakers, it's a dream come true. It's unlikely a book or screenplay of mine will ever again have such stellar treatment, and I am grateful to Dean and Richard Zanuck, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks for believing in the graphic novel, and to that list Sam Mendes also should be added, in great big letters.