Koontz Wants His Name Off Movie, Citing Violence

Best-selling author Dean Koontz wants his name off the upcoming movie of his 1992 suspense thriller “Hideaway” because he thinks the screen version is too violent.

But TriStar, the studio releasing the film, says that’s tough noogies.

An item in Liz Smith’s syndicated column today (see F4) says Koontz, who lives in Newport Beach, “demanded” to have his name removed from the credits. According to Smith, the film, due this spring with Jeff Goldblum and Christine Lahti, “remains thrilling but (is) much less supernatural (than the novel), so Koontz feels it would be ‘false advertising’ to keep his name associated with the flick.”

“I’d say I’m trying to work with them to get my name off the picture. I’m not demanding,” Koontz said Friday, “and it’s not because of the supernatural.” It’s because “I find the film more violent and negative in its nature than anything I do,” he said.

He acknowledges that “a studio has every right in the world to make a picture any way (it wishes) to make it, but when it’s 180 degrees opposite of what the writer does, I think they owe it to the author to just simply remove his name from it, to avoid offending people who like his books.”

Koontz said he knows that TriStar is “taking a hard-line attitude” toward his request, but he is “still hopeful.” Under his contract, his name cannot be dropped without TriStar’s permission.

A TriStar spokesman acknowledged that “Mr. Koontz did request that his name be taken off the film. However, at this point we are not (going to comply). We feel the film keeps the spirit of Mr. Koontz’s book and in fact our early research screening shows that fans of Mr. Koontz who read the book really have enjoyed the film.”

Koontz says he has made no public statement about the film, doesn’t know where Smith got the item and is reluctant to discuss the situation.

“I don’t want to be somebody going out speaking against the picture, and I’ve given (TriStar) a lot of ways to avoid that happening,” he said. “It’s important to them and me that we don’t get into a public battle.”

Koontz has seen six of his novels turned into films but said he is happy with only two of them--”Demon Seed” and “Face of Fear.” A year ago, he publicly expressed hope that “Hideaway” would be “something I don’t have to apologize for” and said he felt there was “a damned good chance” it would turn out that way.

But Friday he said that from the day he saw a shooting script, he hasn’t been pleased with the tone of the film.

“I started out saying, ‘Look, this is not the kind of thing I do. It’s too violent, too negative, too any number of things. Why even use my name?’

“I have said privately, ‘Suppose a studio had gone and taken ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and made it into a movie that glorified the Ku Klux Klan.’ (Author) Harper Lee would have to say something. I find myself in that position.”