Buy-the-Book Filmmaking

Two years ago, Clint Eastwood’s “Absolute Power” was David Baldacci’s “Absolute Power”--a debut novel that brought the author a $2-million advance. One day after the manuscript was sent to the major studios, Castle Rock Entertainment paid an additional $1 million for the movie rights after an intensive bidding war.

Baldacci is only one recipient of Hollywood’s self-interested munificence. Impatient with tired formulas, hungry for fresh material with built-in “wanna-see,” disheartened by the number of pricey spec scripts that failed or never got made, the movie industry is keeping closer tabs on the publishing scene. Studio development in recent years, insiders say, has been dicey. Books provide instant legitimacy and a synergy that increases the chance that a project will take off.

“The conventional wisdom is that a blockbuster book makes a blockbuster movie,” says Amy Schiffman, a vice president in William Morris’ motion picture literary department.

Top-flight authors are considered bankable stars whose names open movies and attract A-list talent. And in a town eager to clone success, the numbers racked up by Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park,” Winston Groom’s “Forrest Gump,” John Grisham’s “The Firm” and Tom Clancy’s “Clear and Present Danger” stand out. Jack Ryan, Clancy’s protagonist, has pulled in $500 million in worldwide box-office receipts over the course of three films.

And the allure of movies looms large--even in the writing stage. Crichton named the lead character in “Rising Sun” John Connors, hoping to interest the similar-sounding Sean Connery in the role.

In fact, books present problems of their own, filmmakers say; it’s the rare one that translates well to the screen. Still, hoping that they’ll stumble onto one of them, producers like Arnold Kopelson, Danny DeVito and Lili and Richard Zanuck have set up offices in New York.

“I get between 50 and 100 scripts each week--and most fall short,” says Kopelson, whose East Coast staff submits a weekly list of 10 to 15 books whose rights are coming up for sale. “They don’t have developed characters and a back story which should be the heart of the film. That’s why I’m keeping an eye on the book scene--it’s time I competed with the [producer] Scott Rudins of the world.”

Like Rudin, producer Peter Guber tapped into the literary connection early on, bringing “The Deep,” “The Witches of Eastwick,” “The Color Purple,” and “Missing” to the screen. More recently, he lined up Peter Blauner’s “The Intruder” to be directed by Philip Kaufman (“The Right Stuff”).

“There’s snob appeal in being able to send a book along with a script to a writer or director since everyone wants to be associated with success,” he says. “Plus, the marketing possibilities are huge. You’ve got millions of readers as a starting point and cover artwork that can be used in an ad campaign. Releasing the movie also increases the penetration of the paperback version, which often features a picture of the cast.”

Publishers are well aware of the synergistic possibilities. Hyperion Press routinely gives corporate parent the Walt Disney Co. first crack and, if the price is right, Simon and Schuster may favor Viacom sibling Paramount Pictures. Timed to the release of the Oscar-winning epic, Vintage reissued Michael Ondaatje’s “The English Patient,” which, five years after its hardcover publication, is now No. 9 on the New York Times paperback fiction bestseller list.

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Male authors benefit from such cross-pollination far more than their female colleagues, says William Morris executive vice president Robert Gottlieb, who represents Clancy, Dean Koontz and Barbara Taylor Bradford, among others.

“Historically, as much as 70% of the New York Times bestseller list was dominated by female authors,” Gottlieb says. “But the playing field is more even now. The difference is that the novels of Grisham, Crichton and Clancy translate into films that generate more book sales.”

A female sensibility--in the form of Taylor Bradford, Sidney Sheldon and Judith Krantz, among others--dominated the New York Times bestseller list during the 1980s, says Creative Artists Agency literary agent Bob Bookman. That’s why relatively few were converted into blockbuster films. In descending order of opening weekend grosses, “Jurassic Park,” “Interview With the Vampire,” “The Firm,” “Congo,” “Clear and Present Danger,” “Patriot Games,” “The Client,” “The Hunt for Red October,” “The Pelican Brief” and “Absolute Power” top the list, he says. All but one were bestsellers in the last 10 years.

“It’s a modern phenomenon,” Bookman says. “The rise of Grisham, Clancy and Crichton made for books appealing not only to women but to businessmen in airports. I’d like to think we’re near the beginning of a long arc.”

Film advances can be massive: a reported $10 million for Crichton’s 1996 “Airframe,” $1 million or $2 million for your average hot property, and between $100,000 and $250,000 for even a run-of-the-mill acquisition. And since purchase is generally made at the manuscript stage or before, they’re often leaps of faith. In October 1994, Disney offered $3 million for Nicholas Evans’ “The Horse Whisperer” after seeing 100 pages and an outline. Last August, an unfinished manuscript of Scott Turow’s “Laws of Our Fathers” was purchased by Universal Pictures----the same studio that bought Grisham’s “The Chamber” for $3.75 million before the author had written a word.

“The Chamber” grossed only $14.5 million domestically. But that’s unlikely to affect Grisham’s asking price, literary agents say. “The Firm,” “The Pelican Brief,” “The Client” and “A Time to Kill” were major hits. More recently, Paramount Pictures shelled out$6 million for “The Rainmaker” and New Regency/Warner Bros. $8 million for “The Runaway Jury.” Writers, like stars, are typecast, and “The Chamber”--a serious novel about capital punishment--may just have been too much of a detour for some.

The Grisham phenomenon is one-of-a-kind, says Ruth Pomerance, who heads Kopelson’s New York office with her partner, Jill Kearney. And there is no heir apparent. “Grisham skyrocketed to fame overnight on the basis of one book, ‘The Firm,’ and stayed there ever since,” she says. “Someone that successful and prolific comes along once in a blue moon.”

That hasn’t stopped Hollywood from searching, however, hoping to rediscover a veteran or unearth a diamond in the rough. Crichton and Clancy continue to crank out plot-driven novels with strong male leads--the type that makes the industry drool. But when it comes to feeding the machine, the field is a relatively limited one.

“There’s a huge gap between the top echelon and the next tier down,” says Ron Bernstein, head of literary affairs at the Gersh Agency.

Only Clancy, Crichton and Grisham routinely exceed 1.5 million in hardcover sales. A dozen or so sell in the 750,000 to 1 million range. Among these, Stephen King has had countless liaisons with Hollywood, but he’s had a spotty box-office track record since “Carrie” and “The Shining.” Frederick Forsythe (“The Day of the Jackal”) sells between 500,000 and 750,000 units. So does Dean Koontz (“Demon Seed”), whose seventh film, “Phantoms,” is due out from Miramax Films in late fall. As a genre writer, Elmore Leonard rarely sells more than 200,000--but Hollywood made a beeline for the author after the success of “Get Shorty.”

In the female ranks, Danielle Steele (“Mixed Blessings,” “Secrets”) has made it only to TV. Patricia Cornwell’s novels have been optioned as movies, but none has been made. Terry McMillan (“Waiting to Exhale”), Mary Higgins Clark (“A Stranger Is Waiting”), Anne Rice (“Interview With the Vampire”), Amy Tan (“The Joy Luck Club”) and Alice Walker (“The Color Purple”) had better luck. But despite the fact that Olivia Goldsmith’s “The First Wives Club” broke the $100-million mark last year, the path to the big screen is still an uphill one.

“It’s no secret that it’s harder to get female-driven movies made,” Pomerance said.

A number of newcomers are making their mark--among them, Caleb Carr, whose historical epic “The Alienist” (1994) was purchased by producer Scott Rudin, and Baldacci, a lawyer whose “Total Control” (1996) has just been picked up by TriStar Pictures for a four-hour mini-series, possibly for CBS. First-time novelist Evans could edge close to the top if Disney’s oft-delayed “Horse Whisperer” finally takes off. In 1995, Lorenzo Carcaterra clinched a three-book deal with Random House after his $2-million sale of “Sleepers” to Warner Bros. “Apaches”--the story of some disabled New York City policemen--is now going out.

Whether promise translates into staying power, however, is always the question. “Gump & Co.,” Groom’s sequel to “Forrest Gump,” tanked in 1995 and, since 1992’s “The Bridges of Madison County,” Robert James Waller has been on a downward spiral. Thomas Harris hit it big with 1988’s “The Silence of the Lambs,” which became an Oscar-winning film in 1991, but hasn’t delivered a book since.

“Much of the time, you suspect that a book was their one and only--that they were lucky tapping into the zeitgeist of the time,” one prominent producer said.

For unknown writers, a book is the easiest way to penetrate the feature film world, says manager-producer Tamara Rawitt (“In Living Color”). “Many writers are being told that, if they want to sell a script, they should set up a book deal first,” she said. “A book, whether it sells a million or 20,000, means that someone already believed in the idea. It provides instant validity and legitimacy.”

Having a picture made, however, isn’t necessarily a plus, as Gottlieb points out. “Franchise authors have to be careful since their career is based on one character,” he says. “As Sara Paretsky found out with ‘V.I. Warshawski,’ book sales can drop if a picture is bad--yet agents see offers only as dollar signs.”

Compressing a book into a 120-page screenplay, moreover, is tricky and time-consuming--particularly when the narrative is internal and nonvisual. Though “The English Patient” more than weathered the transition, it was the exception rather than the rule. “Movie people are easily fooled,” said Peter Gethers, vice president and editor-at-large at Random House Inc. “Since films are about plot, it’s the bad books that make good movies--Hemingway and Fitzgerald never did. Unless the director is Stanley Kubrick, it’s almost impossible to translate style.”

Books are regarded as a talisman, giving filmmakers a false sense of security, adds development executive Gina Blumenfeld. “In movies, things are revealed through behavior,” she said. “State of mind is hard to convey--unless through narration, which is something of a cheat. A stripped-down ‘Smila’s Sense of Snow’ didn’t work as a mystery-thriller. The psychological observations of the writer and the internal workings of the character never ended up in the film.”

When it comes to making movies, less is sometimes more, suggests William Morris’ Schiffman, one of the agents representing Carcaterra. “Raw material isn’t always a plus when trying to write a screenplay,” she says. “Like sculpture, it’s not what you add but what you take away.”

A spec script is a blueprint for a movie, says Guber. With a book, gratification must be postponed. For those feeling pressure to get on the map, it may not be worth the wait.

“Adapting a novel involves more than taking pictures of the pages, so you start out further from the finish line,” he said. “There’s a longer stretch before you can cast it, shoot it--work which, from an image point of view, is visible to the world.”

That’s why younger studio types are resistant to books, the Gersh Agency’s Bernstein says. “The hot kiddie executives want to get movies in the works in 20 seconds,” he says. “Reared on TV, they’re more responsive to a pitch.”

It can be years before a book makes it to the screen--a stretch during which studio administrations, screenwriters and visions may change. Unhappy with previous adaptations, Koontz convinced Miramax to let him tackle the “Phantoms” script himself. After years of passing the ball to others, Grisham is also going it alone. “The Gingerbread Man,” a Robert Altman thriller about a Southern lawyer immersed in intrigue, marks his motion picture writing debut.

Book adaptations can be problematic, says CAA’s Bookman, whose clients include Crichton and Evans. But demographic change should only tighten the bond between Hollywood and the publishing world. “The baby boom audience is a pathological film-going generation and they’re seeking out the kind of depth and content often found in books,” he said. “They want something more adult and mature--and studio development hasn’t kept pace.”

Whatever the drawbacks, said Guber, there’s no sign Hollywood is pulling back. “Everyone is searching for the perfect book at the perfect price--with no competition,” he said. “We’re all looking for the Holy Grail.”