Kicking Up Dust Over ‘Sahara’ Saga

When Hollywood last tackled the work of adventure writer Clive Cussler, it wound up with the 1980 flop “Raise the Titanic.” Said producer Lord Lew Grade of the experience: “It would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic.”

Now, producers hope Cussler and his Web-savvy fans don’t sink his “Sahara.”

Since January, financier Philip Anschutz and his Crusader Entertainment have been in a legal brawl with the author over a big-budget film version of “Sahara,” now shooting in Morocco.

The book is one of 18 that recount the heroics of Dirk Pitt, a wisecracking swashbuckler who fights for good and the environment under the auspices of the mythical National Underwater and Marine Agency, or NUMA. The picture, which stars Matthew McConaughey, is set for distribution by Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures and is the first major feature directed by Breck Eisner, the son of Walt Disney Co. Chairman Michael Eisner.

In a lawsuit filed last month, Cussler asked a state court in Los Angeles to block the film, saying Crusader and Anschutz violated his contractual rights by proceeding before he had approved a script.

The case, recently moved to a federal court in Los Angeles, is far from trial. But it has roused Cussler’s admirers.

They are using the Internet to mount a campaign that is serving to remind Hollywood of an uncomfortable truth: Fandom can be a dual-edged sword, even in the era of cult-driven films such as Warner Bros. Pictures’ “Harry Potter” cycle and New Line Cinema Inc.’s “Lord of the Rings.”

“What Cussler is doing has the risk of harming the film, and the audience for the film, for no reason,” said attorney Alan Rader, who represents Anschutz and Crusader, a production boutique the financier co-founded in 2000.

Rader said that the 72-year-old author was deeply involved in the movie’s development and that he was simply trying to win back the rights to two other books that are part of Crusader’s deal now that “Sahara” is “going to be a big success.”

Oddly enough, Cussler -- whose daughter Dayna is credited with a small role in the film as the Amelia Earhart clone Kitty Mannock -- appears intent on tiptoeing through the fight.

He declined to be interviewed for this story. His lawsuit, in which he is represented by veteran entertainment attorney Bertram Fields, never mentions “Sahara” by name, referring only to an offending “motion picture.”

“We weren’t anxious to say bad things about the picture,” said Fields, who characterizes the dispute as a straightforward disagreement about contractual terms.

Some among the buyers of more than 125 million copies of Cussler books aren’t so cautious. They have been quick to declare opposition to a film reported to cost more than $100 million and that was relying heavily on what Paramount Motion Picture Group Chairwoman Sherry Lansing in 2002 called Cussler’s “fanatical following.”

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A Fan Rebellion

“From the moment I first read the book, I’ve wanted to see it on screen. But I know now it should never be made,” declared “nightshade 2” on a Simon & Schuster online chat board that has sizzled with boycott talk. (The “Sahara” publisher also is a unit of Viacom.)

At the site www.cusslermen.com/News.htm, Webmaster David Hyatt has posted a photograph of a “rejected script.” It is wrapped in bright-red Creative Artists Agency covers and ignominiously titled on the back: “Sahra.”

“They misspelled it. That’s a slap in the face to begin with,” said Hyatt, who recalled learning of Cussler’s displeasure with the project directly from the author at a December book signing in Denver.

Elsewhere on the Internet, a petition demanding that Cussler be allowed to write his own script has garnered more than 700 signatures.

“There’s definitely a rebellion,” said Gabriel Waters, an Ohio fan who plans to deliver the signatures to the producers and Paramount. “At least 98% of the messages I’ve seen are very upset with what Crusader is doing.”

Despite the chatter, even the most avid Cussler fans aren’t entirely sure what specific objections the author raised to drafts of “Sahara” scripts from no fewer than eight Hollywood writers, including David S. Ward, whose credits include “Sleepless in Seattle,” and James V. Hart, known for “Hook” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”

Fields said Cussler’s complaints are that the final script doesn’t capture the essence of Dirk Pitt and his cohorts, that it deviates from the book’s sequence of events and that it gives short shrift to some of the action sequences.

One theory among Cussler fans is that the movie will soft-pedal or eliminate what they call the “cannibal village” -- a scene in which Africans driven mad by industrial waste devour a caravan of unsuspecting tourists -- and that it will take the generally wholesome Pitt on an uncharacteristic visit to a strip bar, complete with frontal nudity.

Without discussing the finer points of the plot, Crusader attorney Rader said the latter notion was completely at odds with the company’s stated commitment to family entertainment.

“That’s just ridiculous,” he said. “There will be no frontal nudity in this picture.”

Addressing another fan concern, Rader said Cussler clearly signed off on the elimination of the book’s Abraham Lincoln subplot. (In that twist, Dirk Pitt finds the remains of the president, boldly kidnapped before the Confederacy’s fall, in the ruins of a Southern gunboat left high and dry in the African desert by receding river waters.)

Cussler’s lawyer would not comment on his client’s view of Lincoln’s fate.

But “I find it hard to believe Clive would approve of that -- it’s such an integral part,” said Wayne Valero, a Colorado collector of Cussler memorabilia who has written a book about the author.

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Devoted Following

That fans are unusually protective of Cussler has much to do with his skill of creating an alternative reality that not only remains consistent through his many novels but also deliberately blurs the lines between fact and fiction.

A real-life adventurer best known for locating the sunken Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, Cussler uses the NUMA name on his own nonprofit organization, dropped himself into a brief scene in the novel “Sahara” and has been known to open a telephone conversation with: “This is the real Dirk Pitt.”

Many fans are still offended by the many departures from Cussler’s book in “Raise the Titanic,” including the scratching of a Russian takeover of the salvaged ship in a hurricane.

Indeed, screenwriter Eric Hughes, credited with the adaptation, recalls being told that “all we bought was the title.”

Cussler’s willingness to flirt again with the film business may owe something to Anschutz’s personal interest in the books. The Denver entrepreneur, who also is financing a big-budget version of the Jules Verne classic “Around the World in 80 Days,” to be distributed by Disney, has inquired about Cussler collectibles in the past, Valero said.

Fans who have spoken with Cussler said he was not confident that a court would actually stop the film, the contractual dispute notwithstanding. Yet Fields noted that about 30 years ago, he persuaded a court to pull Paramount’s “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” from release and substitute a version with new dialogue and music to meet the objections of author Richard Bach.

A Paramount spokeswoman declined to comment on the “Sahara” dispute. Director Eisner, a 1995 USC film school graduate, was unavailable for an interview, Crusader’s attorney said.

But several observers pointed out that sometimes, at least, author-led rebellions have had a happy ending. A decade ago, for instance, author Anne Rice triggered a reader uprising against the David Geffen-produced “Interview With the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles,” only to reverse course and declare the movie wonderful.

And even some of Cussler’s supporters acknowledge that star power and Hollywood marketing, not to mention their own curiosity, may override their resistance in the end.

If the film is finished over Cussler’s objections, Valero said, he probably would see it -- though not until it was out on video.

“I don’t think this is going to be the end,” he said. “Dirk Pitt is resilient enough to survive any bad film.”