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Small print, big picture

Getting a book on the big screen is a hard enough task, writes Richard Jinman, so what chance of starting from scratch with the latter in mind?

In September 1994, Derek Hansen was an author in search of a movie deal. Setting out to write his third novel, Sole Survivor, he decided to do everything he could to make the book attractive to filmmakers.

His motivation was simple. "A movie deal is an imprimatur," he says. "If you get a film made, it says it's a good book because there's a blind faith in movies. So I kept the cast small, set it in one location and made the props fairly minimal."

True to his word, the former advertising copywriter chose a remote island off the coast of New Zealand as his location. The book had only three main characters: two male hermits and a woman whose arrival on the island turns their isolated world on its head. Major "props" were limited to a Sunderland flying boat, a patrol boat and a trawler.

The plan appeared to work. In 1997, Hansen - then aged 53 - was in New Orleans when his American agent, Jillian Manus, called. "Derek," she gushed. "When you wrote Sole Survivor, you must have realised you'd written a major movie."

Manus was about to strike an extraordinary deal. Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, a Hollywood production team whose credits include Schindler's List, Cape Fear and Twister, were prepared to pay a $US60,000 up-front fee to option the rights to the book. Hansen would receive a further $US200,000 to write the screenplay and another $US700,000 the day the cameras started rolling.

The author was ecstatic. Names such as Susan Sarandon, Anthony Hopkins and Sean Connery were bandied about. He began work on the screenplay and must have daydreamed about strolling up the red carpet at the premiere.

Seven years later, Sole Survivor remains unproduced. Despite his producers' reassurance that "this ship is gonna leave port" it was ultimately torpedoed and sunk by the 2000 Tom Hanks film Cast Away. Hanks's tale of island survival was deemed too similar to Hansen's story. "Once that [Cast Away] went into production, my producers got cold feet," he says. "Sole Survivor went from being the hottest property to dead."

So his plan failed? Well, yes and no. Hansen reckons his book's adventures in Hollywood have earned him at least $400,000 to date. Sole Survivor still attracts regular interest from US producers and each time a screenwriter takes a shot at adapting it, Hansen receives half the fee.

"It's been a rollercoaster ride," says Hansen, who now questions the tactics he used to make his book enticing to filmmakers. When he read the coverage - a one-page synopsis used to describe the book's strengths and weaknesses to film companies - there was no mention of his efforts to keep cast and props to a minimum.

Kennedy and Marshall were also oblivious to Hansen's attempts to woo them. "They didn't see it as a cheap movie," he says. "They saw it as a $US40 million movie from the word go."

Hansen's conclusion - there's no formula to landing a movie deal. "You have to write a book that appeals to yourself, that you believe in," he says. "If other people see it as a movie, fabulous. But you have to use your own judgement."

But does anyone really know why some books provoke a bidding war among filmmakers, while others are deemed "unfilmable"? Do some authors imagine actors playing the lead roles in their stories as they're writing or construct key scenes through an imaginary viewfinder? And is it possible to deliberately write a book that will send producers, open chequebook in hand, scurrying to snap up the film rights?

Many writers and book lovers will hope not. For them, the notion of writing a novel to land a movie deal would seem cynical or even heretical - a betrayal of literature and the traditions underpinning it.

Shane Maloney, the Melbourne author of the Murray Whelan novels, is hostile to any suggestion a film or television adaptation validates the written word. He's had two of his books adapted as Seven Network telemovies starring David Wenham but says the fact the films were written by his friend and fellow Melbourne writer, John Clarke, excited him more than any attendant publicity.

"People often ask ... if there's a plan to make this [book] into a movie," he says. "By all rights, I should be offended by such a question. Any author should be. It's like people saying you've managed to complete a second-order task. Do you think it will ever be turned into something proper?"

Luke Davies, 41, the Sydney author of Candy, a novel about the junkie life, considers the idea of pandering to the needs of filmmakers a "doomed proposition".

"It's poisonous to your creative process to write with those kinds of ends in mind," he says. "The duty of the writer is to abdicate from a sense of audience. The moment you start to write from a sense of who's this for, how's it going to work, it's all over. You have to stick to your creative guns and let the rest work itself out."

It's an interesting perspective because Davies's writing is a magnet for filmmakers. Working with the theatre director Neil Armfield, he's written the screenplay for a film version of Candy that is set to star Heath Ledger and begin shooting next year. His second novel, Isabelle the Navigator, has been optioned by the actor Toni Collette and a screenplay is in the works.

Davies insists he had no inkling either book had movie potential. "Candy took me completely by surprise," he says. "And Isabelle the Navigator was sprawling, literary. Again, I didn't think there was a film in it. I'm working on a third novel now and there's no way in the world it could be a film."

Oddly enough, Candy's co-producer, Margaret Fink, agreed with him at first. An Australian film pioneer whose best-known productions - films such as 1975's The Removalists and 1979's My Brilliant Career - have mostly been based on "known works" rather than screenplays, Fink loved Davies's first novel, but didn't think it was a film.

She gave a copy of the book to Armfield to demonstrate Davies's potential as a screenwriter. Armfield loved it and decided the story's "sense of possibility, loss and humour" could be translated to the big screen.

Fink says she nearly always finds it easier to gauge a writer's talent from a novel or play rather than a screenplay. When she read Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career in 1965, for example, she was immediately struck by the gutsy heroine Sybylla Melvyn.

"Novels are easier to read than screenplays," she says. "And the thing with a known work is that you can refer back to it if you get in a fix, rather than floundering around. It provides a sound basis [for a film]."

A book may provide a solid foundation for a film, but Australian literature - the inspiration for so many great movies during the local film industry's renaissance in the 1970s - isn't as popular with today's filmmakers. That's mostly down to money. Brian Rosen, the Film Finance Corporation's chief executive, has stated his belief that filmmakers should be telling the big, ambitious stories often associated with literature but concedes the relatively high cost of making such films is prohibitive.

Most contemporary Australian films are based on original screenplays, not book adaptations. But adaptation isn't a lost art. The Australian Film Commission says about a dozen books by local and overseas authors are in the development process.

Phil Noyce is working on a version of Tim Winton's Dirt Music and Bruce Beresford is adapting The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney, Henry Handel Richardson's autobiographical portrait of Australian life in the early 20th century. Film adaptations of David Malouf's An Imaginary Life, Mandy Sayer's Dreamtime Alice: A Memoir and Patrick White's The Eye of the Storm are also in the pipeline.

It's highly doubtful any of the above were written with one eye on a movie deal. Kate Richter, an agent at Sydney-based HLA Management - a company that represents Australian directors including Jane Campion, Gillian Armstrong and Gregor Jordan - warns that authors trying to "write a movie" should probably go straight to a screenplay. Most directors aren't interested in filming a literal translation of a book, she says. They're looking for a great character, a brilliant story - anything that fires their imagination. But they don't expect the film to be handed to them on a plate.

"Books and films are totally different," Richter says. "I don't think you can ever know what story will appeal to someone. A book gets into your psyche and lets you make up your own world."

Having your book optioned by a filmmaker sounds exciting, but as Derek Hansen discovered, the journey from option to lights, camera, action, can be long, winding and prone to derailment.

Up to 100 books are optioned for every one made into a film, says Rachel Skinner, an agent at Rick Raftos Management, a Sydney agency representing about 120 writers. Options typically last for 12 months with an option for two renewals. If the producer wants to shop an idea around at an industry market such as Cannes, the agreement can last as little as six months.

Authors who order a new Ferrari the day their book is optioned may be jumping the gun. The fee depends on factors such as the author's reputation, book sales and the number of literary prizes on their mantelpiece. Rival bidders can spice things up but in Australia, at least, options are modest.

"If the book's not that well known you can put in offers from about $1000," says Skinner. "The most I've ever done is $35,000 for a year."

The moment the cameras start rolling, the author receives an assignment of rights payment calculated as a percentage of the film's budget. It's time to pop the champagne cork but considering the average budget for an Australian movie is $2.6 million, local authors might opt for domestic bubbly instead of the imported stuff.

"You need to look at it as your holiday fund, not your retire-to-the-Bahamas fund," Skinner warns.

The Sydney author Dave Warner, 50, has had three of his novels optioned, although one of those has now lapsed. None of his books has made it to the screen yet but Louis Nowra has written a screenplay treatment of his first novel, City of Light. Warner knows the journey from book to film is protracted and fraught with difficulties. The deal can fall over at any time, so he takes a relaxed attitude to the process.

"For an Australian writer, the really difficult thing is to buy time to write your own original work," he says. "So, if a [film] option can help you do that, why not? The options paid aren't huge but they can roll over."

Are things radically different in America?

It can seem like that, considering the six-figure deals commanded by literary superstars like John Grisham and Stephen King. But unless a producer is attached to a studio, their pockets may not be much deeper than their Australian counterparts, says Skinner.

Jonathan Tropper is one of the fortunate American authors who have struck a lucrative movie deal early in their careers. His second novel, The Book of Joe, is being adapted to the screen by Plan B, a production company set up by Hollywood stars Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston.

Like Hansen, the 34-year old Tropper set out to score a movie deal. His first novel (coincidentally called Plan B) was primarily designed to get him a literary agent but he also loaded it with "cinematic possibilities" in the hope Hollywood would sit up and take notice.

Plan B is about group of friends who kidnap one of their circle - a famous movie star - to rid him of his cocaine habit. There's plenty of sex, drugs and twentysomething angst. The book reads a bit like a The Big Chill for the Kurt Cobain generation; you can almost hear the soundtrack playing as you read it.

Plan B got Tropper an agent, but Tinseltown was unmoved. He realised his efforts to pander to filmmakers had compromised his writing and refocused on his literary instincts. The result was The Book of Joe, a novel about an author called Joe Goffman who writes a thinly veiled and deeply insulting biography of his home town. The book is a bestseller - it's even made into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio - but when Goffman's father has a stroke, he's forced to go home and face the angry inhabitants of Bush Falls.

"I had tremendous anxiety that I was writing a book that wouldn't have commercial appeal," says Tropper, who was convinced the book's heavy reliance on flashbacks and back-story made it an unlikely film. "I was always second-guessing it. When I gave it to my agent, I said, 'the writing's better, but I'm not sure if it's a sexy sell."'

Pitt and Aniston disagreed, outbidding 20th Century Fox to secure the rights. A screenplay is now being written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Doug Wright and Miguel Arteta, the director of Aniston's 2002 drama The Good Girl has signed on to direct. Tropper won't say how much he's been paid - "way more than I thought I was worth" - but admits the cash and kudos have already transformed his career.

"The sad truth is that publishing cannot offer the money or exposure that Hollywood can," says the author, who lives in Westchester County, New York. "[A movie deal] is a tremendous advertisement for the book and, as a writer starting out, you dream of any big push that will take you from struggling author to household name. That's the truth but some people don't like to admit it. When I write, it's 100 per cent my type of fiction, but sometimes I do stop and think, 'Does this idea have any attraction for a movie deal?"'

Like Hansen, Tropper says authors who deliberately try to woo filmmakers are almost certain to fail.

"It might work if you write thrillers," he says. "But if you do it with contemporary fiction, it's a problem. You do have to stay true to a literary imperative. But when you've had a deal from Hollywood, it's hard to get it out of your head when you write the next book."

So hard, in fact, that Tropper forced himself to rewrite 60 pages of his third book when he found himself questioning "the purity of my motives".

The message appears to be simple. If you can't get the silver screen out of your head when you put pen to paper, you might want to consider a screenplay. Authors are usually better off honouring their muse, not the movie producer's chequebook.

Shane Maloney puts it this way: "The cinema has a very high impact on people. It's a very strong and powerful medium. But I'd like to think that books allow people to make their own movies."

[original article]

Posted by thinkum at July 17, 2004 07:01 PM