First I was an agent representing writers, then I was a producer. First I sold film rights in novels, then I bought them. I represented screenwriters, then I employed them. While not in itself a noticeably baroque career move-in Los Angeles all producers were once agents or lawyers-it was a trajectory which, to the British branch of "the business we call show," seemed to be the act of a sleazeball: the contempt of produ-cers for writers being one of the most consistent elements in the Hollywood story.
The received wisdom, particularly about the 1930s and 1940s when writers such as F Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner and Clifford Odets were working on scripts, is that distinguished novelists or playwrights were abused by producers and demeaned by working in Hollywood. In his biography of Fitzgerald, Matthew Bruccoli tells us: "He knew that the movie work was unworthy of his genius and resented the power exercised over him by lesser men." By implication, a terrible price was paid for the abuse of talent. For Fitzgerald, in a decade when the average annual income barely scraped into four figures, the price was $85,000 for his 18-month contract at MGM.
"Selling film rights is like pimping your daughter," Tom Clancy was recently quoted as saying. Clancy's novels include The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, three books which became, in quick succession, three films. Now, in common with most other best-selling authors, it is not Clancy doing the pimping himself-this is what agents do. But if your daughter had the chance to achieve a turn-over equivalent to the worldwide grosses of Clancy's three films ($600m and counting) a parent might reasonably put aside thoughts of higher education for her and at least consider other, more lateral, career paths.
As pimping stories go, this is an inspirational one. Tom Clancy has, after all, hit that particular kind of Hollywood jackpot called a "franchise." True, occasional items in the trade press indicated minor seismic disturbances during production of the films. Still, such stories blow in the breeze in Los Angeles-they reveal nothing untoward about the filming of the Clancy oeuvre. Rather they indicate not only the general difficulty of getting any film made, but also the specific impossibility of getting any film made and keeping everybody happy, especially the author.
A particular tone of disdainful outrage is employed by novelists describing the perceived travesty that is the film of their book. Rose Tremain, author of Restoration, was quoted as saying: "The filmmakers have lost the intellectual element of the plot and cast hot young stars of Tinseltown as members of the court of Charles II." Worse: she appeared in 14th place on the roll of credits. "My agent did send them quite a few faxes to try to get my name a bit higher up, but we didn't get a single reply." In Tinseltown, the food is so bad, the portions so small.
Michael Ondaatje, however, had a different experience with the film of The English Patient. He clearly feels that selling film rights is like marrying your daughter into royalty. Before the film, Ondaatje had always felt that "A book could be as secret as a canoe trip, the making of a film more like the voyage of Lord Jim's Patna-uncertain of ever reaching its destination with a thousand pilgrims on board and led by a morally dubious crew."
With this film project Ondaatje clearly took a trip on The Love Boat: "While Anthony [Minghella] is a wonderful director, he is, first and always, a writer." (Somehow you get the feeling that the kind of writer Ondaatje believes Minghella to be, first and always, is not a screenwriter, but something far more elevated; a Haiku writer, say.) What separates Minghella from the philistine movie herd is this: "He treasures books. Leaving an editing room, we would often decompress by scurrying into a bookstore in Berkeley." Never has the act of scurrying seemed so Masonic.
Ondaatje's praise is so extravagant, his happy experience clearly so far from what he expected, that it only reinforces the traditional view that novelists are mistreated-if not mauled-by their dealings with the lesser men who are producers.
Screenwriters, though clearly no less bruised, have a more consistently resigned tone to their anguish-as if, being closer to the industry than novelists, they expect nothing less than betrayal. A screenwriter I met in Los Angeles, who had just sold a script, told me excitedly-in the tone of a man whose love for his wife is enhanced by the number of other men sleeping with her-that the producer thought so highly of his screenplay that he had brought in another writer to work on it.
In fact, reading the introductions of a random selection of screen plays published over the last 25 years or so, there is a bizarre homogeneity. You can only presume that a truth drug has been handed out to the screenwriters along with the paycheck:
"The script in this book is substantially the one I finished that night in Puerto Rico. It is not, however, the film you will be seeing in theatres," said Pete Hamill of his 1971 screenplay Doc.
"The decision to publish this version of the script represents a compromise between the first versions and the final shooting script. The writer believes this version... to be authentically his while still being close enough to the actual film," said Rudy Wurlitzer of his 1972 screenplay Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
"As is so often the case with Hollywood movies, other hands took over the project. What audiences will see includes the work of many other, uncredited, writers," said Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin about their 1996 screenplay Twister.
In any screenwriter's contract, or a contract for the sale of a literary property, you will find, now as 60 years ago, some equivalent of the following clause: "The Company shall be entitled to make use of the Work in such manner as it shall in its sole discretion think fit including (but not by way of limitation) the right to make changes, alterations, substitutions and additions thereto deletions therefrom and adaptations and rearrangements thereof..." The fact is that, pace Ondaatje, if your particular voyage as a novelist or screenwriter turns out to be on the Titanic, you are powerless to change its course.
But there is still a potential recourse against the changes or alterations made to your script or novel. Like pulling the sword from the stone, you could invoke your "moral rights," a set of legal rights conferred on you the moment you put pen to paper, an incandescent mantle silently guarding your work. It is an author's right to object to, and seek redress in court for, "derogatory treatment." You could argue that your reputation had suffered. You might even, if the film goes down with all hands, claim that your earning power has been reduced. These things are hard to prove, but in the movie business potential litigation is a terrifying threat: it is the shotgun on the wall in the first act of the play-you cannot keep your eyes off it because you know it will go off by the end.
So this is what happens to your rights: you waive them. For the purposes of the project you have been hired for, any moral rights you might have had are simply no longer there; they cease to exist.
When I was an agent I represented Pat Barker, who later won the Booker prize for one of the novels in her Regeneration trilogy. She had written a book called Union Street; we sold it to two Holly- wood producers. It is the story of seven working class women in a depressed area outside Durham in the north of England. It became, after some time had elapsed, a movie called Stanley and Iris which was set in a depressed area outside Boston, Massachusetts. Iris, an enormously fat woman in the novel, was played by Jane Fonda; Stanley, neither fat nor thin in the novel (because there was no character called Stanley in the novel) was played by Robert de Niro. Other elements that did not feature in the book were the love affair between these two and his eventual proposal to her when he becomes a robotics engineer after she has taught him to read and write.
When the film opened in London, Pat Barker was interviewed extensively. The story was potentially a good one: serious English feminist author has book trashed by Hollywood. But her reaction was not what was expected. Although not without a certain jaundiced amusement at what had happened to her story, Pat Barker's view was that the book had not been changed. It could still be found in any good bookstore in exactly the same form as it had been written. There was also a film called Stanley and Iris.
Whoever said: "In the beginning was the word," lied. In the beginning there are many other things-including the word. These are sometimes called in Hollywood, in a parallel to the act of creation, "the elements." These could be a novel or script, but they are just as likely to be a star, a director, a favour owed or a deal struck-any combination of things that causes the particular surge of electricity which brings a project to life.
There are those who would ar-gue that the one truly creative act in filmmaking, the equivalent of Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, is getting the right elements together-not only finding all the playing cards that make up a film, but keeping them on the table in the right order and face up.
The standard contract that novelists and screenwriters sign may seem like the literary equivalent of a contract which graciously allows children to become chimney sweeps. But they are not alone-and the chimney is not that dirty. All creative participants will have signed similar agreements for one reason: if a possibility exists that, after $3m or $30m has been spent, the potentially profitable trajectory of your film could be dogged by litigation, you would not be able to raise the finances to make the film.
And so, if there is a country where your hand is cut off if you take an orange, either do not go to that country, or do not take the orange. And do not, even in your hour of greatest need, dwell on how much the orange is worth.
