"Quite right, Theodore, the fox has already escaped. We mustn't also lose the prize in this contest of wills between us."
"So what do we do now?"
The proprietor tented his fingers before him, leaned back in his executive leather chair, and stared off into the dark recesses in the far corner of the ceiling.
For several minutes absolute silence reigned in the Inner Sanctum. Theodore hesitated to clear his throat or even breathe. For that matter, he was sure that he could now hear the pulse of his heartbeat inside his right ear. He just hoped it wasn't too loud.
"There's one crucial detail you've failed to inform me of, Theodore."
"What detail is that, sir?"
"The menu."
"The menu on the dinner cruise, sir?"
"Exactly."
Theodore thumbed through his notebook again. He also tried to conjure up the containers of food remaining on the serving tables in the main cabin of the cruise ship.
"To the best of my recollection, sir, the chafing dishes on the hot food table contained an excellent marinated jumbo shrimp. I must admit I ate two of them before moving on to the breaded chicken strips. Those were very good when dipped in the Chinese mustard sauce. And then there were the small cubes of superb ham quiche. And of course I can't forget the breaded mushrooms and the..."
The proprietor held up his right hand, palm out.
"Enough, Theodore, now tell me about the cold dishes on the stainless steel table."
"Well, sir, that table was packed high with crushed ice and covered with several plates and bowls of food that needed to be kept at a cooler temperature. I ate several of the cold shrimp dipped in cocktail sauce. There were fruit salads and potato salads and marinated vegetables and ... There were so many dishes there that one bowl or plate almost touched the next one, but the food was great. I tasted almost every dish they had. I'd recommend their chef for our next Christmas party ... if we have one."
Theodore noticed that the proprietor had lowered his gaze from the distant ceiling and was now looking at him.
"Tell me, Theodore, when you went back to the cruise ship hours later for this last trip, did you happen to dine on the cold hors d'oeuvres again?"
Theodore felt himself blushing.
"I haven't had time to eat anything since breakfast, sir, and all that food was just sitting there. Naturally, I didn't want it to go to waste, so I managed to munch on some of it every time I went on board."
"And the last time you were there, Theodore, had the ice melted somewhat on the cold table?"
"Yes, sir, the ice was getting pretty watery and most of the dishes and bowls were starting to lean at odd angles away from the center of the table as if the crushed ice had melted faster on the outside edges. It also looked like something dark had gotten mixed in under the ice, but I figured the food was still cold enough to be safe for human consumption, so I ate a few more snacks to tide me over."
"Interesting, Theodore, but perhaps now you will be perceptive enough to make one more trip to the cruise ship and retrieve our missing client."
"But where?"
"I trust you have a strong stomach, Theodore. It seems that Herr Morden has been keeping our missing client on ice all this time. Our Mister Jovanovich may be a little stiff, but I seriously doubt if he's frozen solid."
For the third time in less than twenty-four hours, Theodore had a mission. This time, the clock was no longer pushing him to hurry; the object of his mission would keep quite well for a while longer. Well, at least until the ice melted.
Copyright (c) 2008 R. T. Lawton
[Back to Table of Contents]
Department: Reel Crime by J. Rentilly
When you've got a dead body on your hands, you stash it in the trunk of a car and run the whole thing off a cliff. That's how these things go—at least in crime fiction, filmed or printed. And that's exactly what critically acclaimed, bestselling author James (L.A. Confidential, White Jazz) Ellroy does when he sells his books to Hollywood. He calls them dead and gives them a dispassionate shove into the abyss. Then he cashes the movie studio paycheck.
"It's money for nothing. You have to assume going in that the studio will never make your book into a movie. And if they do, it will probably be [screwed] up beyond recognition,” Ellroy says. “So you just shove these books off the cliff. Or you don't."
* * * *
Don Winslow
* * * *
Jeff Lindsay
* * * *
Last year, more than seventy-five films based on books were released, while a handful of television series—including Bones, Dexter, and The Women's Murder Club—were based on bestselling fiction franchises by Kathy Reichs, Jeff Lindsay, and James Patterson, respectively. (The first quarter of 2008 will see the release of filmed adaptations of Scott Smith's The Ruins, Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears A Who, along with One Missed Call, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Jumper, and Rambo, based on characters created by novelist David Morrell).
According to Writers Guild of America, nearly ten thousand books, magazine articles, and other prose works are optioned by filmmakers annually. Industry pundits believe that bestselling prose is particularly appealing to risk-averse, balance-sheet-oriented Hollywood producers because of its built-in audience, its road-tested story lines, and, frequently, its critical pedigree.
For authors, a Hollywood sale can mean a significant studio paycheck, a healthy sales bump, and wider exposure. Don Winslow, author of The Power of the Dog, The Death and Life of Bobby Z, and A Cool Breeze on the Underground, says his career as a novelist was “pretty much flatlined” a few years ago. During a long, daily commute doing consulting work for Southern California law firms, Winslow tapped out a vivid novel about a retired hitman—"just to amuse myself, really,” he says. For The Winter of Frankie Machine, he filed the manuscript with his agent on a Tuesday, and by that Friday night, a multi-studio bidding war had broken out; everyone wanted Frankie, and suddenly Winslow's career was resuscitated.
"One of these studios offered me more money than I'd ever seen in my life but gave me only twenty minutes to accept it. I said I didn't do business under those conditions, and spent the next twenty minutes cursing myself,” Winslow says. “The next call offered five times that amount and I accepted. My life changed, literally, overnight."
In addition to the seven-figure cash infusion, Frankie brought Winslow a creative collaboration with actor Robert DeNiro and filmmaker Michael (Heat, The Insider) Mann. Production is scheduled to begin in early summer, with Winslow—who says “novelists are generally considered the vestigial bone on the body of cinema"—content to leave the Byzantine adaptation process to Hollywood heavyweights.
Jeff Lindsay served “twelve years of hard time in Hollywood” before penning the bestselling Dexter series of novels. “Those years made me aware of how hard it is to adapt something in a way that the author can watch it without wanting to slash his wrists,” Lindsay says. When Showtime approached Lindsay about turning Dexter into a weekly television series, the author was game but had very low expectations. Then a funny thing happened at the first meeting between author, network, and talent. “They had all read the book. They could quote it. Unreal!” Lindsay says. “They've done a terrific job from day one."
But Winslow's and Lindsay's romances with Tinseltown are the exception, far from the rule. Author Stephen (The Kingdom of Bones) Gallagher has spent three decades as a published novelist, and has also adapted a number of other authors’ works for film and television, which is to say he has a fair level of pragmatism about Hollywood's lack of fidelity to source material and respect for authors.
"I'm not great at letting go,” Gallagher confesses. “I mean, if they tell me they're bringing in Tom Stoppard to punch up my jokes, I'll shut up because I know at the end of the day it's going to make me look good. But I always seem to get my material handed over to some know-nothing friend of the producer."
Gallagher recounts an experience wherein he'd been hired to adapt on
e of his own novels, then labored to secure financing, cast the film, select locations, and get the film into production. At the last minute, the film's director announced he wanted a “fresh eye” on the screenplay and gave it to his office assistant for a head-to-tail rewrite. “The girl was a nonwriter with no track record or experience. Her draft was worse than awful,” Gallagher says, adding that—fortunately—the film was never produced.
Gallagher also recalls the time a screenwriter hired to adapt one of his novels called to ask for tips on scanning the text of Gallagher's novel into screenwriter software. “He wanted to save himself all that typing,” says Gallagher. “I couldn't even find a place to begin."
Harlan Coben, author of the bestselling Myron Bolitar mysteries, currently being adapted for Fox Television, also had “miserable experiences” in Hollywood. Then in an unlikely plot twist, he was approached by French filmmakers who wanted to relocate his Philly-set thriller Tell No One to Paris. Coben says the film's writer/director Guillaume Canet showed him “great respect.” The author's notes on the screenplay were encouraged, and he was even granted a brief cameo in the film, which won four Cesar Awards last year—the French equivalent of Academy Awards.
Coben says he was mesmerized watching his novel's decidedly red-blooded American characters come to life as Frenchmen in Ne Les Dis A Personne, as it is titled in France. “There were no subtitles and I don't speak a word of French, so it was rather surreal,” Coben recalls. “Here I was, watching my story unfold, and I couldn't understand a word."
Most authors—not to mention filmmakers—are sharply divided about what makes a good book-to-film adaptation. One such author, Richard Price, believes the key is “ruthlessness with the source material.” The author of Blood Brothers, The Wanderers, and Freedomland, all turned into films, has adapted the books of others, including the Oscar-nominated The Color of Money.
"The only thing a movie owes to a novel is to be true to its spirit. If you're in awe of your source material, the end result is an overly respectful brick up there on the screen, not enough life and too solemn by half,” he says.
Conversely, Gallagher believes filmmakers too often play too fast and loose with source material, “plundering their source for ideas, rather than finding the essence of the source.” Ellroy believes successful big screen adaptations “determine the scope of the story going in, then reduce the story, make it coherent, and retain the essence of the story. Simple,” he laughs acerbically.
Elmore Leonard, whose novels and stories have been widely adapted (Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Jackie Brown), was once hired to write a film version of his novel Glitz. Though Leonard had always wanted to be a screenwriter, he says the experience chastened him—for good. “I remember going into a meeting with the head of the studio and he stood up in our meeting and said, ‘All you did was adapt the book,'” Leonard says. “And I hung my head and said, ‘Ah, yeah, sorry.’ I realized you're supposed to add something else to make it a screenplay. But damned if I know what it is. I gave up writing movies that day."
Which is to say, there is no end in sight to the volatile alchemy of adapting books for film and television. Perhaps Ellroy's cavalier attitude is right; you push your book off a cliff and then cash the check. Maybe the movie happens. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's good. Maybe it's not.
Author Joseph Kanon—who says he was “exceptionally lucky” when his novel The Good German was made into a film by Steven Soderbergh, George Clooney, and Cate Blanchett—says the only way for an author to survive his (mis)adventures in Hollywood is to remember one elemental thing. “It's important to keep in mind that the movie is not yours. It's the director's—along with the hundreds of people working for him,” says Kanon. “Your book will always be on the shelf and the movie in your head always there. But the one on screen belongs to someone else. The rest is just funny business.”
Copyright (c) 2008 J. Rentilly
* * * *
A Few Favorite Book-to-Movie Adaptations:
Stephen Gallager: The Silence of the Lambs is my idea of the model adaptation. It's the heart and guts of the book—images, relationships, pace, atmosphere, everything the author was looking to put into prose—properly and cinematically reimagined.
Don Winslow: The Godfather, definitely. Just an epic story, beautifully told, beautifully shot, with great performances.
Joseph Kanon: Double Indemnity is one of the rare occasions when the film is actually better than the book. Billy Wilder took a piece of pulp and made it glorious pulp, with every detail shrewd and knowing, right down to Barbara Stanwyck's anklet, and the sort of dialogue they just don't write anymore.
Jeff Lindsay: Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin. I didn't think the movie would be as scary, sexy, and intense as the book, but it was.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Fiction: RED HERRING HOUSE by James Powell
Tim Foley
* * * *
Two middle-aged Canadians, Wallace and Dean, were eating lunch at a small Greek restaurant near the yacht marina in the shadow of the Pickering, Ontario, nuclear power plant.
During a silent moment, Wallace asked, “So how'd you solve the Pollock business?"
Dean lowered his wineglass. “Has it been that long since we saw each other? Yes, I guess it has.” He shrugged. “Sad to say, I had to eliminate Pollock."
* * * *
The two men had been at the university together. Now Wallace was a partner in a Pickering law firm and Dean a writer of modestly successful mystery novels. (The literary critic for Canada's Squill and Squire: the Magazine of Bulb Gardening and Country Life, had described Dean's The Bloody Belfry Murders, as “ding-dong entertainment.")
They were friends of the sort who might not see each other for a year or two, but when they did it was as if one or the other had returned from the men's room to continue a conversation just left off. In fact, they usually met in bars or restaurants. Wallace's wife didn't care much for Dean.
At their last get-together Dean had complained about Pollock, a character in his current novel, who'd gone muleheaded on him. He described the scene where it had happened. On a late, overcast September afternoon Pollock sits reading The Financial Post in the second floor library of his big country house. Outside in the bushes in raincoat and fedora is Dean's Inspector Trudge. The policeman suspects Pollock is the notorious Greater Toronto Area garrotter because his latest victim was a young clergyman active in good works among the poor to whom Pollock's wealthy Aunt Flora intended to leave her fortune. Now her money would go to Pollock.
Dean explained how he needed Pollock to get up and go to the telephone on the table next to the window so Trudge can see him and jot down the time. That same afternoon the G. T. A. garrotter will strike again some twenty miles away. The victim's delicate wristwatch set with diamonds, broken in her struggle with the murderer, will prove to Trudge that Pollock couldn't be the murderer. But Dean's problem was Pollock wouldn't get out of his chair.
"He went Mr. Inertia on me,” he told Wallace. “Characters need an interior life. You want them to be able to walk around a bit when you get up from the computer. But overdo it, make a character too thoughtful, and suddenly he's wondering why you put him in the novel. He knows he isn't the murderer or the detective. He wonders if he's going to be a victim further down the road. Then he decided he's a red herring, just there to clutter up the plot and confuse the issue. That's when he gets muleheaded."
"Well, look at it from Pollock's point of view.” Wallace smiled. “Once Trudge crosses Pollock off his list, he and your readers will lose all interest in him."
"Look at it from my point of view,” said Dean. “I'm trying to advance a story here."
"Okay, how about this,” said Wallace. “The phone rings. Pollock picks it up. It's a telemarketer. Trudge sees him. End of story."
"I said it was late afternoon,” Dean pointed out. “Telemarketers only call at mealtime."
"So a friend, then,” said Wallace.
"Pollock doesn't have any friends."
"Then what's-his-name, Pollock's business partner, the one he owes so much money to? Harrington?"
Dean's eyes narrowed. After a moment, he said, “Let's just say Harrington's away on business."
"Then what about Pollock's rich Aunt Flora?"
Dean's expression did not change. “Let's just say Aunt Flora can't come to the phone."
"A wrong number, then,” said Wallace. “We all get wrong numbers."
Dean shook his head. “I can hear my readers groan, ‘Wrong number? That's the best Dean can come up with?’ And from there it isn't far to ‘Hell, I can do better than that.’ Bingo, another writer wannabe's crowding my space."
* * * *
Now, months later, sitting in the Greek restaurant, Wallace asked, “So how did you eliminate Pollock?” He cocked an eyebrow and ran a thumbnail across his throat.
Dean shook his head. “Never had the heart to destroy my creations. Mostly this is what I do."
Dean returned to Pollock's house in the country, reminding Wallace he'd said it was overcast. Now a steady rain starts to fall. Trudge decides to call it a day. He'd parked his car at a nearby roadhouse and stopped in for a drink when he did. The place had a real fire in the fireplace and a barmaid with a wonderful laugh. Now Trudge decides maybe another drink and a bite to eat were in order. He steps out of the bushes, squares his hat, and sets off.
Just then, Pollock, who's the type who likes to look outside when it's raining and he's high and dry inside, gets up and goes to the window. He sees a man in a raincoat and fedora walking away down the road. Isn't it what's-his-name the detective, he wonders? That's odd, he tells himself.
Dean looked over at Wallace. “By ‘odd,’ Pollock means poorly written,” he said. “Now he's really asking for it. I could've saved myself a rewrite by having Trudge turn back for one last look and see Pollock there at the window. But after a crack like that I said the hell with Pollock. He's history. Let the process of elimination begin."
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