Hollywood and Novelists

Sailor Boy does not like me watching movies about novelists. Whenever we do, and I get on one of my tears (you should have seen me when the recent Cheaper by the Dozen was out), he always says, “Hollywood? Being unrealistic? You don’t say” and hopes I’ll leave it at that.

I admit, I’m more lenient when it’s obviously a magic realism situation, as in the Will Ferrell/Emma Thompson vehicle Stranger than Fiction. But in the aforementioned Cheaper by the Dozen, in which the author, minutes after mailing off her manuscript, is called for a meeting in New York, handed a hardcover copy of her book, and told that she is already been booked on a multi-month, multi-city tour, and if she doesn’t go they’ll cancel her book contract (never mind that they’ve already planned a massive marketing campaign, not to mention done a printing!!!!), yeah, I went through the roof.

I think the reason is because I devote a significant amount of time to dispelling myths about the publishing industry to family, friends, people I meet at cocktail parties, entertainment law class students, and random folks on the internet (hi, guys!), and I blame a lot of these myths on portrayals like the above. Not a month goes by but I see another aspiring writer talking about how the reason they want to go into self-publishing is because NY publishers will force them to write X many books a year and go on endless book tours, and put their picture on the cover, and etc. etc. (My standard response: how many books on your shelf have a picture of the author on them? Maybe 30%? Less if your taste runs to mass markets instead of trade or hardcover? Most authors I know would kill to get on their publisher’s schedule more than once a year, and I know only a handful of authors who ever go on tour.)

I guess Hollywood tries to glamorize life for all professions. Cops won’t watch procedurals, etc. (Though I hear that the cops in Baltimore *love* The Wire, which scares me enormously.) But this is my only profession, so it’s the only one I get to be annoyed about.

Last night, Sailor Boy, his mom, and I, watched Martian Child, starring John Cusack. This is a movie based on a novel, based on a true story by established, award winning SF writer David Gerrold (who I’m not familiar with, but according to Wikipedia, he wrote a ton of novels, and a lot of Star Trek episodes, including “The Trouble with Tribbles”). The “true” part of the story, I believe, is about how Gerrold adopted a little boy who thought he was from outerspace.

In the movie, John Cusack’s character is an established (???) SF writer with a hit hit novel (about to become a movie) called Dracobahn. Dracobahn is described as “Harry Potter in space,” by which I took it to mean that it was a hugely popular book with crossover appeal in both the children and adult markets. So perhaps like Ender’s Game, only moreso? John Cusack lives in a gorgeous house somewhere in the countryside in Southern California.

For most of the movie, I was fine. He’s apparently late with his sequel (unfortunately titled “The Revenge of Dracobahn” and to be honest, John, I think that’s your problem right there), and is experiencing writer’s block due not only to the recent death of his wife, but also because he’s contractually bound to turn in a sequel to a book that ended with the death of all the main characters. So far, so good. None of this sounds bizarre to me.

Now, his agent does seem to drop by the house an awful lot (he apparently has an L.A. based agent, which is unusual, but not unheard of, especially if John, like Gerrold, does a lot of screenwriting work as well). I don’t know how screenwriting agents work — are they more like Ari from Entourage, totally in the client’s business all the time? I don’t know any literary agents like that. I get emails or phone calls, and usually, only when there’s something to discuss (a cover, a contract, a challenging revision request).

At one point, he gives a talk/reading at a planetarium, and there are about 20 people in folding chairs in the room, which I, personally, found very very realistic.

But then, about 3/4 into the movie, it goes off the rails. His agent (over a round of golf) informs him that the publisher is flying out to California and holding some enormous black tie function in Hollywood, the sole purpose of which seems to be for John to “ritualistically hand over the first draft” of the sequel. Which seems like a lot of money for a publisher to spend on a publicity stunt with no product to push, but whatever. We’ll pretend it coincides with the release of the paperback of Dracobahn, or the wrap party for the movie, or something.

So he shows up at this party, clutching what is supposed to be the manuscript, though it can’t be more than 25 pages long and is bound in one of those red pleather Kinkos covers I used for my senior thesis. I couldn’t get over this, no matter how many times Sailor Boy told me to shut up and watch the movie. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been doing proofs, and my nice, compact, 75k manuscript is a massive massive pile of paper on my desk. There is no way anyone can buy that as a manuscript. And the binding?

(SB wants you all to know that he did point out that the binding might be an affectation, like the “ritualistic handing over” of the draft. Which sure. Maybe. But then those 25 pages are ritualistic, too.)

Nobody notices him, though there are probably a hundred or more people in the room, listening to the chamber orchestra, drinking wine, and milling about in front of an enormous poster of his face (John says he looks like Chairman Mao.)

At this point the publisher swans up to him, calls for attention from the audience, and goes “This is [John Cusack]. And he’s brilliant.” The speech being apparently over, she grabs the manuscript out of his hands and everyone, apropos of nothing, goes back to milling. Whereupon the publisher introduces him — introduces him! — to his publicist. Um, he’s never met his publicist before? But he’s all chummy with the publisher? Is she also his editor? Is he with a small press?

In passing, the slim, slim, maybe 175 page trade paperbacks (ostensibly of Dracobahn) placed all over the room do in fact, indicate a tiny, tiny press, since the cover and the sizing had the distinct POD look to them. It was some sort of neon orange and yellow planetary (like a closeup of a pastel artist’s rendition of Jupiter) color wash with white text. Very odd looking. Not at all what one would expect of a major bestseller.

Anyway, what comes after is a bit of a spoiler, but it’s also really odd, though perhaps not anything to compare to the non-event black tie gala, ritualistic draft-handing, short bound-manuscript-having, publicist-introducing, ugly book-pushing, bizarre truncated speech-giving shenanigans that went before.

Had to get that off my chest. Just so you know — the book business isn’t like that. Manuscripts never look like that, and I wish Hollywood would stop making it out like it was. The most realistic interpretation I’ve seen of writing in a major motion picture was Romancing the Stone. She lived in a normal-sized apartment, with a normal life, and would meet her editor out at a bar for normal drinks because they both lived in Manhattan. (The bit at the end where she stood in her editor’s office while she read the book was a little odd, but the rest of it seemed very on target to me!)

I can’t speak for the treasure hunting portion, though.