The Writer’s Predicament

Let’s talk about the writer’s dream — Hollywood — and how that whole thing works.

Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland, Noah Wylie. All those guys have read my work and showed an interest in playing Joe Dillard in a television series. That humbles me, to some extent. It also makes me wish they’d been able to pull it off. They might still pull it off. We’ll see.

Here’s how it started. My New York agent, Philip Spitzer, has a professional relationship with an agent in Hollywood named Joel Gotler. Philip, who was the first to read the re-re-re-written manuscript of “An Innocent Client” and want to represent it, subsequently sent it out to Joel, who is a big shot at the International Property Group – Literary Management (IPGLM) in Los Angeles. Joel’s agency represents books to the Hollywood machine: producers, executive producers, writers, actors, and ultimately, studios.

Joel’s first pitch of my work was to Alexandra Milchan. Alexandra is a beautiful, high-energy, wonderful human being who just so happens to be the daughter of Arnon Milchan. Arnon Milchan is what a lot of people would call a sketchy guy, but I don’t care. I’ve been called a sketchy guy. He’s been involved in arms dealing and the international underworld as a “spy” for the Mossad, which is Israel’s version of the CIA. He’s also a multi-billionaire who has produced more than fifty movies and who developed and owns a studio in Hollywood called New Regency. I didn’t give a thump about his politics. I actually admired him. Talk about a tough SOB. I admire tough SOBs. I was just hoping he’d back what the agents were talking about. So Joel went to dinner with Alexandra in a posh Hollywood restaurant and put “An Innocent Client” in her hands. She read it, loved it and wanted to develop it into a television series. Joel let me know that she wanted to develop it, which was exciting, but he didn’t say anything about money. He didn’t say anything about an option.

I received a phone call from Alexandra in early 2008, not long after Philip Spitzer had sold “An Innocent Client” to the Penguin Group. I had trouble understanding Alexandra on the phone, to be honest, because she’d been raised in France and her accent was a bit difficult to comprehend, but I listened closely, and what she told me was that she LOVED “An Innocent Client” and wanted to turn the Dillard character into a television series. A couple of weeks later, she called me again, but this time it was a conference call between her, me, Rod Lurie and Marc Frydman. Lurie and Frydman owned and operated a production company called BattlePlan. They’d done movies together before and Lurie had been a showrunner on a series called “Commander in Chief,” starring Gina Davis. I was absolutely out of my league. I’ll never forget, though, during the phone conversation, Lurie said, “Will you let us use your book for free?,” which meant, can we go out and try to sell it to studios without having to pay you anything?” I said, “Maybe you should talk to my agent about that.”

Alexandra set up a meeting between Rod Lurie and me at the Madison Hotel in Memphis and we talked for hours in the restaurant. He was one of the brightest men I’ve ever met. We talked about story ideas for a Dillard series for hours. He told me that if they could develop a series based on Dillard and get it renewed for three years, the producers would make upwards of forty million dollars. My take of that as the pissant writer who had developed the characters and the ideas for the show would be in the low hundreds of thousands, but hey, I was willing to take hundreds of thousands. I was in.

My agent, Joel Gotler, was enamored by Alexandra Milchan’s father’s incredible wealth and the opportunities that might present him in the future, and he definitely didn’t want to do anything that might compromise his relationship with Alexandra. So my book got shopped, by Alexandra, in Hollywood, for free. I never received a dime for an option. I can’t really say I regret it, though, because Keifer Southerland, Kevin Bacon, Noah Wylie, and a host of other folks read the book. Noah Wylie was the first to come on board and say, “Yeah, I’d like to play Joe Dillard.” But for whatever reason, when Rod Lurie and Marc Frydmann and Alexandra started pitching the show to networks, the networks passed.

I think they passed because the novel, and the Joe Dillard character, was set in Northeast Tennessee. Lurie wanted to set the show in Memphis. He, as well as others who have pitched the show to networks over the past few years, wanted to change the relationship between Dillard and Caroline. They wanted Dillard to have an affair, or they wanted Caroline to have an affair. They thought it would make the show more “edgy.”

I thought it was bullshit. The appeal of Dillard has been that he’s a good guy and a good husband. He might have been involved in a crappy world, but both he and his wife were good people. They’d raised good kids to the best of their ability but the kids made mistakes along the way, just like every kid makes mistakes. The Hollywood folks tried to explain it to me thusly: “You need a high-concept story.” A “high-concept” story to them is something akin to Joe and Caroline having been unfaithful to each other but working it out after Joe’s girlfriend has been charged with murder and Caroline’s boyfriend has been impeached and removed from the United States Senate. They call that “high concept.” As I mentioned above, I call it bullshit.

So for the past several years, Alexandra Milchan has been on my side in Hollywood, but unfortunately, she’s passed the salesman pitch off to people who want to change the fundamental message of what I’ve tried to convey with Joe Dillard. Maybe they’ll get it at some point, like they got it with “Justified” or with “Breaking Bad.”

We’ll see. If it happens, you’re all invited to a the biggest-ass party that’s ever been held in these parts.