Wasted in Hollywood

In February, I was surprised by an email from a Hollywood producer – let’s call him Dave – who had come across my novel Wasted while shooting a movie in Cape Town. We should meet, he said, and I agreed.

            Before our appointment, I googled the bejesus out of him, given the nasty myths about Hollywood people being thieves and charlatans. And, natch, I couldn’t quite believe that he was interested in something I had written. The Google told me he had been President of Production at a big Hollywood studio, and had left a year before to set up his own production company. From Meryl Streep to Bill Murray, Jake Gyllenhaal to Jeff Bridges, Keanu Reeves to Nick Nolte, Dave had worked with them all.

            We met early one morning at the (extremely strange) 15 on Orange Hotel. Dave – mid fifties, balding, stubbled – was dressed in typical movie-set gear. Cargo shorts, old trainers, a slightly grub golf shirt, like an ageing grip on any of the gazillion TV commercial shoots I’ve been on over the years. What was I expecting? A Zegna suit and Hublot watch?

            Dave ordered coffee and then began slowly reeling me in. He flattered my unputdownable novel, my unique writing voice, my brilliant characterisation, and my shrewd plotting. I swallowed it all faster than the hotel coffee.

            Then he let out a bit of line. “So this is one way it could play out. Like, when I met with Famous Novelist to discuss making a movie of her bestseller, I asked if she would like to write the screenplay, and she laughed at me and flat refused. So we agreed to option it and I found a pro screenwriter in LA to do the job. She didn’t care that she would forfeit pretty much all creative input.”

            He waved at the waiter for a refill. I felt rather smart because I’d also googled what “to option” meant – a production company will “rent” the movie rights from the author, typically for eighteen months at a time, in return for a bit of cash. The company will reserve the right to renew the option after each period. The author will be paid an agreed sum for the movie rights if and when the screenplay is signed off for production. The amount of option money offered varies according to the profile of the author. Let’s just say I wouldn’t have been able to retire on what Dave put on the table.

            “The other way,” Dave continued, beginning to reel in the line again, “is for the author to write the screenplay himself. The author would retain creative control, and make much more money when – if – the movie gets made. Do you know how screenwriters get paid?”

            This was something I hadn’t googled just yet.

            “Generally, the writer gets 2.5% of the overall production budget as soon as the script goes into production." Too bad Wasted contained no exploding buildings, space flights, dragons or exotic locations. "Then he gets 5% of net box-office profits.”

            I tried to do the maths based on a modest $10m budget, but Dave kept on reeling.

            “The trouble is that your main character, this Nathan Lucius guy, is so unusual that I can’t see even a pro screenwriter doing him justice. So I want you to write it.”

            That was when I noticed just how blue Dave’s little eyes were.

            “Just know that the second half of your book didn’t work for me. At all. In fact, I almost put it down when Nathan killed the old lady on, like, page sixty something. That’s the movie I want to make – all about the relationship between Nathan and Madge. But make them fuck. They don’t fuck in your book. They need to fuck to in the movie.”

            Holy shit, I thought. I’d only written the first half of the book as a reason to get to the second. And how was I going to turn a vignette, intended as a bit of misdirection and evidence that Nathan wasn’t quite a psychopath, into a hundred-and-twenty-page screenplay?

            Dave must have noted the look on my face and began reeling again. “Write the Madge character with Helen Mirren in mind. Write it just for her. If she likes the screenplay, I can get her behind the movie.”

            Helen bloody Mirren?

            “And for Nathan, think Ryan Gosling. I think he’d be spot on – good looking, but with a bit of a quirk that would be great for the character.”

            Ryan goddamned Gosling?

            A hundred and twenty pages. Barely half of one of my skinny novels. How hard could it be?

           

The only thing I knew about writing a screenplay was how to lay out the page – twelve-point Courier, single line spacing, scene headings in caps, dialogue centred.

Ten days later I met Dave on set with a storyline in my head, and a synopsis and a draft of the first act under my arm. The crew were busy doing what crews do, moving equipment about and putting stuff up and taking other stuff down and going outside to smoke. Dotted around the set on various chairs, a number of young women in princess outfits sat, waiting and yawning between touch-ups from hair and make-up. Dave glanced at the little-girl props of Fairy Tale Land that made up the set. “Some for the money,” Dave said, as if apologising for all the kitch. “Now let’s get out of here – all this pussy is distracting me.”

I spoke him through my thoughts on the screenplay and he diplomatically hated every one.

“Make her younger. You’ve made her too old. Helen Mirren is old, yeah, but she isn’t old old. But maybe she should be younger. Okay, not Helen Mirren then. Someone younger, but good, say early fifties. Think Susan Sarandon, like, ten or fifteen years ago.”

Bye, Helen.

“And make Nathan older. Ryan Gosling is too young. They need to fuck, but it shouldn’t be grotesque. Matt Damon, maybe. Make him speak less. Like a Matt Damon who doesn’t talk.”

So it went, until at the end of the hour and a half, Dave looked at my printouts that lay face-down on the desk. “Something you wanted to show me?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

I’ve been writing ad copy for two decades. I’ve had two novels published, and The Safest Place You Know – the difficult third album – will be launched in September. I've had short stories published in anthologies and on writerly websites and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize. I’ve run half-marathons, cycled in 110km races and taken part in triathlons. I’ve read an entire Henry James and stayed awake during status meetings. I've eaten Brussels sprouts. But none of this has prepared me for the difficulty of writing a screenplay. Or, indeed, the difficulty of leaving the first 20,000 words of Novel No. 4 in the bottom drawer, where it lies pleading for attention every time I sit down at my desk.

I met Dave once more before he returned to LA to share my totally reworked ideas. Again, he politely hated almost everything, and again we spent a good hour “spitballing”, as he called it. And again, I didn’t show him the printouts I'd brought along.

A few weeks later, I emailed him a completely revised synopsis and draft of the first act. His reply had me reaching for the Rescue Remedy: “Excellent! Really good work. Let’s talk in the morning. My office will set a call.”

And then for an hour he kindly proceeded to hate the third draft too, all the way from LA. “Darker! More menace! Think Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler!”

Bye, Matt.

Our agreement is simple. Given my lack of experience, Dave is contributing time and advice to the screenwriting process in lieu of cash for now. I have until midnight on 31 December to submit a final version of the script. If he still hates what I’ve done, he will option the novel for a few dollars and commission a screenwriter who actually knows what he is doing.

            It’s almost June as I write this. I still don’t have a structure that thrills me, just a loose collection of scenes that may (or may not) work. I still don’t have a draft of the first act. So I still have no idea whether I’ll crack it at all, or if Dave will be forced to hand over to someone else.

            In either case, seeing some form of Wasted on the big screen within the next decade, or ever, is far from guaranteed. But whatever happens, I’ll be able to remind the folk in the retirement home every day that, once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I had a novel optioned by a Hollywood bigshot.