Felons and fallen CEOs try writing their wrongs
The Write Stuff - Jonathan Bing
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But will the miscreants behind these scandals soon be shopping their stories to the highest bidder?
A series of recent book deals reveals that publishers don't shrink from authors who get the literary bug while serving time behind bars.
Bestselling British author and former Member of Parliament Jeffrey Archer, now serving a four-year sentence for perjury in a prison in Lincolnshire, England, has just sold three books -- and rights to his backlist -- to Macmillan in the U.K. and St. Martin's Press in the U.S. for a fee said to run into eight figures.
Hyperion has bought "Fun While It Lasted," a memoir by Bruce McNall, the former owner of the NHL's Los Angeles Kings and film financier, who recently served a four-year sentence for fraud. McNall may soon launch a production company with actor Tom Sizemore.
SPIN CONTROL: Publishers are already expecting an outpouring of books by ousted CEOs, each hoping to air his view of the circumstances surrounding his downfall. Jean-Marie Messier is at work on his next magnum opus, "How I Was Betrayed."
Publishers have made a cottage industry of memoirs that double as rehabilitation projects for authors who've fallen from grace. Think Suge Knight, New York judge Sol Wachtler, Michael Milken or Henry Hill. Will Dana Giachetto be next?
"Book publishing is usually the first stop for a scoundrel on his way out of town," says one editor.
Crown editorial director Steve Ross says the personal stories of CEOs who've plundered their company coffers aren't likely to play well for the public. "It's hard to imagine the temerity or hubris that would be behind that," he says. "None of them have been painted in any kind of ambiguous light. It's been pretty black and white."
But Harper Business editorial director Marion Maneker says "Infamy is fame, too. These books are talismans. They're ways to have a little piece of an important person."
Publishers might look down their nose at books by such vilified figures as former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski or members of the Adelphia Communications Rigas family, says Maneker. But Messier's book, he says, could be interesting.
Hollywood's interest in cooperate jailbirds like Kozlowski has been limited, thus far, to stories of corporate malfeasance told from other points of view.
"The Crooked E: The Inside Story of Enron," which Robert Greenwald is producing for CBS, is based on the story of a twentysomething employee who watched the company crumble around him. Brian Dennehy has already been cast as corporate deep throat named Mr. Blue who furnishes the narrator with information about the company's downfall.
"On the timely, event films, you have to have some point of view other than what you get on the news shows," Greenwald says. "I wouldn't be interested in pursuing a time-sensitive story unless I had a significant point of view and an inside look you weren't getting from news shows."
LEGAL GREENLIGHT: But the wags behind these scandals have a new reason to make their voices heard in Hollywood.
In February, a California Supreme Court struck down the state's Son of Sam law, which had forced convicted felons to turn over profits from books or movies to their victims. The ruling was a victory for Barry Keenan, who was implicated in a plot to kidnap Frank Sinatra Jr. in 1963, and later sold the story to Columbia Pictures for close to $500,000.
That is still peanuts for ousted CEOs accustomed to annual compensation packages north of $100 million. For these fallen giants, it's the power to spin the news that matters, not the size of the advance.
As one editor puts it. "Dennis Kozlowski spent more on shower curtains than we spend on book advances."
