H'wood partial to unfinished manuscripts
A few pages and a synposis is sometimes all it takes to capture the fancy of studio executives
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One is 100 pages long and comes with a short synopsis. Publishing rights have sold. The author is a perennial bestseller with a Hollywood track record.
The other is just 47 pages long. There's no synopsis. The author's identity is a mystery. The book doesn't even have an American publisher.
Both titles -- "The Madman's Story" by John Katzenbach and "The Food of Love" by Jess Blake -- have kicked up a storm in Hollywood at a time when studios are increasingly reluctant to buy unfinished literary material without bankable talent attached.
But their different trajectories through Hollywood demonstrate that even in a tough book market, certain projects will rise to the surface, buoyed by the same hype machine that fueled blockbuster sales of partial manuscripts in the past, including Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," Nicholas Evans' "The Horse Whisperer" and Marc Levy's "If Only It Were True."
Hollywood's batting average with such material is dubious. Of those three, only "The Horse Whisperer" has made it to the bigscreen. But the studios keep swinging for the fences.
CALL KATZENBACH THE KING OF THE PARTIAL. He writes crisp, movie-friendly thrillers built around thorny ethical dilemmas and unsolved crimes -- a function, perhaps, of his background as a crime reporter for the Miami Herald.
Katzenbach's agents at Paul Kohner sold "Hart's War" and his last book, "The Analyst," on the basis of unfinished manuscripts, to MGM and Phoenix Pictures, respectively.
"The Madman's Story" is under contract to Ballantine, part of a two-book deal for Katzenbach. It is tentatively set for publication in July 2004.
The 100 pages circulating in Hollywood tell the story of a young man committed to a mental institution, who comes upon the body of murdered nurse, the latest victim of a serial killer hiding in the hospital. A synopsis accompanying the manuscript goes on to explain that a police investigator relies on the protagonist and another patient, one of whom may be the killer, to solve the murder.
UNLIKE KATZENBACH, Jess Blake came barreling out of nowhere.
Last month, U.K. Agent Caradoc King at A.P. Watt sold rights to the book to a Dutch publisher, who slipped it to an editor at Viking Penguin in the U.K., who slipped it to an editor at Viking Penguin in the U.S. even before the author had finished writing a synopsis. Within days, a leaked copy was zapped to book scouts on both coasts.
A Cyrano de Bergerac tale set in contemporary Rome, it doesn't yet have a U.K. or a U.S. publisher, though an auction floor has been set in each country. CAA will offer the manuscript for sale in Hollywood, with a synopsis, later this week. The U.S. publishing auction will happen next week.
"Jess Blake" is a pseudonym. Could it be the pen name of prominent A.P. Watt clients Nicholas Evans or Philip Pullman? Agent Nick Harris says it isn't and he declined to hint at the author's identity.
"It's a classic tale of food and sex and love and romance," Harris said. "It's one of those books you can almost smell. It's tasty."
But it's not just the prose that's appealing, one book scout says. It's also the genre. High-concept romantic comedies rarely come along in book form. "Every actress wants a sophisticated romantic comedy," the scout said. "It's a perfect Reese Witherspoon vehicle, for example."
It remains to be seen if a studio will roll the dice on 47 pages.
But one thing is certain. No matter how many times filmmakers have been burned on partial manuscripts, they continue to reach for their wallets at the sight of new material, a new author, and a fresh idea.
And if they beat out another filmmaker for rights to the material, and somehow manage to hit the jackpot, the success is that much sweeter.
