A guy walks into a bar

'Tender' story still needs filmmaker, studio

By MICHAEL FLEMING

Rudin

'The Tender Bar'

Scott Rudin won a bidding battle for screen rights to the J.R. Moehringer memoir "The Tender Bar," beating several bidders with a high six-figure against seven-figure deal that includes a piece of Rudin's backend gross.

Rudin will set it at a studio after he enlists a filmmaker.

The Hyperion book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times writer was published this week to glowing reviews. Those plaudits stoked the bidding situation.

Autobiographical story tells how Moehringer, who grew up not knowing his father, found surrogates by haunting the Manhasset pub where his uncle tended bar. Moehringer eventually got a copyboy job at the New York Times and then became an L.A. Times reporter, winning a Pulitzer for feature writing.

Rudin exec Mark Roybal will steer the project. CAA brokered the deal for lit agency Janklow-Nesbit.

Though Rudin won't officially transition until late fall to Disney and Miramax from Paramount, he remains an aggressive purchaser of lauded literary properties. Rudin recently bought the Benjamin Kunkel novel "Indecision," which was just published by Random House.