CHAPTER TEN

If my books had been any worse I would not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better I would not have come.

--Raymond Chandler

 

When Advance Reading Copies (ARCs) of In Search of Captain Zero came out in early 2001, my movie-writing agent – whom I would later fire and whose response to that is the title of this book – gave one to a producer she represented, who liked it a lot. The producer called my agent saying she wanted to option the book.

I was wary.

Why was I wary?

Because there was a catch-22, based on the fact that there is no movie in In Search of Captain Zero. (My favorite catch-22 is the old Groucho Marx line, “I wouldn’t belong to any club that would have me as a member.”) Here the catch-22 was more or less this: No one who wants to make a movie out of my book is smart enough to get it done.

So I was wary.

But the movie producer had a trump card to play in persuading me to let her option my book. The trump card was Sean Penn. She’d made a documentary that Sean had narrated. Sean’s manager had read my book and really liked it, thought it would make a terrific movie, she said. Sean hadn’t read the book yet but wanted to co-produce it and maybe star in it. (If you find it surprising that a Hollywood star would want to produce and maybe star in a movie made from a book he hadn’t read, I can only chuckle at your ignorance of how Hollywood is.) Said she knew a director who wanted to direct it – the guy who directed the documentary Sean had narrated.

Given that there is no movie in my book, and given that all these people wanted to make a movie out of it anyway, I was thinking that there are a lot of dumb people in Hollywood. But I already knew that, from personal experience. From unnerving personal experience, if you get my demented-editor drift. So I waffled out of wariness, out of fear of getting involved with a lot of dumb people.

The producer sensed my wariness. She of course had no idea of the reason for my wariness. I mean I didn’t tell her that there was no movie in my book, or that I assumed she was dumb. Hey, I’m not dumb. But having sensed my wariness, the producer had Sean Penn call me. On a certain level it was a strange conversation, since Sean and I were discussing making a movie out of a book that he had not read.

That Sean had not read my book was never outright dealt with during our phone conversation. The closest we came was when – in response to one of my desperate ideas on how to make a movie out of a book wherein there is no movie – Sean said, “I’m missing a little information here.”

Although I was wary, I was also human. I pictured Sean Penn up there on the silver screen, playing me. I also pictured the money. Although the option offer was small, a couple grand, if the producer could get studio backing the movie deal would be up in six figures whether the movie got made or not. And I knew that since there were so many dumb people in Hollywood, studio backing was not out of the question; far from it. I mean look at the movies that do get made. I mean who knew.

I let the producer and Sean Penn option my book.

From Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? A Writer’s Memoir, and a Tale of a Lost Surfer’s Paradise by Allan C. Weisbecker

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Excerpt: The Zero Deal Need a Laugh?