~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Copyright 1994 by Daniel Keys Moran. All rights reserved. I, Daniel Keys Moran, "The Author," hereby release this text as freeware. It may be transmitted as a text file anywhere in this or any other dimension, without reservation, so long as the story text is not altered IN ANY WAY. No fee may be charged for such transmission, save handling fees comparable to those charged for shareware programs. THIS WORK MAY NOT BE PRINTED OR PUBLISHED IN A BOOK, MAGAZINE, ELECTRONIC OR CD-ROM STORY COLLECTION, OR VIA ANY OTHER MEDIUM NOW EXISTING OR WHICH MAY IN THE FUTURE COME INTO EXISTENCE, WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR. THIS WORK IS LICENSED FOR READING PURPOSES ONLY. ALL OTHER RIGHTS ARE RESERVED BY THE AUTHOR. DESCRIPTION: "Bad News," a description of the publication of the movie novelization "The Ring." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Part One: The Short Version A Mr. Boffo cartoon: Mr. Boffo and (Ace) Weederman, the Wonder-Dog, are sitting on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean. Mr. Boffo is saying: "Someday, Weederman, we'll look back on all this and laugh. "It will probably be one of those deep, eerie ones that slowly build to a blood-curdling maniacal scream...but still it will be a laugh." Part Two: The Medium-Sized Version This article was originally written in response to a question by the SFWA Bulletin; they asked me, "Would you recommend this form of writing (movie novelizations) to other writers?" After I stopped laughing hysterically I called George Zebrowski. We had odd difficulties communicating. "Look, you don't have to go into great detail," he said. "But it's kind of complex. I mean, all this happened. It was just crazy. I could probably get this down in, I don't know, three thousand words." "You have fifteen hundred." "Two thousand? How about two thousand?" "!" "But it's such a long story that --" "Look, write ," he shouted. "However you want. And we'll cut it. We're ." Part Three: The Long Version Sometime in August of 1987 my little sister, Doctor Death, sent me a postcard from Brazil, where she was studying up on ether-based purification techniques. The postcard said: . Two days later Bantam called about "the next Star Wars." "We want to do this in hardback," Bantam said. "We think you're just perfect for the job. The movie we're talking about is based on , Wagner's opera. It's a science fiction version of and we think you'd be just perfect for the job." I'd just finished my second novel, and was still under contract for the third. I was offered less money than I needed to starve on, plenty of glory, and a boost to my career. (They were serious about that, incidentally, the boost to the career part. It didn't work, but what the hell.) They wanted the book in four months. I didn't have an agent back then. I agreed to do it. Right then. On the phone. Without having seen the screenplay. Without having seen the work-for-hire "contract," without really having a clear conception of what work- for-hire was or that it entailed total loss of ownership and creative control of my work. Okay, that was a mistake. Still -- four months of writing; if the book had done one twentieth as well as the Star Wars novelization it would have earned many times as much as I'd made for any of the three books in my first contract. The basic idea sounded good. My familiarity with opera was, then, nonexistent -- except, weirdly, for , which I'd watched on PBS many years prior, and had just loved. Watching it, all those years ago, I'd thought then what a great SF or fantasy movie the story could have made. Two days later the screenplay and contract arrived Fed-Ex. The screenplay was not good. The dialogue was bad enough, but the plot was essentially incoherent. There were dueling spaceships out of , the Force out of (cleverly renamed "the Light"), bits from , and some stuff which was recognizably lifted from . The Rhine maidens became the "Nature Women," who lived on the "Nature World," at the center of the universe. It juxtaposed a rural, 14th century lifestyle with lasers and spacecraft. Fantasy with hardware, in other words; science fiction by any reasonable stretch of the imagination. The "contract" was a two-page letter which essentially said that everything I was writing belonged to the producer of the motion picture, William Layton Stewart (who was also, with his wife Joanne Nelson, the co-writer, and planned to be the director as well.) In laying out royalties the letter made no mention of foreign sales, which I missed. I more or less wanted out . But I'd already told Bantam I'd do it, and it seemed at that point that keeping my word was more important than my misgivings. Okay, that was a mistake. I signed the contract and sent it back. I've been writing since I was eight or so. I've never, until faced with turning that screenplay into a book, had anything approaching writer's block. If anything, there's always far more to write than time to write it in. But for two months I couldn't write a word. Finally, with the ms. due in two months, I quit the job I was being paid a lot of money to perform, locked myself in my office, and for sixteen hours a day for four months did nothing but write. I missed my deadline by two months, and only Bantam's threat to pull the book from the schedule made me send it to them. (They were trying to get the hardback book out in time to beat the movie's premier by half a year or so.) Of all my books is the only one that was published with problems (lots of them) . (When David Gerrold purchased a copy of The Ring for $20, I asked him not to read it, told him that the book was was not a success, though some parts of it were quite good. "Ah," he said. "Perhaps you could go through and circle them for me.") The final ms. ran 750 pages. About 220 of those pages were totally original, concerning the early life of the movie's anti- hero, Cain. Those pages, the characters in those pages, were . A copy of the ms. was sent to Bill Stewart; he read it, called my editor, and asked to meet with me. He had a few things he wanted to discuss. My editor called me and asked if she should give Stewart my phone number. I said yes. Okay, that was a mistake. William Stewart is an immensely charming and persistent man. What he is not is a producer or director of motion pictures. He is a writer only if one unproduced screenplay and a couple of proposals count. We met. I received suggestions for revisions from Bill Stewart, from his wife Joanne, and from his business partner. Before we were done, in a process that took about eight weeks, they made suggestions for revisions covering approximately twenty-five single-spaced . I made revisions on the book based on those suggestions; some helped the book, some didn't matter. A few hurt. I made all the changes that helped, all those that didn't matter, and many of those that hurt -- because if I hadn't made them, Bill Stewart, who owned that novel, had threatened to do them himself. In the middle of all this I asked Bill when the movie would come out. I was told that they were in pre-production, and that principle photography would begin in nine months. I was puzzled by the answer; the numbers didn't add up. Why this immense rush over a book to a movie that wouldn't be out, under any circumstances, in less than a year and a half? As it turns out, Stewart had told Bantam, when they began negotiating something like half a year prior, that he was then in pre-production, and that principle photography would begin in nine months. In short, there was no movie. How did this ? Didn't anybody check to see if this "30 million dollar production" was actually ? Nope. I didn't. Smarter people than me -- i.e, Bantam -- didn't. Pretty much everybody bought into this; the book sold in Holland, France, and Japan -- in Japan the book sold to NHK for <$80,000>. I had no right to foreign sales from the book; I made nothing. And there was no movie and to this day there is still no movie. If this movie had been made -- if I'd made a ton off of the novelization -- I would still today be unwilling to do a novelization again without 1) complete creative control, 2) copyright retention, and 3) a ton of money, something along the lines of what bit actors get. It's often said that movie making is a collaborative art; Joan Didion wrote that it's more like armed conflict, where some of the principles have nukes. Before I'd do a novelization again I'd want my own MX. There's nothing wrong with novelizations, if you go in to do a workmanlike job, and are not concerned that people might mistake the resulting book -- because your name is on it -- for an attempt at art. Art is hard enough to begin with. Accepting that an attempt at art will be altered by (in the case of ) no less than three other people, is, for me, unnecessary. I'd rather write my own stories.