Bob Bookman on Adapting Great Books and Why the Best Movies Aren't Always Based on the Best Books

From script to screen, every film is brought to life by visionary creatives and executives, all sharing one mission. To captivate the audience. Hosted by award-winning movie strategist Kevin Goetz, our podcast, Don't Kill the Messenger, offers a filmmaking masterclass through intimate conversations with Hollywood's most influential voices. And now, your host, Kevin Goetz. Not every great book makes a great movie. The challenge isn't finding a great story. It's recognizing which stories can successfully make the leap from page to screen. My guest today has spent decades doing exactly that. Bob Bookman is one of Hollywood's most respected literary agents, managers, and producers. Over a remarkable career, he has represented authors and filmmakers including Michael Crichton, John Irving, Thomas Harris, Jonathan Demme, Cameron Crowe, and Tom Stoppard. Helping to bring stories to the screen that became Jurassic Park, The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, The Cider House Rules, A Beautiful Mind, Jerry Maguire, and so many others. In recent years, he has brought that same eye for material to producing, with projects including the Academy Award Best Picture nominee, A Complete Unknown. Bob, welcome to my show. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you for inviting me. It's great to have you here. We were talking before the show on your very inferior educational path. I made the terrible mistake of saying you went to UCLA. He says, I went to Berkeley. And then, of course, Yale Law School. Correct. You were a European history major. Correct. I love that, because I love history. Can you tell me why you chose to major in European history and why you went on to get your JD? Well, I think in terms of the first question, I had a lot of times what your inspiration is comes from a great teacher. And I had a class in European history from 1648 to the present, the present then being 1965, with a wonderful man named William Slotman at Berkeley. Nobody knew what to expect, but he was absolutely extraordinary. And that was where I think from him I really got my passion, although I had taken advanced placement in European history in high school. I was going to say, did you know about Slotman before you went? No, it was his first semester. Oh, wow. So I just wanted to take the course. I had no idea. So you just had an interest in him? I had a general interest, yeah. Why 1648? Why did he start there? Treaty of Westphalia. End of the Thirty Years' War. And that really was the end of the religious wars. And so that's a good dividing point between before then and after that. I want to ask you about getting your law degree. Did you think you wanted to be a lawyer after getting that? No, actually what happened was I was in my senior year at Berkeley, and I didn't know what I wanted to do, except I knew I didn't want to be a doctor. So I figured I applied to history graduate schools, I applied to international study schools, and I applied to law schools. And I got into Yale Law School. And a product of the California public school system, which I was, gets into Yale Law School, you go. Tell me how you got into the agency world. That goes back to law school, actually, because when I went to law school, I in fact had graduated from Berkeley in 1968, which was the last year of graduate school deferments during the war in Vietnam. And it was before the lottery. Is that one of the reasons that you got to not go to Vietnam? No, what happened was when I was at Berkeley, somebody said to me something very smart. They said, you never know what could happen. You should go over to the Presidio, which was then an army fort in San Francisco, and put your name on waiting lists for army reserve units. So now in 1968, I'm suddenly classified 1A, which means you could be drafted at any time. I've gone east to Yale. I'm sweating bullets. I barely can sleep. And I get a letter from a unit at the Presidio saying, show up on this date and you're in the unit. Otherwise, we'll go to the next name. So I dropped out of Yale Law School after a month, lived with my parents in Westwood, commuted up for a weekend a month, hoping I would be called up in time to do my 120 days active duty and get back to Yale, which I just managed to do. Wow. So what did I do in between? I read all the novels I hadn't read as a history major. I wanted to read, and I started going to movies. Now you have to understand, my mother was a native of Los Angeles. She was born in 1922. What was her name? Maxine Pines was her maiden name. And her father, my grandfather, George Pines, was the first allergist in Southern California. And just was an extraordinary person. And she grew up with the first generation of kids in the movie business, as a result of which around our house, people in the movie business were referred to as those people. In other words, we do not associate with them, Bob. Where in LA? In Westwood, a half block from UCLA. Anyway, so I read all the novels I hadn't read that I wanted to read, and went to movies. Most influential novel at that time? For me? Yes. Easily, Proust. Then called Remembrance of Things Past, now In Search of Lost Time. I wrote my senior honors thesis. I'm Marcel Proust as a social historian. What about movie at that time? My favorite movie then? Influential. Oh, Influential, La Grande Illusion. Grand Illusion, Renoir. Jesus, I love this guy. Bob Bookman, man. Okay, so you get that knowledge, that insatiable need to consume these great books, movies, and you do what with it? What I do is when I get back to Yale, in the fall of 69 now, because I've just gotten out of the... Did your 120 days. What a smart thing to have done. Well, I was lucky, actually, that I got into the unit. Anyway, so... Yeah, but had you not actually volunteered, you would be maybe having a very different conversation. I might not be here. Or not having a conversation. Anyway, so what happened was, a guy I had known named Peter Broderick, briefly the year before, he and I started something called the Yale Law School Film Society. And I spent three years at Yale Law School running a film society. What was the criteria to get into the film society? You had to pay a dollar, and then if you had a membership for a dollar a semester, it was then, I think, 50 cents a movie. And so who curated the movies? You and Peter? Yeah, but I ended up being just me. And where would you get the prints? Well, at that time, you saw movies on 16mm. And there were all kinds of distributors. You could get almost any movie you wanted, except ones that, for copyright reasons, you couldn't, like the Chaplin films, like Animal Crackers, like a number of others. And I knew a guy named William K. Everson, Bill Everson. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of film, but not a critical knowledge of film. I used to go to his apartment in New York, 118 West 79th Street, floor to ceiling, 16mm prints. Oh, no. I had my own screening room in the law school underneath, and he would come up on the weekend and bring a bag full of prints. And if I wanted to show something like those films, he'd loan me the prints, even though they were illegal to show. We had what we called special events. And special events were bringing classic directors. Because remember, in the late 60s, early 70s, a lot of the directors from the early days, even the silent era, were still alive, and mostly sitting at home, forgotten by everybody but the French and Andrew Sarris. There is a marvelous documentary directed by Zan Cassavetes called The Z Channel. I remember The Z Channel. Of course you do. But this is on Jerry Harvey, who was the curator of that. And this conversation very much reminds me of the content of that documentary. And it was made, I think, 20 years ago, and they just did a screening of it, not a week or two ago. And it was unbelievable that Jerry Harvey was able to bring these great forgotten movies by some great filmmakers. But I brought the directors. And the directors, though, to Z Channel. Which would have happened about 5, 6 years later than what you did. Yeah, because I was back here when The Z Channel started. When did you get here? 72. Anyway, so there's documentaries that should be re-shown. Now, Dick Schickel, who I met, I'll tell you how I met him, it's very amusing, made a series of eight documentaries called The Men Who Made the Movies. And he made this, I'm gonna say, in 72, 73. And in fact, the only credit I have on a film until complete unknown was associate director of the documentary about Raoul Walsh. Because Dick was sick and needed to finish the film, so I went out to see Raoul on his ranch in Simi Valley and shot the rest of it. But I met Raoul, I met Frank Capra, Fritz Lang, Jean Renoir, King Vidor, I mean, the great directors of that era. And then the more contemporary directors who I brought up, I brought up Milos Forman, I brought up Sam Peckinpah, all these directors. And we put them on for free. No, Kubrick didn't travel. He was in the UK. Roman I knew afterwards. Billy Friedkin? I brought Billy with French Connection. I'll show you a picture of it. I love Billy Friedkin. Yeah, he was great. But that was a, he was a young director. That was one of the contemporaries. And he was really a renegade. Sherry talks about how Billy needed a scene and I guess the studio wouldn't give it to him or something and he went out and got the footage himself. It was an insert of some sort. And, you know, he got kind of ---- for it. But in fact, she always respected him for that. And of course, we all do. One of the reasons I love Billy is because after and at the end of his film career he was a wonderful opera director. Wasn't he? And wonderful. Terrific. I remember seeing Johnny Skiki at the LA Opera and it was just phenomenal. And he did Turandot. Yeah. Listeners, you have to understand, I mean, this is a time when the film business, 1969, Mark Harris's book, Where These Five Movies, kind of really redefined a new movie era. Well, it was past, present, and future. And the one that won the Oscar was the one that was the contemporary one as opposed to the progressive one. It's very interesting. So we're getting a history lesson on that, is my point. The greatest book, though, and I have to plug it because he's a client of mine, is Neil Gabler's book An Empire of Their Own, How the Jews Invented Hollywood. I was very involved with the issue at the Academy Museum, which maybe your listeners don't know that when the Academy Museum opened, they opened with exactly zero recognition of the founding of Hollywood by the Jewish founders. It got a lot of controversy. But they've rectified it, haven't they? I was part of the rectification. I brought Neil Gabler in and I got them to hire him as their consultant. And the head of the museum is Jewish then. Bill Cramer is now head of the Academy. And it was all about, my opinion was, oh, well, that won't attract young people. So we have to do things more contemporary, which to me is inconsistent with being a museum. So they had a Spike Lee exhibition. They had a Young Hispanic Filmmakers exhibition. But they had no acknowledgement except one snarky comment from Louis V. Mayer of any of these great people. And now they have the first permanent exhibition. I have to say that I don't begrudge the others being included. That's not the point. It was the omission that was so glaring. All those other filmmakers deserve to be seen and heard. But, of course, not having acknowledgement of our roots was the thing that was most painful. So how did we get to you as becoming an agent? I know, it was a long story, right? So what happened was, when I graduated from Yale, I came back here, and I lived with my grandmother, who had a wonderful house in Hancock Park that they had actually built, my mother's mother. And I decided, I'd gone to law school for three years, I might as well take the bar. So I'm living at her house, studying for the bar, and trying to get a job in the movie business. And I had clerked both my summers at law firms, so I knew I didn't want to practice law. Entertainment firms? Yeah, both. And so my mother is calling her mother every day, saying, you know, we paid for Bob's Yale Law School education. You really need to throw him out of the house and put him on the street so he gets a real job. And my wonderful grandmother... Thanks, Mom. I can't do that to my grandson. And my mother used to say, you know what grandparents and their grandchildren have in common? They have a common enemy. True. Anyway, 1972 was a major downturn in the movie business. People were being let off as opposed to being hired. So I got lots of interviews, lots of introductions, lots of, you can't miss, kid, but I don't have anything to offer you. Why was that the case? Because of the changeover of going from these very commercial movies to the more independent movies? I think it was more making expensive movies that no one wanted to see as opposed to movies people wanted to see. I'm pausing for a second to acknowledge that that is exactly what's going on right now. 100%. Anyway, someone said to me, and I don't remember who it was, you know, if you're really serious about being in the movie business, you should become an agent. And I said, what's an agent? Because back then, PR agent, ad agent, no, no. Everything in the movie business passes through the agencies. And if you work for one of the three major agencies, then for five years, then you'll know that's what you want to do and you'll be set. Or if not, you'll know what you want to do and be able to do it. What were the three major agencies? At that time were William Morris, CMA, and IFA. CMA stood for? Creative Management Associates. And IFA was International Famous Agency. That's the one you worked with, yes? Originally. But I'll tell you, the roots are interesting. First of all, CMA, you may notice, is the same letters as MCA. Because you may recall that MCA... Lew Wasserman. Exactly. MCA was the major agency along with William Morris, and in 1962, they bought Universal. And the Justice Department, under Bobby Kennedy, said, you can't own an agency and a studio. So Lew had to give it up. You have to give up one or the other. So you know what Lew Wasserman, Mr. Democrat, said? Try and make me. So they literally padlocked the door of the agency on Crescent and Santa Monica in Beverly Hills. That was Bobby that did that? Yeah, Bobby Kennedy. But I always felt the reason Lew Wasserman allowed that to happen is because he saw the inevitable and didn't want a powerful agency on the other side of the table. So allowing MCA to dissolve into small agencies. Chase and Park Citroen, CMA, Adams-Ray and Rosenberg, all these... They all came out of that collapse, if you will. Yes. So now you have all these boutique agencies opening, right? So now you've got... IFA was before that. AFA, Ashley Famous Agency. That was Ted Ashley's agency. And before that, Ashley Steiner. And when Steve Ross bought Ted Ashley, and then he bought Warner Brothers 7 Arts, and he knew he couldn't own both of them because of the MCA precedent. So he sold Ashley Famous to Marvin Josephson, who had an agency. And he basically represented Captain Kangaroo, and he represented a lot of high-end newscasters. Chet Huntley, Charles Collingwood, people like that of the day. And so when he bought AFA, merged the two together to create IFA, he suddenly had a complete agency in New York and Los Angeles. Because no one was doing that part of the business. So CMA had started with Freddie Fields and David Beigelman. Guys, these names. I wish I could explain who they were. And these are the guys that ran studios. Ultimately, they went from the agency world either into production as producers or studio executives. Or in the case of David Beigelman, in jail, but that's a whole other story. Or in the case of Lew Wasserman, owner of a studio. Yeah. Well, it was Public Hail Company. Yeah, but you know. Okay, so you land initially at... So now I have to have three interviews. So my grandfather, who had died a couple years before, knew Abe Lassvogel, who was the head of William Morris. Legendary head, starred out as William Morris' office boy. And was, I think, well into his 70s, if not beyond at that time. And I remember it took like weeks for me to finally get the meeting with him. So my father gets me the interview with Abe Lassvogel. I'll never forget. I come in. It's the only meeting I've ever had with someone whose desk was on an elevated platform. Because he was so short. And wanted to be higher than those sitting on the other side of the table. And he has his hands folded and his arms out. And he says, Mr. Bookman, before we start our conversation, I just want you to know there are no employment opportunities here at the Morris office. Now, how may I help you? So that was one down. I thought you were going to say, at the end, he said there was suddenly an opening. Oh no. And in fact, my father, the summer of my second year of law school, introduced me to Norman Brokaw. Another legend. At the Morris office also. Yes. He was like the creative... I mean, Abe Lassvogel wasn't really an agent. He ran the agency. Norman Brokaw was an agent. And he took me to lunch at Hillcrest and said, call me and I'm going to have you come by the William Morris office. I'm going to show you around and we'll talk. I'm still waiting for the return phone call. So that was William Morris, right? Now one down. One down. Now I had met the wonderful Jack Gilardi. Jack Gilardi was married to Annette Funicello and famously said, I married a star and made her an unknown. And he was just a prince. Everyone loved that guy. He was a prince. And he got me into a meeting with David Beigelman. Now I remember going into the office and this long oak desk and David Beigelman is on the phone with Charlie Jaffe who was then Woody Allen's manager and producer. And I'm thinking, man, this is where it all happens. And I have an interview with David Beigelman. I don't get a job. And I felt later during the great Beigelman scandal, one of the things that came out is he has claimed he had gone to Yale. And I think he knew if I were there, I would know he had not gone to Yale. Two down. Now the third agency, IFA, was much more of a television packaging agent than a motion picture agency. Although at that time Mike Medavoy was head of the motion picture department. But I got an interview with Frank Konigsberg, another prince. Frank actually had gone to Yale Law School. He was head of television packaging and co-head of the West Coast Office. And this is the serendipity about the movie business or entertainment. So I finally get in to see him. I remember the date. It was November 17th 1969 72 rather. Because I had gotten the day before that I had passed the bar. Don't ask me how I passed the bar. Don't ask you how you remembered the date that you passed the bar. Well, because that's a pretty important date in fair play. So he says to me, we've only been talking for 20 minutes or so, but you seem to be a fairly intelligent young man. How would you like to start Monday? Now I didn't say what's my job? What's my compensation? I said what time do you want me? It turned out that his administrative assistant in television packaging had taken a job the week before as an entry level executive at CBS and he needed to hire somebody. And I was on the couch. It was not the mail room? No. I'm one of the few agents at a major agency that bypassed the mail room. Were you still living at Grandma's? Yes. And then shortly after I moved to the Villa Madrid on Miller Drive just above Sunset and La Cienega. How incredible. When we come back, we're going to talk to Bob about his agency days really getting into what he was so known for which were books. We'll be back in a moment. Listeners, the Motion Picture and Television Fund is a non-profit charitable organization that supports working and retired members of the entertainment community. This wonderfully run organization offers assistance for living and aging with dignity and purpose in the areas of health and social services including temporary financial assistance, case management, and residential living and has been a crucial lifeline to thousands during and beyond critical times that our industry continues to experience. To learn more, visit mptf.com Please join me in helping others in our industry during times of need. There are so many ways to offer support and get involved. Thank you. We're back with Bob Bookman, the book guy. Now, how many times has that conversation come up, that your name is Bob Bookman and books was your thing? Well, actually, my family's original name was Buchmann, B-U-C-H-M-A-N-N, and my first German forebear came to Brooklyn in 1851 and by the third generation had changed it, anglicized it, to Bookman. But, I mean, how prophetic. Yeah, I guess I ruptured my left Achilles tendon playing squash many, many years ago and the doctor who repaired it's name was Barry Breaker. I mean, sometimes you're just born, I guess. Yeah, totally. I want to ask you, as a child, were you an insatiable reader? Yes, you were. Although, interestingly, and my father told me this because I didn't remember it, when I was in sixth grade, I was obsessed with comic books. And my mother was very upset and went to my father and says, you've got to do something. Bob's only reading comic books. And my dad said, he's reading. Oh, it's great. Yes. Let's be grateful. Your mother was a ballbuster. That would be one description. I have a similar experience. Loved my mother deeply. My mother was a great intellect, you know, and my father was more the EQ guy. You know, the charming guy. Oh, my mother was charming if she wanted, believe me, if you weren't in the family, she was charming. How do you become this guy known for, probably more than anyone, the guy to go to for book representation? The answer is Marvin Josephson. So Marvin Josephson owned the agency. And I started, as I said, November 72. In December 74, Marvin acquired CMA. And ironically, they were both publicly held companies, and there wasn't another publicly held entertainment company until William Morris. Because I think too much had to be disclosed. So we are now ICM, and we have this very powerful motion picture department because of the former CMA motion picture department, right? And I've been doing, by the way, very, very well in television packaging. I go to see Marvin, and I say, I've given you 100% of my brain and none of my heart. Because my heart is in motion pictures, I want you to make me an agent in the motion picture department. He said, well, I have a big problem with that. I said, what's that? He said, you don't have any clients. Because in television packaging we were representing companies. In those days, there really was a wall separating film and television. So writers, for example, in television weren't writers in film. There were a couple of exceptions, but for the most part. Danny Thomas and all those people. Desi Arnaz. I mean, they had huge production companies. Huge, yeah. And that's what you would package, by the way, correct? Right. So you'd run projects through them and then sell them to the networks. And there were only three networks. So what happened was he said, you don't have any clients and the former CMA motion picture agents, they're sharks. They'll eat you alive. I can't do that to you. And I told sort of a whitish lie. I said, well, you know, I may have an opportunity to do this somewhere else and I really don't want to leave ICM. He said, let me give it a thought and I'll come back to you. He came back a week later and gave me the greatest opportunity of my entire career. He said, you know, the New York Publications Department, which, by the way, was all women, and with the exception of Lynn Nesbitt, who was in her mid-30s and had come in laterally, all were in their 60s and 70s because they were the former MCA. White space. Oh my God. So he said, you know, we represent some of the greatest writers in the world for publishing and we've never had a rational... Like a sub rights. Exactly. And I'm giving you that... Subsidiary rights, folks. Yeah. I'm giving you that opportunity, that franchise, and I also want you to have your own screenwriter and director clients. So, who did this mean? Audrey Wood had discovered Tennessee Williams and all his early plays were dedicated to her. Phyllis Jackson represented Ian Fleming and Dr. Seuss. I think when they sold the agency to CAA, Dr. Seuss was still one of the first or second highest income... Geisel. Yeah, take Geisel. And then the third was Monica McCall, who among other people represented Graham Greene. In fact, I sold Graham Greene's Human Factor to Otto Preminger. You worked with these women? Yes, they were... They were your mentors? Yes. And then Kay Brown, who, you know, had been David O. Selznick's story editor, and I think the person who actually read Gone with the Wind, and she represented... My head is spinning, Bob. Well, this is the opportunity I had. She represented the Margaret Mitchell estate and Arthur Miller, but then Lynn Nesbitt, who had come in now. Lynn was then, I'm going to say, in her mid-thirties, represented many of those writers you said. Michael Crichton, Tom Wolfe, Joe Esterházy. Is Lynn still working? Yes. Hard. So you and Lynn are still really super close? Oh yeah, we talk all the time. You must be like besties. Yeah, and I see her whenever I'm in New York. Isn't that the greatest? So, that was the franchise I suddenly got, and it was at a time when material like that was suddenly becoming desirable. Okay, I'm going to ask you some questions now about books. What makes a book cinematic? Well, first of all, it's probably not a great book, because great books tend to involve things inside the protagonist's head, as opposed to actions that take place outside. And if you look at what you consider a great book that's been made into a movie, you know, the obvious ones, Great Gatsby, whatever, they've never made great movies. Occasionally, they'll make a very good movie. So the secret to me is finding a good book that has the potential to make a great movie. Explain that a little bit more. Unpack that. Okay, so first of all, they're different structures. People say, you know, God is in the details. I say God is in the structure. Does it break down into three acts? Because that's what movies are. Rarely is a successful movie not three acts. And a great movie, oftentimes, you don't see them unless you really look beneath the surface. Second thing is, does it have characters who have conflicts? Does it have characters who have problems? And third of all, I always like it, is it taking you somewhere you've never been before? Yeah, those are great. When reading a manuscript, what tells you there's a movie hidden inside of it? Do you know the famous Potter Stewart story? No. Potter Stewart was an associate justice of the Supreme Court put on the court by Eisenhower. And Potter Stewart was famous for writing the first big obscenity decisions that widened the First Amendment. And a journalist, because in those days they were more approachable by journalists, said, Mr. Justice Stewart, how do you define obscenity? And his famous response was, I know it when I see it. But what does I know it when I see it means? It means you have a history of reading. It has a history of critical thinking. It's like how do you say to a great musician or a great composer, how do you compose? Bob Dylan's book, it's insightfulness about his creative process. Same with the Keith Richards biography. But it's really alchemy. It's really non-DNA. Yeah, like you can't really put it into words. What's the biggest mistake filmmakers make when adapting a book? I think the biggest mistake they make when adapting a book is not being able to get away from what the book is and getting the spirit of it as the movie. And I'll give you the greatest example I can give you from the writer's side. And I'm still in awe of it. And that's John Irving and Cider House Rules. One of my favorites. And wasn't it Lasse Hallström? Yes, it was. Which I thought was terrific. But here's the thing. John won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. But that isn't even the point. If you look at that book, and you look at the script, I never read the book, yeah. Well, the decisions he had to make, compressing time, compressing characters, and making what was a great book into a great script, I'm just totally in awe of that. Hold on. He wrote the book? Yes. And he adapted the screenplay? And he won an Oscar. Has that ever happened? I'm not sure. I know. That's a fabulous example. I'm wondering, and we should do some research on this to find out, how many really successful source writers actually wrote their screenplay successfully? Because I think that objectivity is absolutely paramount. Actually, it leads into a good point of view. I represented a lot of authors who said, I want to write the screenplay. And I would say, okay, done. I'll make it happen. Psychology. Right. Exactly. Learned from my father. Alright, so here's what you need to know. They don't want you to write the screenplay. And they're going to accept, as a cost of buying your book, that you will. Whatever money they are giving you, they would have rather spent elsewhere. Now, you are not going to succeed in the first draft, so they're going to want to replace you. Who are they going to replace you with? Well, you would hope an A-list writer. But under the WGA credit rules, almost inevitably, any second writer will get second position credit to your credit. Or no credit. They would literally, without exception, say, oh, and I say, you want to be a screenwriter? Write a screenplay. Just don't adapt your own book. And they always went along with that. How about John Irving? Why didn't he? Because John had written that right before I represented him. I signed him when that movie was out. Here's what was brilliant about John doing that, and why he might have been the exception, because he was able to separate and not be precious about his book. And I've never met the man. I revere him, but I can tell you that had to be the answer. I was just going to ask you, when does honoring the source material become a liability? Well, I think if you become, as I say, so wedded to it that you can't divorce yourself from the letter of the law to the spirit of the law, because a book is a book, and a screenplay is a screenplay. Oh, God bless you. I want to say that this is one of the most important conversations I have with filmmakers in my line of work, because they will often test a movie that was based on a book, and the filmmaker feels a certain kind of either responsibility or just a sense of obligation to be true to the book. Or maybe even to be judged. Exactly. Yet, it's a different medium. It's a different medium. It needs to be dealt with differently. As you said, and I love what you said, and I wasn't sure I was going to get that response, because what you're doing when you're reading is you're seeing the potential of something that has moved you in some way. Who are the greatest adapters of books that you've worked with in your career? And I'd like to ask, who are you excited about coming up right now? Steve Zalian, obviously, is a great adapter. Why? Again, it is about getting into the essence and spirit of something and putting it into your own creative words. What about if it's a famous book that has been read? The Da Vinci Code comes to mind. Yeah, but The Da Vinci Code to me is commerce. So what? Are most movies better than the source material? There's no connection. What is the best adaptation, three best, that you've ever seen, from a book to a movie? Well, I would say Silence of the Lambs was a brilliant adaptation. What else? A Beautiful Mind was a really great adaptation. Akiva? Yeah. And maybe something that I wasn't involved with, for example, I would say To Have and Have Not. Ooh, I wasn't expecting that. Wow. There's a great story behind that. I'd love to hear it. The story is Ernest Hemingway and Howard Hawks used to go hunting together, and one day Howard Hawks said to Ernest Hemingway, you know, I bet I could make a great movie out of your worst book. And he said, what's my worst book? He said, To Have and Have Not. He said, you know, you're probably right. I was starving for money, and I wrote it just for the money. And apparently, I never read To Have and Have Not, but if you read the book, it's got the same characters, it's got the same location, but either the story of one ends where the next one begins, or vice versa. Yeah. I mean, to me, if you said to me, who is the single greatest American director of the sound era, I would say Howard Hawks without a moment's hesitation. Are you serious? Absolutely. Name a genre he didn't make a great movie in. Well, I know, but there's so many great... Who's greater than Howard Hawks? Oh, boy. Aha. We've turned the tables. I mean, Billy Wilder. Not greater, as good as. No. I'd love to. He also jerk-worked in multiple genres. Yeah, but it's funny. In Andrew Sarris's American Cinema, he put either lightly likable or less than meets the eye Billy Wilder, and it was the only entry that he ever changed his mind about and said he belonged to the pantheon. George Stevens? No, please. George Stevens, you have to divide his career between when he made the documentaries during World War II and before, because the movies afterwards are so dark to me as the ones before are so light. Now, I'm not a big George Stevens fan. I'm a big Raoul Walsh fan. I'm a big Frank Capra fan. I'm a William Wellman fan. John Ford? Too much Irish humor. A few exceptions, but okay, here's a great John Ford question. Between The Iron Horse in 1926 and My Darling Clementine in 1946, how many movies did John I Make Westerns Ford Make that were westerns? Oh, boy. I would say pre-'46, I don't know, 12. One stagecoach. He's won four Academy Awards. Yeah, I hear he was a tough guy. I actually never met him. R.J. Wagner, who was my guest on the podcast, talks about how he really got into a fight with him, like he pushed him. But I'll tell you a story. Someone that I was sort of raised not to like was John Wayne, and when I was in my- Because of his politics? Yeah, just a general impression. So when I was my second summer, as I told you, of law school, I clerked for a then the number one entertainment law firm here, which was Kaplan, Livingston, Goodwin, Berkowitz, and Selvin. It later imploded. I mean, to give you an idea how long ago this was, Skip Brittenham was an associate. Anyway, so when you're a summer intern, they have events to make it seem like practicing law is fun. So one of the events was going out to Warner Brothers to see Frank Wells, who was then head of business affairs, and then going on a set. And the set we went on was the Cowboys, which Mark Bridell was directing with John Wayne. And I'm thinking, I want to invite John Wayne to come to Yale, right? And I wait my moment. Everybody else is cowering. I wait my moment, and I go over. You know what John Wayne is doing? He's looking at the photographs of the family of one of the bottom members of the crew, you know, a gaffer or whatever, and acting like this guy was the only person in the world. So, changed my mind about John Wayne for the rest of my life, his life. One of my favorite adapters of screenplays was Alvin Sargent. Oh yeah, fantastic. He was great. But I want to ask you a few things, mention a few names, and just sort of give me initial impressions. Michael Crichton? One of a kind. Saw ahead, but not too far ahead of what was coming next, and was able to express it in a way that people love to read. Jonathan Demme? Jonathan Demme started out in PR, and I find the people that started out in PR often treated beneath them badly. Wait, they often what? Treated people beneath them badly. And Jonathan Demme was actually very tough. He put me and Rick Nassita in Silence of the Lambs, and he was a great filmmaker. What do you mean he put you in it? We're in it. He did? Yes! The big scene when the limousine pulls up with Senator Martin coming out to meet with Dr. Lecter coming off the plane, right? So what happens is Ron Vaughter, who's the Justice Department official, has two assistants, me and Rick. Oh, that's great. Rick's the one that hands over the offer for his relaxed confinement, and I'm the one that when he starts describing Buffalo Bill, takes notes in the notebook. Cameron Crowe. Cameron Crowe, especially in the early days, was just amazing. He always was reinventing himself until he wasn't. Why? I think because in some way he always was this young person. And when he became an older person, there was a conflict between actually being an older person and thinking like a younger person. That's very interesting. I find him so insightful and such a great talent. Yeah, but you're not talking about the last few films. Interesting. Tom Stoppard. One of the greatest human beings I've ever met. He was so humble. He was so funny. He was so open. There's a coldness to his work. Only up till the real thing, because remember, that was the criticism. He's a genius as a writer, but doesn't write for the human heart. He basically said, I'll show you with the real thing and then later with Arcadia. Paul Greengrass. Paul Greengrass to me is a really good example of how the British do things different from us. Paul Greengrass started as a researcher and went step by step by step by step until, I'm going to say he was 40 directing his first film. As opposed to an American in that position, after they sold their first screenplay, they detached themselves to direct the next one. People are not reading anymore. You know this. It's become a lost art in many ways. I mean, I'm talking about in general. I'm talking about our business. How about a business driven by the written word in which people don't read? Well, that's interesting, but I wasn't even going there. I was saying general public. What are we going to do about source material now? We've got AI to provide it. He's winking at me, folks. But don't wink. AI is an algorithm. It is not a human being. It can produce a facsimile of, let's say, a novel, but it can't reflect the human heart in that novel. Let me know when AI does irony. That's interesting, probably in a couple of years, because it learns how to understand how to get to irony. It's not really feeling irony. I can only hope you're wrong. I know. So do I, my friend. So do I. Now, I wanted to, though, ask you about this movie that recently opened Back Rooms, which was based on a meme, which then became a YouTube series, and Back Rooms opened hugely. It was huge. I guess my question is, what do we look forward to in five years in terms of books and adaptations? Is it something that will still be as vibrant, as necessary? I kind of know the answer. Kevin, you didn't tell me to bring my crystal ball. I mean, five years ago, if someone said to you the business would be what it is today, you wouldn't believe it. Yes, I would have. Five years ago, I would have. Really? But not necessarily ten years ago. But five years ago, I knew it. No, I'm not being cheeky. No, no, no, no, I know you're not. Because I'm in the business of trying to be a forecaster of that. I think that audiences are craving originality. I agree. But originality can be based on IP. It can't be based on sequels and remakes of existing IP. But somebody today, it was my trainer, Grinnell, said to me, can we just do without studios? And I said, no. I just answered it impulsively. No. And studios cannot afford to do that many original movies because of their overhead, and yet they are too important a part of the ecosystem of this business. For every back rooms and obsession, we still have to remember there are hundreds that fail, and people don't want to see them. And forget they don't want to see them. No one wants to distribute them. Exactly. So we can't make these proclamations of, of course people want original material, but they don't know it until they see it. Exactly. But what I was going to say to you is I'm involved with a partnership called V42 that was started by a brilliant guy named Miles Romney, and Miles' grandfather was George Romney, and his uncle, once or twice removed, is Mitt. And the greatest thing about him to me is when he was 18 or so, he renounced Mormonism and married a Jewish woman and became Jewish. Far more observant than I am, which as I say to him, is getting over an extremely low bar. I don't think I've ever heard a Mormon becoming Jewish. He's just extraordinary. Anyway, there are four of us in the partnership. The goal of our company is to raise money so we can finance and co-finance and then produce ourselves $10 million in underfilms. And we have our first film finished and it's been accepted at Toronto. Fantastic name? Life and Deaths of Wilson Shed. And Tim Blake Nelson wrote and directed it. So I think that to me is my vision of the future and getting involved, because I think low-budget films are going to be the way to go, with obvious exceptions. I think the V becomes vision. Or victory. There we go. Bob Bookman, thank you so much for joining me here today and for shedding so many stories and nuance about things that I never knew about and I know our listeners are going to be so excited to uncover. I want to say, please leave your brain to the Academy Museum because there is so much knowledge in there and we thank you so much. Well, Kevin, thank you so much for including me. It was really an honor to be a guest. To our listeners, I hope you enjoyed this conversation. For more insights into filmmaking, audience testing, and the business of Hollywood, I invite you to check out my books, Audienceology and How to Score in Hollywood. You can also follow me on my social media. Next time on Don't Kill the Messenger, I'll welcome two of the industry's leading distribution executives, Universal's Jim Orr and Angel Studios' Brandon Purdy. Until then, I'm Kevin Goetz. And to you, our listeners, I appreciate you being part of the moviemaking process. Your opinions matter.