When I finished Along Came a Spider—the first Alex Cross book—we got a big offer from one of the Hollywood studios. They loved the book, loved Alex Cross, and only wanted one small change—they wanted me to rewrite Cross as a white man. That was not happening. Not for seven figures. Not ever. And at the time of the offer, I didn’t have much money in the bank.
Bill Robinson runs my film and TV business, along with Patrick Santa and Max DiLallo. Bill went to Brown University, just like my son, Jack. Actually, Bill and Jack are somewhat Brown-obsessed.
On the subject of Brown, one time I spent the better part of a day with CNN’s legal expert Jeffrey Toobin. Toobin went to Harvard, but one of his sons went to Brown. I asked him if the son enjoyed it. “Yes, he loved it!” Then Toobin smiled. “Of course, I don’t consider Brown a university. I consider it a cult.” Bill Robinson and Jack would agree, since they’re card-carrying cult members.
I’ve met my share of movie stars. People ask incredibly goofy questions about them. Like Who’s better-looking, Hugh Jackman or Charlize Theron? Actually, they both look amazing in real life. Also, they don’t seem full of themselves. Oh, and Charlize is better-looking. From my perspective, anyway.
I was invited to the writers’ room during preproduction of the CBS series based on my books Zoo and Instinct. As you might know, I get slapped around a little about cowriting.
Let me set the scene inside a typical network-TV-series writers’ room. Six to ten writers basically cowrite the forty-three-minute scripts. Usually there are notes and story ideas plastered all over the walls. Who says writing has to be a lonely profession?
When I came to visit, the TV writers were nice enough and we had some laughs. But I’ll never forget an exchange with the writing team for Zoo. One of the showrunners said, “Listen, let’s be honest here, James—the novel Zoo is a B-level thriller. But trust me, we’re going to make an A-level TV series.”
Yep, that’s what he said. Now, let me be honest. Zoo wasn’t an A-level TV series either. I always felt that Zoo needed to be a feature film because the special effects would be silly, or at least unconvincing, on a network-TV budget.
They were.
Just being honest.
One last Hollywood story. Barbara Hall, the showrunner on Madam Secretary, wrote a terrific pilot and series outline based on my nonfiction book The House of Kennedy. Barbara’s pilot had some fine writing and storytelling about America’s royal family. One of the head honchos at the network involved killed the project. He said, “It’s mainly about rich white guys, and I’m a white guy, and I don’t feel comfortable green-lighting it.” I get it, but so much for fifty years of history and the Kennedy family. So much for John and Bobby Kennedy, just two rich white guys who happened to die for their country. You gotta love Hollywood.