"Actually, I've always thought of myself as a hot commodity," says
Mr. Adler, whose word processor sits near a stylized painting of a huge bull in
his Beverly Hills apartment. "I think of myself as a bull. I don't have
sweaty palms when I deal with Hollywood. There is nothing they can do to
me."
Nothing except agree to his terms.
After the 1989 movie made from his novel "The War of the Roses"
sold $85 million worth of tickets, Tri-Star bought his unpublished novel
"Private Lies" for $1.2 million, Warner Brothers paid slightly less
for his unpublished novel "Cries of Laughter," and Tri Star
reactivated his novel "Random Hearts," which had been bogged down in
the studio swamp for years. Three short stories from a collection called
"The Sunset Gang" about lower middle class Jews who retire to Florida
have been turned into television plays that will be broadcast by "American
Playhouse" on public television on the next three Fridays. And
"Private Lies" is being published this week by William Morrow &
Company.
"They wouldn't invite any of my guests to the premiere of 'The War of
the Roses,'" Mr. Adler says. He is a large man, as unwilling to move out of
the way as a defensive lineman. "So, in the 'Private Lies' contract, they
pay me to come to the premiere. First class travel for me and my guests. I said:
'If they don't agree, the hell with them. We'll sell it to someone else.'"
Mr. Adler, whose first book was not published until he was 43, says he
becomes physically uncomfortable if his fingers stay away from the keyboard for
too long. Because his novels "take the same time as a baby, nine months,
and I am a compulsive writer," he fills the rest of the year by writing
mysteries in which the homicide detective is a Senator's daughter.
"Immaculate Deception" was published in February and "Senator
Love" is due in August. Since four books in one year would be a surfeit,
even for Warren Adler, his 19th book, "Cries of Laughter," is
scheduled for 1992.
"I've become a specialist in wrecked relations," says Mr. Adler,
who has been married for 40 years. "My turf is the never ending battle of
the sexes that goes on to the grave."
In the film "The War of the Roses," a bitter divorce causes the
death of one dog, one cat, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. In "Random
Hearts," a pair of adulterers die in a plane crash. In "Private
Lies," the game that is bagged on an African safari is Genus Rampant
Infidelity. In the gentle "Yiddish" on "American Playhouse,"
an elderly man and woman fall in love and must wrestle with the possibility of
breaking up their four-decade-long marriages.
His Own Experience
Mr. Adler's own marriage almost ended in the first year. "It was the
Korean War," Mr. Adler says. "I was the Washington correspondent for
the Armed Forces Press Service."
:He had picked me up on the beach," says his wife Sunny Adler. "We
got married and I went back home to Mother to finish college. We almost got
divorced over that."
Three sons and 40 years later, they say they still fight. "Who else am I
going to fight with?" Mr. Adler asks.
"We still think we're young and beautiful," Mrs. Adler says.
Which leads back to Hollywood and it's peculiar standards. "Most people
my age out here are finished," Mr. Adler says. "They treat older
people like junk. They do not respect the mature mind. They'd make a lot more
money if they did. The development guys are very young. No one's over 30. They
have absolutely no life experience and they talk in clichés. Their reference
points are other movies, and they don't know what good writing is."
But Hollywood has taught him some lessons. When he moved from Washington to
Los Angeles before "The War of the Roses," he formed his own
production company, rented offices and hired a staff. "When I started in
Washington, I just put out a group shingle," he says of the Adler Group,
which publishes real estate trade magazines, has 120 employees and is now run by
his 34 year old son, Jonathan. "But here I was calling people who never
called me back. It cost me about $150,000 before I realized this wasn't the way
to do it."
Says the president of one midsize production company: "His hubris was
almost endearing. He came in and said, 'Nobody can adapt my books better than I
can, I've got to be the real producer of the film and the bidding starts at a
million dollars.'"
And what Hollywood takes away with one hand, it is likely to give back with
the other. Warner Brothers spent $100,000 for an option to buy "Madeline's
Miracles," a novel about a couple whose lives are taken over by a psychic.
"Last night they didn't exercise the option," Mr. Adler says
jubilantly. "It's mine, and I won't sell it again without my script, I
insisted on writing the first script for 'Private Lies' and 'Cries of Laughter.'
From now on the scripts don't belong to me. But at least I've set the
matrix."
Warner Brothers bought "Cries of Laughter" for the producer Joel
Silver. The novel, about a Jewish comic, a gangster and the gangster's moll,
takes place in the Catskills in 1937, an era when killers took their wives to
the hotels each summer.
Warner Brothers also now owns "Private Lies." Tri Star traded the
book to Warner in return for "Mary Reilly," a novel by Valerie Martin.
Praised or ridiculed, Mr. Adler sees screenwriting only as a way of protecting
his novels. "To me the ecstasy is the work, and the movies are an
advertising card for the work," he says.
He has sunk no roots in Hollywood. He lives in a large renter apartment in a
shabby building. The money he earns is spent on the house he is building on 14
acres in Jackson Hole, Wyo. "I'm a ghetto boy from Brownsville," he
says. "But in the last quarter of my life I want wide open spaces."
The Hollywood types whom Mr. Adler has bumped against call him arrogant and
describe him as someone who has a gift for self-promotion. With the hide of a
rhinoceros - "I've been rejected thousands of times and after every
rejection I say, 'What do they know?'" - Mr. Adler is happy to point out
the absurdities of the film industry. "Tri-Star has had 'Random Hearts' for
seven years," he says. "Dustin Hoffman insisted the main character be
made a Senator because playing a Congressman's aid wasn't good enough. Hollywood
always kisses up to the big stars. Then Dustin Hoffman walked away."
The writer and director James L. Brooks, who produced "The War of the
Roses," has now taken over "Random Hearts."
As to what he can expect from Hollywood besides money, Mr. Adler is
philosophical. "They shouldn't change the title or the ending," he
says. "That's all you can expect."
