Agents Go Scouting for Another ‘Jaws’ : Hollywood Hunters Stalk the Game at Booksellers’ Convention

“You see, it’s like a treasure hunt,” explains Ron Bernstein, his voice racing at speeds safe only for Hollywood agents like himself. “Everybody is trying to find out what’s hot that no one else has discovered. That rarely happens. But hope springs eternal, doesn’t it?”

No one in Hollywood is going to share any secrets about what--if any--new movie material was discovered amid some 1,800 booths at the American Booksellers Assn. convention in Anaheim last weekend. Suffice to say they were out there trying--scores of Hollywood agents in search of the next “Jaws.”

“I would love to share it, but I just can’t,” says Hollywood agent Jerry Siegel, a little apologetically. “I have to keep my leads to myself.”

Maybe so. But Siegel can’t quite contain his pleasure. He had hustled down to the Anaheim convention Saturday, the first and slowest day of the book show, and it paid off. He discovered what he hopes will be a hot prospect--it’s nonfiction is all he’ll reveal--that could be the ideal follow-up to his successful sale of Dean R. Koontz’s “Watchers” to Carolco. “I saw it and immediately fell in love with it,” says Siegel, who caught sight of a poster advertising the book while he was trying to track down another book by a big-name author at the same booth.

In New York, book publishing is one of the red-hot center of artistic and cultural chic. In Hollywood, many writers complain, books are accorded a status just a few notches higher than canisters of film, or any other raw ingredient of film making.

But Hollywood’s movie makers and New York’s publishers have a symbiotic interest in each other’s success. A movie has more audience appeal if its title is the same as a book on a best-seller list. Good box-office numbers also can mean better book sales.

Tom Doherty’s sci-fi publishing house, Tor, is selling a $10.95 sourcebook and a $29.95 game based on the film “Willow.” Tor already shipped out 80,000 copies of the game and is waiting to see how the newly released George Lucas film does over the next couple weeks before determining the size of the print run for the book. Doherty has a lot riding on “Willow” box-office sales, and he knows it. “The success of the film is vital to these tie-ins,” says Doherty, who could rattle off the most recent tallies of the film’s box-office receipts. “We follow the box-office numbers closely when we have this kind of an investment.”

Hollywood agents prowling the convention’s book stalls found plenty of mutual interests to discuss with New York publishers. Bernstein already had sold the film rights to a July release, Alice Hoffman’s “At Risk,” the story of a young girl’s battle with AIDS. But he was planning to press his case for marketing the book with its publisher, Putman.

“Fox bought it early on,” says Bernstein. “But it’s real important that this book become a best seller. It needs visibility. It needs to be the blockbuster we all think it is. A lot rides on how well this book does.”

Robert Bookman of Creative Artists Agency stopped by St. Martin’s Press to check up on the upcoming book “The Silence of the Lambs” by Thomas Harris, a suspense story about a serial killer. St. Martin’s is planning to print an initial 200,000 copies. That should make it easier for Bookman to sell movie rights. “The Silence of the Lambs” also has been selected as a Book of the Month Club main selection, said St. Martin’s Valari Barocas, who handles film rights for the publisher.

Not all is smooth, however, in this collaborative relationship between Hollywood and New York. “From our perspective, movie people are crazy and hard to deal with,” insists Doherty. “They’re always changing their minds.”

Doherty’s 7-year-old publishing house specializes in science fiction and horror. But it’s the horror, he says, that draws the most Hollywood interest. “It’s cheaper to make,” says Doherty. “They pay very little for the option and then tie up the property for years,” often never actually making a film.

Horror is the word writer F. Paul Wilson, author of the upcoming book “Black Wind,” used to describe his experience with Hollywood. When Wilson sold the film rights to his best-selling book “The Keep,” he pocketed $200,000 but lost creative control.

Wilson says the film’s director, Michael Mann, changed the story, “stripping the book of its moral content.” “The Keep” was a box-office flop, a $12-million film that grossed only $2.5 million for Paramount during its three-week run in 1983. “It was a horrifying experience for me, and Paramount,” says Wilson.