Covid-19 Causes Surge In Deals

To Adapt Books For TV, Film

One might think that, with movie theaters closed and television and film production halted indefinitely, Hollywood has gone on hiatus until the pandemic ends. But one might definitely be wrong. In fact, there’s been a surge in studio deals to secure the rights to hundreds of fiction and nonfiction books to adapt for the screen, both large and small. “Like housebound folks across the country, studio executives, filmmakers and actors have had far more time to read books,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “That newfound availability, coupled with streaming services’ and media companies’ insatiable appetite for fresh material, has led to a substantial uptick in sales, according to agents and producers.” Example: CAA has packaged and sold about 175 book titles for film and TV so far this year, about five times the agency’s volume during the same period in 2019. Rival agencies, including WME and United Talent agency, also have reported significant bumps.

Publishers Worry as Ebooks

Gain In Popularity At Libraries

After Covid-19 closed many libraries’ physical branches this spring, borrowing of eBooks reportedly is up 52% vs. the same period last year. That’s according to OverDrive, which partners with 50,000 libraries worldwide, while Hoopla—another service that connects libraries to publishers—says 439 library systems in the US and Canada have joined since March, boosting its membership by 20%. This may seem like great news but, as Wired reports, the surging popularity of library eBooks also has heightened longstanding tensions between publishers, who fear that digital borrowing eats into their sales, and public librarians, who are trying to serve their communities during a once-in-a-generation crisis. Libraries typically pay between $20 and $65 per copy—an industry average of $40, according to one recent survey—and instead of owning a digital copy forever, librarians must decide at the end of the licensing term (typically two years) whether to renew.

Louise Glück Wins 2020

Nobel Prize in Literature

The 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded last week to the American poet Louise Glück, “for her unmistakable poetic voice that, with austere beauty, makes individual existence universal.” While BunzelGram primarily is about mysteries, thrillers, and crime novels (and almost never about poetry), I’m making an exception here because Glück clearly is the master of a craft for which I’ve always had boundless reverence and respect, but have always been terrified  to attempt. As Jonathan Galassi, Glück's editor at Farrar, Straux & Giroux, told Publishers Weekly, “Her work is deeply poetic and literary, but also deeply sensical and direct. It's like you hear your inner voice when you read her." Even back in 1975 The New Republic sensed her poetic genius, in a review that reads: “Glück’s cryptic narratives invite our participation: we must, according to the case, fill out the story, substitute ourselves for the fictive personages, invent a scenario from which the speaker can utter her lines, decode the import, ‘solve’ the allegory.”

73 Great Crime Movies,

Ranked for Filmmakers

I love lists, which is why I mention so many of them in BunzelGram. Not that I agree with many (or any) of them; they’re simply a thought-starter to get me to read a few more books I’d previously ignored, or watch a movie I’d never managed to see. I also like to see how my personal all-time favorites stand up against the judgment of others and, if a list is properly crafted with some narrative, why it’s been included and ranked where it is. I'm particularly interested in the following list of the 73 Best Crime Movies from StudioBinder.com, which is ranked “on how well the movie represents the crime genre over other genres and then takes into account the actual quality of the film.” (I also was hooked by the number “73,” which isn’t your typical countdown end-point.) Bottom line: This list reminded me of many films I’d always wanted to rent for had forgotten about, and others I’d loved but had mentally misplaced.

Did Jack Reacher Hatch Fully Formed,

Or Did He Evolve Over Time?

Natural-born hero and self-imposed loner, former MP with several red marks on his record, the man with no home or middle name, Jack Reacher is the ultimate enigmatic paladin with a thirst for coffee and a taste for vigilante justice. But…was he always that way? Did he emerge from the writer’s mind fully formed, or did the character evolve with each subsequent book? Heather Martin, who penned the just-released biography [The Reacher Guy] of Lee Child (aka Jim Grant), says the author's first character outline portrays him as “an alienated loner, redundant from job, becomes involved in some kind of [activity] which provides a determined loner the opportunity of appropriating large amount of cash, which he does, after dangers and contests, subsequently leaving the area, revenged against oppression, and enriched.’” And as David Highfill, Lee Child’s first editor—in those days at G. P. Putnam’s Sons—observes, “[Jim] would say that Reacher came to him fully formed. But his instincts and choices and decisions were all right.’”

Mystery Movies That

Try To Keep You Guessing

One of the reasons mysteries continue to outperform virtually every other entertainment genre is because human beings possess an insatiable curiosity about the unknown. As we read a good mystery or watch one unfold on the screen, we automatically search for clues as we attempt to remain at least one step ahead of the writer (or director) in our effort to solve the crime. The more obsessed we are, the more we detest cheating (e.g. throwing in a clue or character at the last minute), or the entire crumbling of the ending as it becomes obvious that the writer lost control of the plot. What we love the most is a story that keeps us guessing—sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly—until the final scene reveals one last surprise. With that in mind, here’s a list from Glamour magazine (yes, really) of some of the best mystery movies from Alfred Hitchcock classics to M. Night Shyamalan that span every genre, from comedy to horror to drama.

What’s Your Book About?

Try Writing Its Headline

Long before I wrote my first novel, I worked as a writer and editor covering the entertainment industry. During those years I was tasked with coming up with hundreds of headlines for stories, both mine and other reporters’, and I found the assignment to be proportionate to how well the original story was written. If the writer knew his/her craft, the true “lede” was easy to spot, and the headline much less painless to craft. While I would never compete with “Sticks Nix Hick Pix” (my all-time favorite headline, from Variety in 1935), I regarded the headline as an “elevator pitch” designed to hook the audience as quickly and effortlessly as possible. In this article in Killzone, writer PJ Parish (actually, sisters Kelly Nichols and Kristy Montee) urge authors—new and established—to attempt to write a headline for their latest book in no more than ten words. “Coming up with a headline or slogan for your story is a great clarifying exercise,” they write. “It makes you think beyond mere plot and deep into that sweet spot where story, character and theme mesh.”

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“Reed Bunzel hits all the right notes in Seven-Thirty Thursday, an intensely personal tale that has echoes of both Greg Isles and John Hart. This is Southern gothic writing extraordinaire, establishing Bunzel as a kind of William Faulkner of the thriller-writing world. His effortless prose crackles with color and authenticity as the brooding Charleston skies set the stage for the storm that’s coming.”

–Providence Journal