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-- By Patricia Nell Warren --
It's been
exactly 30 years since I first had lunch with Paul
Newman's agent to talk about film development of my
novel The Front Runner. It was going to be Newman's
debut as an independent producer. I wished him well, but
didn't hope for much participation of my own in his
project. In those days, book authors didn't get any
creative or producing say.
By then I'd already put in a little
time in development hell, through my maiden
screenwriting effort. In 1972-73, I worked on a screen
adaptation of my first novel, The Last Centennial,
co-writing with Eric Lee Preminger. My book was about a
native American rodeo cowboy who'd been raised as an
adopted child by a white family. Eric had just emerged
as a sought-after new writer, and hoped to launch his
own career as a producer, following in his famous
father's footsteps. I watched Eric struggle for two
years to get this project financed, and got my first
closeup look at how slippery the slope is for
independent film development. By the time I published
The Front Runner in 1974, Eric had given up on producing
a film adaptation of The Last Centennial. Eventually he
moved on to a successful career in television.
During the year of Paul Newman's
option on The Front Runner, there was a pleasant
surprise -- my input was actually invited on Jeremy
Larner's script when it was done. But finally Newman's
partner George Englund told me that The Front Runner wouldn't be going into production under Paul's option.
Newman, whose work as an actor and producer I've
continued to admire, went on to do Slapshot, another
sports film, and many other works.
In 1977, it was independent producer
Frank Perry (David and Lisa, Mommie Dearest) who bought
the rights to TFR. Over the next couple of years, as
Frank struggled to develop the property, he stayed in
touch with me and showed me his script revisions -- till
he finally gave up. The rights were resold to other
independents -- first to Howard Rosenman and his
associates, then to Jerry Wheeler, who died in 1990.
Not till 1991 did I get involved in
film production again. Random House had just published
my Western historical novel One Is the Sun. Independent
producer Philip Labhart read it and loved it. Philip had
made his reputation in TV commercials (including a
Golden Palm award at Cannes) but aimed to get into
feature films. He'd rather have produced The Front
Runner, but those rights were tied up elsewhere. So
Philip invited me to come to L.A. and work on developing
One Is the Sun with him and his executive producer
Veronica Claypool.
I spent the next two years working
out of the Labhart studio on Sunset Blvd., helping
Philip and Roni pitch this and other projects. I also
wrote one short script that Philip produced as a
wildlife-conservation infomercial. Then Philip died in
1993. Roni went to New York to work in theater, and I
kept on keeping on.
In 1993, with veteran media
specialist Tyler St. Mark, I formed a publishing and
media LLC, Wildcat International and published more
books. In 1993, launched an effort -- eventually
successful in 2003-- to retrieve the Front Runner film rights
back in perpetuity.
Wildcat started developing our own slate of
films. In addition to The Front Runner, this slate
includes film adaptations of some of my other novels,
notably One Is the Sun and The Wild Man as well as a
television movie of the week adaptation of my novel The
Beauty Queen, and a TV documentary series based on
material I've written for Outsports.com.
In other words, today I finally get my chance -- as
an independent producer -- to help direct the film
destinies of books that I created.
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