Why I Wrote a Novel About Hollywood Ruining a Novel

There is a particular fantasy shared by writers everywhere.

Someone from Hollywood telephones.

They have read your book.

They love your book.

They understand your book.

More importantly, they would now like to give you an irresponsible amount of money for your book.

At this very point, according to the prevailing fantasy, champagne appears spontaneously.

But nobody ever continues the fantasy far enough.

Because eventually somebody from Hollywood says:

“We absolutely love what you've done.”

And shortly afterwards:

“We just have a few suggestions.”

And this is where THE BOOK'S A LOT BETTER THAN THE MOVIE begins.

At the centre of the story is Localad, a sixty-four-year-old bookseller who has spent twenty years quietly writing Purradise, an enormous fantasy novel involving cats, fallen knights, singing mountains, courage, grief and a mysterious Wound in the sky.

Nobody has read it.

For most of his life, this has been something of a problem.

Eventually it becomes his greatest advantage.

Because when Hollywood discovers Purradise, Localad experiences every author's impossible dream.

His manuscript is wanted.

Money appears.

Los Angeles beckons.

There are meetings.

There are executives.

There are people whose professional contribution appears to consist largely of saying things such as “audience accessibility” while pointing at a graph.

And slowly, almost politely, Purradise stops being Purradise.

The quiet parts disappear.

The complicated parts become a lot simpler.

Grief becomes vengeance.

Characters become market segments.

And anything that might once have required the audience to think very hard develops a reasonable chance of exploding.

I specifically wanted to write about that collision.

Not simply Hollywood versus books.

Something bigger.

Creation versus ownership.

When does a story stop belonging to the person who created it?

What happens when something deeply personal becomes nothing more than a commercial asset?

And what happens when the person everyone assumes is powerless in all of this, discovers that perhaps he isn't?

Those are reasonably serious questions.

Unfortunately, I am legally and constitutionally incapable of asking such serious questions without somebody falling over a piece of furniture.

So the book became a satire.

Hollywood certainly receives some attention.

Publishing receives some.

Writers receive some.

Independent booksellers in run down stores receive considerably less though because I quite like them and they know where all the books are kept.

But beneath all the jokes is something I genuinely believe.

Stories matter because somebody cared enough to tell them.

Not because they can become franchises.

Not because somebody can put them on a lunchbox.

And not because an algorithm has determined somewhere, that adults aged 35–54 demonstrate quite promising engagement with emotionally damaged writers.

But because one human being made something and another human being connected with it.

That's the relationship Localad spends the novel trying to recover.

The irony, of course, is that I've now written a whole book about the dangers of turning books into commercial products…

… and here I am, asking people to buy it.

I choose not to examine this part too closely.

So, The Book's a Lot Better Than the Movie is available now.

And if Hollywood telephones?

Yes, I'll answer.

I'm not a complete idiot.

I'll just be sure to read the contract first.