The High Concept of Michael Crichton

THURSDAY 09 SEPTEMBER 1999
NORTHERN WESTCHESTER COUNTY
It's a Jurassic kind of day. Dark clouds are rolling across the sky and the wind is rising. Rain washes across our windshield, smearing the road into a blur. We're inching along, peering through the glass, looking for the pillars that mark Michael Crichton's lair.

They appear and we drive uphill to a large house set amid leafy trees. Every window is dark. Is this the right place? Bonnie Kurt, Crichton's assistant, told us to go around back, by the swimming pool. Yes, through a picket fence we can make out a body of water prickled by rain.

Our car drives off. We slop along a walkway to a gate in the fence and push. It won't budge. We head to the front door and press a bell. No one comes. We look around. Hurricane Floyd is getting closer: the trees are swaying in the wind and the rain. This is T-rex weather. Crichton couldn't have staged a more dramatic setting to meet with PW -- if finally we do meet. Setting up an interview with the megastar author has been like trying to get a date with the shyest girl in class...

WEEKS EARLIER
WEST 17th St., NEW YORK CITY
Months after PW indicates interest in Crichton, the phone rings at the magazine's offices. It's Paul Bogaards calling from Knopf, which has published Crichton since 1969.

"Michael would like to do the interview here," says Knopf's director of promotion. But PW always talks to authors where they write, nearly always in their home. Will Crichton reconsider?

Bogaards signs off, then calls back. "All right. Michael has agreed to meet you at his office." Not at his home -- Crichton always bars the press from his personal life.

But wait: days pass, and Bogaards calls again: "Michael would like to do the interview here after all. There's construction going on at his office and he's concerned that the noise might disturb the conversation."

Hang the banging. PW wants to talk with Crichton where his dinos roam. Fifty minutes later: "All right. Michael will meet you at his office." And what of Crichton's new novel? It has been three years since Airframe crowned hardcover lists. That's a long time for a writer who in the initial six years of the decade published five blockbuster novels: Rising Sun, Disclosure, The Lost World, Airframe and, first and foremost, Jurassic Park, the novel that, including its spinoffs, has drawn in more dollars than any book in human history, except perhaps the Bible or the Koran. During that time, another Crichton creation -- the television series ER -- has ruled the airwaves, and a handful of films birthed from Crichton's brain, including Twister, Jurassic Park and The Lost World, have made huge sums through box office and video receipts. Crichton earned $65 million last year, according to Forbes magazine -- more than any other writer in the world.

Anticipation is cresting for a new Crichton book. The fall 1999 Knopf catalogue carried this teaser: "Coming in November 1999: MICHAEL CRICHTON'S new novel TIMELINE." November is closing fast now and Crichton, PW learns, has yet to put the final touches on the manuscript. Even so, can we read it before we talk with him?

FRIDAY 03 SEPTEMBER 1999
EAST 50th St., NEW YORK CITY
We can -- under stringent conditions. Knopf, on Crichton's orders, will not release the manuscript to PW, despite our willingness to sign a confidentiality agreement. The lockdown has something to do with the marketing of film rights, we're told.

So on a sunny afternoon PW is standing in the lobby of the modern building that harbors the house founded by Alfred Knopf in 1915, waiting for an elevator to take us to the executive offices on the 21st floor. We notice that a lot of other people are standing around. The elevators are broken. A crowded freight lift takes us up.

We enter a kitchen area and wander the halls until we spot Jeff Prince, Bogaards's amiable young assistant. Under his arm he's holding a thick sheaf of papers bound by a rubber band. Prince leads us to a brightly lit conference room. We take a seat at an oval table. Floor-to-ceiling shelves are crammed with Knopf books from decades past. Crichton himself g s way back -- his first book, the thriller Odds On, was published by New American Library in 1966, under the byline of John Lange. Crichton wrote it while studying at Harvard Medical School. More Lange novels followed. In 1968, Crichton adopted the pen name of Jeffrey Hudson for a mystery, A Case of Need, that won an Edgar Award for Best Novel.

Crichton came out a year later with The Andromeda Strain, which set the pattern for his success. A full-tilt thriller about deadly bacteria from outer space, The Andromeda Strain was Crichton's first book to appear under his own name, his first to be published by Knopf, his first to race up bestseller lists and his first to be made into a movie. The novel also featured the mix of hard and speculative science that characterizes much of his subsequent fiction, and it established Crichton as an author who is fun to read, who can elaborate a gripping high concept into a crackerjack tale.

Bestseller then pursued bestseller: Terminal Man, The Great Train Robbery, Eaters of the Dead, Congo, Sphere, Jurassic Park and onward. Despite this success and consequent fame, including the cover of Time magazine in 1994, Crichton remains an enigma. He's a medical doctor who laid down his stethoscope nearly 30 years ago; a noted critic of science and painting who d sn't practice either; a world-class author who devotes much of his energy to film, television and, these days, computer gaming. Though a mega-celebrity, he lacks the crisply defined public persona of a King or a Clancy; yet he courts the limelight, albeit reluctantly, like a moth flitting near fire but wary of incineration.

Crichton the writer is equally slippery, even after 21 novels. Will Timeline, his 22nd, be adventure like Congo, drama like Disclosure, mystery like Rising Sun, science fiction like Sphere -- or something else entirely? Will it be supernally smart entertainment like The Great Train Robbery and Jurassic Park, or lackluster product like The Lost World and Airframe?

We snap off the rubber band and begin to read. The world fades and we are lost in a novel that is...

TUESDAY 07 SEPTEMBER 1999
EAST 50th St., NEW YORK CITY
"...every bit a book for the Jurassic Park audience."

Sonny Mehta clips his words with the precision of a diamond cutter. Along with Daisy Maryles, PW's executive editor, we've returned to Knopf to talk with 14 of the house's highest-level executives about their most lucrative author -- who's also their most expensive author. While no one connected with Crichton will divulge dollar amounts, it's known that he is working off a multibook contract under which Knopf pays him eight figures per book.

We begin with Mehta, editor-in-chief and president of Knopf. That Mehta is speaking with us today testifies not only to Crichton's importance to the house but also to his editor's dedication. Since he took over Knopf in 1987, Mehta has been one of the most visible men in publishing, renowned for his business acumen and editorial skill, admired for his stylish ways -- and often photographed with a cigarette between his fingers. The cigarettes have taken their toll: in July, Mehta underwent bypass surgery. Today is his first day back at Knopf since the operation, and meeting with PW is his first task of the day.

Mehta's office is surprisingly small, and seems smaller still for all the books and oddments stuffed into every corner. It's tidy, but in a congenial way, like its occupant, who has walked in clad in blue jeans and a casual brown shirt. Mehta is slim with large brown eyes. He has on sneakers that look like Keds, without socks, and he's chewing gum discreetly.

Mehta proclaims himself "a fan" of Crichton's and seems delighted to discuss him. "The first book of Michael's that I actually worked on," he says, "was Travels. It's the only book in which he really talks about himself in any way."

Travels was published in 1988. Though primarily an account of Crichton's global wanderings, it touches upon his early years on Long Island (where his family moved after his birth as John Michael Crichton in Chicago in 1942) and upon his first attempts at writing, under the watchful eye of his father, an editor at Advertising Age.

By the time Mehta began to edit him, Crichton was already Knopf's most important writer commercially, and had been edited since The Andromeda Strain by Knopf's previous chief, Robert Gottlieb. Yet Crichton, Mehta says, "was extremely generous in the way he dealt with me. You know, he'd had a long relationship with Bob, but he was very welcoming, he listened."

In his jeans and sneakers, tapered beard and high cheekbones, Mehta can look disconcertingly like a hip Mephistopheles, but his words this morning are benign. He describes Crichton's books as being "like wallpaper for the brain," and characterizes the writer as "a very, very smart guy. I don't think I've worked with somebody who is as smart as Michael is. Clearly, he's a great man."

Mehta acknowledges that Timeline came in "probably a little late" and points to Crichton's many media interests as a reason. But it is just this eclectic curiosity, he emphasizes, that keeps Crichton "on the cutting edge and the forefront of where the entertainment business is going."

Mehta chews his gum a bit. "I haven't talked about how exciting it gets working on these things. Yes, it gives nervous breakdowns to people who work in the production department. But then they're a little bit fetishistic about how a book looks, and they want to get the cover absolutely right.

"One of the things that I think is extraordinary about Michael as a writer," he adds, "is that he surprises continuously. Every book of his is a surprise." And not only to his readers. The Knopf officials most responsible for the cover of Timeline are the house's art director, Carol Devine Carson, and its senior designer, Chip Kidd, who created the iconic T-rex jacket of Jurassic Park and every Knopf Crichton cover since. PW meets the pair in Carson's office; as we speak, messages and phone calls -- including one from Crichton -- come in concerning the cover. Kidd and Carson have created a striking jacket for Timeline, featuring a computer drawing of a knight's jousting helmet based on one that Kidd found, under Crichton's direction, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"I think the cover conveys a sense of menace, but also I don't feel like I've seen it before," says Kidd, looking sleek and young. "But I can't take a whole lot of credit for it because it was Michael's idea and, frankly, I'd had nothing to read. So with this jacket, I was really just a kind of facilitator for what he wanted."

"You haven't read the book?"

"Not the preferred way of doing it, obviously."

"Do you usually try to read books before working on the cover?"

"Oh, God, yes."

Over the next hours, it becomes clear that other key Knopf executives have been kept away from the manuscript. Even so, work is proceeding at a frantic pace to ready the book for its laydown date, pushed back from November 2 to November 16 because of Crichton's late delivery of the novel. Patricia H. Johnson, Knopf's associate publisher, and Anthony Chirico, executive v-p, operations, of the Knopf Publishing Group, explain that the book will have a projected first printing of 1.5 million copies -- though that falls short of Knopf's announced two million first printing on The Lost World. They also report that in a rare blind auction -- those film rights again -- the Literary Guild has won book club rights to Timeline. Paul Bogaards and William Loverd, Knopf's director of publicity, tell us that Crichton will do a week's worth of media and bookstore appearances for the novel, including the Today show on laydown date. Knopf's director of advertising, managing editor, production chief and various rights executives, plus Gina Centrello and Kim Hovey, respectively president/publisher and publicity director of Ballantine, which publishes Crichton in paperback, both mass and trade -- all convey to PW the energy generated, and demanded, by the advent of Timeline. Sonny Mehta has told us that "over 30 years, Michael has got to know almost everybody in the house; he is the house, in some ways." The Knopf-wide genuine enthusiasm about readying Crichton's new novel for publications testifies to that.

Betty Fairchild, Knopf's director of field sales, who has been working with Crichton for 24 years, speaks of his particular relationship to Knopf.

"I feel like he's a part of our family. He's changed less, as a person, than any author I can remember. Michael Crichton is still Michael Crichton, and I think that's pretty remarkable. He's demanding, but not beyond the bounds, and he's wonderful to the reps and to the accounts. I think that's why we take such delight in selling a Michael Crichton." Like others, Johnson has not been allowed to read Timeline.

THURSDAY 09 SEPTEMBER 1999
NORTHERN WESTCHESTER COUNTY
"Hello?"

We squint through the rain to see Bonnie Kurt calling us from the front door. She asks us to go around back, and soon after shoving open that gate we're dripping water on the floor of a cozy lounge area complete with kitchen. A huge photo of Crichton with his wife and daughter hangs above a doorway leading to a hall. A display for The 13th Warrior, the film version of Crichton's early novel Eaters of the Dead, stands near one corner. Kent, with blonde hair and merry eyes, takes our coat and seats us on a butter-soft leather sofa. She offers food -- fruit salad, muffins, coffee -- and we chat about this and that.

"Hello!"

Michael Crichton fills the doorway. Nearly everyone we met at Knopf mentioned the writer's height, and what they said is true. Crichton is very tall: 6'9" in his bare feet. Yet he seems at ease in his body, and he shows no inclination to use his height to psychological advantage; after getting a blueberry muffin, he sits near us, lowering his face nearly level to our own.

Crichton appears relaxed in jeans and a striped shirt that's not tucked in. His hair is dark, combed back and wet, as if he's just showered. His teeth are paper white. He looks younger than his 56 years, in part because he's so lean. We exchange pleasantries; his voice has a slightly patrician cast. He exudes the aura of a country gentleman or scholar, but in the moment we glance down to take a bite of our muffin, he devours his; only crumbs are left on his plate when we look back up. This, we think, is a man of hearty appetite.

We move to Crichton's office, a few steps down the hallway. It's a working room, designed to cut down on distraction. There are no windows and a lot of bare wall, though one end is lined with books, including several of Crichton's own, and on another is suspended an enormous Roy Lichtenstein poster. Crichton collects art. In 1977, with the art house Harry N. Abrams, he published Jasper Johns, an acclaimed study of the modernist painter. It's Crichton's only book in the past 25 years not initially published by Knopf, and it's the only book he's revised, for a 1994 edition.

Crichton takes the power seat, in the chair behind the enormous desk that dominates the room, and swivels to face us. As he angles his face, the glow of the giant monitor on the desk picks up shadows under his eyes, legacies of the long hours he's spent finalizing Timeline.

Is he happy with the novel?

"I'm never, ever, satisfied with anything I do," Crichton responds. "I think it's one of the mysterious aspects of this kind of work, that you start out always with some feeling of excitement and you end with the sense that you've missed that pitch again."

These are startling words from any author about to bare his new book to critics and the media. They exhibit a modesty that perhaps only the supremely successful or utterly self-confident can display, but they're also indicative of an unadorned honesty that Crichton manifests throughout our talk.

If Crichton isn't satisfied with Timeline, his fans will be. An adventure tale in which a band of young scientists from the present travel back in time to medieval France to rescue their elderly mentor, the novel is vintage Crichton, a slick, immensely involving blend of science fiction and fantasy that's reminiscent in tone of Jurassic Park and could be his most popular novel since that juggernaut. With its castles and jousting tournaments and swordplay, its knights in shining armor and damsels in distress, Timeline also seems perfect for filming and could sell a lot of action figures down the road.

Crichton has been knocked often for writing novels with movies in mind. Certainly, Hollywood has pursued his books with the avidity of a hound chasing a raccoon. His last novel, Airframe, sold to Disney for a record $10 million. Then there's his personal screen career, launched in 1972 when he directed one of his John Lange novels as a television movie. His screen résumé now includes adaptive screenplays (Robin Cook's Coma; several of his own novels) and original screenplays that he directed (Twister, Runaway, Looker and Westworld, which presages Jurassic Park in depicting a theme park run amok). Crichton boasts numerous directorial, producing and creative credits, too, including for ER, which sprang from a long-dormant screenplay inspired by his first nonfiction book, Five Patients: The Hospital Explained (1970).

Crichton takes exception to the charge that he's aiming his novels at Hollywood. "I remember," he says, "when Sphere was published: 'Oh, it's just written for the movies.' Wait a minute, it's completely internal, you know. That was a very difficult movie to make."

He has another explanation for why his books fit film like a designer suit. "When I write," he explains, "I see pictures in my head. It's also why I tend to view characters externally: I'm looking at a movie. How do I know what's in their head? I can't go beyond what the camera of my mind sees. I think because of that my books are fairly well structured for a movie already."

The sensitivity Crichton manifests toward this criticism surfaces elsewhere. When we observe that Timeline, despite its merits, exhibits an overt calculation in its mix of characters, each tailored to please a particular readership, Crichton objects. "In doing something like this," he says, "I'm about the least calculating person in the world. I'm just desperately trying to make the thing work. Otherwise, I wouldn't have to rewrite it four times. I think I got about 150 pages on the first one, about 150 pages on the second one, 300-odd pages the third time and then I started all over again."

When we suggest that the folks at Knopf probably will do most anything to please him, Crichton expresses a fear that "at a certain point, it is possible that no one will tell you the truth." This is a real concern of his. It becomes apparent after talking with him for a while that he's not so much defending himself when he questions what others say about him and his work as he is vocalizing a continuous and passionate search for truth. It may seem curious that a man who has made his fortune from fiction -- and fiction that subtly mixes fact and fancy -- is engaged on a quest for truth. Crichton's professional and personal history bears this out, however. He was trained in the scientific method, both at Harvard, where he graduated summa cum laude as an anthropology major, and at Harvard Medical School. He vigorously researches each subject he tackles, and his subjects have increasingly concerned issues in which he feels truth is bastardized. Rising Sun (1992) exposed covert Japanese influence on the American economy (but drew accusations of racism that, Crichton says, astonished him "as much as if we were to walk out that door and the sky was yellow"). A year later, Disclosure confronted feminism and the question of sexual harassment by casting a male as victim (the response to that scenario, Crichton says with a laugh, "was no surprise. I actually found it pretty entertaining"). And in Airframe, he went after the media for what the novel portrayed as its distortion and dumbing-down of the news through sound bites.

Even Timeline, with its meticulous reconstruction of 14th-century life, reflects Crichton's yearning to re-establish truth in a world plagued by falsehood. "I think," he says, "there's a perception that we live in an unprecedented world. It's about time for people to start to recognize that almost everything has a history; not to know that is to be struck by everything freshly, in a foolish way."

Crichton crosses his legs as he says this. He only rises from his chair twice during our two-hour talk, but he's constantly in motion, folding his long legs every which way, rubbing his nose, covering his mouth with his hand, taking off and putting on his wire-rimmed glasses. His body, it seems, generates as much energy as his mind, and he confirms that when he writes, he's "always getting up and moving around."

"You know," he continues, "I'm fascinated by the Internet because I'm old enough to remember the arrival of television. There was the notion that television was going to bring in an era of universal education. You know, that's baloney. We've seen the great claims for this new technology turn out to be, at best, overstated, and at worst, a lie."

That Crichton maintains his own Web site (www.crichton-official.com) only underscores his point: there, he can present the truth as he sees it. Despite his disdain for the Net, Crichton has courted electronic media for a long time. In 1983 he published one of the first general books about computing, Electronic Life: How to Think about Computers, and about that time he designed one of the earliest graphic computer games, Amazon. He has been a gamer ever since, and is again designing games. This renewed interest comes in part, he explains, because gaming now has a "tradition" that lends itself to his interest in experimenting with "preexisting forms."

Crichton cites this challenge as the reason he works in established storytelling genres like fantasy and adventure, despite the lack of respect accorded them by the critical establishment. "I'm particularly attracted to genres or kinds of writing that seem to be exhausted," he says. "Where it seems as though everyone's done whatever there is to do and there's no point to going back to the Victorian adventure novel [as he did in The Great Train Robbery], or time travel [Timeline], or Frankenstein [The Terminal Man]. " At the same time, it must be noted that Crichton is willing to stand, albeit in his own fashion, on the shoulders of authors past. The influence of, for instance, Conan Doyle upon him is palpable (Rising Sun; Jurassic Park; The Lost World), and Crichton isn't the first major writer to depict modern man traveling back to medieval times: Mark Twain did it in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

Though Crichton will load up Quake and surf the Net, he periodically unplugs. "People get annoyed, you know? They'll go, 'Did you answer your e-mail?' And I go, 'No, pal, I'm not doing it.' Then they get mad. There's this assumption that everyone is wired all the time. Forget that!"

More than any other superstar author, except perhaps John Grisham, Crichton insists on his right to raise his drawbridges, to privacy and the quiet home life it can secure. During the heady days of his early success, he took his share of drugs (and co-wrote a pot-inspired novel with his brother, Douglas, entitled Dealing: or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues) and ran through three marriages. Then, in 1978, while directing The Great Train Robbery, came a revelation.

"I thought, I'm a director working on a big picture abroad, with two movie stars, Donald Sutherland and Sean Connery, from a book that I've written. This is what I've been working toward ever since medical school 10 years before. And I had to admit that I didn't like it very much. I was lonely and far from home, and cold. I realized then that I needed to have a real private life -- which, to me, meant a stable marriage and family."

Crichton entered therapy and, in the early 1980s, met his current wife, Anne-Marie Martin, whom he married in 1987. A year later, he fathered a girl, Taylor; Timeline is dedicated to her.

A coterie of friends and colleagues -- people whom he trusts to tell him the truth -- are also important to Crichton. He tells PW that, after he wrote the first draft of Jurassic Park, "People didn't just dislike it, they hated it. Something was making them mad. I talked to Lynn [Nesbit, Crichton's longtime literary agent], I talked to Sonny, I talked to Bob Bookman [his erstwhile film agent]. Finally, Sonny said to me, 'This should be a scientific story that only happens to be about dinosaurs.' And then somebody else read it and said, 'You've written it from the point of view of a kid, and I didn't like that. I wanted it to be a story for me, an adult.' So I changed it."

Crichton won't tell PW what book he'll be writing next, but he d s let on that he won't be involved in Jurassic Park III, and that he hopes not to write the screenplay for Timeline. He also mentions several projects that he's abandoned over the years, including a novel about Ben Franklin, a "pirate story" that he "wrote in the '70s, didn't work out," and a 19th-century western that he labored on "for a long time. I may resuscitate that one."

Meanwhile, Crichton spends his leisure time hiking and scuba diving -- solitary pursuits, and healthy substitutes for the cigarettes he, like Mehta, recently gave up. He writes late at night or very early in the morning, because "I'm very sensitive to outside influences, so I prefer to work when the world is quiet." He visits bookstores twice a week, for reading material ("I'm usually staggering under a ton of books when I leave") but also to keep abreast of the book business. "When I went to Frankfurt," he recalls, "I was appalled at what I saw. There's this giant business that I didn't have any sense about. So by going to the store and seeing what's out, I gain some understanding of what's going on."

He gets recognized in bookstores, he says, and he realizes that his anonymity is as gone as yesterday. "You know," he says, "I chose writing because this wouldn't happen. Degas had a line that said, in essence, 'The best thing is to be famous but unrecognizable.' For most of my life, if anybody recognized me it would be when I gave them my credit card.

"There was a time when, just before I had this visibility, I could go to restaurants and sometimes I'd overhear people at the next table talking about me. Or on talk radio. And I'd think, 'What person is this they're discussing? He sounds completely alien.'"

What person, we ask, d s he consider himself to be?

Crichton pauses. His eyes are hyperalert. We can sense his mind prodding the question, formulating the right, the true response.

He clears his throat. "As much as I can, I try not to define myself, because, first of all, everyone is doing that for me. And you know, most people's ideas of themselves are distorted.

"So I try not to have any."

Saying this, Crichton laughs and breaks into a smile that lights up the room. We take leave of the author, but we'll be speaking with him again. Before we do, however, we need to talk to two people who worked with Crichton at the dawn of his career: literary agent Lynn Nesbit and Bob Gottlieb.

MONDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 1999
MADISON AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY
A wool scarf can come in handy at Janklow & Nesbit Associates, at least in the reception room, a low-lit, high-gloss area with frosted air and lots of marble and glass. The hallways leading to Nesbit's office are equally chilled and lined with black filing cabinets.

Nesbit's office is warmer and more personalized, tastefully scattered with needlepoint pillows and with a fine blue rug underfoot. Nesbit darts into the room a few moments after we're seated. She's petite, very stylish in a dark gray jacket, black slacks and jewelry. She wears her hair short and speaks quickly, in a sharp, direct voice.

Lynn Nesbit is one of the most powerful literary agents in the country, and has been for a long time. Her clients include Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Carter, Robin Cook, Gay Talese, Joan Didion and Anne Rice, among others, but her relationship with Crichton harkens back to her first days in the business. She has been Crichton's only literary agent.

"I think from the first time that Michael and I met," Nesbit recalls, "we had an extremely empathetic rapport. I genuinely liked him, and I knew that he was somebody extraordinary. This is indelibly etched on my memory: he said, 'Let's grow up in the business together.'"

So they did, and 30 years with Crichton have given Nesbit penetrating insight into him and his work. "One of the things I like about his writing," she offers, "is that it's very clean. It's not inflated prose, and he has a wonderful through line of action."

Nesbit asks whether we found meeting Crichton difficult. "Because he's always been somewhat distanced," she explains. "He said to me once, 'Can you imagine what it was like to be 13 years old and six foot six?' You know, it's hard for him to hear because he has to bend down so far. So he's not comfortable with small talk.

"He's a wonderful man," she adds, "and he's absolutely wonderful with my kids. I love that man."

Likely it's not Nesbit's affection but her effectiveness that has kept Crichton with her for three decades, however. When we ask Nesbit about the sale of film rights on Timeline, she d sn't so much sit on her armchair as perch on it like a mother eagle defending her newborn. She has been instrumental, she says, in the successful clampdown on the manuscript. "We don't have to worry about leaking," she declares. "We controlled it."

Why the draconian control?

"Because Michael is very paranoid, with very good reason, about ideas leaking to Hollywood. He felt everyone would rush to get in a Timeline movie. You want to control the property once you're out with it. You want to control the deal, you want to control the director who's attached. If it leaks, you can't control it. It's like a virus."

WEDNESDAY 06 OCTOBER 1999
WEST 17TH St., NEW YORK CITY
Bob Gottlieb is on the phone to the PW office. This is unusual. The former editor-in-chief of Knopf, then editor of the New Yorker, Gottlieb practices what he preaches: "editors should be unseen and unheard." But today, in a very rare interview, he is willing to talk about Crichton, beginning with his work on Crichton's first Knopf novel.

"I remember Lynn sent it over to me. I thought it was very, very good. But the main thing was, The Andromeda Strain was a documentary, and its strengths were in that -- not in its characterizations. So we decided that rather than try to build on the characterizations, we should strip them in order to make it even less novel-y and more documentary."

Back and forth they exchanged manuscripts, Crichton generating new drafts in two to three days. "We did that through many, many books," Gottlieb remembers. He considers The Great Train Robbery the finest Crichton book he edited from start to finish, comparing it favorably to some that came after. "Books like Sphere and Congo were, I don't want to say formulaic, but you could see there was a pattern. A group of people, they get into danger."

Gottlieb's last book with Crichton was Mehta's first: Jurassic Park. "I did the first two versions," Gottlieb recalls in cultured tones, "and then Sonny took over. I told Michael that it was too much like a YA, and that the problem was in the presentation of the kids."

Gottlieb's frankness about Crichton's work extends to the author's personality. "He's a strange guy. He's not at his happiest with authority, so that makes for an interesting editorial dynamic. But an editor's job is to be useful, not to be loved. I think we respected each other a great deal, which d sn't mean he can't be a pain in the ass. But he's also a consummate pro, and he believes in his ideas. He is not cynical -- and that's crucial."

Crichton has been in the news. On October 5, the online magazine Salon reported that six major studios -- Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner's -- have passed on film rights to Timeline. The story cited the expense of translating Crichton's medieval world to film as one possible reason for the rejections, but laid most of the blame on Michael Ovitz, with whom Crichton has recently signed, ditching his longtime film agent, Bob Bookman of CAA. (When we met Crichton, he cited his friendship with "Mike" as a reason he'd jumped from "Bookie.") Salon claimed that Ovitz had gone outside accepted channels to submit the manuscript to certain directors, including Stephen Spielberg, and that he had played favorites in his submission schedule.

The next day, demonstrating that it's all show biz, Daily Variety stated that "even with a reported price tag close to $10 million, sources said [Ovitz] is in talks with Warner's and two other studios for the book." PW telephones Crichton to get his take on this.

"You know," he says after a friendly hello, "I didn't look carefully at the Salon story. I knew it was completely wrong. We live in the greatest era of baloney and misinformation in human history. People laugh about snake oil salesmen a century ago, but that's nothing compared to what g s on now. We now have a distribution system in which nothing has to be verified and there are absolutely no consequences to being incorrect.

"I had a conversation with a friend of mine who's quite well known in business -- not Ovitz, by the way -- and I was talking to him about his plans, which had been widely reported. Every single thing that had been reported was baloney. I expressed surprise, and he looked at me and said, 'Well, you of all people should know that what the press reports isn't true.'" Would Crichton care to add anything for the readers of this article?

"I don't know what to... "

"Well," we suggest, "you never said, 'Buy my book,' which is what a lot of authors say."

Crichton's voice rises. "Is that what they say? How could I say that? How could I say that?"

He can't, and he won't, because that would be baloney -- and Crichton, for all his clever depiction of fictional worlds, for all his orchestration of the ways they're introduced into our world, is the real deal. And that's no baloney.

Part 2: Crichton on the Bestseller Runway