This week:Susan Jane Gilman—she talk funny one day; and John Grisham dismisses the courtroom. Plus, are a coupla corrupt cops headed for the Big Screen?
Film and TV folk have begun aggressively sniffingaround Susan Jane Gilman's Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress (Warner, January 2005). Every memoir about an eccentric family these days seems to come with an obligatory quote comparing the author to a certain other famous humorist. "He/she is the [insert here: Latino/Southern/Amish/etc.] David Sedaris." Few measure up, but HR was thrilled to find that this one actually does. Not one but two quotes (one reviewer, one author) on the first page of Hypocriteplace author Gilman on a par with Sedaris. Her hilarious account of growing up Jewish and seriously uncool in a rough New York neighborhood is comfortably lodged on several regional bestseller lists and has also appeared on the New York Times list. Gilman's editor, Amy Einhorn, and film agent, Priscilla Cohen of Michael Siegel Associates, attribute the author's success to a perfect trifecta of publicity hits, standing-room-only readings and strong word-of-mouth. Hollywood's interest in Hypocrite hardly comes as a surprise since it is possibly the funniest memoir about an oddball upbringing since, well, Naked.
If Hollywood jumps on John Grisham's most recently announced book, the town may have to start calling him the Artist Formerly Known for His Legal Thrillers. Last year's Christmas with the Kranks, a Revolution Studios comedy based on Grisham's Skipping Christmas, grossed a festive $74 million. The same company is also fast-tracking Bleachers, Grisham's sentimental novel about high school football. Now the prolific author will test Hollywood's appetite for his first attempt at nonfiction with the story of Ronald Keith Williamson, a promising baseball player who spent 12 years on death row before new DNA evidence exonerated him. Agent David Gernert of the Gernert Company said his client is in heavy research mode and he does not expect a finished manuscript for several months. Doubleday will publish the as-yet-untitled book in 2006.
Briefs... If you live in New York, it was hard to miss last week's tabloid headlines announcing the arrest of Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito (ironically, the author of Mafia Cop: The Story of an Honest Cop Whose Family Was the Mob, which Pocket is bringing back into print), the retired NYPD cops who allegedly led secret lives as Mafia hit men. If the charges that the two officers played a role in the murders of eight men are true, the story is hands-down the biggest scandal to hit the force since Det. Frank Serpico blew the whistle on police corruption in the early '70s. Pacino's role in Serpico, based on Peter Maas's book of the same name, has gone down as a classic.
Hollywood loves a good dirty cop story, and this one, with its Donnie Brasco—esque villains and the Untouchables-style team that brought them to justice, seems too good to pass up. However, producers looking to the publishing world for source material may have a fight on their hands. One senior editor who's intrigued by the story predicted, "We'll see a handful of book proposals on the subject in the next few weeks—but I'd say there's only going to be room for one book. Whoever gets a proposal out of a credentialed New Yawk-y beat [reporter] will win the race."
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