WESTWARD THEY COME. BIG BUCKS FOR BIG BOOKS BY PAUL ROSENFIELD Today's authors who deliver filmable materal are in the midst of their own inflationary spiral. This -part series deals with cur*ent hot properties -the books, the star writers, the bucks. Rosenfield interviewed more than 40 sources in New York, San Francisco Ind Los Angeles. Today's segment covers the novie deals and deal makers. EW YORK-At Elaine's, a famed N writers' Publishers watering Row, the hole, and indications all along are clear, that one trend is now overlapping another. The Big Book era -one true phenomenon of the '70s-has begun a shift. to California. Finding a major publisher in before, however. That balmy time is long gone when the late Jack Warner could be sold a manuscript in a Palm Springs sauna. Warner was notorious for buying fast, and for flat fees -sometimes prudently ("Mildred Pierce") and sometimes not ("Youngblood Hawke"). Today's negotiations are not so simple: Authors' contracts often exceed 40 pages and include such terms as rolling breakeven and cross-collateralization. The phraseology makes today's negotiations seem wholly impersonal. Is the traditional "smallness" of publishing -the cultivated one-on-one relationships -an anachronism? "Quite the contrary," claims Evarts Ziegler, long the acknowledged dean of L.A. literary agents. "Today's dealing is more straightforward. And there are more gentlemen involved." There's also more money. Much more. Last fall, over a Polo Lounge lunch, attor- -agent George Diskant instigated the largest -ever sale for a piece of new fiction. Author Paul Erdman ("Crash of '79") is guaranteed $1.2 million for a novel to be called "Atlantic City." The buyers are Simon & Schuster and Pocket Books. The film ver- Manhattan last week wasn't simple: Simon & Schuster's -in-chief Michael Korda was returning from Los Angeles just as Delacorte boss Ross Claiborne was arriving. In September, Random House's David Obst will relocate in Hollywood. At a trendy Madison Avenue bookshop, one customer suggested subtitling the best -seller section "California." The fact is that Los Angeles -in terms of per capita sales -is now America's biggest book market, and Southern California now has the largest number of library checkouts in the world. Deal making, too, is emanating more and more from the West Coast. It's different than sion also was concocted at the lunch: It will be a joint venture including Erdman, director Sydney Pollack and producer George Englund. Its genesis was somewhat simple, reminiscent almost of the Warner era. (Details on Erdman and his deal next week in Calendar.) Englund, well- versed in the workings of Las Vegas, wanted to do a picture about : a gaming town. Erdman, adept at inventing financially themed fiction, was a natural choice, and so was agent Diskant, whose powers of attorney are not taken lightly in Hollywood's complicated deal making today. This particular barter is a breakthrough Please Turn to Page 32
