IP Finds 🔎: If You like 'Ford v. Ferrari', 'The Vow', 'Black Mirror'...
Plus, the real-life female heroine who saved Egyptian artifacts
Welcome to The Optionist! As always, thanks for reading. If you didn’t get a chance to read my interview with Danny Strong about the making of the opioid drama Dopesick, it is worth the time for anyone puzzling out how to adapt a sprawling current events story for the screen. Danny has some really interesting observations about how to structure story, the advantages of adding fictional characters, and how to compress time.
For me, the takeaway that stuck is a line he credited to Aaron Sorkin: “It’s a painting, not a photograph.” Everybody adapting a true story and everybody reviewing a true story should tape that mantra to their monitor. (And if you came to The Optionist because you saw that White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain tweeted out the interview, welcome aboard! Let me know what you think of it.)
I also wanted to flag a great story over at The Ankler about how — even with their mega-deals — Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, and the Obamas, are finding development pretty damn hard (who knew?). Royals author and legendary editor Tina Brown is quoted as saying, “I think the Sussexes are beginning to realize the mirage of ‘entertainment deals,’ which are wildly difficult to deliver on as everyone in Hollywood knows.” The piece also unpacks the death of the vanity deal in town these days as belts tighten, which, to me, sure sounds like an opportunity for independent writers and producers.
To that end, I’d love to help you out. If you like what we are doing here at The Optionist, building a community of creatives, I would love for you to support our work. I believe you will find a lot of value in what we deliver.
I’ve been watching the new Apple+ show Five Days at Memorial. What got me interested in it for Optionist readers is the long and winding road it took to get to the screen. This version is the third attempt to bring it to screen. The show is based on the 2013 book of the same name by journalist Sheri Fink, which itself is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning articles she wrote about the 2005 tragedy at Memorial Hospital during Hurricane Katrina. Scott Rudin scooped up the rights to the buzzy book right after it came out. In 2017, after the movie option lapsed, Ryan Murphy picked up the TV rights to do the story as a season of American Crime Story. But when that version fell apart, Carlton Cuse and John Ridley got the rights to do it with ABC Signature and Apple+. All of this is a reminder that so many good projects don’t come to fruition for so many reasons, and how important it is to keep tracking books even after they sold, because you never know when the rights will come back up for sale.
Now on to this week's picks. To kick things off, we’ve got a crazy NXIVM-like story
in a ballet program in Boston. (Trust me, this story is wild.) We’ve also got a Mindy Kaling-esque memoir of a woman rediscovering herself when she chucked city life for farm living, a sci-fi murder mystery and the forgotten story of a badass female archeologist who helped save some of Egypt’s greatest treasures from being lost behind a new dam in the 1960s.
JOURNALISM
#MeToo Drama
* For Fans of Black Swan and The Vow (or really any NXIVM show)
* Potential logline: A young ballet star accuses her mentor and mentor's husband of sexually exploiting their young students. But the mentor says it's the stage mom manager who's really to blame.
“Former Boston Ballet star Dusty Button and her husband file explosive counterclaim, deny abuse allegations” by Malcolm Gay (Boston Globe, Aug. 19) This is a crazy story that somehow hasn't gotten a ton of national attention (yet). It started last year when seven young dancers with the Boston Ballet accused star Dusty Button and her husband, Mitchell, of sexual assault, trafficking and rape. Then the Buttons responded in a court filing by naming a bunch of third parties as the real culprits. But now in a weird twist, the Buttons amended their complaint by withdrawing some of their most damning counterclaims but keeping others, including claims that Sage Humphries, a principal accuser in the suit, was essentially coaxed into a consensual throuple relationship with the Buttons by her mother (talk about a stage mother from hell) and that her mother had also essentially prostituted her to billionaire men like Daryl Katz, owner of the NHL's Edmonton Oilers, who was considering investing in a movie starring Humphries. Of the other accusers, the Buttons say they're just trying to get famous on the "MeToo Circuit." This case is far from over but there's a great doc in here and probably a scripted adaptation centered on Humphries. There's also a great recent Boston magazine story about the case that came out just before these new counterclaims (plus lots of court filings packed with info). REPS: The Globe and Boston magazine for the stories. Humphries’ lawyer is Sigrid MacCawley, a partner at Boies Schiller.
BOOKS I LIKE (current)
MEMOIR/DRAMEDY
*For Fans of: Wild, Under the Tuscan Sun, anything Mindy Kaling
*High-powered city girl burns out and becomes a country gal with results that are both hilarious and heartwarming.
Daffodil Hill by Jake Keiser (Dial Press, June 2022) After a miscarriage and a failed marriage, real-life PR exec Keiser traded her high-flying life in Tampa for a farm and a herd of goats in rural Mississippi, with hilarious and heartwarming results. She learns with a bit of trial-and-error how to do farm things and also to enjoy small town life. But she also realizes that changes in latitudes don't always bring changes in attitudes (I know, groan, sorry) and that real healing is going to require her to confront the traumas of her past. Daffodil Hill would be attractive to lots of actresses who would love the mix of comedy and drama in one role. Or really any actress around Keiser's early-40s age looking for a juicy part. It feels part Northern Exposure, part Under the Tuscan Sun, mixed with Wild. (My pick: Jennifer Aniston, whose comedic touch on Friends was always underrated and who has shown her dramatic chops on The Morning Show.) REPS: Aevitas
ACTION/DRAMA
* For fans of: Indiana Jones and Monuments Men
* Potential logline: How a pioneering female archeologist almost singlehandedly saved Egypt’s greatest treasures from being lost to the waters of a massive dam.
Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt's Ancient Temples from Destruction by Lynne Olson (Random House, Feb.) This is a genuinely kick-ass archaeology thriller that tells the amazing and true story of how dozens of Egyptian historic sites were moved out of the way of a new dam that would have destroyed them, and the crusading female archaeologist who made it happen. As a young girl, Christiane Desroches Noblecourt was fascinated by the 1922 discovery of King Tut's tomb. In the 1930s, she became the first female to join the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology, and the first French woman to lead her own dig. In the ’40s, she saved the Louvre's Egyptian collection from the Nazis by hiding it around the country. In the late 1950s when it became clear that the new dam would threaten such treasures as the Temple of Abu Simbel, Desroches Noblecourt leapt into action. Working with UNESCO, she got some 50 countries to donate $1 billion to the rescue, went toe-to-toe with such figures as Gamal Abdel Nasser and Charles De Gaulle over the effort and recruited First Lady Jackie Kennedy to persuade her husband to get the U.S. to join the cause. Not only did Desroches Noblecourt help save these world historical sites, she also helped changed the course of relations between Egypt and the West (that’s why we got the King Tut exhibitions). When she passed away in 2011 at 97, French President Nicolas Sarkozy saluted her as the “grande dame of the Nile.” Olson has a couple of earlier books under development, including Madame Fourcade's Secret War, about the largest spy network in WWII France. This should make it a third. REPS: 3 Artists Agency
DYSTOPIA/MURDER MYSTERY/SCI-FI
* For fans of: Black Mirror and Blade Runner
* Potential logline: In a world where a quarter of the population doesn't need sleep, a journalist investigates his boss's murder and discovers the shocking truth behind the hyper-insomnia pandemic.
The Sleepless by Victor Mandibo (Erewhon Books, just out) In the near future a pandemic has created chaos when it leaves a quarter of the world's population without the need for sleep. In this world, we get journalist Jamie Vega, who is one of the sleepless (though from biohacking, not the original pandemic). On the eve of a big merger, he finds his boss dead. He doesn't believe it's really suicide and launches an investigation of his own. Then the police begin to suspect murder and point the finger at Jamie, the last person to see his boss alive. Problem is, Jamie doesn't remember a thing about that night — one of the side effects of being sleepless is that it messes with your memory. The deeper he gets into solving his boss's murder the more disturbing information he learns about the origins of the pandemic and how it may threaten humanity's future. Jamie is a compelling lead character with a traumatic past that shadows his investigation. There's great world building here that would be fun to navigate — what does a world look like full of hyper insomniacs? — and I love the sci-fi/murder-mystery genre mashup. If this worked as a one-off movie or limited series, there's enough world to be able to build out new iterations to keep the story going. REPS: APA
SECOND CHANCES (older material worth a look)
ACTION/DRAMA/SPORTS
* For fans of: Ford vs. Ferrari, Rush, Drive to Survive
* Potential logline: The amazing life of adventure-seeker, sportswriter and barrier-breaking female race-car driver Denise McCluggage, set during her greatest triumph – winning the 1961 12 Hours at Sebring Race
“Lady Leadfoot: She raced cars when few women dared. But more than trophies or prize money, it was the zen of driving that pulled her in. This is the story of Denise McCluggage, America’s once-fastest woman” by Amy Wallace (Sports Illustrated, Oct. 29, 2018) Done in partnership between Sports Illustrated and Epic Magazine, this 2018 piece about a mostly forgotten early female race-car driver Denise McCluggage — the first woman to win the famed 12 Hours of Sebring race, all the way back in 1961 — fell through the cracks. Maybe the period setting or hesitancy about audience interest in auto racing scared away buyers, but someone should rectify that error now that F1 is resurgent. This is a fab story with a great lead in Denise McCluggage. In addition to racing cars, she was a sportswriter, a founder of Auto Week magazine and a noted adventure junkie who didn't just write about sports, but also jumped out of airplanes, extreme skied and was a fencing champion. (Bonus Hollywood connection: She was married to actor Michael Conrad of Hill Street Blues fame for a hot minute.) But she achieved her greatest notoriety in auto racing which she picked up after meeting Briggs Cunningham, who brought the first American cars to Le Mans, in the early 1950s. When she moved to New York in 1954 to work for the Herald Tribune she began racing professionally (in a signature white helmet with pink polka dots). Not only was motor racing a man's sport at the time, but it was crazy dangerous, and drivers died all the time. This piece tees up a great structure for any adaptation. It is framed around a tick-tock of the Sebring Race she won, interspersed with flashbacks to earlier moments to chart how she got there. Someone should get this story in front of car lover Sydney Sweeney, who would seem like a natural to play McCluggage. And given the newfound popularity of F1, an adaption would be perfect complementary programming for a network or streamer that has dipped into that sport. REPS: CAA
Thanks for reading along with me! We’ll see you again next week, but if you have any questions always feel free to email me at andy@optionist.community.