IP Picks🔎: Jane Austen Goes to Maine
âž• A mystery in Havana and a moving story about grief
Welcome to The Optionist. Thanks for being here.
I want to flag a good story about the marketplace from the Ankler's Elaine Low, but first I want to take a moment to remember Norman Lear. Like pretty much everyone who ever met him, I’ve got a great Lear story.
Back in 2016, I was working on a project at The Hollywood Reporter called "Creative Until You Die," which examined 10 people in the business still working in their 90s — Dick Van Dyke, Don Rickles, Cloris Leachman, Carl Reiner, etc. I volunteered to profile Jerry Lewis, because I knew he'd be tough and I figured I could handle him. Ha. That interview turned into a legendary disaster.
A couple of days later, still shaken, I went up to Lear's house to interview him for the series. (Given the choice of who I wanted to profile, Lear, a hero of mine, was my pick.) Lear invited me to sit at his kitchen table and have a cup of coffee as the photographer set up. Martin Schoeller, who has photographed everyone from Barack Obama down, was telling the crew that Jerry Lewis was the rudest and most difficult celebrity he'd ever encountered. Hearing "worst" and "rudest," Lear perked up. "Who?" At first, we were reluctant to tell the story, but he kept prodding us — you could tell that Lear loved good gossip. So I relented. I had Lear laughing so hard at how it all went south. It took some of the sting off what happened to see him relishing the story with such delight. When I finished, Lear told us how he had lived for a few months in Lewis' pool house when he first moved to Hollywood — his first job was writing bits for Lewis and Dean Martin on the Colgate Comedy Hour — and how difficult and ornery he found Lewis. He nicknamed him "The Pope" because Jerry thought himself infallible. Lear told us the story not with rancor, but with mirth. You could see the sitcom writer who mined the worst human foibles for comedy in the storyteller.
That one incident taught me so much. I loved Lear's curiosity. Most of us lose it as we get older, but not Lear. I really believe one thing that kept him vibrant was he never lost interest in hearing new stories and learning about people. I also loved how he mined his bad experience for comedy. It'd have been easy to go off on what a jerk Lewis was, but Lear responded to it with humor. I try to remember that lesson in my own life. I recall hoping something would go wrong with the camera so I'd get more time just to sit around Lear's breakfast table shooting the breeze with him.
Before we get to this week's lineup, I wanted to highlight this excellent piece by The Ankler's own Elaine Low about the state of the TV buyers’ market. (Subscribers only, so subscribe.) Having checked in with writers, agents and producers, she runs down where we are. Her take is that the market, having dealt with the strikes, mergers and the hangover from Covid is "in a very weird place going into 2024." Her sources told her one thing that is moving is straight comedies ("hard funny" in the parlance of some agents), classic half-hour sitcom type things. Also attracting attention is procedurals. Basically, for all that is new, buyers are looking for the kinds of things that have perennially thrived on TV since TV was invented. There's a lot more here than I've described. For anyone pitching or purchasing, it is definitely worth a read.
Here’s the rundown for this week:
A rom-com that’s a modern and diverse reworking of an Austen classic.
A Havana-set mystery about a woman searching for her lost mother.
A domestic thriller centered on married teachers and the student who might be having an affair with one of them.
A drama with comic elements about a woman coping with a friend’s suicide and the theft of some heirlooms.
We’re in a bit of an odd place on the calendar. Between what Elaine reported on the market and the time of year, it definitely feels like agents are holding back some material until 2024. On the other hand, the rhythms of publishing don’t reflect that, so for all these books, early copies are circulating elsewhere (to booksellers and reviews, for example). My philosophy is once books are out in the wild like that, it’s time. As always, if you’re a paid subscriber and interested in reading something but having trouble getting an advance copy right now, ping me. I might be able to help.