IP Picks🔎: A Swashbuckling, True 'Shōgun'
➕ A series-ready procedural and romance at an Ivy League startup
Welcome to The Optionist. Thanks for reading along. Before we launch into this week’s picks, I want to share this New York Times story about Notes to John, a new book by the late Joan Didion that comes out next week. It’s fascinating. The book is cobbled together from 150 pages (or so) of diary entries and notes that Didion addressed to her husband John Gregory Dunne about their daughter Quintana’s alcoholism, Didion’s therapy sessions and her fears about aging. Still, the article left me wondering about what she wanted to be published. Beyond that, it raises relevant questions for everyone from creatives to agents as well as managers, producers and studio executives about how to handle someone’s IP estate.
Didion left no explicit instructions for her three literary trustees about what to do with any of the materials housed in her archives. So does that make it all fair game? One trustee acknowledged that the material “wasn’t written to be published," but another defended the decision as a way of correcting "a misrepresentation of Joan" as cold and remote.
For both Didion fans and literary scholars, Notes to John offers an intimate look at the author’s personal and writing life. Yes, she already shared some of that in The Year of Magical Thinking (about Dunne's sudden death in 2003) and Blue Nights (about Quintana's 2005 death at 39 from acute pancreatitis). But the topic of her daughter’s drinking and the effect it had on her is one that she mostly tiptoed around in those previous books.
As an IP issue, this raises questions about how exactly creative estates should operate. These issues have become more prominent — and more complicated — as the financial value of high-profile creative estates has taken off in recent years, whether in music or publishing. Some authors destroy their papers, which is not only quite dramatic in a Victorian sort of way but also a tragedy for future generations looking for insight. Others leave their work with an estate, which may or may not have any preset guidelines about which material to withhold or release. The big question for them is this: Why didn’t the author publish it while they were alive?
Once you settle that, other thorny questions arise: Should the material be issued “as is” or is it okay to hire someone else to finish the book . . . or script . . . or song? Where is the line between helping readers better understand a famous artist after their death and voyeuristically exploiting their private lives? There is a big difference between leaving your papers for scholars to study and publishing entire diary entries and personal correspondence in a splashy manner.
One reason why so many musicians (hey there, Bob Dylan!) have sold their publishing catalogs recently is it relieves their heirs of this burden. Some think that yoking children to a parent's work forever robs them of living their own lives. After all, how can someone choose their own path if their whole job is managing a parent’s legacy? Of course, some folks are eager to do that emotionally fraught work, but many are not. Another upside, of course, is the fat check the artist often gets as part of the deal.
For creators, the lesson here is the importance of leaving detailed instructions — the more detailed, the better. Write it down. Be clear. Sell the rights if you don’t want to burden others with the decision. But don’t ignore the responsibility. And do it early. You never know when the unexpected may happen. Plus, you can always later revise your instructions.
It’s the same counsel I offer writers when they ask for advice about getting optioned. Creating is both an art and a business. Be good at the former and smart about the latter. Know what you are getting and what you are giving up so you can make an informed decision.
Didion didn’t do this. But as the NYT notes, she “was savvy about the publishing industry; she likely knew that any literary documents she left behind could be released.” Her friend Calvin Trillin thinks Didion would have given her blessing to Notes to John. Meanwhile, her longtime assistant Cory Leadbeater cops to being more conflicted. “My guess is that she would not be thrilled that her private life was being so explicitly exposed, and also that she would completely understand the literary interest.”
On to this week’s picks, which include a fantastic and true adventure tale from the 1800s, a young-love novel that’s also a business drama and a pair of horror stories. The full lineup:
A real-life historical drama that’s part Shōgun, part The Man Who Would Be King
A romantic drama about a pair of Ivy League students who invent a wonder drug, fall in love and then deal with a scandal that threatens them both
A procedural with grown-up, Veronica Mars energy that’s series-ready
A Western/psychological horror story set during a cattle drive
A horror tale in the mold of Stephen King’s It and Stand by Me
