Today's Picks: A Ted Turner Bio, a 'Knives Out' Opp, Basquiat Mystery

An Ankler newsletter about available IP; I do the reading for you

The Mouth of the South: Turner at the official CNN launch event in Atlanta on June 1, 1980. (Rick Diamond/Getty Images)

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Two stories this week — one about Jenna Bush Hager starting a book-focused production shingle and Mindy Kaling starting her own publishing imprint with Amazon — had me thinking a lot about my recent conversation with PR legend Paul Bogaards and his observations about the rising importance of book clubs. Hager is using the success of her Today book club as evidence that she has an eye for successful adaptations. Kaling has such a strong identity for female-forward diverse romcoms and witty self-deprecating personal essays that most people already have a vague idea of what a Mindy Kaling Press book would be like. Both deals attest to the value of IP, especially books, and to the eagerness of studios to get a jump on the acquisition process. Both Hager and Kaling seem to be offering authors a big megaphone for their books in exchange for agreeing to option their books to them. It will be interesting to see what authors think that’s a good deal.

This week I’ve got a mystery involving 25 Basquiat paintings that has ensnared a pioneering Black TV writer in its web, a great book that pays homage to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, and a feel-good romance for CODA fans. 

Q&A: Ted Turner Biographer Porter Bibb

*Trigger Warning*This piece discusses suicide and suicidal ideation, and some people might find it disturbing. If you or someone you know is suicidal, please, contact your physician, go to your local ER, or call a suicide prevention hotline. For the United States, The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-TALK (8255), or message the Crisis Text Line at 741741. Both programs provide free, confidential support 24/7.

But first, all the drama around CNN and Jeff Zucker got me thinking about Ted Turner. I called up Porter Bibb, who wrote the best-selling 1993 biography of CNN founder Ted Turner, Ted Turner: It Ain't As Easy as It Looks. Bibb told me about how he came to be Turner’s biographer, and, most interestingly, Turner’s unsparing, unfavorable thoughts about CNN under recently-ousted Jeff Zucker, and John Malone’s relationship to Turner.

Turner’s life — his father’s suicide, winning the America’s Cup, turning a rinky-dink Atlanta station at the end of the dial into a media powerhouse, his marriage to Jane Fonda — is the raw material for a great TV series. In the age of streaming, Bibb thinks Turner’s full life is better suited for a multi-part limited series, though he compares the possibilities not unfairly to Scorsese’s Howard Hughes biopic, The Aviator. (Interested? Ping me and I’ll put you in touch with Bibb, who controls the rights).

The book was optioned years ago to a couple of Turner executives, but rights eventually reverted to Bibb. A few others have kicked the tires, including Oliver Stone. But as Bibb explains, he’s feeling a new eagerness to see something come to screen both because of the timeliness of the story and Turner’s declining health. 

Bibb was Rolling Stone’s first publisher where he recruited high school buddy Hunter Thompson to write for Jann Wenner’s publication; now he’s an investment banker (currently at Mediatech Capital Partners) specializing in media deals for 40 years.

Q. How did you end up writing Turner’s biography?

I sold CBS on the idea of a primetime special on the America's Cup, the greatest yacht race in the world. I spent the summer of 1974 in Newport filming. And I focus on this guy, Ted Turner. The people who were running the America's Cup did not like him. They gave him a metal hulled boat. They said, ‘Here's something new we've come up with. Let's see if you can do anything with it.’  And of course he couldn't because it was too heavy. In the middle of the trials, he took a blow torch and personally took about 18 inches off the stern. Of course, they threw him out after that, but he came back four years later and won the America's Cup. He was so popular and such a good sailor that all the best crews in the country wanted to go with him. I made those films and they were the lowest-rated primetime television shows CBS had ever had. Roll the clock forward to 1990. I was amazed that with all the things that Turner had done and that no one had written his story. I went to Atlanta and said, ‘I’m doing this biography. I’m not gonna ask your permission because I don't want it to be authorized, but I just wanted you to be aware.’ And he said, ‘Bugger off Porter because I've taken a million dollar advance from Simon and Schuster to write my own story.’ I laughed. ‘Ted you and I both know that you’ll never put pen to paper.’ Simon and Schuster ended up suing him to get their million dollars back because he didn't ever start. He told me, ‘I’m gonna fire anybody you talk to who works for me.’ But I interviewed 222 people who worked for Turner plus two of his three wives and all his kids. When the book came out Ted brought 500 copies and sent them out as Christmas presents. 

Q. What makes you eager to see a Turner biopic now? 

Ted has Lewy Body Syndrome — the same irreversible brain disease that Robin Williams had and he ended up killing himself. I thought this is the same thing that could happen to Ted. Ted's famous for carrying a silver pistol that his dad committed suicide with. He's packed it all his life. If he loses his brain I'm sure that he will follow Robin Williams so I thought, it's time to get something made. 

Q. What are some things you’d want to see in a Turner story on screen?

I call him the first honest billionaire because he gave a billion dollars to the United Nations to initially pay the dues the U.S. owed and hadn't paid for more than a decade. He really created the Giving Pledge that Gates and Buffet have taken up. He is the largest landowner in the United States — well second now to John Malone — and he's deeded all of it to the Nature Conservancy. He’s the greatest ocean racing sailor in history. You’ve got CNN and he also created the first satellite television station. One of the most extraordinary things he did, which almost nobody remembers, is after the US pulled out of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, he created his own Olympics in Moscow – the Goodwill Games – which was a huge financial and sporting success. He bought the Atlanta Braves and took them from last place to the World Series. He used to say he paid a dollar for the Braves because – no one will believe this, but it's absolutely true – nobody had been taking the cash out of the safe from the concession stands for about 10 years in the stadium. He opened it up and found enough money to recoup the purchase price (of $12 million).

Q. What is Ted like as a person?

He is the most competitive individual I've ever met. They call him ‘The Mouth of the South.’ He's very garrulous. He dominates any room he walks into. He doesn't have a lot of friends. He has a photographic memory –  in trans-Atlantic sailboat races he’d take the wheel all day and all night reciting Shakespeare and other classics to the crew from memory. I call him the first honest billionaire, because he has never hurt anybody. He's made money for anybody who's worked with him. When he bought New Line Cinema, the head who was a friend of mine called me up, ‘Ted’s invited me out to one of his ranches to talk about buying my company. I need to know how to deal with him.’ I said, ‘You can't deal with him. He will tell you what's gonna happen. And you will do it because it's usually a fair proposal.’ I've never met anybody who said, ‘I can't stand the guy’. They all find him very compelling.

Q. What does Turner think about CNN now?

I have not spoken to him [recently], because candidly he cannot really carry on a conversation. His brain is starting to go. But he’s been adamantly [against] what Zucker did with CNN, turning it into an opinion network, to compete with Fox and losing the concept of hard news 24/7 was wrong.

Q. He’d agree with John Malone (who suggested CNN emphasize hard news)? 

They’re buddies, even though Malone (the single-largest shareholder in Discovery, which is merging with CNN’s parent Warner Media) basically beat him into the ground when he came up short on trying to buy the MGM film library. But they became very close after that. John Malone is not only speaking his own opinion of what CNN should be doing as an all-news network, but he speaks for Ted. 

Q. What would Ted make of streaming as a business opportunity?

He would definitely relish the opportunity if he were 40 years younger.  

Q. What the streaming news business needs is an innovator like Ted Turner, the kind of person who gambled on cable news and won, to figure it out? 

It would have to be interactive. I think that AR and the metaverse is going to revolutionize streaming, especially in news, because you're gonna be able to be there on the streets in Kiev, for example. I have no idea whether Zucker had the brains or the foresight to go beyond just taking what it is now and streaming it. I can't understand what he was doing with Chris Wallace and some of the other people that he was planning on hiring to be on the CNN streamer.

Q. Did anyone at CNN ever reach out to him?

No.  He was sidelined by Jerry Levin, the head of Time Warner. Jerry called Ted at 2:30 AM on the morning of the AOL deal (in 2000). That was the first that Ted heard of it and he was on the board and was the largest shareholder at the time. It was the worst business deal in the world for Ted. He had over $20 billion net worth before AOL. Once that deal dissolved, Ted's wealth shrank by more than 50 percent. After that he became known as a hostile shareholder. Levin and company took away his number one parking space at Turner Field. They said, ‘Ted, your son Ted Jr. is getting paid too much. You're not using him.’ Nobody including Zucker today had any time of day for Ted Turner or any of his ideas. He just grew increasingly critical of the fact that they were not an all news network anymore.

Q. Do you think the culture of CNN has changed over the years? 

CNN has become much more bureaucratic and institutionalized. Ted basically has been taking lithium now for more than 50 years. When he was running CNN he would stay up 24, 30 even 40 hours and then crash. He lived and slept at CNN. He had a little apartment on top of the newsroom building. They wouldn't see him for another 24 hours and then he'd come back full of energy.

BOOKS I LIKE (current) 

Courtroom Drama

Against All Tides: The Untold Story of the USS Kitty Hawk Race Riot by Marvin Truhe (Chicago Review Press, October) 

The story of the 23 Black sailors who were court-martialed for their role in the 1972 racial clashes aboard the Kitty Hawk (sometimes called the U.S. Navy's only mutiny), told by one of the JAG lawyers who defended them. Think A Few Good Men meets Black Lives Matter. But this story doesn't have to fall into the white savior tropes because there's a rich ensemble of parts for Black actors (and a Native American officer) and the way to make this sing is to spend equal time on the incident as with the court case. REPS: Wordserve Literary

A feel-good romance for CODA fans 

The Sign for Home by Blair Fell (Atria, April) 

When 23-year-old deaf and blind Arlo hires a new interpreter to help him out with a summer writing course at college, he learns that his uncle and regular interpreter haven't always faithfully communicated for him, making decisions for him without telling him. Further, he learns that his long lost boarding school love who they told him was dead might, in fact, be alive. Arlo heads out for New York City — alone — to find her while the old and new interpreters team up to find him and reunite him with his love. In the past, Arlo would have been an Oscar bait role for a fully-abled actor (Alex, I'll Al Pacino's Scent of a Woman hoo-ah for $500). And that's still possible, but the key now would be to find an actor from the deaf or blind community to play the role. CODA reminded us that the talent is there. REPS: Sterling Lord Literistic

For Knives Out fans 

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney (Flatiron Books, August) 

A great locked room mystery that pays homage to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. The dysfunctional Darker family assembles on Halloween at Seaglass, their crumbling seaside Cornish estate to celebrate the matriarch's 80th birthday. When the tide comes in, the house is cut off from the mainland for eight hours and then grandma is found dead and shortly after another family member. Can the remaining family members figure out who the killer is and how the murders relate the family's past before they're all killed? Come for the dysfunctional family fun. Stay for the wicked twist at the end. REPS: Curtis Brown, UK

Period Mystery 

A Botanist's Guide to Parties and Poison by Kate Khavari (Crooked Lane Books, June 7)

First, can we all agree that this is a great title? And that we also love something pitched as a "STEMinist adventure." In 1920s London, Saffron Everleigh, a young female researcher in the botany department at University College London is trying to get ahead despite her colleagues' sexist beliefs that women lack the academic abilities of men. While attending a dinner party, a professor's wife is poisoned to death and her mentor is the chief suspect. Saffron teams up with a cute colleague (romance alert!) and must use her knowledge of botanical poisons and toxins to clear his name. If I had the power, I would slip this to Emma Watson, who could use a fun mystery-romance romp to get her excited about acting again. REPS: Crooked Lane

Backlist Gems (books deserving a second look)

Drama

Minor Dramas and Other Catastrophes by Kathleen West (Berkley, 2020)

This 2020 novel recently had its original option lapse, which is surprising considering how timely the story about the goings-on at a privileged Minnesota high school feels. There’s the catty secret Facebook group that gets outed, the controversies over teaching queer theory and white privilege, and the viral incident captured on video — did a teacher accidentally elbow a student or punch them? It is full of characters that are at once recognizable — the helicopter parents, the beloved English teacher, the new arrival — and here made distinct. One thing I like about this story is how it turns a minor incident — the viral video — into a major drama, which sounds like pretty much every internet culture story today. There’s enough here to sustain an ongoing ensemble series and to prove the hour-long network drama isn’t dead…yet. REPS: UTA  

Journalism 

Documentary, mystery

“In Orlando, 25 Mysterious Basquiats Come Under the Magnifying Glass: Vibrant paintings on cardboard said to be by the artist were found in the storage unit of a Hollywood screenwriter. Will a museum show resolve questions about their authenticity — or raise new ones?” By Brett Sokol (The New York Times, Feb. 16) 

This probably begins and ends as a mystery doc but even if that's all it yields it's still a super cool mystery – actually two mysteries. The first: Are these 25 Basquiat paintings on cardboard scraps real or fakes? If they're real, they could be worth $100 million. But there are warring camps of Basquiat experts authenticating and dismissing the paintings. And of course part of the difficulty is the way Basquiat worked and hustled, often selling paintings on the sly for a quick buck. The second: How did they come into the possession of the pioneering Black TV writer Thad Mumford, a man not known to be interested in modern art, and what happened to him? In the 70s, when there were few Black TV writers, Mumford was the rare exception, with a credit list that included four seasons on M*A*S*H, an Emmy for The Electric Company and a string of other work across multiple genres. Why did his career dry up in the mid-90s and what happened to him after that? If the paintings are real, why did he stash them in a storage locker and forget them? REPS: Anonymous Content 

Procedural

“The Missing Persons Investigator Who Went Missing Herself: Andrea Knabel spent countless hours searching for missing people. Then one day she was the one who disappeared. Her family and friends—and half the internet—are still searching” by Mark Oprea (Narratively, Feb. 7)

Helping locate a missing friend got Andrea Knabel hooked on trying to help find other missing persons. She became a go-to person in the network of amateur missing person sleuths. Then she herself went missing. Her friends among the missing hunters (a world of colorful characters like Tracy Leonard, the PI who runs Loc8tors, an agency dedicated to finding the missing, and Nancy Schaefer, a former accountant who founded the amateur group Missing in America) then teamed up in vain to find her. There was an Amazon docuseries about the case, but the network of amateur missing persons sleuths would be the basis for a great procedural series. Think Cold Case for the Facebook age. REPS: APA

Thanks for reading! Have a great weekend and happy reading. See you back here next Friday. Please check out The Ankler, which the New York Times calls a “hit Hollywood newsletter” if you love the business of entertainment.