What It Takes to Turn a Bestseller into a Box Office Hit with Bob Bookman

Welcome back to On Production, a podcast brought to you by Wrapbook. Today, I'm joined by Bob Bookman, a literary agent, manager, and producer whose career has helped shape some of the most memorable film adaptations in the last four decades. Bob began his career representing storytellers who would define a generation. Authors like Michael Crichton, John Irving, and Tom Wolfe, and filmmakers including Cameron Crowe, Jonathan Demme, and Tom Stoppard.

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His keen sense for cinematic potential helped bring classics like The Silence of the Lambs, Jurassic Park, and A Beautiful Mind from page to screen. After decades at agencies, including ICM and CAA, Bob founded Bob Bookman Management and later Smarty Pants Ventures, where he continues to champion the connection between literature and film. His recent projects include A Complete Unknown, starring Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan, and A Spy Among Friends, the limited series starring Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce. In our conversation, we'll explore how Bob navigates the process of turning great material into produced work, from securing rights and packaging teams to adapting stories for today's global market. We'll also talk about how producing has evolved, what it takes to get a project greenlit, and how the role of the producer is changing in today's industry. We're thrilled to have Bob with us today. Let's get into it.

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The first thing I want to know, Bob, is you've had this really remarkable career spanning over four decades in Hollywood in this really focused area. Five decades, you say, OK, in this world of

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Bob Bookman (02:36.898)

Yesterday was my 53rd anniversary. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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Cameron Woodward (02:39.982)

Really? That's in the industry or with your wife? That's awesome. 53. Did you do anything special?

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Bob Bookman (02:48.032)

I don't know, get back to you on that.

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Cameron Woodward (02:49.742)

All right. What's amazing though is like, Bob, like within your, within your world, you like, really have this incredible penchant between like the literary to film space. I'm curious, how did your early experiences as a literary agent shape your understanding of what makes a story cinematic? And then how has that perspective evolved as the industry and audiences have changed over 50 years?

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Bob Bookman (03:12.888)

Yeah, well, that's the thing. mean, because to me, you know, a great movie is a great movie or even a very good movie is a very good movie. And the question is, will the audience discover it or not? And right now, you know, we're in a particularly difficult place, especially post COVID, getting people to get it go to the theater. You know, as somebody said to me the other day, I thought it was kind of useless. You know, even if you like to only cook at home every now and then, you like to eat out and the

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thing is we've got to get people eating out more often. And I think that especially with my generation, which is the baby boom generation, we were film goers. And we're sort of starting to, on the older side, but I think we still like great movies. think again, it's about getting.

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it's gotta be something special because it's so easy to stay home and watch streamers and so forth. And I do that myself. it's, you've gotta like, yeah. I mean, for example, I have two sons and two grandsons and I took them to see Naked Gun in the theater. I can't imagine seeing that anywhere but in a theater. And we all loved it. It was great. And it was like, I can't believe that they thought they were taking a risk in making a movie like this today.

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And now, of course, what's going to happen is it's going to spawn a lot of imitators that aren't going to be nearly as good. And someone's going to say in three or four years, see, no one wants to see those movies.

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Cameron Woodward (04:50.54)

I'm sure you've seen that market cycle go over and over and over.

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Bob Bookman (04:53.126)

yeah. Yeah, and it is a cycle. know, there was a time when everybody wanted IP and then nobody wanted IP. And now we're back to everybody wants IP, but I think they wanted as a kind of safety net as maybe as an excuse. used to be you had a star as an excuse. Well, he was a star. I mean, how was I to know the movie wasn't going to work? You know, well, this is grounded IP. We based it on that important piece of material. How was I to know it wasn't going to

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Cameron Woodward (05:22.714)

Are there things though, Bob, over the last decades that like you still feel in your bones just have not changed? Like specifically, like, you you were a literary agent, you were reading amazing stories then, you read amazing stories now, and some of them you decide to push on to bring to the screen.

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Bob Bookman (05:40.632)

Well, I'm going to say something that you're probably going to laugh, but alas, it's true. You know, I used to appear before panels and symposiums and things like that. And inevitably someone said, so Mr. Bookman, tell me when you're going out with a new piece of material, what is your process? And I would say, you know, I think I do something I'm not sure any other agent in Hollywood does. The first thing I do is read the material. And you see, laugh, but the fact of the matter is this is a business.

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driven by the written word in which more, fewer and fewer people actually A, take the time to read and then know how to read. You have to be able to read something not in your own head, but in the head of is this gonna be a movie? And I just naturally do that, I think because of how long I've been doing it.

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Cameron Woodward (06:31.928)

I mean, you've worked with some really awesome people. mean, authors like Michael Crichton, John Irving, Tom Wolfe, you know, who gave you a front row seat to how great stories translate to film. What did these collaborations teach you about recognizing not only strong storytelling, but also material that's practically adaptable, the kind of project that can realistically make it to production?

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Bob Bookman (06:56.994)

Well, ironically, I would say you learn more by reading material that isn't that great. Because if you think about what is wrong with this that could be fixed to make it much better material. And when you read those authors, they are so great at what they do that you can lose your sense of proportion and think, wow, it's so easy to do something this great. It's not.

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and you have to figure out when you read something that's not great or a good example, I mean, I think the better the intellectual property, the harder it is to adapt. mean, with great novels, so much of the action takes place inside the protagonist's head and you can't really show that on screen. And if there's more visible action in the book or whatever it is, it's easier to translate that to the screen. I think

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An extraordinary example of that is Cider House Rules. And I still don't believe the extraordinary job John Irving did with his own material. I mean, he is so protective of his material, and he had to compress the time, he had to compress characters, he had to make certain other things to satisfy the inherent three-act structure of a movie, and won an Oscar for it.

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And I just look at that as a standout example, but it's tough. It is really tough.

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Cameron Woodward (08:27.694)

Like let's dig into some of these movies that like our listeners definitely know. I mean, you help bring the films like Silence of the Lambs, Jurassic Park, A Beautiful Mind from the page to screen. Each of those, not only the complexity of turning a story into a thoughtful cinematic adaptation, but on the production side of this, certainly there must've been complex rights deals or creative packaging.

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Bob Bookman (08:34.571)

Yeah.

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Right. Right.

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Cameron Woodward (08:55.406)

the collaboration between the studios, the writers, the filmmakers, from your vantage point, what did those projects teach you about the production realities of turning really great source material into a greenlit film?

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Bob Bookman (09:09.121)

Well, I would say you have to deal with each project individually. mean, there's certain obvious common aspects. You've got to get a script. You've got to get someone to buy the material. Then you've got to get them to get a script. At some point, you attach a director. I think generally you attach a director before an actor because if the director doesn't want to feel unless it's a really big star, of which there's so few now, that

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he's not given the creative ability to at least collaborate on who the actor's gonna be. And actors, if you don't pay them or at least give them a holding fee, they're subject to accepting a pay or play offer from somebody else and now you don't have an actor and maybe have perception of damaged goods. mean, Silence of the Lambs is actually a really good case study because it's so...

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different and so complex if you want me to just sort of hit the highlights because I think it's interesting. Okay, well, great. So what happened was that Michael Mann had made the movie based on the predecessor novel, which was not a successful film. And so when I got the manuscript from the New York agent, and I'd never met Thomas Harris at that time,

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Cameron Woodward (10:07.266)

Please do, or even go deep into it. That'd be delightful.

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Cameron Woodward (10:16.27)

you

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Bob Bookman (10:32.597)

and I read the book and I loved the book and what happened was at that time between the failure of the previous film and the lack of interest at that time in serial killer movies, I literally had no interest in the book. It was on the New York Times bestseller list. I had no interest in the book. It was making me crazy. And I had a still

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great friend at CAA, Fred Spector, who's now 92 years young, who represented Gene Hackman. And he came into my office one day and he said, are the rights to silence at Lamb's available? I said, yes. He said, Gene Hackman wants to buy them. He wants to direct and star in the movie. And he's gone to Arthur Crimm at Orion and there agreed to go 50-50 on the rights. I go, great, let's make a deal, which we did. And it was a very advantageous deal for Tom.

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And in fact, at that point I got a call from Arlene Donovan, who I knew very well at ICM in New York. And I was at CAA at the time. And she said, do know Ted Talley? And I said, no. is he? says, well, he's a wonderful playwright, and he's obsessed with Silence of the Lambs. And I said, I'll introduce you to Bob Sherman. Bob, who I'd known many years before as an executive.

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at Fox and before that was an agent and he was Gene Hackman's agent and now he actually lived in Santa Fe and Gene had gone to him to produce the movie. So Bob actually hired Ted Talley to write Silence of the Lambs and now one day Fred comes into my office and he says, won't believe this, Gene Hackman's daughter read the book. She called her father and says, daddy, you can't make this movie and so Gene is reluctantly

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pulling out and he went to Arthur and he said Arthur I really apologize but I'll eat my share of it and Arthur said I won't let you do that Gene I'll buy your share and we'll just continue. Now another irony is that I represented Jonathan Demme and I had given the book to Jonathan Demme I don't know if he actually read it or not but he didn't want to pursue it and Arthur went to

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Bob Bookman (12:50.315)

Jonathan Demme and said we really want to make this movie and that's when he committed to it and the interesting thing also was when they got into casting that Orion wanted one role for Hannibal Lecter and then they wanted a different actor. I don't remember how it worked back and forth

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but jody foster was one of their choices in anthony hopkins was the other and i mean it's one of only three movies that is one of the five oscars for the top five categories

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Cameron Woodward (13:27.04)

It's unbelievable. I mean,

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Bob Bookman (13:28.555)

And the other thing, just a footnote that is interesting about it is I have a cameo in

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Cameron Woodward (13:34.712)

Really, who are you?

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Bob Bookman (13:36.567)

So the big scene when Dr. Lecter comes off the plane at Memphis Airport in the gurney with the face mask and a limousine pulls up with the Justice Department official in two aids and Senator Martin in her aid and we all get out and I'm one of the two aids to the Justice Department official Ron Waterplated and I take out a book like this one

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Buffalo Bill, you know, says, is what I think he's, and so that's my big, you know, yeah, yeah. Or I can send you the link. You can find it on YouTube so you don't have to go through the whole movie.

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Cameron Woodward (14:09.058)

I'm gonna turn it on tonight, Bob, that's hilarious.

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Cameron Woodward (14:18.088)

I mean, I'm curious, Bob, mean, like, you've learned a lot of these lessons. I mean, like in the instance of, you know, Silence of the Lambs or, or a adaptation like Beautiful Mind, I would imagine that you and the teams are balancing these expectations amongst the authors and the studios and the filmmakers. And you're even working today and bringing great movies to bear. So like, I'm curious, how do you manage that process once a project moves beyond development to keep the creative and

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Cameron Woodward (14:46.208)

intent intact while navigating the production and the business realities that inevitably shaped the final film.

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Bob Bookman (14:53.588)

Right. Well, you you have to stay in touch with the screenwriter and because they are on a schedule in their contract and a lot of times they go over schedule in it. And there's a famous story about George S. Kaufman. This must have been in the 30s and his theater producer, Jed Harris, and he was very overdue on a play. And Harris said to Kaufman, know, George, I want the play. You're overdue. And he said, you want a good or do you want it now?

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And that again in today's terms is another thing. You want to really push a writer who's falling behind and you're not going to hold him to the letter of the contract unless there's some real issue that rarely arises. So it's just about keeping and I also feel that no news is news. In other words, when there's no news and you don't communicate, people think the worst or they think things are going away and you have to say,

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I've spoken to the writer and he's really into it and don't worry, you'll get the script. And just so everybody feels like they're involved in the process. ultimately, you've got to go through the budget process and that also can be a very traumatic thing. I Paramount was famous at one time for right up to the green light, say we're ready to green light, but you've got to take $5 million out of the budget, like the last minute.

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which really drove people, as you can understand, crazy. So all these things are, you know, you have to be kind of a juggler to keep all these things in the air and not let anything fall.

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Cameron Woodward (16:34.818)

Bob, I'm just curious, from your entire catalog of films that you've worked on, from discovery of source material to picture on the screen to audiences, what's the shortest cycle and the longest cycle?

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Bob Bookman (16:47.456)

Well, I'll you the longest because it happened fairly recently. I Jonathan Haar, who wrote A Criminal Mind, a very good writer of both nonfiction books and articles, and he was looking for an article to write for the New Yorker. And I had read it must have been an I'm guessing it was a piece of the New York Times about a funeral home company in

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Mississippi was like six generations and a Canadian conglomerate was trying to had taken them over was basically trying to crush them and they had hired this very sort of flamboyant black lawyer from Florida and they had won the case and I called Jonathan I said I don't know why this sounds this lawyer in particular sounds like a really interesting subject for New Yorker article

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So he writes this article, it's called The Burial. And it was extraordinary article and I sold the rights outright to Warner Brothers. Now the irony is, the difference just explains so people understand, normally when you sell the rights to a book, you sell an option. Which means they have an exclusive right over a period of time, I would say the conventional period is 18 months, to

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You've acquired the material, you now want to develop the material and you want to get it into production. As you were saying, the subtext of your question is 18 months is all but beyond possible. So you have a right to extend the option for another 18 months, usually for the same amount of money, but not applicable against the purchase price. So now you've got 36 months in theory in your contract. And so

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When you've sold the rights outright, means whatever the purchase price was is paid going in, they own it. Now, you may negotiate a reversion, let's say after seven years if they don't make it, but a reversion almost always comes with a lien, which means you have the rights back, but you can't sell them unless the original studio has a suitable method of compensating them for what they paid. So that makes it complicated.

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Bob Bookman (19:09.696)

when you've sold the rights and it doesn't get made right away. Anyway, long story short, the movie was made two years ago by Amazon and I sold the rights 25 years before that. And it bounced around, it was at Screen Gems for a long time. Warner Brothers had brought in a couple people from DC who were involved in it. I had brought in Bobby Shriver, who was, we were looking to do a project together early on, so he was attached from the beginning.

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Bob Bookman (19:39.126)

but it took 25 years and the irony, back to our conversation about streaming, is that it got Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones. In fact, they'd made it earlier. Bobby had Harrison Ford and the script was terrific. I thought it was great. They put it in theaters for a week. It should have been supported. I'm not saying it would have got Academy nominations, but it would have been surprising if it did. And then after a week,

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They got great reviews. They threw it up on streamers and got was forgotten unless your algorithm said you should watch it.

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Cameron Woodward (20:16.458)

Interesting, 

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Bob Bookman (20:18.471)

And on the other hand, I've had just a couple things that just immediately came together quickly. And the key then, of course, is you've got to have the script, you've got to have the director available, and you've got to have the actors available. And working that out is what really works against getting a movie made, let's say, in less than three years.

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Cameron Woodward (20:40.118)

See, like that's something I'm really curious about for you, Bob, in your experience in this pipeline is, you know, are there just very common production or financing bottlenecks that tend to slow down the journey? It also sounds like a resourcing element, as you mentioned, from director or actor, et cetera. And then how have you learned to overcome these things? Like, obviously I would imagine that you find it significantly more satisfying when you find great material, you sell it, you get it made.

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Not sure I have another 25 to wait anyway. But I mean, that's a really good question. it is a lot of it is about and we were talking about coordinating and such. But my metaphoric view of the industry is concentric circles, meaning the object of the game is to play in the

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Cameron Woodward (21:09.942)

you're not waiting 25 years.

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Bob Bookman (21:36.817)

circle closest to the center. So let's define the closest to the center as the major studios that are production distribution companies. And let's say the next circle is major independents who are also distribution companies. And then let's say major independents who have a distribution deals. But by the time you're, let's say the fifth or sixth circle, you're dealing with marginal people and you're dealing with difficulties in getting financing.

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And it's tougher and tougher. And so I've had the good fortune for a lot of reasons of mostly working in those three or four inner circles. And I've generally had, and now in this world of independent production and financing and all that, dealing with more remote circles. And I can tell you, it is really tougher, even when you're dealing with people in good faith, which you not always are.

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Cameron Woodward (22:36.088)

I wanted to talk about that actually, which is, you had long tenures at ICM and CAA. Can you tell me a little bit about those in terms of how that played into sort of your journey? And then from there, I want to talk about your founding of Bob Bookman management and then later Smarty Pants Ventures.

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Bob Bookman (22:50.793)

Yeah. Right. By the way, just to clear that up to be a smarty pants was my dog. And in fact, when I told my lawyer that that's what I was going to call my company, says I don't think that's a very serious name. And I said, I do. Anyway, what happened was if I can give a little bit of my background, I was born and raised in Los Angeles, believe it or not, second generation. My mother was born here.

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Cameron Woodward (23:07.15)

I'm sorry.

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Bob Bookman (23:19.965)

I'm a product of the California public school system. went to grammar school, was then called junior high school, high school and college. I went to Berkeley as an undergraduate. And then the only private school, if you will, I went to is I had the chance to go to Yale Law School. So in college, I was a history major.

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In fact, I was a modern European history major, and a lot of what has shaped my view of telling a story comes from that, because the Berkeley History Department was extraordinary. I was in what they call the Honors Program, which was a very small group, and you had to write a senior honors thesis in order to graduate. And I can't rave enough about the greatness of the department and the education I got there.

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And the irony is people weren't English majors because it was much more into, you know, Derrida and Lacan and all these sort of intellectual academic sources that didn't really deal with the material itself. So I then didn't know what I want to do with my life. I applied to history graduate schools, international study schools and law schools, and I got into Yale Law School.

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And I just thought a product of the California public school system who doesn't want to be a doctor and doesn't know what he wants to do with his life and gets accepted, you go. And what happened was this was some of your readers may, your viewers may recall that War in Vietnam and I graduated the last year they had graduate school deferments, which meant I was subject to being drafted. And when I'd been at Berkeley, someone had said to me, you know, I'm going to give you a piece of advice, Bob.

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go across the Bay to the Presidio, which was then an army base, and put your name on waiting lists and army reserve units. You'll never know what could happen. So now I've started at Yale. I'm classified 1A, which means I could be drafted at any time. I'm there for about a month, and I get a letter from a unit at the Presidio saying, show up on this day and you're in the unit. Otherwise, we go to the next name. So I dropped out after a month. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life.

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Bob Bookman (25:37.533)

moved back to LA and with my parents, commuted up to the Bay Area weekend a month, hoping I'd be called up in time for my 120 days active duty and get back to Yale in the fall, which I just was able to do. But I spent the time in between reading all the novels I hadn't read as a history major and going to movies. And that was really when I fell in love with the movie business. just as an amusing aside,

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As I said, my mother was born in Los Angeles, but to say our family had nothing to do with the movie business would be an understatement, because in fact, she would refer to the people, because she grew up with the first generation of kids in the business as saying, refer to them as those people, as in we don't associate with them. So was interesting when I was associating with those people. And what happened was I...

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In the course of the Film Society, in addition to having two nights of screenings a week, we brought what we called special events, which were directors from the classic era. Remember, this is 1969 to 72. So even back to silent film, a lot of them were still around. I I brought Fritz Lang, I brought King Vidor, I brought Frank Capra, I brought...

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Joe Mankiewicz, I brought all these great directors from that era, as well as contemporary directors, because that was the first of the youth movement in terms of making interesting films, like Last Picture Show and so forth. So I brought Sam Peckinpah with a wild bunch, and I brought Milos Forman with two different films. And it was just extraordinary. And so I dealt with the studios. And I thought,

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and the other amusing thing is Peter Goober, who's still around, right? I was clerking for a law firm in Beverly Hills after my second year of law school. I'm reading the LA Times. This is the new boy wonder of Hollywood, Peter Goober, vice president of creative affairs for Columbia Pictures. And it said in the article that he'd gone to NYU Law School. And I had, in the interest of sort of making as many connections as possible,

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Bob Bookman (27:54.603)

gotten approved a course for the next year in entertainment law, which consisted of bringing entertainment lawyers from New York up to school and hoping you got to know them well enough in case you wanted to work for one of them. And so I invited Peter and it started a dialogue and he was never able to come. But when I got off the plane for Christmas, this was 71, my mother said to me, do you know someone named Peter Gruber? I go, yeah, why? He he called. I go, really?

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So I called him back and he said, what are you doing over the winter break? And I said, nothing. says, why don't you come to Columbia and hang out with me? And that was the last year they were at Gower in Hollywood before they moved to the Burbank Studios the next year. And it was like, oh my God, I can't believe this. I'm hanging out at the studio. My mother actually couldn't believe it either. And I'll never forget the end. Peter Goober put his arm around my shoulder and pointed down a metaphoric hallway and said,

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That is your future and there will always be a future for you at Columbia Pictures. Well, the problem was there was no job A, and if there was, he didn't have the authority to offer it to me. So I'm spending all summer, I took the bar and I don't have a job.

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I was really depressed and someone said to me and I got at that time was a downturn in the movie business So I had all the kid you can't miss I'll introduce you to every you want this, you know, you're the best but no job offers

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Bob Bookman (29:47.955)

And someone said to me, you know, if you really want to be in the movie business, you might think seriously about the agency business. And I'm thinking PR agent, know, ad agent. No, no. The agencies now are the nexus. Everything goes through them in terms of getting movies made. And if you do that for five years, you'll either know you really like to do that and you do it well, or if not, you'll know what you want to do and you'll be able to do it based on the relationships you've made.

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So William Morris, CMA, and IFA were the three big agencies. I go to, my grandfather had died by then, but he knew Abe Lasvogel, who was the vaunted head of William Morris, and it started as William Morris' house boy, or office boy, I guess, and was then most elderly. And it took my father forever, but I got a meeting with Abe Lasvogel.

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And this is a lesson here is sometimes you can meet with someone too elevated in the company. I come into his office, I'll never forget his arms are like this, his desk is elevated on a platform because he's so short. And he says, Mr. Bookman, before we start our meeting, let me just tell you that there are no job opportunities here at the Morris office. Now, how may I help you? Well, that was number one. Then I had met through somebody, one of these referrals, Jack Jelardi.

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who was an agent at CMA. He had been married to Annette Funicello and loved to say, I married a star and made her an unknown. And I loved Jack. was just extra, but he was sort of outside of the mainstream. But he introduced me to David Beegleman, who along with Freddie Fields, they were the founders and owners of CMA. And David Beegleman later, subject to a very famous scandal that forced

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he was brought to trial for embezzling money from a number of people and it was really ugly. But this was, I'm gonna say a year or two before. And so David Beegleman, I go into his office, it's like, you're in the heart of Hollywood. I remember this long oak desk, he's on the phone with Charlie Joffe, who was Woody Allen's manager and producer. And I go, my God, this is where it happens.

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Bob Bookman (32:10.098)

I have an interview, I don't get a job. And it turns out when the scandal broke that one of the lies he told us that he'd gone to Yale. And I always thought the reason he didn't want to hire me is he saw my resume had gone to Yale and I would figure out he'd never gone there. So that left IFA. And IFA was much more of a television agency than a film agency. Mike Medaboy actually was head of the film department at the time and a guy named Frank Konigsberg

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I was head of the television packaging department and that's who I got an interview with. And I'll never forget sitting on Frank's couch and asking me, you know, he knows I'm interested in film, what do I think about television? By the way, I didn't own one. And I said, well, it looks like movies of the week aren't that different from movies and I just think I have a real contribution to make. And he said, well,

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My administrative assistant for television packaging left last week to take a job at CBS, so I need an administrative assistant. How would you like to start Monday? And I didn't say, what's my title? What's my pay? I said, what time do you want me? He said, nine o'clock. So I show up at nine o'clock, and at the receptionist, who's not there yet, there is a telegram for me. Who's the telegram from? Peter Goober.

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Wishing me luck on my first day of work. So for two years, and the other music story, Bob Roeder, was right under, who'd recently died, both of them magnificent people. And Bob, I started out working on Bob's couch. And the first day I'm there, hands me like a three page pitch for a television series. And I read it and I go.

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Bob, what am I missing? This is very good. And his immortal words to me were, sell it, don't smell it. And I decided if that was what it going to take to succeed in the business, I might as well go into real estate now. But I persevered. So about six months later, long before car phones or anything like that, we're coming back from Burbank Studios where we had a meeting at Screen Gems, which was what?

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Columbia Pictures Television was called then. And then the car, he says, when you get back to the office, I want you to do X. And I go, Bob, I can't do X. He goes, why can't you? I go, you need to be an agent to do X. I'm only administrative assistant. He goes, ah, you're an agent. Go do it. later, decades later, at CAA, you'd be in a monthly meeting in the theater, which seated 200 people, and somebody would be called up and say,

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We now pronounce you agent. And it was like white smoke was coming out of a chimney or something. It was just so different. So that's how I became an agent. Now, after two years, Marvin Josison, who owned IFA, in fact, it was publicly held, believe it or not, as was CMA, acquired CMA, merged the two together to create ICM. And so now we have this big motion picture department.

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from CMA, Freddie Fields, David Beegleman, Jack Giallardi, Jeff Berg, Sue Mengers, Guy McElwain, mean, killer, you know, murderers row. And about six months later, I go to see Marvin and I say, know, Marvin, I've given you 100 % of my brain, but none of my heart, because my heart is in movies and I'm right now in television. I'd like you to make me an agent in the motion picture department.

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He said, well, I think you'll have a big problem with that. I said, what would that be? goes, you know, the former CMA agents, they're sharks. They'll eat you alive. You don't have any clients because in TV packaging, you're representing companies. And I go, well, I don't care. And I still kind of a white lie. And I said, you know, I have an opportunity somewhere else that I really would like not to take. He says, let me give it some thought. And he came back a week later with the biggest opportunity in my career.

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He said, you know, the New York Publications Department in New York represents some of the greatest authors in the world. And we've never been able to really consolidate and coordinate the sale of the rights to their material to film and television. So I'm giving you that mandate at the same time as I want you to have your own clients in screenwriting and directing. So what that meant was, interestingly, in

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Bob Bookman (36:51.685)

in today's world, the former MCA Publications Department, which is what this was, were all women, literally, all women, all dynamic women, and all in their 60s and 70s. And the younger agent was Lynn Nesbitt, who was then in her mid-30s, who I'm still very close to, who had come in laterally from Sterling Ward. So here's who we're talking about. Audrey Wood.

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had discovered Tennessee Williams. All of his early plays are dedicated to her, among many other people. Then there was Monica Bacall, through whom, believe it or not, I represented Graham Greene. I sold the human factor to Otto Preminger. And she had, again, other great clients. Kay Brown, who was David O. Selznick's story editor, and I think is the person who actually read Gone with the Wind. And she represented the

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Mitchell estate and Arthur Miller and then Phyllis Jackson who is extraordinary who represented among other minor clients Dr. Seuss and Ian Fleming and I think when CAA bought ICM last year I think even then Dr. Seuss may have been the biggest income earner for the agency maybe it's TV packaging thing and they were just extraordinary and then Lynn represented Michael Crichton Tom Wolf

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Bob Bookman (38:17.769)

Joe Esther Haas, Nora Ephron, John Gregory Dunn, these were my clients. And in the cases of people like Joe and Nora, I turned them into screenwriters. So I became their screenwriting clients. I mean, what kind of opportunity was that? And then I was very quickly, extremely successful. I sold a lot of books for what then was a lot of money and today even is a lot of

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And then I decided I'd always really wanted to be a studio executive so I took an opportunity to do that and As I like to say Moses spent 40 years in the desert I only spent six and then I decided I wanted to go back to the movie business Sorry the agency business I knew Mike Obitz he didn't believe that I did and when he finally was convinced he basically hired me over a weekend and I was there for 27 years and

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Bob Bookman (39:15.357)

The difference there was that CAA didn't have a publications department. So that meant I had to go out and meet all these independent agents with one or two exceptions I didn't know and get them to commit their material to me and to CAA. So for example, my first trip to New York, I met with Gail Hockman and Gail said to me, you know, I represent this lawyer.

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from who had gone to Harvard and wrote a nonfiction book called One L and he's just written his first novel and it's called Presumed Innocent. I'd like to send it to you to let me know what you think about it. So I read Presumed Innocent over the weekend, loved it, called Gail. She said you can represent it. I always had coverage done because as I was saying, nobody reads. So you want to have coverage? The coverage was not very

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exciting or very recommending. And I always thought if it relied on coverage, I wouldn't have represented that book.

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Cameron Woodward (40:15.638)

It is interesting. mean, how many people that you would work alongside with who were agents had sort of this like, sort of academic background. I mean, like you love history, you love stories, you love reading. Whether you want to admit it or not, being a Yale trained attorney affords you a certain level of ability to scrutinize text and engage with it in a meaningful way. And you've found

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Yeah, right.

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Cameron Woodward (40:41.984)

as you mentioned, tremendous amount of opportunity from really reading the material. Was that something that was pretty common you found or was that something that you think really helped you stand out with sort of securing?

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Bob Bookman (40:52.736)

I think it helped me stand out and I think the law school part gave me credibility. I mean, as I like to say, what you need to know from law is contract law that you could learn more than you need to know in a weekend symposium. So it was more about, and it was all about, you know, when you go to a school like Yale, you learn to think like a lawyer. You learn to be analytical. You learn to be conceptual. And I think that was hugely valuable in reading.

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Cameron Woodward (41:20.974)

I love the story. It's fantastic. Mr. Ovitz is actually an investor here at Wrapbook as well. Yeah, yeah.

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Bob Bookman (41:26.316)

is he? Yeah, I guess that's why you call him Mr. Obis.

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Cameron Woodward (41:30.542)

You know, what's interesting, is I'm curious, like, so from this, these long tenures of really seeing how to make a story into a movie that then turned into Bob Bookman management, how has that transition changed the way you personally approach the business of getting a film made? You know, from the rights securing to the financing to the management of the production process itself. I mean, you talked about the,

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Cameron Woodward (42:00.749)

the layers of the ecosystem, right? And maybe you're further away of the, one, have the industry is changing radically, distribution is changing radically. The system has sort of changed a bit, but then also like, I'm just curious, how do you take those past experiences and apply them to the work that you're doing now?

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Bob Bookman (42:21.512)

I think it's a very good question. think the answer is one, you have to be adaptable. Two, you can't look too far into the future. You have to deal with what the situation is today. I think to take an extreme view, you know, we still stage Greek theater and that goes back, you know, almost some of the 2,500 years. And what is it that they did? They knew how to produce something that engaged people's emotions.

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And I think at the end of the day, that's what you have to do. Somebody, Sidney Pollack said this, but I just read and I'm forgetting who it is who first said it. There were only seven stories and you got to say, how are you going to tell a story that's fresh and different? So I, and, and a lot of times the answers I know when I see it, but that's kind of a cheat. The truth is I like stories that take me somewhere I've never been. I like stories that have.

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interesting conflicts. like stories that have three-dimensional characters who have problems. I like stories that make me feel at the end like I've gone on a journey. And the ending doesn't have to be a happy ending. It just has to be a satisfying ending. And I tell you what I'm not good at. I'm not good at sci-fi. I don't think I'd know unless it was grounded.

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I don't think I know good from bad. I'm not good at fantasy. I'm not good at YA. I'm not good at, what do they call it now, Romantasy or whatever, or even sort of low rent rom-coms. Yeah, well, if you talk to me longer, you may change your mind about that. so, you know, I sort of know my lane and, you know, people submit me a piece of material that I'm sure is wonderful.

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Cameron Woodward (43:59.107)

You strike me as a romantic guy,

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Bob Bookman (44:15.697)

and I'll just say, you want someone that will generate passion for this, you're not getting that from me, so it will do neither of us any good for me to take it on. And at the same time, especially when I was an agent, I would take on clients not because I thought I was gonna earn money for the agency from them, but I just thought symbolically who they were and what they did represented a certain level of artistic achievement.

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Cameron Woodward (44:44.514)

What was the transition you felt, I mean, you had this amazing opportunity to start actually getting access to some of these like absolutely brilliant artists, you yourself have taste, so you were able to sort of start smelling it and selling it, so to speak, right? And when was that transition? When you actually started getting to read this material, see if it moved you individually and then start being a champion for it versus the tension of, we've got to make money here. I mean, obviously we want to make money, but...

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Cameron Woodward (45:12.48)

you were able to increase your editorial output over time, it seems like.

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Bob Bookman (45:18.984)

But the good news is that with the big agencies, it was more seen as material to keep the high-end clients. And that's why especially at CAA, you wanted a package around producing clients. And I did that because that was the way the agency worked. And Mike was brilliant at coordinating all those things. And so my feeling is that it was more about if

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I'm passionate about it. And it wasn't like representing screenwriters and directors where it was more a team effort. It really, a team would be counterproductive representing a piece of IP. It really needs to be focused. So it was about relationships. Mike Mettavoy, when he left IFA and I was trying to get into the motion picture department and he introduced me to a number of people as did John Patak.

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who later were very helpful to me. John introduced me to Jerry Bruckheimer when he was Dick Richards' associate producer and doing Culpepper Cattle Company. There's the title, no insert of anymore. And so I met a lot of people and Mike said to me, I'm only gonna give you one piece of advice. There are only 200 people that matter in the movie business. Make a list of them and get to know them all. And there is nothing more important than relationships. And...

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When I started out, somebody said to me, know, Bob, there are two kinds of careers in motion pictures, long ones and short ones. And when you're young, it's like, well, that's sort of obvious. But when you've been around a while, you meet a lot of people that had short careers that never expected to. And why did that happen? And why have I been so blessed to be here 53 years and still functioning as well as I do? I think a lot of his relationships, it's judgment.

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It's earning trust in people. It's if I call someone and say, want you to read this, they may not want to do it, but they're not going to say, why'd you waste my time? And on the business side, I remember this something I'm proud of, but again, it's strange that this was true. When you make a deal at a studio, you now they allegedly you can't do it, but you cite precedence for your client.

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Bob Bookman (47:40.953)

And the negotiation for services, not necessarily for materials, I E I P, but screenwriting or directing services is based on precedent, especially at a studio where the budgets are higher. And I was making a deal at Warner Brothers and I don't even remember who the writer was, but I gave the precedent and I said, you can call Universal and get the latest quote. And they said to me, we don't need to call Universal. You're the only agent we deal with. know we can trust.

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I mean, do you believe that? And it's just like so easy to do the right thing and do the right thing because it's the right thing and maybe something good will happen and maybe it won't. But if you do it because you think something good is going to come out of it, it probably won't. I attribute that to Václav Havel in an interview he gave after he became president of Czechoslovakia. And it really stuck with me.

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Cameron Woodward (48:35.18)

That's incredible. I want to dig into these themes, but through sort of a different angle, which is you some recent projects, some excellent projects. I see one is referenced right behind you, which is a complete unknown, which was a fantastic movie. Congratulations to you and the entire team behind it. And then of course, A Spy Among Friends, which both these projects are awesome. They sort of reimagine real historical figures and events.

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Cameron Woodward (49:01.336)

From a producing standpoint, tell me about bringing these films and these projects to life.

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Bob Bookman (49:07.943)

Well, it's a really good question because both of them, I would argue, are atypical in that regard. So in terms of Spy Among Friends, which I'm hugely proud of, it started because I represented Ben McIntyre. In fact, afterwards, we have time asking about Agent Zigzag because it's also an interesting story. more to the point, with Spy Among Friends, if

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For those that don't know, about Kim Philby. And Kim Philby was one of the so-called Cambridge Five. They were five privileged undergraduates at Cambridge in the late 30s who all ended up spying for the Soviet Union. And the case of Kim Philby, most destructively of the five. And Ben wrote a book about it and I had tried to sell the rights. again, it was just so hard to get a book like that sold.

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And until you'll laugh one, I tell you why I know the date, April 15th, 2017, when I ruptured my right Achilles tendon playing squash. I played squash three days a week for most of 49 years, but I was never great. So I was taking lessons up to the end with a wonderful guy named Evan Khan. And he said to me one day, and there was a guy named Alex Carey who had the lesson right after mine. And all I knew is he had an English accent. Hi Alex, hi Bob.

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it. And he says, you know, Alex Carey is a screenwriter. You know, you must know him. go, why would I know him? There are tons of screenwriters out there. I don't know them all. He goes, well, he's one of the main writers on Homeland. I go, well, that's interesting. So I Google Alex Carey and it turns out that he has a very interesting, grand background and he went to Westminster school. Who went to Westminster school? Kim Philby.

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So I get his contact info, I call him up and I said, I just wondered if you have any interest in Kim Philby. He said, I'm obsessed with Kim Philby. I said, I have to send you this book called The Spy Among Friends because it's the definitive book about Kim Philby. He called me three days later and he said, I'm writing a spec pilot. Now that just doesn't happen. And he wrote all six hours of it. And I then have two other Ben McIntyre projects with him.

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Cameron Woodward (51:34.69)

Wow, so that's a, can't make it up and that you have a long career that doesn't happen, but in this case it did.

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Bob Bookman (51:35.077)

You can't make that up. Right.

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Right. Yeah. And then with a complete unknown, someone had introduced me, and I don't remember who it was when I was still an agent, to Jeff Rosen. Jeff has been Bob's manager, Bob Dylan's manager since 1977. Great guy, was a literature major in college. If you have Albert Grossman as your image of Bob's manager, Jeff couldn't be more different. So...

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I always went to see him at his office when I go to New York, again, cultivating relationships, right? And he called me one day and he said, I have a real problem that I hope you can advise me on. I said, what is it? He said, I have a project set up at HBO called Going Electric. It's about Bob going electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. And it's based on a nonfiction book called Going Electric. And

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Michael Lombardo, who as you know runs HBO, has put it on the shelf with a lot of other projects and won't give it back because he's afraid it'll get set up somewhere else and be successful and embarrass him. But all these producers are circling it and trying to get me to bring them on and replace the writer and get a new script. And the screenwriter is Jay Cox. Jay was a long time film critic for the Time Magazine.

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and Jay wrote a number of scripts for Marty Scorsese and I knew him slightly, I didn't know him well. And Jay was married to Verna Bloom who was a big actress in the 70s and 80s. Most people probably remember her as the Dean's wife in Animal House. Anyway, Verna had been suffering from Alzheimer's for about three years at that time and Jay had in fact moved from New York to Maine because he couldn't afford to take care of her in New York.

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Bob Bookman (53:35.642)

And he had written the script and Jeff wanted to be very protective of him. So I read the script in that context. And I called Jeff the next day and I said, you know, it may not be camera ready, but if you're going to make a movie on this subject, this is the basis for the movie and a director may work with Jay to polish it or whatever, but this is the script. You don't need another writer.

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So now I make the transition over to being a producer and manager and Michael Lombardo leaves HBO and is replaced by Casey Boyes who has nothing at stake with any of these projects so puts them in turnaround including Going Electric. And Jeff calls me and he said the producers are circling with me again because I now have the project back and they still want to bring in a different writer.

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I said, I'm going to be in New York next week. If Jay is, by now, Verna has died. If Jay is open to having a meeting, I would love to meet with you and him. So I think it was probably the first meeting he had since she died outside of family and close friends. And after the meeting, he said to Jeff, Bob understands me. He understands my script. I think he'll protect me and the script. I think you should bring him into the project. And that's how I got in. And I had two producing partners at the time.

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and that's how they got in. And that is really what launched our Getting the Movie Made.

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Cameron Woodward (55:09.178)

How long did that process take, since you got attached to hitting theaters?

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Bob Bookman (55:13.946)

So I would have gotten attached to it, I'm gonna say in let's say late 2017, mean, let's say even early 2018. And the movie came out in 2024, but Jeff had been, I'm gonna guess Jeff was on it for at least 10 years.

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Cameron Woodward (55:28.398)

That's fine.

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Cameron Woodward (55:32.995)

Wow, great film, awesome project. It's really, really, really awesome. Pivoting a little bit, you're bringing these from the number of movies you've worked on, the world has changed. And I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on this because we have now the rise of these streaming platforms. They're underwritten by massive technology firms. They offer us global audiences.

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Cameron Woodward (55:59.255)

I'm curious with the rise of this distribution channel, these new capital markets, from your perspective, how has the process of adapting this great literature, these great books for screen changed, whether and how material is sourced or financed or positioned for buyers today?

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Bob Bookman (56:17.787)

Let me take a couple of perspectives. One, let's start with the complete unknown. So we had gotten Timothee Chalamet made a commit to it. We didn't have a director and I thought we're going to be bombarded with offers to make this movie. We had two offers. We had Searchlight, which was then Fox Searchlight, and we had Amazon. And I would say Amazon's offer was materially stronger than Searchlight's offer.

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and I in particular, but not just me, argued very vociferously to make the deal with Searchlight because they would back the movie, they would understand the movie, they'd market the movie, and they would be the best possible home for it. Which they were. I cannot praise Searchlight enough for how they handled it from start to finish. And they ended up investing $70 million in the negative.

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which is by far the most money they've ever invested in a movie and they got their money back, which is also the good news. But what do you think Amazon would have done with it? Maybe what they did with the burial. No pun intended. I don't know. It's just, they see it as an algorithm. They are tech companies. They are not entertainment companies. The studios and related are entertainment companies. So I would say,

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If it's a, unless you're Marty Scorsese and you have the leverage to get Netflix to put up a lot of money and then release your film, but they've clearly put up too much money and it's a rounding error probably for them. It's it's disheartening. Uri Marmer, who is a producer who went to work for Netflix and I went to see him a few weeks after he'd started there and I said, so how is it going? And he said,

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I almost walked out the door the end of my first day. I said, really? He goes, yeah, this is not an entertainment company. It's a tech company. He said, they give me a phone and it's got my calendar in it. And the first day I had every hour from nine to six, I had a commitment. I said, and you go to these meetings and there'd be people from all parts of the company that had nothing to do with making a movie there. And I said, so what did you do? He said, I asked somebody and they said, put fake.

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Bob Bookman (58:37.891)

meetings in your calendar and then that'll give you the time to do your real work. So he said that Warren Beatty had come in for a meeting, right? And that he was, and in each conference room, it's got a screen that lists all the meetings for the day. I don't want my name up on a screen like that, right? Anyway, so Warren has a meeting at five o'clock with Scott Stuber, right? And at six o'clock, there are all these like,

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young people outside the office looking through the window kind of tapping on it and according to Ori Scott thinks, my God, they heard Warren Beatty's in the building and they want to meet him. And he goes, hey dude, we got a meeting at six, do you mind leaving the office? He had no idea who it was.

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Bob Bookman (59:32.549)

So it's, and look, if I have to deal with them, I mean, I had set up as a movie at Amazon, a terrific project called, come to me in a second, it's about the Stephen Kinzer's book about the fall of the Mosaddegh government in Iraq in 1953 and how the CIA was responsible for it.

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It'll come to me. Anyway, the point is that we got a terrific writer that they had recommended. They optioned the book. They paid a good price for it. And we even had at one point a really great director attached to it. And then the director dropped off because he was an older director and didn't feel he had the stamina to make the movie that we're called for.

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And then they get a call one day saying, we're going a different way with our development. We're giving it back to you. And they actually extended the option and still gave it to us and turn around. And it's like, what, that's not the way a movie company, an entertainment company works.

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Cameron Woodward (01:00:51.054)

What about just the change of the scale of it though. I mean, I'm really curious if you've seen an impact there, especially with like, with a complete unknown. mean, you you are in some ways getting access to markets that historically we hadn't really fully developed in the business. Well, I guess it's just, you know,

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Cameron Woodward (01:01:16.756)

Everyone has a screen in their pocket. They're not going to the theater necessarily, but there is just unbelievable amounts of distribution access globally with these types of projects and I'm just curious if that has sort of changed the dynamic in any way or

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Bob Bookman (01:01:32.163)

I don't know if it does because what income do you get from that? Netflix, it's a buyout. There's no back end. In terms of looking at a movie on an iPhone, to me that's not looking at a movie. I think that's why Qiibi thought that they were going to be a success, that you get a 10-minute attention span. How about that work out?

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Cameron Woodward (01:01:56.143)

Yeah, I mean it is is interesting and just seeing how all of this is going to play out of the attention is going to short form content versus long form content. And actually I want to take a different tack here really quick, which is for you Bob with your producer hat on, you know, I'm curious. What have those experiences taught you about the producers role and really building the environment that allows.

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Cameron Woodward (01:02:22.7)

writers and directors to do their best work creatively and practically.

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Bob Bookman (01:02:26.789)

Well, I mean, it's about who you're in business with. And again, I it goes back to my concentric circles. You want to bring them into the small and you want to protect them, especially if they're in a more expanding circle. And it's really about staying close, creating, not creating false expectations, maybe even diminished expectations. So then you exceed them and

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And just as you can tell from those two examples I gave, you never know what to expect or what's going to happen. And you just have to have the flexibility, versatility, relationships to take advantage of them.

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Cameron Woodward (01:03:08.078)

That's great. I have one last question for you and I'll repeat what I've heard from you, which is obviously like when in doubt, do the right thing. You can have a really long career in the business by being honest and open to make a list of the 200 most important people and get to know them by whatever honest means necessary. For emerging producers taking those lessons,

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or hoping to understand how films actually get made from the element of scripts to attaching talents, curing finance, what lessons from your own projects stand out as the most valuable to pass along? I mentioned two maybe of the most important, but if there's anything else.

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Bob Bookman (01:03:47.013)

They are, but part of it has to do with who you are when you come to the project. And just to give a metaphorical example that I give to young agents and assistants and so forth, imagine that you're creating a mosaic and you have a wood frame and nothing's in it and all these colored stones are off to the side. And every time you have an encounter, it could be a phone call, it could be an email, it could be anything.

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A stone goes into the box and pretty soon an image appears. And once that image appears, it's all but impossible to change. So decide what is the image you want to have for yourself. And don't follow the road that somebody else has taken because in my opinion, with maybe general exceptions, all the roads are unique for the time and circumstance and who you are.

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Bob Bookman (01:04:46.253)

Work hard, communicate, cultivate relationships, and just use your best judgment based on your experience as to what to do next. It's not like imagine you're at the premiere in the theater. What do I do next to advance this forward? And just not to disincentivize anybody, but my mantra right now is I'm working harder to accomplish less.

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Cameron Woodward (01:05:13.358)

I like that.

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Bob Bookman (01:05:14.895)

But I'm working hard and I'm accomplishing.

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Cameron Woodward (01:05:17.858)

That's awesome. Well, Bob Bookman, this has been honestly an incredible joy for me to just dig in and think through with you how you approach productions, how you approach bringing movies to life. I can't wait to see what you deliver next because you've got great taste, you make great stuff, and you're a part of really, really wonderful projects. So thank you for joining me on On Production.

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Bob Bookman (01:05:38.064)

Cameron, I'm really privileged to be on your show and all the best to you.