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Larry in La La Land

-Jack, here. Larry shared his Hollywood experience on TwitterX recently and I thought it should be preserved here.


There are thousands of books out there with original ideas that could be made into movies, but Hollywood is mostly illiterate.

Okay, I’m gonna expound on this with a thread about my experiences with Hollywood, as limited as those may be. As a working novelist and red state American I’m like an outsider barbarian there. 

First, I’m not exaggerating about them being illiterate, let me tell you a story-

Back when I was first getting started, Monster Hunter International had just blown up. I got contacted by my first movie producer. Nice guy. Had a made a bunch of movies I’d heard of in the 90s and early 2000s. 

This guy actually read books. Little did I know just how odd that was at the time. So this producer read MHI, loved it, showed it to his friend who was the #2 person at a major movie studio, who also read books. And he was literally like the only guy at the entire movie studio who actually READ BOOKS.

I wish I was exaggerating. I’m not.

The #2 guy at Major Studio you’ve all heard of reads MHI. Loves it. Even had an MHI patch on his desk. I flew out there to meet with these people, only to promptly discover that literally everybody else in Hollywood is functionally illiterate. I have a lunch meeting with these dudes, some Studio People, another novelist (way more famous than me), and a guy who has won an Academy Award for special effects. 

First time in my life I had mango chutney. Which is pretty awesome. Not so awesome was the rest of Hollywood. Studio guy starts pitching who should star in MHI, and this is when I learn Hollywood doesn’t give a fuck which actor actually fits the part, or who would do a good job, but who they have a deal with to give more work to. So they started casting- they start casting my 6’5″ 300 pound half Polynesian former illegal pit fighter main character. 

Hey, what about Tobey Maguire?” 

Oooh, I know, Jake Gyllenhall would like this part!” 

And I’m like… are you people high? WTF is wrong with you? Other writer leans over, whispers in my ear “Don’t say anything. They never give a fuck what us writers think.” Of course none of the studio people had read the book, nor did they care to. Their job is to be VISIONARY. 

As this went on, their vision got goofier and goofier, but I enjoyed my mango chutney quite a bit. It was an expensive place and the studio was paying for it.

Amusing side note- being a Hollywood restaurant, other patrons were wannabe actors, so when they heard us talking business, the actors realized these were actual studio people, so they started interrupting our lunch to introduce themselves and drop off glossy pictures and bios. 

Oh hi I couldn’t help but overheard your conversation and I think I’d be perfect for blah blah blah” as they are handing out pics. 

When the first actor did this, all the other wannabes there saw this happen, so they all ran back to their cars and came back with pictures and bios to give us too. The studio people didn’t seem to notice. I didn’t know what to do with them so I started collecting them like trading cards.

So the Major Studio people loved MHI. They’re going to make me an offer. A week later the literate producer calls me and says the deal is dead. Why? Because Will Smith, who at the time was the biggest box office winner in the world, had just talked about doing a family comedy with Kevin James called “Monster Hunters” where a pair of child psychologists discover that the monsters under kids’ beds are real. (great pitch by the way)  Which meant instantaneous death for my project. They aren’t messing with Will Smith. 

And then Will Smith never made that movie anyway. 

(Keep in mind, this was way before most people in America had ever heard of the Japanese video game with that name too, which extra kicks me in the nuts 12 years later!)

A few years later I option MHI to Entertainment One for a TV show. I get paid money to just let somebody else hold the rights. And then nada… I don’t hear anything for years. Occasionally something changes and I get an update. They actually paid for a couple of screen plays to be made of it. But nobody tells me anything because I’m just the writer. 🙂

At one point I was told Dwayne Johnson tried to pick up MHI from E1, but that fell through (I have no idea if he read it because who knows, but I was told he wanted to be a bad ass and fight monsters).  But that fell through, and the Rock then bought the rights for Seal Team 666 from my friend Weston Ochse (good dude, RIP) where bad ass Navy SEALs fight monsters. I emailed Weston when that was announced and told him “congratulations, you bastard” 😀

Hard Magic got optioned by Radar Pictures, but same story. I haven’t heard anything new for a while (nobody tells the writer anything). Same thing. Occasionally a movie star I’ve heard of expresses interest, and then nada. A producer briefly shopped Tom Stranger for an adult cartoon, and Adam Baldwin said he’d love to play Tom again if it got picked up (he killed it on the audiobook) but Rick and Morty came along and anything “multidimensional” was seen as a rip off of that, so that project died too. 

Long story short, Hollywood options a lot of books, but they only go into production on a fraction of those. Most of them just hang out in limbo, with us authors getting paid option money to just not sell the rights to somebody else. Ender’s Game got optioned for like 30 years before they finally made a movie. 

So Hollywood has a ton of original unique properties available, but very few people who can actually make decisions actually read any of them. I’ve got a bunch of things which would make great TV shows or movies, and people ask me all the time who I’d like to see play whatever character, but I’m so jaded, I don’t care. I’m gonna cash that check and shut up because nobody gives a shit what the writer thinks. 

Seriously, if you aren’t JK Rowling, Hollywood doesn’t give a shit about us wanting to “maintain our creative vision”.

People always ask me, aren’t I worried that Hollywood will screw it up and make a bad movie? Oh hell no. First off, they have to pay me more if they actually go into production. I am a devout capitalist. Second, if it is actually good, I sell more books because they are now a successful media tie in, and if it is a shitty movie, I just got an hour long commercial with everybody who has read it telling everyone “the book is better”.

So that’s my experience with Hollywood. It is a bunch of people who don’t read books and who don’t really give a shit about the story doing whatever they feel like, while desperate beautiful strangers give them glossy head shots. 

Down These Mean Streets

Available January 2nd, in hard cover, ebook, and audio, is the third anthology of noir sci-fi and fantasy stories edited by me and Kacey Ezell.

Down These Mean Streets

Honestly, these are just awesome. It’s a great bunch of stories.

Since the theme was “the city” for mine I went with a Lost Planet Homicide story, where the Mount Zenith maintenance AI tries to solve a murder. The city is the hard boiled detective. It’s called Low Mountain, and it came out really good. I really really enjoy writing in the Lost Planet Homicide setting.

Everybody picked different cities, some real, some fictional, and we’ve got a wild assortment of different kinds of stories out of them. In order:

Ophir Chasma by Kacey Ezell, takes us under the shadow of Olympus Mons, where a weary cop takes the murder of a joy girl personally, and hunts a killer through the slums of Mars.

Yokoburi by Hinkley Correia: People can’t give me crap about nepotism, since my daughter’s story in the first anthology earned the highest reviews! (She’s legit got skills) and she returns to the world she introduced in Kuro, this time from the perspective of the American branch of her family of Japanese ghost hunters, as a fish out of water in Tokyo.

Empire of Splinters by Mike Massa. Mike introduced his Genius Wars setting in the first anthology, where cities develop souls and turn sentient, and it turns out history has been these cities warring against each other, using humans as pawns.

The Streets of CircumFrisco by Robert E. Hampson, when the clients of Frisco Station hire a PI, they expect a classic gumshoe, so he leans into it hard.

He Who Dies With the Most Scars by Patrick M. Tracy – takes us back to the gigantic, rotting, fantasy mega-city of Remnar, where by day a friendly necromancer runs a coffee shop, and by night solves crimes.

Fool’s Gold by Dan Willis, this is from Dan’s Arcane Casebook series, about a wizard PI who handles problems for his clients in 1930s New York.

Central After Dark by Casey Moores. This one is bonkers. The city is Albuquerque, and no matter how weird you think Albuquerque is, this gets weirder!

Ghosts of Kaskata by Marisa Wolf. A war hero gets called back to duty to solve a murder in the sci-fi city of Kaskata, which is pretty on top, but ugly all the way down.

A Devil’s Bargain by Steve Diamond. If you’ve listened to WriterDojo you’ve heard Steve talk about WEREWOLF COP! The city is Sacramento, which if you’ve not been there, is a perfect place to have some occult murders.

Urban Renewal by Chris Kennedy, with a dark adventure on an alien planet where the city is just The City. And these aliens are mean, and can hold a grudge like you wouldn’t believe.

1957: The Dark Side of Paradise by Robert Buettner, who has been in all three of these anthologies, because he always kills it. This is a follow up to his story in No Game For Knights, in a gritty alternate history where Germany won WW2.

Breathe by Grffin Barber, who brings us another bad ass story with his same undying protagonist as in Noir Fatale, this time involving a killer in the scummy fantasy city of White Boar.

It’s Always Sunny in Key West by Laurell K. Hamilton. Vampires in Key West, from her mega-bestselling Anitaverse. Laurell is just so damned cool to work with and her story is just plain fun. Also, weaponized sea gulls!

It was an honor to be able to work on this project. What a great bunch of talented authors. I really hope you guys enjoy these.

The A-Z guide to anti-gun vulture talking points on Facebook

A. Gun owners are never trained enough so are dangerous and shouldn’t be armed at all.

B. Gun owners who do train are crazy psychos living out their wannabe fantasies itching to shoot someone.

C. Even though it takes orders of magnitude more effort to become marginally effective with martial arts than a gun, you are better off using martial arts and not having a gun.

D. *Real Men* use their hands. This is why your mom and grandma shouldn’t have guns either.

E. Twitter randos who have never been punched in the face are experts on real life violence, and whatever you have personally experienced doesn’t count.

F. No matter how trained you are, it is never enough for the hypothetical attacker they make up. Sure, your concealed handgun might be enough to stop a regular robber or rapist, but what about if you get attacked by 20 Chechen terrorists with AKs, huh? Huh? (we call this the Dracula Riding Godzilla rule)

G. If the anti-gun vulture was ever in the military, this makes them a Military Trained Expert. Even though most of the time this means they got to put 20 rounds through an M-16 once in 1992.

H. No matter how many certified MMA bad asses or combat vets go “lol wut, dork? I’d rather have a gun.” the anti-gun Twitter vulture will remain undeterred.

I. Goldilocks Rules apply. No matter how much you know about guns, you’re either too ignorant and dangerous, or you know too much and that makes you dangerous. Whatever amount the anti-gun zealot knows is Just Right.

K. Whatever stats they pull out of their ass are sacrosanct. If you cite any numbers they reflexively scream “SOURCE?!” and then have some reason they won’t accept that source when provided. “The actual FBI Crime Statistics? LAME!”

L. At some point they’ll need to talk about how big our penises are, because guns are for compensation. Obviously the female gun owners are compensating for their tiny uteruses.  

M. “I believe in the Second Amendment BUUUUUUUUT-” (insert statist bullshit here)

N. If you insist on using terms correctly and words having actual definitions, clearly this demonstrates you are a fanatic. Words mean whatever they need to mean in that moment, especially legal ones.

O. “Castle Doctrine” is a secret right wing code word that means that you can just shoot whoever you want.

P.  Get ready for a history lesson about “what the founders really intended” from some dumb motherfucker who was stoned through every history class in high school.  

Q. Everybody knows big blue cities are way safer than the scary red state flyover country.

R. Gun control isn’t racist! Sure, historical gun control was all about keeping guns out of the hands of the “undesirables” like freed slaves, Indians, and the Irish, but that’s totally different now!

S. AR-15s are the most dangerous gun that’s ever existed. It can fire ten thousand ultra deadly murder bullets a second and each one can explode a moose from a thousand yards away. There is nothing this miracle death machine can’t do.

T. lol your AR-15s are utterly useless against a tyrannical government.

U. The NRA is an all-powerful, super evil entity which has tricked innocent Americans into wanting ultra deadly assault rifles, to satisfy their incessant blood lust. They do this through their ultra powerful marketing, like giving out free hats.

V. Anti-gun organizations are all totally innocent grass roots movements made up of moms, orphans, and kittens, funded entirely by bake sales, who just want the best for all Americans.  

W. “I grew up around guns” makes you an unassailable subject matter expert on the topic.

X. The gun industry is made up of giant soulless mega corporations who make trillions of dollars off of selling Glocks to preschoolers. This message was brought to you by benevolent small businesses like the six companies that own most of the world’s media.

Y. Even though everything the anti-gunner proposes is ass backwards and would just make the problems they are crying about worse, and everywhere they get their way good people are disarmed while evil doers are empowered…they CARE HARDER than we do. So we’re the real bad guys.  

Z. “You sound angry.”