1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,400 Dinosaurs, DNA, writer's block, and Hollywood blockbusters. 2 00:00:06,400 --> 00:00:10,280 What could be better? 3 00:00:10,280 --> 00:00:12,280 Hello listeners. 4 00:00:12,280 --> 00:00:15,200 My name is Will Jauquet. 5 00:00:15,200 --> 00:00:21,800 Welcome to episode 6 of I'll Probably Delete This, where we learn about the story behind 6 00:00:21,800 --> 00:00:27,840 successful books, including today's episode, about the book that launched Hollywood's 7 00:00:27,840 --> 00:00:32,120 biggest dinosaur movie franchise. 8 00:00:32,120 --> 00:00:37,720 At 3 a.m., Michael Ovitz turned the last page of the manuscript. 9 00:00:37,720 --> 00:00:42,680 As he looked out on the hills of Brentwood, his head was still swirling with thoughts 10 00:00:42,680 --> 00:00:46,800 of prehistoric DNA and velociraptors. 11 00:00:46,800 --> 00:00:48,800 His friend had done it. 12 00:00:48,800 --> 00:00:52,920 This was the best thing he'd written in more than 10 years. 13 00:00:52,920 --> 00:00:56,160 Ovitz admired Michael Crichton's creative genius. 14 00:00:56,160 --> 00:01:01,640 Ovitz might not have the same kind of creativity, but he could identify it. 15 00:01:01,640 --> 00:01:07,840 No one was better than Crichton at explaining cutting-edge science and weaving it into a 16 00:01:07,840 --> 00:01:08,840 story. 17 00:01:08,840 --> 00:01:15,280 And this manuscript was full of science, cloning, DNA, dinosaurs, and chaos theory. 18 00:01:15,280 --> 00:01:19,820 Ovitz was sure that this story had gotten his friend out of his rut. 19 00:01:19,820 --> 00:01:26,540 He also thought it would be a hit, a hit book, and with the right people, a hit movie. 20 00:01:26,540 --> 00:01:31,660 Ovitz thought he knew just the right person for the movie, but it could wait until daylight. 21 00:01:31,660 --> 00:01:38,620 He needed some sleep, but not too much because he wanted to act fast. 22 00:01:38,620 --> 00:01:44,100 Join me now as we learn about Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton's blockbuster novel, and 23 00:01:44,100 --> 00:01:50,780 how Crichton went from failed idea and writer's block to successful novel and blockbuster 24 00:01:50,780 --> 00:01:51,780 movie. 25 00:01:51,780 --> 00:01:55,540 That book led to many movies in the Jurassic Park franchise. 26 00:01:55,540 --> 00:02:02,580 The latest, Jurassic World Rebirth, comes out July 2nd. 27 00:02:02,580 --> 00:02:08,220 Michael Ovitz, the Hollywood superagent and Crichton's friend, said that Crichton was 28 00:02:08,220 --> 00:02:10,900 the smartest person he'd ever met. 29 00:02:10,900 --> 00:02:13,100 Crichton was a bit of a phenom. 30 00:02:13,100 --> 00:02:18,820 He published his first book at age 23 and 10 books before he turned 28. 31 00:02:18,820 --> 00:02:24,720 That is impressive in and of itself, but even more impressive is that he wrote most of those 32 00:02:24,720 --> 00:02:26,980 books while in school. 33 00:02:26,980 --> 00:02:32,000 He wrote them under a pseudonym as a way to pay his way through Harvard Medical School. 34 00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:37,780 He wrote under that pseudonym because he was writing cheap mass market paperback novels, 35 00:02:37,780 --> 00:02:43,340 and he didn't want his classmates or professors to take him less seriously or think he wasn't 36 00:02:43,340 --> 00:02:45,600 committed to medical school. 37 00:02:45,600 --> 00:02:47,000 But things changed. 38 00:02:47,000 --> 00:02:52,180 He learned that he didn't like med school and didn't want to be a doctor. 39 00:02:52,180 --> 00:02:57,700 At various points in his time at Harvard Medical School, Harvard's psychiatrist persuaded him 40 00:02:57,700 --> 00:03:04,180 to stick it out longer, telling him to give it more time, or he would like clinical practice 41 00:03:04,620 --> 00:03:08,620 or he was almost done, so he might as well finish. 42 00:03:08,620 --> 00:03:16,140 But while still in med school, Crichton wrote Andromeda Strain under his own name and not a pseudonym. 43 00:03:16,140 --> 00:03:20,420 The story was about a dangerous microorganism from space. 44 00:03:20,420 --> 00:03:27,620 Alfred A. Knopf published the book in hardback, and it hit the bestsellers list in 1969. 45 00:03:27,620 --> 00:03:31,220 Crichton was ready to get out of medicine. 46 00:03:31,260 --> 00:03:36,940 After graduation, Crichton moved to LA to focus on writing and trying to break into 47 00:03:36,940 --> 00:03:40,420 Hollywood as a writer and a director. 48 00:03:40,420 --> 00:03:46,980 And he found success, both writing novels and writing movies, and did some directing too. 49 00:03:46,980 --> 00:03:49,660 By the late 80s, though, he was stuck. 50 00:03:49,660 --> 00:03:52,380 He was stuck and he was depressed. 51 00:03:52,380 --> 00:03:55,940 He was trying to write, but couldn't come up with anything. 52 00:03:55,940 --> 00:03:59,180 He had only written two novels in ten years. 53 00:03:59,180 --> 00:04:02,220 The last novel had been three years before. 54 00:04:02,220 --> 00:04:05,340 He hadn't written a movie in even longer. 55 00:04:05,340 --> 00:04:11,260 And this is from the same guy who cranked out two thrillers a year while in med school. 56 00:04:11,260 --> 00:04:14,980 Michael Ovitz was both Crichton's friend and agent. 57 00:04:14,980 --> 00:04:20,860 Ovitz met him regularly and tried to push and cajole him to write either a book or a 58 00:04:20,860 --> 00:04:22,820 screenplay. 59 00:04:22,820 --> 00:04:24,260 He brought him ideas. 60 00:04:24,260 --> 00:04:29,300 He even brought him really bad ideas, thinking they would motivate him to write something 61 00:04:29,300 --> 00:04:30,480 better. 62 00:04:30,480 --> 00:04:32,860 But the cajoling didn't work. 63 00:04:32,860 --> 00:04:39,460 Ovitz and his Creative Artists Agency (CAA) told people around Hollywood that Crichton 64 00:04:39,460 --> 00:04:45,840 was deeply involved in an original project and that was why he wasn't working. 65 00:04:45,840 --> 00:04:50,060 But the truth was that Crichton was depressed and had writer's block. 66 00:04:50,060 --> 00:04:54,380 He couldn't find an idea he wanted to work on. 67 00:04:54,380 --> 00:05:00,440 In the early 1980s, Crichton had played with a story about dinosaurs. 68 00:05:00,440 --> 00:05:06,620 He had tried a screenplay that focused on a researcher who was cloning a pterodactyl, 69 00:05:06,620 --> 00:05:09,100 but he couldn't get that story to work. 70 00:05:09,100 --> 00:05:12,460 He also didn't want to follow a trend. 71 00:05:12,460 --> 00:05:17,900 Dinosaurs were very popular and so he wanted to wait until the popularity died down. 72 00:05:17,900 --> 00:05:23,500 His idea also included an amusement park, which also concerned him. 73 00:05:23,500 --> 00:05:28,660 It concerned him because it was too close to Westworld, a movie he had written and directed 74 00:05:28,660 --> 00:05:30,780 in 1973. 75 00:05:30,780 --> 00:05:37,060 That movie, like the more recent HBO reboot, involved visiting an adult amusement park 76 00:05:37,060 --> 00:05:39,700 filled with human-looking robots. 77 00:05:39,700 --> 00:05:46,080 For dinosaurs, he thought that even in a world where someone could use DNA to create and 78 00:05:46,080 --> 00:05:50,400 clone a dinosaur, it would still be very expensive. 79 00:05:50,400 --> 00:05:54,960 There would be no practical reason to make one, and because there would be no practical 80 00:05:54,960 --> 00:06:01,080 reason to recreate a dinosaur, the purpose would have to be for entertainment, hence 81 00:06:01,080 --> 00:06:03,060 the amusement park. 82 00:06:03,060 --> 00:06:08,760 So he shelved his initial story ideas, thinking he might come back to it after dinosaur fever 83 00:06:08,760 --> 00:06:10,180 faded. 84 00:06:10,180 --> 00:06:13,680 But other ideas didn't fill the void. 85 00:06:14,360 --> 00:06:20,840 Finally, at a regular weekly lunch with Ovitz, after weeks and months of cajoling, Crichton 86 00:06:20,840 --> 00:06:26,360 said he did have this idea about dinosaurs that he had had for a while. 87 00:06:26,360 --> 00:06:31,880 It was almost 10 years after he first started working on it, but interest in dinosaurs had 88 00:06:31,880 --> 00:06:33,560 never faded. 89 00:06:33,560 --> 00:06:37,380 Crichton gave Ovitz the broad outline of the story. 90 00:06:37,380 --> 00:06:43,480 He said he had an idea about a group of three people who visit a dinosaur amusement park 91 00:06:43,480 --> 00:06:46,840 on an island off the coast of Costa Rica. 92 00:06:46,840 --> 00:06:50,140 Two characters were younger, and one was older. 93 00:06:50,140 --> 00:06:55,760 After getting a description, Ovitz's reaction was, I like dinosaurs. 94 00:06:55,760 --> 00:06:57,920 My young son likes dinosaurs. 95 00:06:57,920 --> 00:07:00,960 And even my 70-year-old father likes dinosaurs. 96 00:07:00,960 --> 00:07:03,400 You have to write this. 97 00:07:03,400 --> 00:07:08,120 The two of them then spent the next three hours talking about the science behind the 98 00:07:08,360 --> 00:07:15,360 idea, about paleontology and DNA, about cloning and the current science of cloning and its 99 00:07:15,360 --> 00:07:19,120 ability to breed prehistoric animals. 100 00:07:19,120 --> 00:07:25,200 Note that this is six years before scientists would clone Dolly the sheep, sort of the famous 101 00:07:25,200 --> 00:07:30,480 marker that hit the press and entered into public consciousness. 102 00:07:30,480 --> 00:07:35,880 Crichton dove into this resurrected idea and came up with a draft, but his early beta 103 00:07:35,880 --> 00:07:38,920 readers all hated the draft. 104 00:07:38,920 --> 00:07:41,000 He went through additional ones. 105 00:07:41,000 --> 00:07:43,000 They hated those too. 106 00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:47,360 Despite my earlier description of Crichton, he would deny that he was a phenom when it 107 00:07:47,360 --> 00:07:48,600 came to writing. 108 00:07:48,600 --> 00:07:54,080 He would instead have said that he didn't have any special talent as a writer, but had 109 00:07:54,080 --> 00:07:56,560 to work really hard at it. 110 00:07:56,560 --> 00:08:01,120 He revised his novel again, and again the beta readers hated it. 111 00:08:01,160 --> 00:08:06,640 It wasn't the science of cloning they struggled with, or his insertion of chaos theory or 112 00:08:06,640 --> 00:08:09,100 descriptions of dinosaurs. 113 00:08:09,100 --> 00:08:14,160 One reader suggested changing the focus to adults and not the kids. 114 00:08:14,160 --> 00:08:19,940 What Crichton realized was adults were just as fascinated by dinosaurs and wanted to see 115 00:08:19,940 --> 00:08:28,440 themselves in the book, something they had trouble doing with his earlier drafts. 116 00:08:28,440 --> 00:08:33,680 Five months after that lunch, where they talked about his idea, Crichton called Ovitz 117 00:08:33,680 --> 00:08:38,400 to tell him, I'm sending you a draft of the book that we talked about. 118 00:08:38,400 --> 00:08:45,040 Ovitz was always a whirlwind of activity, and his work ethic was unmatched. 119 00:08:45,040 --> 00:08:49,520 As an agent, he regularly made 250 calls a day. 120 00:08:49,520 --> 00:08:55,500 He was building CAA to be the biggest and most powerful talent agency Hollywood had 121 00:08:55,500 --> 00:08:57,280 ever seen. 122 00:08:57,280 --> 00:09:03,640 Taking three hours at a lunch to talk science ideas, or spending his evening uninterrupted 123 00:09:03,640 --> 00:09:07,920 reading a draft of a book, was no small thing for Ovitz. 124 00:09:07,920 --> 00:09:12,360 Ovitz left work early to read his friend's manuscript. 125 00:09:12,360 --> 00:09:18,140 He sat down to read the typed manuscript at six that evening, and kept turning the pages 126 00:09:18,140 --> 00:09:22,040 until he finished the book around three a.m. 127 00:09:22,040 --> 00:09:24,480 After some sleep, Ovitz moved fast. 128 00:09:24,480 --> 00:09:29,200 He called Crichton at seven a.m. and told him, this is the best thing you've written 129 00:09:29,200 --> 00:09:30,480 in years. 130 00:09:30,480 --> 00:09:35,640 He said, this will be a great book, and it will make a great movie if we can get the 131 00:09:35,640 --> 00:09:37,600 right people to make it. 132 00:09:37,600 --> 00:09:43,640 Ovitz's wheels were turning, and he told Crichton that the only director for this movie is Steven 133 00:09:43,640 --> 00:09:45,120 Spielberg. 134 00:09:45,120 --> 00:09:49,760 He said this even though Spielberg was one of the only important Hollywood directors 135 00:09:49,760 --> 00:09:53,360 who was not a CAA client. 136 00:09:53,360 --> 00:09:56,960 Ovitz feared that anyone else would screw it up. 137 00:09:56,960 --> 00:10:02,000 Ovitz called Spielberg at nine a.m. that same morning to tell him that he was sending over 138 00:10:02,000 --> 00:10:07,120 a manuscript for him to look at, and said, if it's all right with you, I'm going to 139 00:10:07,120 --> 00:10:11,800 call your wife to ask her permission for you to read through this tonight. 140 00:10:11,800 --> 00:10:16,800 He did this because Spielberg and his wife, Kate Capshaw, were very protective of family 141 00:10:16,800 --> 00:10:21,440 time, and Steven generally didn't read scripts at night. 142 00:10:21,440 --> 00:10:24,400 Spielberg agreed, and his wife agreed. 143 00:10:24,400 --> 00:10:30,680 In an effort to create urgency, Ovitz gave Spielberg two days to read the manuscript. 144 00:10:30,680 --> 00:10:33,720 It didn't even take 24 hours. 145 00:10:33,720 --> 00:10:39,800 Spielberg called Ovitz back at 7.30 a.m. the next day, and said, this knocked my socks 146 00:10:39,800 --> 00:10:40,800 off. 147 00:10:40,800 --> 00:10:42,720 I'm making this movie. 148 00:10:42,720 --> 00:10:44,800 Ovitz packaged up the movie. 149 00:10:44,800 --> 00:10:47,320 Crichton would write the screenplay. 150 00:10:47,320 --> 00:10:49,000 Spielberg would direct. 151 00:10:49,000 --> 00:10:54,440 Ovitz lined up funding, and he made an agreement with Universal to distribute it. 152 00:10:54,440 --> 00:11:00,040 He did all of this more than six months before Knopf published the book. 153 00:11:00,040 --> 00:11:06,220 This packaging of a movie project was an innovation of CAA. 154 00:11:06,220 --> 00:11:11,520 In this case, they found the story from Crichton, had the script writer, again, Crichton. 155 00:11:11,520 --> 00:11:17,560 They would add somebody later to help Crichton, and they had the director, Steven Spielberg, 156 00:11:17,560 --> 00:11:20,680 all before any studio was involved. 157 00:11:20,680 --> 00:11:26,520 This type of packaging, packaging up a project, increased the odds that a movie would get 158 00:11:26,520 --> 00:11:33,400 made, and increased the bargaining power of the creative talent, the actors and the directors 159 00:11:33,400 --> 00:11:37,400 and the writers. 160 00:11:37,400 --> 00:11:44,820 Publishing house Alfred A. Knopf released Jurassic Park in late 1990 with an initial 161 00:11:44,820 --> 00:11:49,340 print run of 150,000 hardcover books. 162 00:11:49,340 --> 00:11:55,620 It was on Publishers Weekly's bestseller list for 12 weeks, and according to Publishers 163 00:11:55,620 --> 00:12:02,220 Weekly, was the 18th bestselling novel for that year for 1990. 164 00:12:02,220 --> 00:12:07,940 The book also made the New York Times bestseller list in December of 1990, and stayed on that 165 00:12:07,940 --> 00:12:15,220 list for 13 weeks, clawing its way up from number 12 on the list to number six. 166 00:12:15,220 --> 00:12:19,620 These were good hardcover sales, but nothing amazing. 167 00:12:19,620 --> 00:12:25,620 It is really the release of the movie that turbocharges sales, and mostly through sales 168 00:12:25,620 --> 00:12:26,620 of paperback. 169 00:12:26,620 --> 00:12:31,600 I remember reading it in paperback in the early 90s, around the time of the release 170 00:12:31,600 --> 00:12:32,980 of the movie. 171 00:12:32,980 --> 00:12:38,820 Jurassic Park sells many more copies in paperback than it did in hardcover. 172 00:12:38,820 --> 00:12:45,180 Universal released the movie in 1993, and by the end of the year, the book had sold 173 00:12:45,180 --> 00:12:49,060 9 million copies, a huge number. 174 00:12:49,060 --> 00:12:57,420 By 1999, the book had sold more than 12 million copies, and gone through 100 reprintings. 175 00:12:57,420 --> 00:13:02,180 Total book sales were impressive, but the movie did even better. 176 00:13:02,180 --> 00:13:07,740 It became the highest-grossing movie ever to that point, earning just under a billion 177 00:13:07,740 --> 00:13:09,140 dollars. 178 00:13:09,140 --> 00:13:12,540 The movie's popularity drove book sales. 179 00:13:12,540 --> 00:13:18,580 The rest of Crichton's other books all became big paperback sellers after the Jurassic Park 180 00:13:18,580 --> 00:13:20,580 movie came out. 181 00:13:20,580 --> 00:13:25,780 Crichton did write a sequel to Jurassic Park, the only sequel he would write to any of his 182 00:13:25,780 --> 00:13:27,140 books. 183 00:13:27,140 --> 00:13:32,980 While Crichton stopped at two dinosaur books, Hollywood, however, has kept the movies coming. 184 00:13:32,980 --> 00:13:39,900 Jurassic World Rebirth, which comes out July 2, is Hollywood's seventh movie in the Jurassic 185 00:13:39,900 --> 00:13:44,540 Park franchise. 186 00:13:44,540 --> 00:13:50,580 For the postscript, I have two things I want to touch on, pulled from interviews that Michael 187 00:13:50,580 --> 00:13:53,760 Crichton did with Charlie Rose. 188 00:13:53,760 --> 00:13:58,920 Before we get there, in watching those interviews, really any interview with him, it's easy to 189 00:13:58,920 --> 00:14:05,200 see just how much he can tower over people even while he's sitting down. 190 00:14:05,200 --> 00:14:07,000 Crichton was 6'9". 191 00:14:07,000 --> 00:14:11,440 He also comes across as reserved and pretty thoughtful. 192 00:14:11,440 --> 00:14:14,840 Alright, so let's get to point one. 193 00:14:14,840 --> 00:14:20,520 This shows up on Charlie Rose, but also in various articles. 194 00:14:20,520 --> 00:14:25,800 In the time that he was working on Jurassic Park, both the book and the screenplay for 195 00:14:25,800 --> 00:14:31,520 the movie, Hollywood scouts and friends would ask Crichton what he was working on. 196 00:14:31,520 --> 00:14:37,800 Crichton's response was, I'm writing the most expensive movie ever made. 197 00:14:37,800 --> 00:14:40,880 Crichton said it as a joke, but he had a point. 198 00:14:40,880 --> 00:14:47,120 What Spielberg did in the first Jurassic Park movie had never been done before. 199 00:14:47,120 --> 00:14:53,960 Like in CGI dinosaurs that look realistic, was a real stretch in movie making. 200 00:14:53,960 --> 00:14:56,920 And even 30 years later, they hold up. 201 00:14:56,920 --> 00:14:59,880 The movie holds up, and it holds up well. 202 00:14:59,880 --> 00:15:01,640 Point number two. 203 00:15:01,640 --> 00:15:09,200 Rose asked Crichton about the parts of writing that gave him the most pleasure or satisfaction. 204 00:15:09,200 --> 00:15:14,320 And for Crichton, it was coming up with the idea and doing the research. 205 00:15:14,320 --> 00:15:19,840 He loved to read scientific papers and really think about their implications, their near-term 206 00:15:19,840 --> 00:15:21,960 implications. 207 00:15:21,960 --> 00:15:27,640 That often with each book, there was a set of questions he was interested in and questions 208 00:15:27,640 --> 00:15:29,380 he was working through. 209 00:15:29,380 --> 00:15:34,580 It was only after he had answered them for himself, did he sit down and try to write 210 00:15:34,580 --> 00:15:37,520 a story, to weave them into a story. 211 00:15:37,520 --> 00:15:44,840 And it was the writing a good story that was really the hard part for him. 212 00:15:44,840 --> 00:15:52,480 For our bibliography today, much of the story from this episode is from Michael Ovitz's 213 00:15:52,480 --> 00:15:53,480 perspective. 214 00:15:53,480 --> 00:15:58,920 And that's because a good part of it was taken from Michael Ovitz's memoir called 215 00:15:58,920 --> 00:16:01,600 Who Is Michael Ovitz? 216 00:16:01,600 --> 00:16:09,500 That book was published in 2018 by Portfolio, which is an imprint of Penguin Random House. 217 00:16:09,500 --> 00:16:16,000 If you are interested in behind-the-scenes stories in Hollywood, the egos, personalities, 218 00:16:16,000 --> 00:16:22,320 and the deals that get made and those that don't, you will find the book really compelling. 219 00:16:22,320 --> 00:16:25,680 And Ovitz himself is a pretty interesting character. 220 00:16:25,680 --> 00:16:30,760 The second book informed discussion of Crichton's early years. 221 00:16:30,760 --> 00:16:37,240 And mostly that discussion comes from his kind of pseudo travel memoir. 222 00:16:37,240 --> 00:16:40,260 And that memoir was titled Travels. 223 00:16:40,260 --> 00:16:42,300 It's by Michael Crichton. 224 00:16:42,300 --> 00:16:46,920 And it was published in 1988 by Knopf. 225 00:16:46,920 --> 00:16:50,620 Crichton wrote it before he wrote Jurassic Park. 226 00:16:50,620 --> 00:16:53,560 Travels is mostly a collection of stories. 227 00:16:53,560 --> 00:16:56,960 Some are focused on his time in medical school. 228 00:16:56,960 --> 00:16:59,360 Some are international travel. 229 00:16:59,360 --> 00:17:05,200 And many are on his exploration of things like psychic phenomena. 230 00:17:05,200 --> 00:17:10,320 On the last point, he's curious about whether any of it is real. 231 00:17:10,320 --> 00:17:18,200 And he largely remains skeptical but unsure and accepts that there may be phenomena that 232 00:17:18,200 --> 00:17:23,440 are beyond sort of the current understanding of science. 233 00:17:23,440 --> 00:17:29,360 Join me next time for another episode of I'll Probably Delete This, where we'll explore 234 00:17:29,360 --> 00:17:34,340 more stories of publishing, storytellers, and their stories. 235 00:17:34,340 --> 00:17:38,300 Next up, we'll cover kind of a contemporary of Crichton. 236 00:17:38,300 --> 00:17:43,280 We're going to cover James Patterson's first big hit, including the changes he made to 237 00:17:43,280 --> 00:17:47,480 his writing and to marketing to make it a success. 238 00:17:47,480 --> 00:17:50,400 So look forward to that one next week. 239 00:17:50,400 --> 00:17:51,400 Happy reading. 240 00:17:51,400 --> 00:17:52,040 Thanks, everybody.