Hollywood Weasels
Fear and Loathing of Hollywood
I licensed my book/website title to a movie production. The negotiations were incredibly hostile on their part, but I tried to be honest and direct throughout.
"I am only licensing you the rights for this movie."
"I retain all rights to TV, radio, theatrical, and books."
"Those rights are for other artists. You get the movie."
"Okay you can have movie prequel and sequel rights."
To each negotiated point, two producers agreed, with Jacob as my witness. But their lawyers couldn't seem to put our agreements into the contract. It was costly and frustrating. The producers and I would reach an agreement that their lawyers would ignore. This continued for months, via a variety of methods.
*** They began with a contract entirely unlike our agreements. My lawyer edited it and returned a "redline" (MS-Word tracks changes so one person's edits show in red, the next in blue; redlines are common during legal negotiations.) No matter how many back-and-forth redlines, the contract never converged on our agreements.
*** They changed legal teams.The new lawyer sent back a garbled redline contract. No one could tell what was changed and what was not. Parts were better, parts worse, most was unintelligible. We all tried to decipher the contract. but gave up. Their story was, "Irwin doesn't know how to use Word." That cost me a lot of lawyer hours.
*** They changed back to the orginal legal team, the original contract. Some progress was made with "the nice lawyer." My hopes were revived, a successful end was in sight.
***They changed legal teams again, and sent another new contract. The contract didn't reflect our agreements. We sent a redline, their lawyers sent a redline, back-and-forth. Little progress, much delay. The producers' excuse was, "Our lawyers just won't take direction." My lawyer said, "That's BS, they pay them, they take direction."
I was naiive. I trusted the producers. If we agreed on terms, it would work out. And we did agree! But I lost my innocence. Their "two steps forward, three steps back" approach was tactical. They were stalling the negotiations. My lawyer, calm through much provocation, finally told me, "They are not negotiating in good faith."
During five months of hostile negotiations, I was so stressed, I thought I might lose my mind. The producers would say one thing one day, reverse themselves the next, all the while appearing to be genuine and truthful. It was maddening. It made me feel like I was crazy, talking to people who could lie so seamlessly, and seem so friendly and nice while they lied.
If they didn't want to license what I was offering, why not just say so? It would have been so much easier to deal with a "No," than an insincere "Yes."