Hideaway (53 page)

Recently (as I write this), I received in excess of 120 pieces of hate mail from a number of anarchists who did not like the fact that a serial killer in
The Face
was also an anarchist. You guessed it: Most of them wished me dead!

One fellow wrote a
polite
letter about the same issue, but suggested that I was obliged to write an apology for an anarchist website. I replied in part as follows:

 
I do not mean to compare myself to Dickens, but I wonder whether in his day he received angry letters from the wardens of the debtors’ prisons or from furious money-lenders who were offended by Scrooge.

An employee of a major national magazine has written dozens of anti-Catholic hate letters to me. They come on general-use magazine stationery, and the envelopes have been processed through postage meters registered to the magazine. Twice this publication has given space to vicious attacks on me which featured phrases and even whole sentences from those hate letters. The editors were unmoved by my politely worded suggestion that harboring religious bigots who threaten and harass a subject in his private life and then publish attacks on him in the magazine’s pages is poor journalism even by their low standards. Indeed, I sensed that they were perversely proud of their hatemongering scamp.

In retrospect, it seems meaningful that the first hate mail I received should be in regard to
Hideaway,
for this novel is in part about the power of hate and about the power of love to defeat it.

The power of love can never defeat Hollywood, however, which grinds forward in a relentless, fevered quest to destroy the story, characters, and meaning of every Koontz property on which it can lay its hands.

The film rights to
Hideaway
were sold to Tri-Star with high hopes. I made the deal only after the head of the studio at the time, Mike Medavoy, gave me his home phone number and promised that if at any point I received a script that desecrated the novel, he would ensure the revisions I wanted would be executed; in an extreme situation, a new writer would be brought aboard to start over. “Other adaptations of your books have been dreadful,” he said, “but this time the source material will be treated with respect.”

I accepted his guarantee, and he never disappointed me. The development executives brought in a writer about whom I was dubious; the writer produced a confused and blood-soaked script, and when I complained, Mike read the script, agreed with me, and ordered a fresh start with a new writer. The second writer did a terrific job; the script had suspense, style, and heart.

Then Mike Medavoy was deposed. Some said it was a palace coup, perpetrated by people who owed their careers to him. I don’t know if that’s true or not—Hollywood politics bore me.

What I do know is that Mike was, in my experience, that rarest of individuals: a film executive who kept his word, acted honorably, and had taste. He became a successful independent producer after leaving Tri-Star, so sometimes there is justice in Hollywood.

The new studio power players, aligned with the Dark Side, brought in a young director they described as a “very unique genius.” When talking about themselves and their closest associates, the only words that many Hollywood executive use more frequently than
genius
are the article
the
and the conjunction
and.
When they modify
genius
with wild disregard for grammar, you know you’re in trouble.

Although she isn’t the female lead, a young disabled girl named Regina is the heart of
Hideaway
both in terms of plot and thematic structure. She is a symbol of innocence, of purity. The antagonist, Vassago, is actually Evil personified, and like most evil with a small
e
and like all Evil with a capital E, he is motivated more powerfully by the desire to destroy innocence and pollute purity than he is by anything else. In a structural sense, therefore, Regina is the sun, while all the other characters are planets revolving around her. Without Regina—ten years old, disabled, charming, acerbic, funny, indomitable—the story doesn’t just collapse: It evaporates.

In their very unique genius, the director and the studio execs kept the
name
“Regina,” but they changed her into a moody sixteen-year-old sexpot. They wanted to cast a girl who had been identified by the very unique geniuses of Hollywood as the next megastar: Alicia Silverstone. She has never become a megastar, but neither has the young director become the next Steven Spielberg—as both the studio and he himself, with singular arrogance, assured me that he would.

I argued without effect that the new shooting script sucked. When, at the studio’s request, I attended a test screening, where they expected me to be enchanted—some in the audience walked out in disgust ten minutes into the movie. One woman, passing the roped-off seats where studio bigwigs sat with the director, said loudly, “Sewage.” My wife and I left ten minutes later, and I exhibited astonishing self-control by
not
vomiting on the director.

The studio intended to put my name above the title of this atrocity in a possessory position:
Dean Koontz’s HIDEAWAY.
As this was manifestly
not
my
Hideaway,
I wanted my name off the title, out of the credits, and off all advertising. I offered to return the money they had paid for film rights if they would erase my name from their exercise in stupidity and tastelessness. They refused.

I turned to my entertainment attorney, a wizardly strategist, and said I was willing to press the issue as hard and as far as we could even if the cost exceeded what I’d been paid for film rights.

Meanwhile, a mensch in my professional life, knowledgeable about the morays of successful Japanese businessmen, suggested I write to the CEO of Sony, the parent company of Tri-Star, in Tokyo. According to my adviser, by making a personal appeal to that man, and by referring to him as “a friend in business,” I would be requiring him, by Japanese custom, to treat me with honor and with respect.

I wrote a cordial letter to Mr. Teriyaki (not his real name), which my adviser edited, and I sent it air express to Tokyo. This felt good: not a love letter, but the opposite of a hate letter, a thoughtful, courteous appeal to my “friend in business.” Mr. Teriyaki himself was not a Hollywood weasel, so no doubt he would be appalled to discover the studio had shredded the spirit of our agreement.

He didn’t answer me. At the advice of my mensch, I wrote again, an even more cordial letter, asserting the relationship of “friends in business.” Mr. Teriyaki didn’t tell me to pound sand or to buzz off, but he still didn’t answer me, either.

Then I had an inspiration. Love letters hadn’t worked; I wasn’t capable of writing hate; but in the past I had discovered that humor with a slightly acerbic edge could occasionally work wonders.

Therefore, by air express, I sent this letter to Tokyo:

 
 
When that letter received no response, I followed it with this:

 
Had I been Mr. Teriyaki, I would have answered. He did not. So:

 
 
When he didn’t reply, I wondered if Mr. Teriyaki was obtuse or whether perhaps he wanted to see what I would write next.

 
His silence resulted in a final letter.

 
Before Hideaway was released to theaters, we got my name out of the title and out of major advertising. We could not get it out of the screen credits or prevent it from being referenced in publicity materials; nevertheless, I felt we had achieved 80 percent of our objective, which was to separate me from association with their tedious, sleazy movie. My attorney’s fine work was most likely entirely responsible for our success, but in the bad-boy corner of my heart, I like to think that my letters to Mr. Teriyaki contributed to the cause.

The movie tanked, as it deserved to. It was a ghost of a ghost of the book. After stripping story, character, and theme from the novel, the director and studio execs failed to replace them with anything, resulting in just a series of images and noises.

I do not—and at the time did not—hate the director. Hating him, even going after him with a crow bar, could not have done the damage to him that he did to himself by abandoning the essential elements of the novel. I never sent him hate mail, and I never will. He won’t get a dinner invitation, either.

New York Times
Bestselling Author
 
Dean Koontz

AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD OR AT
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