New Life to Flo Ballard Biopic?

[carlo]

Carlo I couldn't read the article.

Here is the article, RanRan. I will need to spread it across multiple posts, since it seems there is a 10,000 character limit per post on this forum.

‘The Lost Supreme’ and a Classic Hollywood Con

The author of a Supremes-related biography was thrilled when a producer approached him to make a movie of the book — then things turned very, very strange

BY PETER BENJAMINSON

During that decades-long quest, I had quit my job as a reporter for the Detroit Free Press and worked for, among other organizations, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the New York City Department of Investigation, the New York State Department of Labor and Columbia University. I’d also moved up and down the East Coast, been married, divorced and remarried and had written five other non-fiction books.

And now this, this call from the white-hot center of every writer’s ambition — Hollywood. Of course, many writers say they would disdain such calls, and instead wish to remain pristine scribes whose books never migrate to the silver screen. They are lying.

I was mulling this over in my motel room while Spencer gave me the details of her proposal to option the movie rights to The Lost Supreme. Although I think I responded rationally, I was spending most of my energy trying not to drool audibly. Summoning up my most neutral tone of voice, I asked Spencer to send me her proposal in writing and I would send it on to Chicago Review Press. She did, I did, and after some back and forth, we all signed on the dotted line.

Two other would-be moviemakers had previously signed option contracts on The Lost Supreme story with my publisher and me, but these wholly legitimate options had expired without any movement toward even the earliest stages of film production. I had signed the first option agreement with a music industry figure I knew personally, Andy Skurow, and his filmmaker brother Matthew, before I had signed the contract to write The Lost Supreme. That option was based not on the book but on the eight hours of interviews I had audiotaped with Ballard during the last year of her life. My publisher and I signed the second option contract, after the book was published, with Karen Harris, a scriptwriter for General Hospital.

The first agreement involved no upfront money at all. The three of us merely agreed to split all the money we received, but we received nothing before the contract expired. Harris purchased a six-month option on The Lost Supreme for $100, but agreed to pay much larger amounts when and if the book was produced as a film or television project. Neither of the optioneers was acting on behalf of studios or indie movie producers; they had hoped to establish such ties to produce this film. They were unable to do that, however, and their efforts came to no fruition. But my publisher and I didn’t lose any money by signing these agreements, and the small amount promised us under the second agreement was duly paid. So when Spencer offered not only to arrange for the filming of the book, but to raise the money to finance the project and to pay $15,000 to my publisher and me on the first day of movie production and another $15,000 a year later, plus other sums on further down the line, neither my publisher nor I saw any reason to say no. Although I never met Spencer in person, I did have lunch in Manhattan with one of her associates, a presentable and intelligent young man who seemed to know what he was doing.

While hopeful about Spencer’s effort, I tried to remember that the same fate that had befallen the previous two attempts to bring my book to the screen would likely befall her project. I am incurably superstitious, however, and believe, along with millions of others, that the third time is always the charm. Very soon, I had an inkling that that might be true.

First of all, the film was to be titled Blondie, a title Ballard probably would have loved, since “Blondie” had been her nickname. More significantly, Spencer soon sent a 55-page screenplay for my approval, certainly a sign that she was taking her option responsibilities seriously.

I was shocked, however, to see how amateurish the screenplay was. It was not much better than a screenplay that I, a complete screenwriting novice, might have written. What I’d been sent was basically verbatim passages from the book, or summaries of those passages, with the margins adjusted to resemble standard screenplay style. For instance, wherever I had quoted Ballard’s Supremes singing partner Mary Wilson in the book, the screenplay had Wilson saying exactly the same thing at the same place in the screen narrative. That would be followed by whatever scenic description from the book followed Wilson’s quote, transferred perfectly intact to corresponding place in the screenplay. I found it difficult to believe that this was a screenplay produced by professionals who were serious about making a movie.

I called Spencer and asked her why she’d bothered to send me this atrocity. I didn’t know what her reaction to my in-her-face criticism would be, and was pleasantly surprised when her only response was to say that she would have it redone. I figured I’d never hear from her again, but within a few months she had sent me a much longer, better screenplay that she said she had co-written with a Hollywood professional named Roy Fegan, who had appeared on television series such as The Shield and Will & Grace.

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