Author:
Connie
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Date Posted: 12:56:14 02/24/03 Mon
Thought this was interesting and wanted to re-post it here....for anyone interested in knowing "what ever happened to the "Bye Bye Baby" book/movie deal?"
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When Courtney Love bought the rights to Caroline Sullivan's book about the Bay City Rollers, it was meant to be the start of a beautiful friendship. Recently, though, things have gone rather wrong
Friday February 14, 2003
The Guardian
I wish I'd saved the emails. There were eight, spanning December 1999 to April 2002, all written in unpunctuated lower-case. The lack of full stops made them hard to follow, because they jumped from one tangential thought to the next, often in the middle of sentences. But there was a flatteringly confiding tone ("stipe and i are going to the erin brokovich premiere," she would write, and I'd be wildly chuffed that she'd told me) that made it easy to like her. Actually, I'd have liked her, anyway - she'd just optioned a book I'd written, Bye Bye Baby: My Tragic Love Affair with the Bay City Rollers, for a film. But there was a special little frisson every time "Courtney Love" pinged into my inbox.
Sadly, it's true: people turn into dribbling sycophants in the presence of celebrity. I certainly did. From the moment in autumn 1999 when Courtney's manager faxed my publishers, Bloomsbury, a letter headed Option Proposal, I crumbled in the face of fame. As a music critic, I'd always been ambivalent about the Hole-singer-turned-actor, but once she singled me out, the idea of a celebrity friend overrode any reservations. It's fashionable to sneer at people who buy Heat for a celebrity fix, but until it happens, you can't imagine how seductive it is. And when you figure in the thrill of friends asking, "Is it true that Courtney Love is making a movie of your book?" (I'd nod modestly, implying that although I was out of their league now, I wouldn't let fame change me), it's easy to understand why celebrities excite the same reaction as a seal begging for a fish. It wouldn't have mattered, I'm embarrassed to admit, if it had been Courtney or Delia Smith, though in the event, Courtney came with more kudos . . .
Because she liked Bye Bye Baby, a story of boy bands and girl bonding, I assumed we would become friends. It certainly seemed so when her first email arrived, just before Christmas 1999. It ambled along as if we'd known each other for years, and even included her home phone number in Los Angeles. Hey, Courtney, I thought - it's you and me. Buddies. Think Thelma and Louise. Think Michael Jackson and the rat in Ben.
But I don't blame me. I had had modest aspirations for the book, and the idea of anyone at all wanting to make a film of it didn't occur to me as I was writing it. The fact that Courtney, who'd blossomed into a rock star and actor since the death of her husband Kurt Cobain, did was so improbable that I just laughed, slightly hysterically, when I found out.
I hadn't even known she'd read the book. It transpired that someone at the Glasgow Herald knew she was once a Roller fan, and when Bye Bye Baby was published, sent her a copy in the hope she would write a review for their pages. Instead, she decided it would make a suitable subject for her directing debut. Her what? But that's what her manager said in the fax: "She has been looking for a project to direct for some time, and she sees this as her directing debut."
Not only that, her mate Michael Stipe of REM had launched a production company, and was apparently keen to get involved. Courtney mentioned this in her second email (all our communications were by email; I was too shy to phone her), and it was such an unlikely turn that if I'd made it up, nobody would have believed me. But by now, small pieces were appearing in the press, and I'd begun daydreaming about what I'd do with the money. In fact, I thought about it a lot. So did my friends, who grumpily said, "Suppose you've made a fortune out of this."
They'll be happy to know that I didn't. The real money, I discovered, comes not from selling an option, but from the movie actually being made. Most authors are lucky to receive £2000 for an option (in which a party such as Courtney pays for the right to develop a screenplay within a specific period, usually a year), but can expect a chunk when (more likely, if) it becomes a film. Only 5% of all optioned books do. But Courtney's high profile and Hollywood contacts made it seem a better than average bet. So there was potentially a small fortune in it, and I spent many happy hours imagining the pad I'd buy. A south London version of Lenny Kravitz's op-art Miami mansion appealed.
The 13-page contract was finally signed in April 2000, and Courtney's emails, which had chattily discussed various actors for the role of me - someone was going to play me! - stopped. Once the deal was done, I suppose she felt she no longer had to woo me, which was something of a relief. I'd been attempting to answer them in her own meandering style, and was never entirely sure what I was saying.
At around the same time, the Express and Telegraph ran features in which I'd idly said I wouldn't mind Leonardo DiCaprio and Ewan McGregor playing Rollers. Well, of course I wouldn't. But once it appeared, other papers printed it as fact. By October, the Sunday Times was writing: "Ewan McGregor has expressed interest in portraying the charismatic lead singer Les McKeown. Leonardo DiCaprio has, however, turned down the opportunity to portray the guitarist Stuart Wood." Now magazine said: "Roseanne star John Goodman is in line to play a major part in an upcoming movie about the Bay City Rollers . . .Courtney's thought to favour Keanu Reeves in the role of Les McKeown instead of Scots-born Ewan McGregor." John Goodman and Keanu Reeves? Who mentioned them? The thing was taking on a bizarre life of its own.
As far as I know, the film never got beyond the talking stage. Courtney renewed the option in 2001, and in August of that year invited me to LA - "Get your ass over here and help me write this script" was the way she put it. But September 11 intervened, and, unsurprisingly, we never got around to it. I heard from her once more last April, when the option was up. "I've got every frame of this film in my mind!" she wrote encouragingly. Then, to everyone's surprise, she failed to renew the deal, and that seemed to spell the end of my celebrity friendship. (But the British Film Council have recently shown interest, and Bye Bye Baby may yet become a film.)
Courtney, meanwhile, has taken up residence in the British tabloids since last week's much-reported air rage incident. She followed it up by appearing naked on the cover of Q magazine and appearing at an Elton John charity gig in a Donald Duck outfit. A friend who met her at the last asked if she still had plans for Bye Bye Baby. "She looked at me like a slightly cross-eyed deer, not quite focusing, and said, 'Yeah, it's great, but if I'm gonna start making films, I've got to take so much blow that I'd be running around the room for hours. And I've got an album to do first.'"
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