Please be seated. Good afternoon and welcome to the 34th annual book fair. I am dean of the Honors College ere at Miamidade College. We are delighted to be able to host this for you this year. And before we get started, there are a couple of people and organizations to thank. As this fair would not be possible without our sponsors. Please, give them a round of applause. [applause] also, we are so fortunate to be a part of a community of people who care about book fairs, literacy, et cetera, we have so many friends of the fair in the audience today, so please give yourselves a round of applause. Cheers and applause] as customary, i ask that you please turn off your cell phone. Know that we will have a q a at the microphone. We ask when you present your questions, please be brief and concise and also i hear the chuckle. Also we will have a signing area to the right of the elevator. Without any further ado, this is a particularly special panel a because we have with us, one of the founders of the book fair mitch kaplin. Please give a round of applause. Cheers and applause] thank you. Youre welcome. [cheers and applause] thank you. Thats very kind of you. You know, ive been doing this for 34 years. [cheers and applause] i probably you know, ive been the ed mcmahon for 5,000 authors and i have never been nervous, this is the first time ive been nervous doing Something Like this. My fellow folks ought to be coming out. [laughter] so as many of you know because i havent kept it a secret. Ive been involved with a film a man who invented christmas. Its a remarkable film and itll be premiering november 22nd, this wednesday night and its really and i had the time of my life doing it. And what i thought we would do at this program is sort of give you a bit of an anatomy of the making of a film from a book. So itll be instructive as to all that happens because we know so many books become films,not an easy process. It took us nine years to get made. Youll understand what it did do that. Will introduce everybody from the panel and then were going the film trailer from. I just want to say its not the music that youll see in the film, we have michael dana ho won the academy for life of pis music during the music but its still a pretty good music, i think. Im going to go and start on this side. This is ian. Yes. [cheers and applause] ian is from the Mob Film Company in london. Not the mob, but the mob. [laughter] film company in london and hes been coproducer since 2009 with us. Hes best known for producing mini series adaptations. Terry cratch it. You all know him. Yes . Hes the bestselling, the color of magic and hog father of books and i also had the opportunity to see a documentary which im hoping to bring to miami called cruel and unusual. Documentary about three guys who were in prison in louisiana and they were there for 40 years in solitary confinement for a crime they did not commit and its a very powerful documentary and we are hoping to bring it to miami. [applause] im going to give a formal introduction. Les is the director of Creative Writing Program at f. I. U. And he is the best selling author of 20 books and novels including the john deal mystery eries. And last rain to paradise, water to the angels and the man who invented christmas which is why we are here today. [applause] please give him a warm welcome. [applause] now, i told you that i started this about 10 years ago and i could only do this because i started a film Company Along with two local folks and i dont know if they are here but its marvin and lisa who are not with us this afternoon but the real erson who i could start with a producer, paula who is right here as my partner. [cheers and applause] my partner in the kaplin company and awardwinning producer in her own write. Right. Her work is derived almost solely from literary material. Which is why we get along so well. Shes taken numerous plays from state screens including something yall know, the search for signs of intelligent life in the universe and the vagina monologue, actually. She also produced Karina Karina with whoopi goldberg. J nims island starring jodie foster. Gerard butler and abigael. Shes now partnering with me obviously, i dont know why she didnt wait but i think we are going to start a good role right now and she you know, our company, shell talk a little bit about it i hope too, in addition to this, we have how any of you read the literary the Potato Peel Pie Society . That will be coming out in april. How many months, 11 months, 14 months in london and dublin trying to get all of this one. She gets my most valuable player award for helping. And then we have barrett, our director of the film. [applause] gave him a directors nomination and life on mars garnered the nternational emmy for best drama. He followed these with tsunami, the aftermath. It was a miniseries that dealt with the events of the 2004 asian tsunami. For his work on the series, he was nominated for an emmy as outstanding director. Cast members included toni ollette. And then he did a future film i grew livesd miss pedi or a day with amy adams. And then his tv show spooks. He worked with us on the set. I came not knowing him when i went to dublin to watch this film being shot. E was just remarkable. His interplay with the actors. His empathy for kids and the way he was able to work with them give me a renewed respect for what directors have to do. That is barrett. [applause] then Robert Michaelson taught me with ian moore about the financial aspects of film making. I thought book selling was difficult. He is an Award Winning canadian independent feature Television Producer and director. Among his many feature films are hard choices which premiered at sundance. Rayer of the roller boys starring patricia arquette. Burg ler starring mark wall and bill paxton. And off the list featuring adam scott which was called the spinal tap of surf movies. He is a surfer as well. He is also a member of the border family. Robert and paul are married as well. Thats a nice thing. We save some money on hotel rooms. What i thought we would do now is lower the lights. Youll get a sense of the whan who invented christmas from the trailer. Indiscernible] [applause] my lamp has gone out. Have have run run out of ideas. Are we in trouble . I have told you not to disturb me when im working. Humbug. Most people dont belong in books. He meets some kind of super natural gise. Scrooge. Check the window. You think im made of money . Mr. Scrooge. How delightful to meet you sir. Sorry i cant say the same. He and i are going to do wonderful things together. Couldnt possibly get it printed and distributed. If i cant finish it, ill never write again. The characters wont do a lot. Allegedly. We will shut out nothing and everyone will do work. I have to get to the printers by 9 00. Merry, Merry Christmas to one and all. Back to work. God bless us, every one. [applause] thank you. Thats just the beginning of it. Making a film out of a book, i thought we would start with all of the players who were involved in this very, very and difficult process. Lets start with les who can talk about the material and the book and what drew him to write this book. Well, is this working . Can you hear me out there . Yeah. People often ask me, are you happy with what they did to your book . [laughter] i can say im very happy that my book could be the starting place for what i think turned out to be a terrific film. Of a graduate of p american the american film institute. I had some exposure to the notion that maybe every word in your book will not make its way to the screen and im so tickled that susan, the screen writer from canada and barrett decided to take this book in the direction they did which focuses really on the creative process. When robert first came to me, and said mitchell told me about your book and i think i can make a film about it. You know its about a guy writing a book. [laughter] he said yeah, yeah, but we have got that covered. Normally you might supposed that what you would see a series of skeans with the fellow wadding up sheet after sheet of paper and throwing it into the wastebasket. What a writer goes through when hes struggling with the process of bringing idea into a form that will actually captivate readers and i think that susan has done a terrific job of imagining the actual interesting things that go on inside a writers head when, what a writer is really doing in most cases in forming a novel is running a little movie inside her head and then finds the words to somehow get that in paper where people can appreciate it and i think what you see in this film is a very accurate and very entertaining, i have to say representation of what Charles Dickens did for most people. The es in one ear and out her, a genius like dickens takes incidents and memories and profound experiences of life and finds a way to weave those all together into a narrative, well n case this turns out to be one of the most popular books ever written. One that 175 years later people still take time at in the Holiday Season to sit down with their families either reread or watch one of the representations and while they have a new one to watch because from my money the new favorite scrooge is christopher plummer. He is outstanding. What drew you to the material in the beginning . What made you think this would be a good book, the story of dickens . Well, i went to graduate school and we didnt spend any time on Christmas Carol because i dont know, i think that my professors thought anything that popular wasnt worthy of serious inquiry to think of that. I thought just the opposite, if anything remains so popular for so long, isnt it worth time to figure out why . When i found out that Charles Dickens had to publish book, how when he went to his publishers, they told him to lie down until the urge passed, a ghost story about christmas and he was so upset by that and certain that he had had the best idea to date that he told his agent, i will publish this thing myself and forester said, you dont have any money, dickens, well, forester thats where you come in, helped him raise the funds so that in six weeks write and have ill illustrated and typeset and bound and delivered to bookstores in six weeks and sold out all 6,000 copies immediately. Dickens by the way was at the nateer of his career. Famous for having done oliver twist and the old curiosity shop. He last three books he had published had gone terribly for him. He was ready to quit, move to ontinent and become a travel writer and at the last, at the 11th hour came up with this notion that just maybe he had one more good idea left in him. When i realized how close we came to not having a Christmas Carol, thats when i was convinced that this was a story worth telling. Thank you. [applause] robert, why dont you talk about that story a little bit. Paula probably turned to her right and said robert, why dont you talk about that story a little bit. Paula . So, yeah, mitch sent me the book and our process is mitch sent me the book and the process is i wake up and there are things in my inbox in santa monica where we live, how about this . This could be a good tv series. This is a great movie. [laughter] there was this book by les and i said, sounds intriguing, send it on but, you know, sent the book, read it and thought, this is great. I have absolutely no idea what to do with it and at that very day, robert, my husband came into the office, i just got a call from the Canadian Broadcast Company and theyre looking for an event film, maybe christmas or Something Like that. [laughter] and i was like what do you think . It was just very fortuitous and robert took it, hes canadian which canadian government actually gives you money to help you make films which the American Government does not and that was really handy being married to someone who had that. And robert ran with it at that point and went out and found the writer susan who is fabulous and started working on putting it together as screen play and first iteration was actually television, it was a short moment and then we looked at it and we thought, you know what, lets lets take a big leap that we can put this out in the theaters and that its going to work at the feature and we took what was tv script and we completely reworked it into a feature script and, you know, compact it into a 90minute piece. Thank you, paula. [applause] yes. We will move to robert. Robert, when you saw that and i know just because i know, we went and jumped through a lot of different hoops and went down a lot of different roads, why dont you talk about some of those and talk about how the mob got involved as well. [laughter] ok. Charles dickens wrote the book in six weeks. It started when i talked to cbc nd were looking for a canadian movie, ive never done a Christmas Movie before but i like finding genres and bending them and when i heard about Charles Dickens, my image of Charles Dickens, classic picture of him as old man bent over his desk writing and that was the image i had of him and i started reading the book and here this is, this is a 31yearold, 29 when the process started, you know, young, vital, he was like a literary rock star of his time and so that tied in as using Christmas Carol as the basis and going through dickens imagining a Christmas Carol became something very excited and a way to tell the christmas story but thats different and so that was sort of well researched and i never even knew about and we incorporated a lot of those pieces into the movie. As les was saying, how do you make a story about a writer interesting and i since this as a canadian project, i was looking for a Canadian Writer and susan coin had done a tv series, slings and arrows. It is about a shakespearian travel troupe. A very kind of i dont know if people have seen that. Eally talented writer. The writer of mozart in the jungle. Really talented writer. She has magical realism to her work and we wanted to figure out how to bring this all to life in a movie and make it entertaining and exciting. So we got the canadian government to pay for us to get trip to london, i said it was necessary to do the research and they agreed actually. We met with a lot of dickens experts and we met with simon ho is in the movie and we hear stories of how dickens used to walk the streets of london, 1015 miles a day and see things and incorporate them in material, that he couldnt start writing a book until he had the characters names, those elements in the movie as well. Also the fact that when he was writing, he would be upstairs in his study and just becoming all the different characters and talking to himself in the mirror and taking on all the different voices and becoming different characters. We try today figure out ways of bringing that to the screen. Also to make independent films you need partners and this is about dickens and we were in canada and uk have coproduction agreements which allows you to Work Together and take advantage f each others tax benefits. I was introduced to ian and adam john of the mob and they made an officer we couldnt refuse and so we ended up partnering with them and we scattered locations and long conversation and they say over 9year period this was going to be an event, Christmas Television movie and we had artners in the uk and, tnt was things ebb it, these and flow, and then we had such a great script, great idea and said this is too good not to make. Paul came on board and everyone jumped in and four years later we got it made. [laughter] ian can take it from where you started . We were match made by industry contact. We started as one Conference Call and then two Conference Calls. We got sent the treatment. We have to do this, this is great. Very slowly we started working on it together. I think what we liked about it you can make stuffy period ramas about Charles Dickens. It wasnt going to be a stuffy period drama, dickens as rock star as the time when you could legitimately come from the u. S. To europe and go home again. Not long before the period. If you came to the u. S. , they couldnt go back because they idnt have the ships to do it. It was the first office to be bootlegged. The beginnings of fame and all those kinds of touch points as well. Dickens was the start at the modern celebrity and that felt fresh and interesting and contemporary as well. We just looked at the material and dickens, and just really liked the idea of getting involved in that and we formed a partnership and here we are today to tell you all about it. No, its been a Remarkable Partnership between we have three companies, mazer and the mob and Roberts Company and its become a friendship and a family and we want to do more stuff together, clearly. But tell us how barrett got snookered into doing this . [laughter] like a short version of a long version . I think i will do the short version. Im always gobsmacked its ike how does any independent film ever get made. The things that fall into line or nine years. Its extraordinary and the passion behind it and as directors we come at the end and take all the credit and the glory. [laughter] but you know, i came in very last minute and these guys have been working for ten years. I was on a speech in mexico. [laughter] a beach in mexico. [laughter] in fact, i kept the cap, my lucky cap. I recommend you go there while its still here and the water levels are low. I was literally having a margarita on the beach and these guys found out that we have a take ian who introduced but ian30 years ago told me how to se the camera. [laughter] it kind of goes back to, you know well back yeah. [laughter] victorian times. But but these guys said we have a script and its, you know, its a very different take n a Christmas Carol, its not a Christmas Carol. Its Charles Dickens meets a Christmas Carol and we know that youre a big fan of a hristmas carol and i had been attached to a couple of versions already which had begun for other reasons and so so i said, ok, and i borrowed my sons ipad and downloaded les book and they sent me the script and got transported to victorian Christmas Eve england and six months later im in dublin. What really happened was once we give barrett the script, he couldnt hear us, he was on this island, he had to hike halfway of a mountain and looking for the spot where the cell reception was good. So did you like it . Did you like it . And he said, im in. And honestly, 48 hours later, he was on a plane to vancouver to meet dan stevens who was already attached to play dickens and that had to work, its all about chemistry and people feeling good about working with other people, so barrett just literally jumped on the plane and went to vancouver and dan is shooting tv series and youre squeezing a meeting with barrett in between takes of the tv series and they met and it was just it just really clicked and so barrett was on director and i think what robert four days later, we were scouting in dublin. It was insane. It moved really quickly. When they go, they go. They go fast and you also have to find money to make it go. [laughter] maybe we can talk a little bit during q a as well but one thing that i learned, all of the money that you get to make a film, you really dont get it until you start making the film. So the question is how do you then finance that period before youre making the film . [laughter] i just had to do a call last year. David is sitting in the first row, david, wave your hand. This is kind of like hanukkah. We are shooting in a few weeks. It was coming but it just wasnt there yet. Were having to build sets and make costumes from 1843, they were all handmade. All the customs were handmade. You dont buy it off the rack. Thats not the process. We needed money immediately and mitch, we went to mitch and said, mitch, we need like a fairy god mother or father to help us through this. We gave him an amount of money that we could use, itll get us two or three weeks of preproduction and then the money was going to come in. Mitch went to david lee and david asked no uestions, we worked on other projects. He is fantastic. He wrote out a check. May i say the amount to everybody . No. It wasnt that much. It was going to last us two to three weeks. We liken it to the hanukkah story with the oil, its supposed to go for one day but then it goes for two, three, eight. O this money, not so much that david gave us which was supposed to be a little gap ended up getting us through eight weeks of preproduction and at the end of each week, these two brilliant producers would go, who do we not have to pay this week . [laughter] thats how we stretched the hanukkah money out. I was in dublin but i was getting emails trying to figure all this out, how are we doing all of this and realized when i got to the set that the actors actually and the director, you guys actually started the film not getting paid for that very first week, i think, it was, am i wrong about that, robert. No, just so you know, the money is our promise from a lot of different entities so we actually have the money promised from all the different parties but until everyone signs every contract, it doesnt come to us, so theres this huge promise amount of money but you have to tell that to an actor. If you go to someone and say well, we have this money promised, work with us. How do you pay for food and all the different things, that was kind of the exercise and unfortunately in a lot of independent films everyone is in this crunch zone. I just want to say a lot of the independent films fall apart around that point. These guys did not let it fall apart. [applause] a remarkable job doing it. Now that you know the process every night ian and i would go on the phone, we are still standing. That was our mantra. Were still here. We still have 18 people working for us. Its the aaa of film making, one day at a time. Keep going. Tells a little bit more about the process. We have a feature receipt that was made. It tulls featureettethat was made. The its very short, a couple of minutes, i thought we would show that and go to q a, we have about 10 to 12 minutes left. Lets see that and i know you may have questions out there as well. So lets, if we can lower the lights and go to that, thatll e great. I am the ghost of christmas past. Not bloody likely. This origin story of a Christmas Carol. Dickens was a rock star at that time but fell from grace. He was sort of going through a midlife crisis at 32. My lamp has gone out. I have run out of ideas. The pressure was mounting. He has young children. He was overspending and concerned about dwindling finances. Do you have a new book in mind . It is about a miser. Does it have a title . Humbug. Christmas bald. Something like that. Christmas ballad. This is what Charles Dickens had to go through to make the greatest christmas book ever a reality. He had to publish himself. He has a lot on his shoulder. This intense imagination. These characters literally manifest. Scrooge. Check the window. You think im made of money . Mr. Scrooge, how delightful to meet you, sir. Sorry, i cant say the same. Dickens talked about the characters in his books being more real to him than the people he knew in his life. They became his tortures in a way. He gets Writers Block and particularly scrooge becomes his nemesis. Allegedly. They all have their opinions. He doesnt get to explain his side of things. So i took the little bit of writing a short speech. No. What dickens created became important to the whole world. He completely changed the way people looked at poverty. Those people dont belong. Those people . You mean the poor . The possibility of goodness and how do we treat our fellow man . Christmas wasnt celebrated that way before a Christmas Carol. God bless us, err one. Scrooge, you and i are going to do wonderful things. Merry christmas to one and all. [applause] if you have any questions, please go to the mic. Just a couple of quick housekeeping things. The next part we didnt go into is the distribution. It is being districted by bleaker street films. It will be opening up in about 500 theaters on thanksgiving weekend and in miami, right now, i know that it is playing it will be playing at the sunset amc theater. Those of you watching on cspan, check your local listings. Go to the ogo to the bleekser street website. If there are any questions, we had be happy to take some. Here come a couple, i see. Thank you, this question is for les. I heard you all talking and tte. The feature it seems so tortuous. [laughter] is this the kind of thing that you go through when you write. At least for you. Well, it is a mix of hope and torture. [laughter] like dickens you get an idea that you think is full of promise and then the agony comes in always striving to do the best you can to make it manifest and worrying that what youre coming up with isnt quite getting it and as dickens, as dickens says, the first thing was to get the name of the character and hope the characters would begin to tell the story which really does happen despite those who might poohpooh the notion. Characters when youre lucky, do help you tell the story. When i saw the first dailies where scrouge comes to life for dickens and wonderful interchange, how delightful to meet you, im sorry, i cant say the same, i knew they got this, this is going to work. I believe its accurate representation of what we go through when we struggle to make something work that we think really is important to make work. Thank you. Thank you. Its a universal story so have you sold International Rights yet . Yes. It is going to be opening in canada. It opens in canada on november 24 and london december 1, u. K. December 1. Australia. New zealand. Italy. Italian version is great, scrooga [laughter] itll be everywhere. I know that the russians have put in [laughter] they are going to reserve it for next year because they cant dub it fast enough to get in. Maybe we will be sitting in russia next year. I have seen the movie and i got a sneak preview and it was fabulous. Its even better than the preview. I saw the preview. When i got a pass to see it, i was so excited, jumping up and down and calling my friends, it was great. So you guys really nailed it. So youre saying it took nine years from start to finish but you didnt tell us how long the actual filming took, im curious once you got the script . In a life imitating art kind of way, we did it in six weeks. [laughter] and runup to the to shoot itself and runup to christmas 2016 on either side of christmas 2016. And i say in the promotion of it, christmas in the title, we have about six weeks to get a really Good Box Office out of it as well. Everything is six weeks. It was wonderful, the music was wonderful and the story itself and the costume was fabulous, i really enjoyed it. Thank you very much. [applause] i know that we are getting down to the time, i want to thank these guys for being here with us. [applause] and i also want to give special shotout to my lovely partner paula who i couldnt do any of this without. [applause] how are you able to do this . I have someone i have someone who is a real producer whos on my team. On a personal note, i want to give a shoutout to my mother who is right over there. Cheers and applause] i also want to thank everybody from Miamidade College for being supportive of not only what we have done today but the book fair. You know it has been a remarkable week. We have another day ahead of us but we dont. Youve got a marvelous program coming right after ward with bob haas and charles simic. Just soak it all up and thank you very, very much. H, by the way, les will be signing books outside, we have beautiful posters that the rest of the group will be signing out in the signing area as well. The posters are free. Feel free. [applause] [laughter] you want us to get together . [inaudible youre watching American History tv. All weekend, every weekend on cspan 3. Next on American History tv, urnalist liza monday talks about her book code girls. Women code breakers remarks were ho
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