Word: obst
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...film backward, a process similar to watching spawn swim downstream to salmon. An idea is "developed" by film executives, a writer is recruited to amplify the notion into a novel, and then the book is converted to celluloid. The trend has become widespread: Simon & Schuster Editor David Obst recently moved his offices to Hollywood, and Bantam Books has established a film-production company in Los Angeles. Its acquisitions editor Charles Bloch regards the cinema-literary process as "a sophisticated methodology of people who have an interest in both books and movies so that they can put two and two together...
Sometimes the idea springs from outlines, sometimes from headlines. One idea managed to come from a shudder. In the Hollywood Hills last year, Obst and Independent Producer Peter Guber (The Deep) gazed down at the urban sprawl. "What would happen if all this burned to the ground?" Guber wondered. Replied Obst: "I don't know. Let's do a book-movie in which fire is the villain." The Great Los Angeles Fire by Ned Stewart will be published by Simon & Schuster this fall; Columbia will make the film. Obst has the courage of his confections: his license plate...