Bill Fitzhugh writes:
In 1982 I was about to graduate from the University of Washington. I was also writing and producing a radio show called "Radio Free Comedy." P.J. O'Rourke came to Seattle to promote one of his books and I gave him a copy of the radio show and asked him for a blurb. (P.J. used to write for the National Lampoon Radio Hour.) He sent a very nice blurb along with the advice that, considering the fate of most humorists, I should go straight to law school. I considered it but decided to try my luck as a writer.
I moved to Los Angeles to write sitcoms exactly two days before the great writers strike of 1988. Struggled for a couple of years writing spec scripts, trying to find an agent and a job. Finally got hired on a Fox show called "Haywire" and was working there for a mere four weeks before I got another job offer at double the salary. I figured I was in the business at this point. I took the new job, with Norman Lear's company. Four weeks later that show was cancelled, the Fox people wouldn't return my agent's call since I'd 'betrayed' them, and the TV hiring season was over for the year. Welcome to Hollywood.
In May 1991, a friend of mine and I began to brainstorm ideas for a screenplay that would eventually become Pest Control. We tried to sell it off a pitch during the summer of that year. There were no takers. We decided to write the screenplay on spec. We finished a draft in early September. We had an agent send the script all over town (Mel Brooks, Lobell-Bergman, Neufeld-Rehme, Scott Rudin etc.). Everybody passed.
A director friend pitched it to producer Peter Samuelson who, after reading the script, optioned it for what would be called "low four figures" in the trades if such small deals made the trades. Peter was unable to sell it to any of the studios and the rights to a screenplay that nobody wanted came back to us.
In June of 1993 I decided to try to turn the script into a novel and I began doing extensive insect research. In November of that year I went to New York to research the setting for the story. In December, I was hired to write the "Insect" episode of the BBC "Eyewitness" series. In the spring of 1994 I took a "Novels-in-Progress" course at UCLA Extension. I finished a draft of the novel in September and began sending query letters to agents.
Over the next eight months I sent 139 query letters and received 124 rejections (the other fifteen agents were either dead or rude enough not to reply). In May 1995 an agent by the name of Jimmy Vines read the manuscript and said he wanted to represent it. The first dozen or so editors to receive it, passed. In July 1995 Jimmy sent the manuscript to a film scout for Spring Creek productions. She loved it and sent it to the home office at Warner Brothers. In August, Jimmy called to say Warner Brothers was offering a staggering sum of money for the film rights and that the offer expired at midnight. I didn't believe him but told him if by some weird chance he was telling the truth, to accept.
On August 4, 1995 there were stories in Variety and Hollywood Reporter about the sale of Pest Control film rights to producer Paula Weinstein's Spring Creek Productions. In August, September, and October there were stories in Publishers Weekly, Newsweek, and the LA Times Sunday Magazine. Jimmy sold the publishing rights to Avon in the US, to Tokuma Shoten in Japan, to Sherz-Verlag in Germany, to Random House in the UK, and to RCS Libri in Italy.
Pest Control was first published as a mass market paperback in the UK in May of 1996, a mere fourteen years after I decided against law school and set out to be a writer. It was published in hardcover in the US in March of 1997. Pest Control will be reprinted in trade paperback in April of 2005.
It is still "in development" at Warner Brothers.
Bill Fitzhugh, a native of Jackson, Mississippi, now improbably lives in Los Angeles. He is the author of several humorous mystery novels, the latest of which (Highway 61 Resurfaced) will be published this April.
