MEET MISTER WIZARD

• Share

(2 of 7)

ER, based on a script of Crichton's that had been moldering around Hollywood for 22 years, is just the latest evidence that Crichton hits more passes than anyone else at the high roller's table, even with old dice. From his best-selling The Andromeda Strain (the first novel he wrote under his own name), which became a hit movie in 1971, through Jurassic Park, with a worldwide box-office take of $912 million the most popular movie of recorded history, he is a giant even among those other pop novelists--John Grisham, Stephen King, Tom Clancy--whom Hollywood has fallen in love with. Consider the string of Crichton novels that have tapped into popular obsessions and been converted into box-office gold: Rising Sun, his thriller that exploited American fears of Japan's economic threat, earned $65 million domestically for Hollywood in 1993. Disclosure, his 1994 topical twist on sex-harassment in the office (Demi Moore chases Michael Douglas around the desk) collected $83 million domestically. Congo, his adventure saga featuring a talking gorilla, was released last summer to widespread pans but still made a hefty $80 million. Maybe that's because its advertisements didn't feature a single cast member--just the real superstar behind the project: "From the author of Jurassic Park."

Crichton built his success out of his understanding of and passion for science, technology, art, entertainment and commerce. His is one of those high-end, abstract-thinking machines, keen on contemporary social issues but able to make his interests drive book and ticket sales. That pejorative expression that has so much currency--"obviously written with a movie in mind"--requires qualification when applied to Crichton. "I think of Michael as the high priest of high concept," says Spielberg. All right, concept: Island. Theme park. Dinosaurs. Adults swallowed whole. Kids in peril. Easy. But who said the author had to give us the history of computers along with it? And chaos theory? Fractal vs. Euclidean geometry? And the workings of a Stegosaurus gizzard? And dna? So much dna it's a wonder Crichton hasn't been called as an expert witness in the O.J. trial.

"He's the only writer I know who has footnotes in his fiction," says Frank Marshall, who directed Congo. Raves Spielberg: "He has maybe the richest imagination of anybody I know. And he grounds his fantasy in such contemporary technical reality that he can make the reader swallow just about anything." Need a for-instance? Take Jurassic Park, page 69:

"Bioengineered DNA was, weight for weight, the most valuable material in the world. A single microscopic bacterium, too small to see with the naked eye, but containing the genes for a heart-attack enzyme, streptokinase, or for 'ice-minus,' which prevented frost damage to crops, might be worth $5 billion to the right buyer." There is popularity in a passage like that. It bears information a man, even a casual-reading man, can do something with. Win a bar bet. Pass the time creatively on the scaffold with the hangman. It is skinny with legs. Crichton is Captain Reliable at this.