Stevie Williams (Interview) excerpt

Stevie Williams (Interview) starring Jaime Lynn Randall: When this first aired, I had 30 messages waiting on my answering machine the next morning. Before I could get to them, the phone rang and the voice on the line said he was calling about the book that had been talked about on the show the previous night. He had already talked to all the New York publishers who couldn't help and they had referred him back to the cable channel who, in turn, referred him to me.

He said he wanted to buy the film rights to the book and asked if I could help. I told him there was no book, it was a fictional interview and it was just a story I had written. He said he didn't care that there was no book and that it was a great story and asked what I wanted for the rights. This was very early days and I had yet to sell one of these stories so I suggested he make an offer. He did and it blew my mind! I told him I thought we could work something out.

We arranged to meet and, in ending the call, I asked what movies he had produced. Blind Date ((Bruce Willis and Kim Basinger), Dragnet (Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd) and The Marrying Man (Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger) was his answer. His name was David Permut. The story was ultimately picked up by Rob Cohen at Taft-Barish Entertainment and David arranged for me to have a 'first-look' deal at TriStar Pictures.