The Funhouse

always thought that transforming a screenplay into a real novel would be interesting and demanding, so I was motivated by the challenge. To be truthful, I was also motivated by the financial terms, which were more generous than what I was receiving for my own novels. When I signed on to write The Funhouse , the inflation rate was 18% and interest rates were well above 20%, and it seemed as if total economic collapse was imminent. I was not receiving peanuts for my own novels, as I had for many years, but had worked my way up to compensation in cashews; nevertheless, given the economic climate, the offer for The Funhouse was enough of an improvement to be irresistible.
        Yes, sometimes writers do have to take money - as well as art - into consideration. That is, if they like shoes, having something to eat now and then, and having more than a supermarket shopping cart in which to store their worldly possessions. Oh, I know some writers who are above such grubby motivations. Of course, every one of them has a trust fund, wealthy parents, wealthier grandparents, or a well-paid working spouse to fall back upon. Nothing allows an artist to ignore the importance of money more than having enough of it to begin with. I've always thought that having to be concerned about finances for at least the first decade or two of his professional life actually improves a writer's work; it puts him in closer touch with average citizens and their concerns, insuring more relevance in his fiction.
        Anyway, I accepted the offer to write The Funhouse. The script was good as a screenplay but offered enough material for no more than 10% or 20% of a novel. This is not unusual. Movies are shallow compared to novels, shadows of stories when compared to real stories. I had to build up the characters, create back-stories for all of them, and develop a plot that built toward the events on the carnival midway in the latter chapters, which were the scenes with which the movie was almost solely concerned. I didn't start to use the screenplay until I had written four-fifths of the book.
        The project was fun, however, because I'd long had a serious interest in carnivals and had collected a lot of material about them. As an unhappy child in a severely dysfunctional family, living across the street from the fairgrounds where the county fair pitched its tents every August, I had often dreamed about running away with the carnival to escape the poverty, fear, and violence of my daily life. Years after writing The Funhouse , I made far more extensive use of my carnival knowledge in Twilight Eyes . But writing The Funhouse was satisfying in part because I knew that the carnival lore I was putting into it was not only accurate but fresh to readers, for this was an American subculture about which few novelists had ever written with any real knowledge or accuracy.
        When The Funhouse was first published by Jove-a paperback imprint owned by the Berkley Publishing Group, which was a division of G. P. Putnam's Sons, which was owned by MCA, the media giant that also owned Universal Studios (life is more complex out here in the late 20th century than in the carnival) - it was supposed to hit stores simultaneously with the film's appearance in theaters. However, late in the game the film was held back for additional editing, and the book was dropped into the marketplace three months ahead of the movie. Surprisingly, The Funhouse quickly went through eight printings and a million copies, and appeared on the New York Times paperback bestseller list. It was a satisfying success for a paperback original (that is, a book that had no hardcover history to build upon), and it sold steadily-until the film opened.
        Now, you must understand that ordinarily a film sells books. If a book does well before a movie is made, it will often do exceptionally well when it has the flick to support it. This was not the case with The Funhouse . Upon release of the film, the sales of the book plummeted.
        A mystery?
        Not really.
        Let's just say that Mr. Hooper had not realized the potential of the material to the extent that the studio, probably Mr. Block, or Hooper himself would have hoped. Instead of serving as an advertisement for the book, the film acted as a curse upon it. Months later, The Funhouse had vanished from bookstore shelves, never to be seen again.
        Well, almost never.
        The book had been written under the