After spending eight years writing "A Civil Action,"
Jonathan Harr has become Hollywood's latest literary darling.

BY BARBARA ZHEUTLIN

jonathan Harr's first book, "A Civil Action," is the best-selling nonfiction paperback in the country. Quite a feat, given its subject matter. "It's about dead kids and toxic waste and a law suit that drags on and on — the kiss of death," Harr says. At the core of "A Civil Action" is Jan Schlichtmann — a Porsche-driving, charismatic young lawyer who risks everything to represent several families who believe their children died from drinking water contaminated by two giant corporations. Critics were among the first to discover the book, calling it "riveting," "important," "compelling," "page-turning," "consequential." But it is word-of-mouth that keeps the book on the bestseller list, and now Hollywood has jumped on the bandwagon. Robert Redford's production company bought the film rights for $1.25 million. John Travolta will play Schlichtmann. Steve Zaillian (who won an Oscar for his screenplay for "Schindler's List") has written the script and will direct the film, which is set for production in the fall. Salon met with Harr in Northampton, Mass., in a brick carriage house he and his wife have rented while, a few doors down, teams of tradesmen are transforming their rambling old home of 15 years. After struggling for eight and a half years to write the book ("The documents in this case, not including trial transcripts, were, if you stacked them up, as tall as a three-story building.") and hoping for little more than a contract to write another book, Harr professes joyful amazement at his sudden success. What was your perspective on the legal system when you began writing "A Civil Action"? I was virtually tabula rasa. I went into it — I can honestly say this — without any expectations. I was not particularly interested in the environment. And I wasn't interested in writing an exposé of the legal system because I simply didn't know enough to write an exposé. In this kind of writing, you don't know what's going to happen. You're there watching the thing unfold. Maybe there's something to expose, maybe there isn't. It's hindsight when people say that it's an exposé of the legal system. It really wasn't that at all. The reason I set off to do the book was because it looked like an interesting story. It was the kind of story that I'd been writing for magazine pieces. You find an issue, an event where there is conflict, and you watch what happens. You hope that it touches on something important. In this case it seemed to. But what I had first and foremost was Schlichtmann's promise of access. That to me was the great allure, I simply wanted to tell a good story. And all the elements were there. You had conflict. You had a lot at stake. And you had interesting characters. How did your perspective evolve while writing this book? [The case] was unusual because of its size and because of the nature of the allegations — they were going to be very difficult to prove. It was unusual too because of Schlichtmann. This was a guy who was willing to take things to the end. No rational, sane person is going to risk everything. He can do it because, first of all, he is given to that sort of risk, and secondly, he wasn't married, he didn't have a family, unlike Conway and his partners. So this was for him a great adventure. When did you realize that Schlichtmann is the kind of person that he is? Pretty early on. He was an amazing character. He's the kind of guy who when he walks into a room you immediately sense it. He is a presence. He is loud. And he is persistent. And he never seems to be at a loss for words, and is never self-conscious. Or never acutely so — that I have seen. While you were writing the book, did you imagine that the story might become a movie? Never. The story is too complicated. No sex, no car chases. Did you have fantasies about it becoming a bestseller? No. [The writer] Tracy Kidder, my best friend, would tell me, "Never expect anything more than your advance. Be careful with your money if you get it. Don't think you're so hot. A lot of this is luck." Fundamentally, he takes a pessimistic view. And he's absolutely right. And my advance was $80,000, and it had taken me eight years to write this thing. All I had hoped was that the book would be critically reviewed well enough that I'd be able to get another book contract. How did the book become a Hollywood property? My agent decided to send a copy of the manuscript to a Hollywood agent, Robert Wunsch. One week later I got a call from Wunsch, saying that interest had arisen. That was on a Friday, and on Monday he called to say, "They're banging my doors down." On Wednesday Ron Howard had offered $750,000 and Wunsch called up and said, "I think I'm going to get you more." By the end it was Robert Redford for a million and a quarter. It was just unbelievable. What attracted Hollywood producers to the material? Rachel Pfeffer, who is the head of Redford's production company, said she started reading it and couldn't put it down. That's one thing that tells her, "This is something I want to make." They also said it was written in a very cinematic style. It's true that I use devices of fiction, like character and scene-by-scene construction to get the narrative going. But I thought it was far too complicated a story. Here you have a case in which there are two defendants, not one. You have a trial in which the plaintiffs never take the witness stand. There's no resolution to the main issue. And you have an outcome that is like real life. Have you seen the script? I've seen all versions of the script. There were four drafts. The first was an exploratory draft. It was incredibly faithful. The second drafts were all a little bit shorter, and a few characters ended up getting cut out, but Steve Zaillian's fidelity to the general overall story was incredible. It was my presumption that they would have to fictionalize it terrifically and have one defendant and some courtroom drama. But he didn't do that. The story line really is very close to the book. A lot of the dialogue is right out of the book. Did Zaillian want access to any of your materials? Yeah, he did. For example, the final argument that Schlichtmann makes in the Carney case. He wanted to see the actual argument so that he could pull some more out of it. I found it very difficult to write that, to actually use Schlichtmann's words and then say how powerful they were because, put on the page, they didn't look that powerful. Zaillian's got the benefit of having an actor who will deliver them, and then they will be much more powerful. I ended up not using Schlichtmann's words but describing the emotional effect they had on people. What is Schlichtmann's response to Travolta being cast to play him? He loves it. At one talk that we gave at a law school, he said, Travolta is going to make more money playing him than he's made playing himself, and it got a big laugh. He's also said that it is vindication for the one base canard in the book, which is that he cannot dance. So how has your life changed with the success of this book? I'm a much hotter commodity in Hollywood. Everything I write is picked up very quickly and looked at. Hollywood is now in your mind? Well it can't help but be. I've made maybe four times as much money off of Hollywood as I've made off the book so far, so it has to be part of the equation. But it can't be the dominant part of the equation. I have to stick to writing. How did the success of the paperback affect you and what you are writing? I would like to do it again. I don't know exactly how I did it. I get a huge number of letters, which actually eats at me because I feel like I need to respond and I haven't. People say to me that they started reading the book and they couldn't put it down. I don't know exactly how I did that. I never thought that the book would actually read that way. I'm not certain why it does. If I could figure it out, if I knew what the formula was, I would do it again. [Laughs] I haven't been able to. Feb. 5, 1997 Barbara Zheutlin is co-author of the forthcoming book "The Writer's Resource."

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