The Rights That Sold for $10--The Strange Tale of ‘South of Heaven’

Everybody in Hollywood likes to boast about making a great deal. But one of the enduring unsolved mysteries of Jim Thompson’s Hollywood years is how in 1970 Tony Bill managed to buy the rights to Thompson’s novel, “South of Heaven,” for the astonishing sum of $10.

The book, originally published in 1967, is now being made into a major motion picture, with producer Mark Lipson and the “Rain Man” production team of Barry Levinson and Mark Johnson at the helm.

According to both Bill and the Thompson family, the rights to “South of Heaven” changed hands after Thompson met with Bill and Robert Redford and agreed to write an original script on an American hobo. What’s in dispute is whether Thompson knowingly sold the rights or was bamboozled.

“My father said he never recalled signing anything giving them any rights to that book,” says his daughter, Sharon. “Maybe they got him drunk. He was not an idiot. He would have never sold the rights to any of his books for $10.”

Bill insists he has no recollection of purchasing the book. “I think Jim may have made a side deal with Columbia when we were making a deal for his hobo script,” he says now. “But in tracing down the rights, ‘South of Heaven’ producer Mark Lipson determined that I originally owned the rights to it. But I have no recollection of that.”

Lipson says it took several years to track down the rights to the film. “I finally found a contract that said Thompson had sold ‘South of Heaven’ to Bill in 1970 when he and his partner, Vernon Zimmerman, ran a company called Bi-Plane Cinematograph,” recalled Lipson, who was a producer of the acclaimed documentary, “The Thin Blue Line.”

“When I contacted Tony, he said, ‘Why don’t you just take the project--the rights are all yours.”

Lipson subsequently discovered that Bill and Zimmerman had sold their rights to the book in 1972 to Columbia Pictures, which still owned the project. After several more years of negotiations, Lipson and director Ted Bafaloukos, with Levinson and Johnson’s help, convinced Columbia to make the film.

The Thompson family remains angry about the affair. “If my father thought he was among friends, he could’ve signed anything,” said Sharon Thompson Reed. “But that doesn’t mean he knew he was signing away the rights to his book. The family is extremely bitter about that incident. It was really the beginning of the end for my father.”

Blaine Campbell, the agent who represents the Thompson estate, insists he will take legal action if “South of Heaven” goes before the cameras this summer.

“The Thompson family is not going to go quietly,” he said. “It’s unconscionable for Columbia to make a film without compensating the estate for the market value of the film. What’s in dispute isn’t the contract, but the ethics behind it.”

Is it possible Thompson could have sold the rights to one of his books for a paltry $10? “Jim once tried to sell me the rights to every book he wrote for $500,” said Bill. “I refused. I told him that wouldn’t be fair. Too bad I didn’t.”

Thompson’s widow, Alberta, disputes this claim, saying: “That’s not true. He didn’t do anything of the kind.”

Lipson said he is not qualified to serve as a spokesman for the studio or his production team. But he sounded a conciliatory note.

“As someone who has a great deal of affection for the material, I’d like to see this worked out with the Thompson family,” he said. “In my opinion, aside from Columbia owning the rights, my sentiment is that if--and when--the movie gets made, that fairness should be done.”