A visionary archeologist

A genuine gold mine for the great film studios in Hollywood, Michael Crichton is preparing a new mega-production, whose action takes place in medieval France. Upon its release, the novelist granted an interview where he tries to reveal himself as a person.

Michael Crichton is the best-paid novelist from Hollywood. Strange statement, but the books of this giant (seven-feet tall) are translated in the main circulation languages (that is, in spaces where there is a real market for books) and are put into motion pictures almost as soon as they are written: "on line," "live," "in real time."

A Magna cum Laude graduate from the medicine and anthropology sections within Harvard University, Crichton is now a millionaire. He wrote, among others, "Jurassic Park," directed by Steven Spielberg. Recently, another "mine gold," "Time prisoners," appeared in bookshops all over the world. In this book, Crichton speculates on the quantum theory in order to send three archeology students in Dordogne (France), back to the year 1357, in the middle of the One Hundred Years War. The motion film after this book, certainly a mega-production, is already scheduled for next year.

Although his fortune comes from the Western Coast of the United States, Crichton prefers to live in New-York: "In 1980, Fox gave me a splendid office. I escaped immediately, because I wasn't able do to anything. The same at Warner. A studio is a production spot, filled with actors. To see real people, you have to escape from such a place. In Los Angeles, even in the streets, people are acting like in a movie.

They pay attention to every gesture, being totally absorbed by their ego." Interviewed by French weekly "L'Express," Crichton politely, elegantly and fairly concedes that the American way of living is "somewhat inhuman, focused on speed, on profits." He also criticised, though moderately, loosely, the unlimited globalisation: "It is inevitable, but how much? Human groups have the right to protect their jobs, their identity, and the environment against multinationals. In the United States, they wanted to spread the idea that this dispute does not exist, that a gigantic force, an industrial revolution is driving us all."