NEW YORK, NY (November 27, 2007)

The Weinstein Company is pleased to announce that the Company has acquired the worldwide publishing, film and television rights to Bridie Clark’s new novel, I THINK SHE’S GOT IT, a thoroughly modern retelling of Pygmalion. Weinstein Books will publish the novel in 2009. The Weinstein Company has optioned the rights to develop and produce the project for film and television. The announcement was made today jointly by Harvey Weinstein, Co-Chairman of The Weinstein Company and Weinstein Books President and CEO Rob Weisbach.

Set in contemporary Manhattan, I THINK SHE’S GOT IT is the story of a shy, young Midwesterner named Lucy Ellis who is transformed into a sophisticated socialite by Wyatt Hayes, a dashing but arrogant man-about-town who is convinced he can turn anyone?even the most awkward wallflower?into this year’s “it” girl. I THINK SHE’S GOT IT tells a timeless story of transformation and unlikely love set against a contemporary backdrop.

Says Weisbach, “Bridie Clark writes what she knows and does it with style: In I THINK SHE’S GOT IT, she offers an insider’s take on New York’s social and fashion circles and wraps it in sharply observed humor and undeniable charm. Bridie is a refreshing young writer whose future shines bright.”

Bridie Clark, a former book and magazine editor, graduated from Harvard University, where she was an editor of The Harvard Crimson. She has written for The New York Times, Vanity Fair, New York, Quest, and Elegant Bride. Clark’s debut novel, BECAUSE SHE CAN, about a beleaguered young book editor who works for a notoriously tyrannical female publisher, was published in nineteen countries around the world and was reviewed and featured in dozens of magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, Glamour UK, and USA TODAY. Clark lives in New York City.

Weisbach negotiated on behalf of The Weinstein Company. Daniel Greenberg at the Levine Greenberg Agency in New York negotiated on behalf of the author.

ABOUT WEINSTEIN BOOKS

Weinstein Books published its inaugural list of titles in Fall 2007, including Padma Lakshmi’s Tangy Tart Hot & Sweet; Vincent Lam’s Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures; Chris Elliott’s Into Hot Air; and two new children’s series. Bob and Harvey Weinstein have an extraordinary track record in the publishing business, dating back to 1993 when they formed Miramax Books. Under the Weinsteins’ leadership, Miramax Books published many #1 New York Times/ bestsellers including Leadership by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Leap of Faith by Queen Noor, Big Russ & Me by Tim Russert, Summerland by Michael Chabon, the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer, and Ice Bound by Dr. Jerri Nielsen. Some of the other New York Times bestsellers published by Miramax Books include Plum Sykes’ Bergdorf Blondes and The Debutante Divorcée; Madam Secretary, a memoir by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; Kristin Gore’s debut novel, Sammy’s Hill; the Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud; and Stolen Lives by Malika Oufkir.

ABOUT THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY

The Weinstein Company (TWC) was created by Bob and Harvey Weinstein, the brothers who founded Miramax Films Corporation in 1979. TWC is a multi-media company that officially launched on October 1, 2005. Dimension Films, the genre label that was founded in 1993 by Bob Weinstein, is also included under the TWC banner.

During the Weinsteins’ tenure at Miramax Films the company released some of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful independent feature films which received 249 Academy Award® nominations and won 60 Oscars®, have generated billions of dollars in worldwide box office receipts and billions more in home video sales. In its history, Dimension Films has released some of the most successful franchises including ‘Scream,’ ‘Spy Kids’ and ‘Scary Movie.’

CONTACT:

Weinstein Books

Katie Finch, Director of Publicity
katie.finch@weinsteinco.com
212-419-0378

The Weinstein Company

Julie Cloutier, Publicity
julie.cloutier@weinsteinco.com
212-862-3825

Because She Can by Bridie Clark (Bantam, £6.99)

In The Devil Wears Prada you met the fashion magazine world’s boss from hell, and now, in Because She Can, you’ll meet the book world’s biggest ogre, Vivian Grant. A publishing maverick, Grant doesn’t mind what books she publishes as long as they top the bestseller lists — and she works her staff to the bone to get there. Claire jumps at the chance to scale the career ladder at Grant Books — until she finds out how extreme Vivian can be. This is a great moral tale for our work-obsessed times and intriguingly, Grant’s character is allegedly based on a real-life publishing tyrant, which adds a certain frisson to a great read.

Because She Can

Bridie Clark, read by Mary Birdsong. Hachette Audio, abridged, five CDs, 6 hrs., $29.98 ISBN 978-1-59483-869-9

Mary Birdsong, who plays Deputy Kimball on TV’s Reno 911!, spawns a comically horrific incarnation of boss-from-Hell Vivian Grant, who steamrollers over assistants, editors, agents, authors and even corporate executives at the venerable publisher that houses her highly controversial—but amazingly lucrative—imprint. Grant utters the f-word with a frequency that would leave Tony Soprano blushing and catapults office supplies across conference rooms during her frequent tirades. Newly hired Grant Books editor Claire Truman valiantly strives to hold onto both her cool and her job, as relationships with friends and family—not to mention her planned nuptials to hunky Wall Street broker Randall Cox—lapse onto autopilot. Birdsong’s depictions of the principal male characters are a little too affected, but she maintains a pitch-perfect command of female banter. The book-business jargon may somehow seem both too familiar for industry insiders and too insular for a broader audience, and the romantic triangle wins no prizes for originality. Yet listeners in the mood for some hearty laughs at the expense of a deliciously devilish workplace villain should find themselves thoroughly entertained. Simultaneous release with the Warner hardcover (Reviews, Sept. 11). (Feb.)

PAGE TURNERS: ‘BECAUSE SHE CAN’

In the latest example of “assistant lit,” Bridie Clark’s debut takes on another villainous boss character.

By Teresa Méndez | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Shelve this one next to “The Devil Wears Prada.” In the latest example of “assistant lit,” Bridie Clark follows Lauren Weisberger’s lead (”The Devil Wears Prada”) and takes on another villainous boss character. But it works a little better for Clark. After all, the woman she satirizes – her former real-life boss and fallen publisher Judith Regan (of aborted O.J. book fame) – cultivated an ignominious reputation that left little room for the admiration commanded by Weisberger’s onetime employer, legendary Vogue editor Anna Wintour. “Because She Can” traffics a little too earnestly in the clichés that mark in-the-know New Yorkers of a certain social set. (Ivy League degrees abound, and investment banking is a typical job.) The plot follows the predictable “chick lit” trajectory to a fairy tale ending. But along the way, Clark’s protagonist, young book editor Claire Truman, comes off as genuinely sympathetic. And there are some fresh and incredibly funny lines (Clark writes that Claire’s boyfriend and his family “treat WASPiness like an extreme sport”).

For a waft of beach reading to warm that winter chill, you can’t go wrong with this breezy debut novel. Grade: B+

Summerscapes
An occasional series on the rites of summer.

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

First Day of Cool

By BRIDIE CLARK
Published: September 3, 2007

IT was a humid evening at the tail end of summer. My family was eating dinner around our picnic table when my mother spotted the hot air balloon, cresting down in the distance. I don’t remember who proposed we chase it to its landing spot, or who seconded, but suddenly half-gnawed corn on the cob clattered down on plates and we raced for the driveway.

At 12, I lived for moments like this — moments I could pretend I was still a kid.

I grew up in a nice suburb outside of Hartford, where summer was the season for indulging whims, camping in the backyard, swimming instead of bathing. It was the season I most appreciated having a brother — for the simpler, why-talk-when-we-could-be-jumping-off-this-rock way that boys play, the peace of ending each day bone-tired. Even my parents, strict during the school year, became kids every June.

Most of all, summer was the peak season for daydreams — my most passionate hobby then and now. There wasn’t much to do besides daydream, really, unless you were good at pickup sports or had many friends. That summer I was 12, about to start a junior high where I’d know almost nobody, I lived inside my head more than I did in the real world.

Pretty much everyone, I realize now, goes through an awkward phase and feels that their curse is unique. Yet it remains a fact that all the girls in my sixth-grade class glided through puberty overnight, while I alone remained flat-chested (noted by a classmate who spelled out my condition upside down on his scientific calculator), shy, glaringly uncool.

This is where daydreams came in handy. Inside my head, there was nothing stopping me from being the cute sister from the sitcom “Charles in Charge,” or as sassy and stylish as any girl you’d find in Seventeen magazine.

That summer, when I wasn’t chewing my nails over confusing class schedules and locker assignments, all daydreams were directed toward one shining vision: the New Me, the girl I would unveil (to dropped jaws and perhaps a few scattered gasps) when school started in the fall. That summer was my golden opportunity to transform myself.

But how? I started by breaking coolness down into three components: looks, clothing, flirting skills.

On the looks front, my hands were tied. No amount of coffee-guzzling could’ve stunted the growth spurt that had shot me up an entire foot the year before. Now my head rested like a pinball on top of a nervous, toothpick-frail body. A perm might have added a little volume up there, but my mother was staunchly against it and impossible to break.

Also not helping: the Irish-Catholic genes to which I owed my translucently pale, vein-laced skin. Getting golden (a must) would be an uphill battle, so I committed to a rigorous rotisserie approach. When lifeguards at the town pool blew their whistles extra long for adult swim, I’d flip onto my back and coat myself in baby oil. Ten pages into my Baby-sitters Club book, time to reflip onto my stomach. Repeat 1,346 times. I steeled myself against the sizzle of crisping flesh with visions of a bronzed start to school.

On the clothing front, only my grandmother could help me: Grandma, a child during the Depression, understood — even more than I did — how important it was to have the perfect First Day of School Outfit.

During my annual visit with my grandparents, she and I pulled pages from catalogs, thought long and hard about what we wanted the outfit to “say,” and then, after hours of scouring malls, performed a living-room fashion show for my grandfather. Here I got the scattered gasps, the dropped jaws I craved. (My grandparents spoiled me, but they were much more generous than that — they humored me.)

Flirting, though, was the true focus of my daydreams. One thing was for sure: I needed to start school with some prepared banter. Experience had laid bare the dangers of off-the-cuff. I committed some “boy” information to memory: the starting quarterback for the Giants, the definitions of a grand slam and a triple play.

Then it was on to dreaming up the locker-side quips I’d exchange with a curly-haired altar boy from our church, or my whispered chats in study hall with a handsome eighth-grade stranger. Imaginary popularity was the best; if I said something goofy, I’d just rewind the mental tape and start over until the dialogue ran smoothly.

In fact, I’d spent our balloon-chasing car ride quizzing myself with optimistic hypotheticals: What, for instance, would New Me do if a boy asked me out on a date? There were several ways this could go down — in the cafeteria, on a walk home, or most thrilling of all, by phone — and I knew exactly how I would respond in each case. (“Sure” would always be my first word. It was the relaxed, laid-back choice — clearly better than an over-eager “yes” or a dull “O.K.”)

In a blink, it was Labor Day, and then the first day of junior high. After a fluttery night’s sleep, I walked through the doors of Sedgwick Middle School. I wore a killer outfit. I was tan, for me. I’d practiced a casual, hallway-appropriate smile. My head was crammed with more banter than a season of “Gilmore Girls.”

Needless to say, I still felt exactly like myself — self-conscious, shy, very likely to trip on uneven flooring.

Well-dressed, though. And even though I’d spent three months gearing up for this non-moment, this transformation-that-didn’t-happen, I have no memory of disappointment.

My memory instead takes me to that sticky August night when we stalked the balloon. That night, when I’d imagined that there was just a week separating me from my life as a cool kid, I’d been happy. My sister’s knee blatantly flopped into my space in the back seat, but I felt no need to elbow her. My father noted the convenient location of a Dairy Queen for the ride back. And my mother was happy too, her bare feet resting on the dashboard. She hummed along to a Beach Boys song that I didn’t think she liked.

The balloon plopped down in a soccer field. Sitting on the warm hood of the station wagon, we watched it deflate and deform until it was just a melt of lumpy rainbow-colored fabric. Then it was time to chase down some ice cream. It was better than any daydream.

Bridie Clark is the author of “Because She Can,” a novel.

What prompted you to leave after less than a year on the job?

I left because I wanted to be a writer. But there was the added benefit of not having to work there anymore. Judith’s a notoriously difficult boss. She wasn’t the type of person I wanted to work for, and it didn’t exactly take years to discover that.

No, I’m sure you had that figured out before lunch the first day. Did you witness any of the alleged sexual outbursts or anti-Semitic remarks that are now coming to light?

I never heard her make an anti-Semitic comment, but does it shock me that that would have happened? No, it doesn’t.

It seems like the real Judith Regan outdoes any character that a fiction writer could create. Has your novel lost some of its potential sting now that the real Judith has been exposed?

I think the Vivian Grant character is pretty outrageous. Definitely, though, the headlines have been crazy.

Do they strike you as accurate?

I don’t think most people who have worked with her are shocked by what they’re reading. My guess is that very few ex-ReganBooks staffers are losing sleep over it. Everything I’ve read has been within reason.

Did you take a job at ReganBooks purposely seeking an experience that would make a commercial novel?

No, certainly not.

Do you feel the book says something original?

Boss from hell stories are not a new concept. But people want to read fiction that is reflective of their lives. It makes sense that readers would turn to these books that center around the workplace and center around the employer-employee relationship.

On the front page of the USA Today life section for February 4th, writer Jocelyn McClurg covers BECAUSE SHE CAN:

She’s the most “hot-headed, ruthless woman” in the publishing industry.

She made her name producing “tabloid-inspired blockbusters” by porn queens and “a despicable serial killer.”

She hurls obscenities and lamps at her overworked employees.

She’s Vivian Grant, the “vile” villain of Because She Can (Warner Books, $23.99), a chick-lit debut in the Devil Wears Prada vein, out Monday.

The author, Bridie Clark, worked for 10 months in 2004 for Judith Regan, the deposed head of ReganBooks, who lost her job in the wake of the O.J. Simpson If I Did It scandal.

The roman à clef’s heroine, Claire Truman, is a young editor juggling romance and trying to survive the boss from hell.

Any resemblance to Regan is … purely coincidental?

The Harvard-educated Clark, 29, chooses her words as cautiously as a defendant on the witness stand.

“I can relate to Claire’s idealism, and her experience with this terrible boss,” Clark says during lunch in Manhattan.

Read the entire article here »

The Washington Post Media Mix covered BECAUSE SHE CAN on February 4th.

From The New York Times Newly Released section:

In the taxonomy of publishing, Bridie Clark’s new novel falls into the genus chick lit; species, boss from hell. An idealistic young book editor, Claire Truman, goes to work for the powerhouse Vivian Grant, who, as Ms. Clark writes, “made her name and fortune by producing tabloid-inspired blockbusters and crass market stuff, including authors such as under-age porn queen Mindi Murray, a despicable serial killer who’d terrorized Chicago for an entire year and a roster of loudmouthed pundits from the furthest extremes of the political spectrum.” The description may sound familiar to people who’ve followed the recent brouhaha over Judith Regan’s plans for a book and accompanying television interview with O. J. Simpson; Ms. Clark has worked, among other places, at ReganBooks. Can Claire stick out the year she’s vowed to stay at Grant’s imprint? And is her impending marriage to the fabulously wealthy Randall Pearson Cox III the right choice?

Read the entire item »