The adaptation of Joseph Wambaugh’s best-selling 1975 novel turned into one of the more public author-versus-filmmaker battles of the decade. Lorimar had paid roughly $700,000 for the rights in October 1975; Wambaugh adapted his own book and expected fidelity to his darkly comic, insider portrait of LAPD life. Robert Aldrich signed to direct in February 1976 but promptly commissioned Christopher Knopf to rework Wambaugh’s screenplay. Aldrich’s bluntly antagonistic public comments — that the book “doesn’t go far enough” and his insistence on showing LAPD brutality and moral failings — made clear a very different tack than the author intended. When Wambaugh saw the rewrites and final cut he complained that the producers had “mutilated my work,” took out a full–page advertisement denouncing the film, demanded his name removed from the credits, and sued. The standoff culminated in Lorimar paying Wambaugh $1 million in compensation; shaken by the experience he later bought back the rights to other works (including The Onion Field and The Black Marble) to exert tighter control over future adaptations. The fight left a lasting stain on the film’s reputation — critics panned the picture, Wambaugh called it “a dreadful, slimy, vile film,” and the legal and publicity battle became a cautionary tale about creative control on book-to-screen adaptations.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1970s
Joseph Wambaugh publicly blasts Robert Aldrich's rewrite and extracts a $1 million settlement over The Choirboys
The Choirboys (film) / Joseph Wambaugh / 1970s
The adaptation of Joseph Wambaugh’s best-selling 1975 novel turned into one of the more public author-versus-filmmaker battles of the decade. Lorimar had paid roughly $700,000 for the rights in October 1975; Wambaugh adapted his own book and expected fidelity to his darkly comic, insider portrait of LAPD life. Robert Aldrich signed to direct in February 1976 but promptly commissioned Christopher Knopf to rework Wambaugh’s screenplay. Aldrich’s bluntly antagonistic public comments — that the book “doesn’t go far enough” and his insistence on showing LAPD brutality and moral failings — made clear a very different tack than the author intended. When Wambaugh saw the rewrites and final cut he complained that the producers had “mutilated my work,” took out a full–page advertisement denouncing the film, demanded his name removed from the credits, and sued. The standoff culminated in Lorimar paying Wambaugh $1 million in compensation; shaken by the experience he later bought back the rights to other works (including The Onion Field and The Black Marble) to exert tighter control over future adaptations. The fight left a lasting stain on the film’s reputation — critics panned the picture, Wambaugh called it “a dreadful, slimy, vile film,” and the legal and publicity battle became a cautionary tale about creative control on book-to-screen adaptations.
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