I told you a year ago about Donald Sutherland’s crazy unpublished memoir.
He wrote it and sold it to a publisher without anyone’s knowledge. No one in his family was aware of what he’d written.
When the family found out, they intervened to stop publication. They said they’d edit the book and turn in a new manuscript. Crown Books had already paid Sutherland $400,000 against a $1.25 million advance. So they wanted something they could sell.
But that’s never going to happen. They never did turn in a revised version.
Well, the book — called “Made Up, But Still True” — has been halted by the Oscar winner’s estate. So Crown sued them today for the $400,000 in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Insiders tell me the book details all of Sutherland’s love life, affairs, and sordid moments described as “Depraved.” Some of it might be true, some not, but you can’t blame the family for not wanting these episodes to represent the great actor’s legacy.
Sutherland made so many great movies, from “Ordinary People” to “MASH,” “Klute,” “Cold Mountain,” “Six Degrees of Separation,” plus top stuff in TV including “The Undoing” with Nicole Kidman. No one wants to remember him from lurid writings.
So the Estate will have to pony up. But if anyone has the original manuscript, that will be the Holy Grail if it ever turns up!
Just a thought. We don’t know what Sutherland’s mental condition was when he wrote and sold the book. The Estate could make a case that he was not in his right mind.
