Michael Crichton Gets Small

EW What's your new show for Fox going to be about?
CRICHTON [Blank stare]

EW Don't want to say?
CRICHTON It's just not finished. At the time I made the deal with Fox, I told them it might be a while — and it's turning out to be the case. Ordinarily, I finish something and then sell it, but every now and then I sell something in advance. But I'm not going to change my way of working just because there's a deal.

EW Can you at least say whether it'll be another medical drama?
CRICHTON I've spent my whole life trying to retire from medicine, so I can say that it probably won't be a medical drama.

EW Last question about your critics: You were attacked for racism because of the depictions of Japanese businessmen in Rising Sun. Disclosure wasn't wildly popular with feminists.
CRICHTON There was also a lot of discussion about whether Jurassic Park was antiscience — don't forget that.

EW Are you surprised by the controversy you sometimes stir up?
CRICHTON I was surprised by the reception Rising Sun got. But I knew that making the man the victim of sexual harassment would make Disclosure controversial. That was the idea. To stir things up and make people think.

EW You stir up the sexual politics in this latest book, too. The stay-at-home dad is its hero, while his working wife is a villain. Not a big fan of feminism?
CRICHTON I wouldn't say that. I had one of the first subscriptions to Ms. magazine. I was actually quite sorry to see feminism take the nosedive it did, to watch it commit intellectual suicide with its support for Clinton. If they like the guy, he can do anything. But if they don't — if it's Bob Packwood — they kill him. It revealed the intellectual contradiction. At least that's my reading of it.

EW Let's get back to that vision of yours for a moment. The woman in the business suit who comes home from work and beats her baby. Do you still have that fantasy?
CRICHTON It stopped after I wrote that scene in Prey.

EW What do you suppose it meant?
CRICHTON Who knows? Who knows where any of this stuff comes from?

EW It might be interesting for you to figure it out, no?
CRICHTON Yes, I agree. It would be interesting.