Scott Rudin has read books you don't even know about yet

Today's LA Times features a profile of despotic super producer Scott Rudin, who owns the film rights to basically every novel of note to come out in the last five years. How does he do it? The article offers a window into his methods:

A voracious reader who is famous for acquiring books before anyone else knows they are on the market, Rudin was the first to read Cormac McCarthy's novel. In fact, ICM's Ron Bernstein, who represented the book, hadn't even sent it out when he began getting calls from Rudin. "It was still in manuscript," Bernstein recalls. "He started badgering me over the weekend to buy it. I said, 'Wait a minute, do you mind if I finish reading it first?' But that's Scott. When he loves a piece of material, he's relentless. I couldn't beat him away."

Like all pieces on Rudin, there is the obligatory paragraph about how many assistants he's had and how he likes to throw things -- tantrums and phones, mostly.

I'm only partially joking when I say that Rudin has the rights to every book. He doesn't own them all, only the one's worth making into movies.