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Writers gain TV's attention Photo by Bob Pennell Jahnna Beecham and Michael Hillgartner, a husband-wife team who write children's stories under the pen name Jahnna N. Malcolm, share a moment away from the action in Ashland Tuesday where they are working on a children's video based on one of their stories. Another of their books, "The Battle of the Bunheads," will become a movie for Showtime. Kids' authors met while at OSF in Ashland By BILL VARBLE J ahnna Beecham was visiting a friend who'd been a ballerina. "I was a bunhead for years," her friend said. Beecham hadn't heard the expression -- it comes from the way dancers put their hair up -- but it clicked instantly into place. Here was the killer title for her new book. Beecham, of Ashland, is half the writing team of Jahnna N. Malcolm; the other half is her husband, Malcolm Hillgartner. Beecham and Hillgartner recently signed a deal with Hyperion Studio in Los Angeles to turn one of their books into a TV show for Showtime. The book? "The Battle of the Bunheads." It's the second in the two children's authors' "Bad News Ballet" series that first hit bookstore shelves almost a decade ago. In the Ashland production studio where they're filming some scenes for "The Ruby Princess Runs Away," (another Jahnna N. Malcolm book being made into a movie) Beecham says having the Bad News series picked up for TV is a thrill, even if it's essentially a long-distance one. "It's happening kind of in L.A.," she says. "We get the word, and we say, `great."' She doesn't know whose attention the book captured at Showtime or Hyperion. But attention it got. "Bad News Ballet" sold more than 600,000 copies. It's still selling in France and England (under the title, "Scrambled Legs"). Jahnna N. Malcolm books, including the thrillers "Scared Stiff" and "Scared to Death," have sold more than 6 million copies around the world. Hyperion was founded in 1984 by ex-Disney executives Tom Wilhite and Willard Carroll. It has several TV series running now (Fox's "Life with Louie," HBO's "Happily Ever After" and Discovery's "Animal Rescue Kids"), and it moved into movies last year with "Playing by Heart" (Miramax). Beecham says the couple's daughter, Skye, 9, thinks she's the princess in the book. "She thinks her character is the only one who should have fun adventures," she says. The couple also have a son, but they say the books were started before the family. They don't know who will write the screenplay, but it won't be them. Beecham says at first she wanted to talk about writing it, but they decided they're comfortable -- and busy enough -- letting it go. "Why kill ourselves to go down there and write it?" she says as people set up lights and cameras and somebody asks about the details of a girl's costume. Beecham, 45, and Hillgartner, 46, met in Ashland 20 years ago when both were actors at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Both had majored in theater -- she at Utah, he at the University of California at Davis. Both did some acting after college. But they scarcely have time to look back to their acting days. They wrote the script for "Clandestiny," a CD-ROM game from Trilobyte. They wrote a monthly interactive story for PRODIGY Online Services from 1992-1995. They've been featured on Sesame Street Online and have written dialog for The Learning Company's new CD-ROM game, "The Baby-sitters Club 3rd and 4th Grade Adventures." They wrote "Chaps!" a musical comedy about BBC types in London forced into into creating a cowboy show on the BBC. It's played theaters around the country since 1995, including the Oregon Cabaret Theater this fall. "Bad News Ballet" is about the friendship among five misfit ballerinas. All they have in common is that they all dislike everything dainty -- including ballet. "It's about friendship," Beecham says. Next up for the couple is to write a musical with award-winning composer Matty Selman for the Cleveland Playhouse in Ohio. It's slated for production in late 1999. Now if somebody would just come up with a pithy, title-yielding quote, please. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA