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The judge threw the book at the man, but at the same time he didn't sentence him by the book.
The biopharma tweeps I follow on Twitter are all atwitter about the unique punishment handed down to a former Bristol-Myers Squibb [BMY
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] exec.
Andrew Bodnar pleaded guilty to his role in the generic Plavix brouhaha a couple of years ago. And yesterday a District Court judge fined him $5,000 and ordered Bodnar to write a book about what happened. Write a book!
The generic Plavix scandal was a great story to cover. I'm just not sure that years later I or many other people are gonna want to pay to read all of the ticky-tacky details about it unless it surprisingly turns out to be a juicy kiss-and-tell-all account.
Even then, I'll probably wait for the publisher to send us a copy or just buy it at a discount somewhere. I prefer to read non-fiction, usually about the TV-news biz, but I'm a slow book reader and it would take me forever to read a court-ordered book about a small chapter in pharma history.
A quick read for me, on the other hand, was Jamie Reidy's "Hard
Sell: The Evolution Of A Viagra Salesman." He's a former top sales rep for Pfizer [PFE
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]and later Eli Lilly [LLY
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]. He sold the movie rights to Universal (CNBC is part of NBC Universal GE [GE
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] ) and it was turned into a screenplay.
A source sent me the script. It didn't follow the book so much. Instead, it read like a formulaic Hollywood romantic comedy with the drug biz as a backdrop.
Anyway, Jamie sent me an email this morning with this link to a "Hollywood Reporter" article about the project. Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway are reportedly in talks to play the leads, but Universal is apparently opting out and Fox is buying in. Production could start this fall.
I was hoping to do a story on the set when it looked like Universal might greenlight the movie. But now with the film in Fox's [NWS
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] hands I'm thinking that ain't gonna happen.
I probably won't read the Bodnar book, but I will go see the flick that now has the working title, "Love And Other Drugs."
I just wonder if Pfizer's gonna let them use the name "Viagra" and the real-deal little blue pills in the movie or if they'll have to come up with some silly fictional name for an impotence drug. PFE may not like Reidy exposing the underbelly of drug sales repping, but if the movie's a hit imagine the product placement and advertising, ahem, upside.
Questions? Comments? and follow me on Twitter at mhuckman
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