HAMILCAR PUBLICATIONS GETS A BIG PUNCH OUT OF “AMERICAN FICTION”

The genesis was in the summer of 2022, when an email from a movie production company working on American Fiction, starring Academy Award nominee Jeffrey Wright, reached the inbox of Kyle Sarofeen.

They happened to be filming in the Boston, Massachusetts area, where the book publisher lives.

At first, he thought the email was some kind of joke.

The production people wanted 50 books of this, and 50 books of that.

Sarofeen has been publishing books under Hamilcar Publications since 2018. He is one of the few publishers out there who still believes there is a book market for boxing, releasing titles like Don Stradley’s The War, about the epic Marvelous Marvin Hagler-Tommy Hearns brawl, and Fistful of Murder: The Fights and Crimes of Carlos Monzon; along with Todd D. Snyder’s Bundini: Don’t Believe the Hype, about Muhammad Ali’s trainer Bundini Brown; and Tris Dixon’s Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing.

The production company wanted books for background shots. They hit up Sarofeen for piles of books, showing up with a truck at his home. Sarofeen was willing to take the chance the books would even end up in the film.

It looks like it was a risk worth taking. Hamilcar books appear in the trailer for American Fiction, shown in the background of the office belonging to Arthur, the agent of the main character, Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, who is played by Wright. Arthur is played by actor John Ortiz.

American Fiction is a 2023 comedy-drama film about a frustrated Black novelist and college professor who purposely writes a satirically stereotypical Black book, only for the book to be taken so seriously that it turns into a bestseller and achieves high praise.

“When I saw the trailer, you could see the books in the background, and it was John Ortiz’s office. I remember seeing it on a Saturday night with a few whiskeys in me, so I was amped,” Sarofeen recalled, laughing. “Brad Norr is our creative director and does an amazing job with the cover designs. The books are literary and multi-dimensional. The War, the Hagler-Hearns book, which deals with socio-cultural stuff that was going on in the 1980s, and The Duke: The Life and Lies of Tommy Morrison (by Carlos Acevedo) is southern Gothic in nature. When I took over in 2018, my first call was to Brad, and his cover designs are what makes our books appealing.”

In the movie, the Hamilcar books are featured prominently in the bookcase of Arthur’s office. There is one scene in which Arthur is trying to coax his client into writing the type of book a Black woman just made into a best-seller that panders to racial stereotypes. The movie, which is based and filmed in Boston, wrapped up filming in December 2022 and Sarofeen had forgotten about it until one of his authors tweeted about the Bundini book appearing behind the Ortiz character in the movie.

“I received the email, and that followed with a call, and I was skeptical at first, since they wanted a lot of our books and I’m thinking these books would not even make the movie,” he said. “It cost money to give them all the books. I sent them stuff from our distributor’s warehouse and forgot about them. We gave them the books, with the chance that they would end up in the film.”

The movie premiered in early-December 2023.

Norr wound up seeing it.

“I saw the movie in early January and I thought it was kind of cool to see the books,” said Norr, who lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. “I love Jeffrey Wright. It started to sink in that this is kind of a big deal. The funny thing is, for our Bundini book, that didn’t just show the cover, they made this case with the front cover, the full jacket, the printed case and the title spread. It was four different things in this display.

Click here to read an excerpt from “Bundini” in the October 2020 issue of The Ring

Click here to read an excerpt from “The Duke” in the July 2022 issue of The Ring

“John Ortiz, the agent, comes off very adept in the movie, and they designed fake covers for his books. The agent is mad because this one author is selling books and he is trying to convince the Wright character to write a book like that. My impression is that the Hamilcar books in the background are the books his clients have written and not the Jeffrey Wright character. The movie is a family drama and Sterling K. Brown is really amazing as Jeffrey Wright’s brother (Clifford “Cliff” Ellison). It’s funny, a family dramedy, and it gives a funny peek into the publishing industry.”

Life has not changed much for Sarofeen and Norr.

“But it is affirming for what Brad and I are doing,” Sarofeen said. “There are publishers out there that don’t keep it real. Brad and I are old-school. A lot of larger publishers do not go the extra mile the way we do. For book design, we’re like the James Toney of book design, throwbacks. The golden age of boxing and the golden age of books came at the same time. A lot of what we do is pay attention to book design tradition, like Toney paid attention to Archie Moore, Ezzard Charles and Jersey Joe Walcott.

“It’s nice to be recognized.”

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