Other Lives

Controversial in a different way is another literary figure, Truman Capote. George Plimpton's Doubleday biography of him has inspired Killer Films to undertake a movie called Every Word Is True. It will be directed by Doug McGrath and focuses on Capote's relationship with the two killers he interviewed in researching his book In Cold Blood. It's unfathomable why some authors suddenly seem to be the Hollywood flavor-of-the-month, except that they led extraordinarily interesting lives—there is another Capote film in development, looking at the same story as McGrath's. It is based on Gerald Clarke's biography, published by Carroll & Graf, and has Bennett Miller attached to direct and Philip Seymour Hoffman to star as the author.

Contemporaries also get the bio-pic treatment, as James Cameron has signed on to direct the adaptation of diver Francisco Ferrera's forthcoming autobiography to be published by Regan Books. The book and the film will chronicle the story of Ferrera's love affair with his wife—also a diver—who died last year while attempting a record-breaking dive.

Another contemporary who must be delighted that her book was sold to HarperCollins, then optioned to Sony Pictures, as this will aid her in her quest to get out of debt, is Karyn Bosnak. She needed to raise $20,000 to pay her credit card bills and set up a Web site asking for money. She got the money and the opportunity to tell her life story in print and celluloid into the bargain. This will be one subject who won't complain about media exposure, especially as she has the opportunity to also write the screenplay.