An Option on Damnation Street
What I guess is now the leading show business trade “publication” — Nikki Finke’s blog Deadline Hollywood — had a nice mention of a project of mine this week. And — cool! — this is my blog, so I get to link to it here:
Fox Hill Productions has optioned development and production rights to Andrew Klavan’s mystery trilogy Dynamite Road, Shotgun Alley and Damnation Street. Klavan has adapted the trilogy into a screenplay titled Damnation Street,described as a neo-noir thriller about a private detective and a serial killer in pursuit of the same mysterious woman. Producers on the project will be Samantha Lusk, Andrew Hyatt and Seth David Mitchell of Fox Hill (The Frozen, The Last Light and the upcoming The Stanleys).
Christian Toto at Big Hollywood picked up the piece and quoted me talking about how I’d condensed the trilogy into one story for the script, and how some of the approach of the book was derived from Clint Eastwood’s film Unforgiven:
“I always felt that was a great western that was also a movie about the western, an examination of the heart of those stories. Likewise the Weiss-Bishop books were meant to be top-flight detective stories that were also about detective stories, that held the genre up to the light so to speak.”
Anyway, an option is only one step on the long, long road to getting a film made, but it’s a good script and I hope it makes it to the screen.
That’ll teach me not to skim so quickly. I thought it said something about this project being produced by the producers of One Tree Hill. That would not have been an obvious choice.
Best of luck, Andrew.
Congrats, I hope it goes all the way. Then Last Thing, then Identity Man, then they can just keep going, I just hope you’ll be able to keep ahead of them with more books.
Well, as usual bro you’re not getting a lot of comments on the cultural stuff, esp. on something you wrote your own self(ouch!), but don’t be discouraged. I read this trilogy in ’07 and thought it was terrific. It’s not for the fainthearted (read: your typical Bible-believing church-goer, of which I am one) but I had no problem with any of it. Graphic, gritty, and a rip-roaring good trilogy of crime stories. Particularly good in the sexual tension department.
I remember seeing somewhere in an interview you did that you mentioned you used to analyze crime stories- or maybe novels in general- in your early teens- seeing how they were put together, how the author dealt with various aspects of crime writing, and I thought, “This is the way a born wordsmith thinks.” I believe at that age I was reading Tarzan books and not thinking at all about what a hack Burroughs was (Which I guess that proves that storytelling trumps style.). I particulary found interesting the evidence toward the end of the third book of your migration towards Christian world view.
Anyway these books would make a great movie- I wonder how you condensed them into one screenplay, since there’s so much stuff there. Sort of the opposite of what that Peter Jackson fellow is doing with the Hobbit. Heres hoping this one works out for you. Movies are where the big money is, and you deserve a healthy slice of the pie.
Well, my opinion on these books is already on the record. http://spectator.org/archives/2012/10/23/salvation-alley I consider them a landmark in the history of mystery writing.
“What the author does here, I think, is unprecedented. I don’t believe there’s ever been a detective epic before — a trilogy of free-standing books bound together by a single transcendent theme.”
Here is a comment form a another of your typical Bible-believing church-goers. I am going to order these books. I have become a mindless zombie fan of Klavan. Whatever he recommends I tend to like. I confess that i am a big fan of Condi as well. Many say she is not conservative enough but I think that whatever she is that’s me too.