Favorite novels inspire two new film productions

"Are you sure it isn't sleet?"

by John P. Meyer

Exciting news this week about two films gearing up for production based upon novels that we'd given up hope of ever seeing made into motion pictures.

I've long been a fan of the atmospheric Louisiana bayou-based mystery thrillers penned by James Lee Burke; I consider Burke to be one of the most interesting writers working in popular fiction today, and have stretched my neck so far as to declare that the first-person fictional renderings of Detective Dave Robicheaux have actually begun to take on a life of their own, with Dave sometimes seeming to fool his very creator into characterizing his motivations incorrectly. (It's almost as if Robicheaux had a submerged vindictive and self-indulgent personality that periodically causes him to mis-report factual events; and since we as readers experience the "world" through his eyes, we have no other perspective on reality. It's hard to imagine until you've immersed yourself in a few of the stories.)

There has been one previous attempt to bring Cajun crime-solver Robicheaux to the big screen: Heaven's Prisoners (1996) starred Alec Baldwin in the title role and included a memorable "hangin' 'em out over the wrought iron balcony" sequence with Teri Hatcher in the role of Claudette Rocque. While that film (helmed by Phil Joanou) satisfied in a basic thriller-by-the-numbers sense, it failed to deliver on the psychological and spiritual levels so important to the Burke milieu.

Now there will be another attempt, drawing on acting talent of greater depth and complexity for the lead role (no offense, Alec). French auteur Bertrand Tavernier will direct Texas native Tommy Lee Jones around the bayou country; filming is slated to begin in April at various Louisiana locations.

The second and more improbable of the productions just announced involves a classic subcultural/radical environmental text from the mid-1970's, Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang, which brings together a group of misfit misanthropist wilderness lovers and plops them down in the midst of a canyonlands country on the verge of being dammed up by a power-hungry population, strip mined by coal interests and asphalted over by developers.

This one will be directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown) with filming to begin in April. No word as of yet on who will star as disaffected Green Beret George Hayduke or his improbable love interest, New York expatriate feminist Bonnie Abzug.

I will always revere Ed Abbey for introducing me to the Utah wild lands through his memoir, Desert Solitaire (and, incidentally, for serving as a role model), but I can never forgive him for writing the scene in which Hayduke is allowed to utter the following in the context of his tent-bound, barely above-freezing circumstances:

"Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear."