Adapting McTeague

For the second time, I have made finalist round for the Sundance Screenwriting Lab, this time with my adaptation of Frank Harris 1897 novel, McTeague. The only film version is a cool 1924 Erich von Stroheim silent flick, Greed, which ran nearly 10 hours long. Storheim cut it down to 4, then MGM cut it down to an hour and a half and it flopped; the cut film was accidently put in the incinerator by a janitor and is lost forever.  It was the highest budgeted film at the time, at half a million, unheard of in the silent film biz.  I always wondered why no one re-did it -- I am sure there are some adaptations on development shelves, but the book is public domain so I can do my own.

I am having fun adapting someone else's work, let alone a classic novel, what Larry McCaffery calls the darkest, best dentist novel ever written. I am calling it MAC. I was calling it TEETH until I saw the recent indie, TEETH.

Some recent published stuff --

My cover story at the Reader on Tijuana violence --

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2008/aug/06/greetings-from-tijuana/

A review-essay of Eric Kohn's PURSUING HOLLYWOOD --

http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/995

My novelette, "Long Island Iced Tea," has finally appeared in issue #35 of HARBOILED MAGAZINE and a prose poem, "Nothing," in Issue #33 of ART MAG.

Two short essays on Raymond Carver stories accepted in THE EXPLICATOR.

Thinking of doing my second Helm Felloship at India U's Lilly Library next month -- this time on the William Vollmann art books they have archived there, which I will write an essay on and include in my Vollmann bibliography.