I Am Charlotte Simmons and I Am Going To Be A Movie

Hollywood looooooves Literature.

The Hollywood Reporter tells us that Tom Wolfe’s 2004 novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, is headed for the big screen. Liz Friedlander, director of Take the Lead, the Antonio Banderas teaches high school kids to dance movie, will direct. John Watson, one of the writers behind Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, is adapting (that movie was a bloated mess, but let’s not give Watson all the heat; director Kevin Costner did more than his share of damage there).

This is the first adaptation of one of Wolfe’s novels since 1987’s Bonfire of the Vanities, a debacle of filming immortalized in Julie Salomon’s book The Devil’s Candy. Simmons is about a naive country girl who arrives at a big time university and is shocked by the idea that college students are drinking, doing drugs, and having sex. The New York Times review of the book, by Jacob Weisberg, points out numerous flaws in the book, not least of which is the whole problem of a seventy-something man trying to get into the head of an eighteen year old college girl, and I think the sales were somewhat weak. In the right hands, this could maybe improve on screen, but the story doesn’t sound exactly groundbreaking. I also have no clue if Friedlander and Watson are the right hands.

Look for lots of pretty young things to get cast in this one.