Screenwriter/director James Gunn’s first and, to date, only novel should have had the effect of a modern-day The Catcher in the Rye for twentysomethings at the beginning of the 21st century. It’s that poetically and politically incorrect, that unflinchingly honest, and that painfully and brutally funny. It’s also that good. Though the book has been […]

Part 9: All Roads Lead to Katie With a blockbuster hit and his Gone paycheck under his belt, Allison Burnett could afford to return to works of a more personal nature, however risky the prospect of financial reward would be. Like his recently and quietly released novel, The Escape of Malcolm Poe, his next directorial […]

This is the third cinematic interpretation (and the second English-language one) of the Lisbeth Salander/Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Swedish thriller book series that was created by the late Stieg Larsson. Based on the first book in the series written by David Lagercrantz instead of Larsson, The Girl in the Spider’s Web faces the uphill […]

Part Eight: Gone is Malcolm Poe Gone was Burnett’s first-produced spec screenplay in over a decade. On paper, it seemed to be an amalgam of all the strengths his work exhibited to date: great characterizations, a strong female lead, sparse and true-to-life dialogue. Perhaps even more appealing, it was all neatly and cleverly wrapped up […]

Silver Screen Fiend is Patton Oswalt’s answer to Permanent Midnight. It’s a cautionary tale for film buffs– or anyone geeked out on anything outside of real life. While it may not feature stories of Oswalt sleeping under park benches, it certainly provokes self-examination for anyone who starts losing sight of reality when they confuse it […]

Part Seven: The End of B.K. (For Now) and a Blockbuster Hit at Last B.K. Troop wasn’t quite done with Allison Burnett. While there wasn’t exactly a high demand for more books filled with his neurotically moving and bitchily brilliant narration, it didn’t stop Burnett from writing a third novel in his trilogy. In fact, […]

Bringing Jim Thompson to the screen cannot be an easy task. To date, the best adaptation of the 1950’s pulp novelist’s work is Stephen Frears’s The Grifters. That 1990 film combined Thompson’s hard-boiled dialogue (appropriately adapted by fellow crime writer Donald E. Westlake for the screenplay) with a stylized glaze of noir, resulting in an […]

Part Six: More Frustrations, a Strike, and the Birth of Katie Like every screenwriter, there are a number of “great unmades” in Allison Burnett’s drawer. Perhaps his most industry-respected is his adaptation of Andrea Di Robilant’s celebrated historical romance, A Venetian Affair: A True Tale of Forbidden Love in the 18th Century.   Burnett wrote the […]

Adventures in Paradise actor Gardner McKay’s novel, Toyer, is a haunting and inventive thriller. Also produced as a play by McKay, the novel is a compulsively readable, if not slightly long-winded, examination of the media’s relationship with violence, the dark side of Los Angeles, and madness in and of itself. The heroine of Toyer is […]

Part Five: B.K.’s Silent Return and a Champion Hollywood Fight Backtracking slightly from the end of our last installment, Allison Burnett’s screenwriting career proved to continue without disruption– in spite of Autumn in New York’s failed reception and his public feud with Richard Gere. Surprisingly, as far as he could perceive, the entire debacle failed to […]