• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

While watching the new film “Capote,” a stellar account of the struggles and successes experienced by writer Truman Capote during the composition of his seminal book “In Cold Blood,” I had two revelations.

Revelation No. 1: Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of the most talented thespians in the business today. After enjoying his nuanced performance as the flamboyant, troubled Capote, it’s difficult to imagine anyone challenging him for the Best Actor Oscar this year. Looks to me like Hoffman is 2005’s Jamie Foxx.

Revelation No. 2: The author biopic is a genre ripe for further exploitation. “Capote” illustrates an intriguing fact about the literary world – authors’ own lives are often as interesting as the work they produce. Sometimes even more so.

A few author biopics are simply begging to be made – hopefully film executives are reading. After a summer full of not-quite-masterpieces like “Stealth” and “The Dukes of Hazzard,” it would be great to see a few more “Capotes.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald: I think Fitzgerald is the coolest author ever. No one even comes close. A literary sensation by his 23rd birthday, he was hailed as the voice of the Jazz Age, his prose possessing the subtle beauty of a Charlie Parker saxophone solo.

Gallivanting around the world with his stunning wife Zelda, Fitzgerald’s lifestyle, much like his writing, captivated the imagination. At his peak, he could do no wrong.

But alas, life intervened. As book sales plummeted, schizophrenia plagued Zelda and booze grew increasingly irresistible. Fitzgerald experienced a precipitous decline that illustrated the prescience of his oft-quoted insight, “Show me a hero, and I will write you a tragedy.”

His earnest but unsuccessful struggle against misfortune would make a remarkably touching film. I see Viggo Mortensen as the tormented Fitzgerald, futilely drawn to glorious yesterdays.

Renee Zellweger has the squinty eyes and acting talent to successfully capture the essence of his burdened, beautiful wife Zelda. And with backdrops such as the New York jazz clubs of the roaring ’20s and the French Riviera, the film could make an impressive visual, as well as emotional, impact.

Allen Ginsberg: Ginsberg, one of the premier poets of the Beat Generation, was a true original.

Or, as my eloquent flatmate Dan, a rabid poetry enthusiast, phrased it, “Ginsberg is (synonym for fornication, beginning with the same first letter) crazy, fool!”

His lengthy career offers many intriguing moments – touring with Bob Dylan, partaking in the Berkeley anti-war protests of the ’60s, and founding The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.

However, I think it is his earliest years as an artist, when he was still striving to find his voice, that would make a uniquely charming film.

Jason Schwartzman, of “Rushmore” and “I Heart Huckabees” fame, already has great experience playing the intelligent yet confused eccentric.

Ginsberg’s story is a creative odyssey that includes a landmark obscenity case, several love triangles, and – in a moment made for a biopic – a confrontation with a heckler at one of his readings when he walks down to the audience, removes all his clothing, and proclaims, “The poet stands naked before the world.” Do I sense an Oscar clip?

Franz Kafka: Kafka remains one of the great enigmas in world literature. Each year, his writing confounds thousands of readers facing “The Metamorphosis” or “The Trial” for the first time.

Attempts to describe his work, style and themes have only resulted in the ambiguous term “Kafka-esque” and many furrowed brows. What’s so intriguing to me are not his life experiences – fairly ordinary, as he was an insurance company employee who wrote as a hobby – but rather how his apparently normal existence left him with a uniquely bleak perspective.

Why was the world such an oppressive place for him? His biopic would attempt to find some answers.

There is only one man in the world who could do Kafka justice, and that is Woody Allen. Allen’s affinity for the writer is evident in roles he has already played on screen – “Oh, sex with you is really a Kafka-esque experience,” his date declares to a perplexed Allen in the classic “Annie Hall.”

“My one regret in life is that I’m not someone else,” Allen once remarked. If anyone could capture the pessimism and anxiety that characterizes Kafka’s personality, it would be Allen. Both seem mired in an inescapable ennui, alienated from their fellow man and frustrated by the seeming absurdity of day-to-day affairs.

And both articulated these bleak realities in the most hilarious of ways. Imagine Allen, as Kafka, attempting to sell “The Metamorphosis” to his publisher:

“Well, it’s about a man who wakes up one day as a bug,” Allen would begin, with his characteristic nervous stammer and frantic gesticulation.

“A bug?”

“Yeah, and then for the rest of the story he tries to deal with it. His metamorphosis. I see it as ... emblematic of the struggle all humanity must endure.”

“Humanity is a bug?” the publisher would exclaim incredulously, as Allen fidgeted in his seat.

Kearns is prone to disrobe and shout, “The columnist stands naked before the world” when his editor attempts to remove literary references from his articles. E-mail him at bkearns@media.ucla.edu.