Ask The Dust

March 27, 2006

A few weeks ago, Matt Flowers wrote to ask my thoughts on the movie Ask the Dust based on the book of the same name by John Fante. I replied that when I first heard about the movie, I thought, "Oh no." For one reason because of Colin Farrell. I don't have strong feelings for him one way or the other, but why cast an Irish guy as the Italian American lead? Whatever. He's an actor, and that's what actors do: Act. But I also thought, "Oh no," because the book doesn't have that much of a plot, and while that's generally how I like my books, and sometimes even my movies, it doesn't make for a very commercial film, which is, of course, what Hollywood likes to make. That means that either the movie will stray from the book in an attempt to make it more dramatic, or whoever is directing it will be too out of their element to do a decent job.

"Did you happen to see Young Adam?" I asked Matt. "It's based on a book by another one of my favorite authors, Alexander Trocchi. Great book, shitty movie."

All this, however, was before I’d heard that Ask The Dust was being written and directed by Robert Towne. I don't know what kind of a director he is, but his screenplay for Chinatown is generally regarded as among the best ever written.

I just finished reading an interview with Robert Town in The Onion , where he speaks about meeting John Fante in the seventies to talk about adapting the book. (Apparently the project has been floating around for a long time.)

"He was a very angry little man who felt that he had been roundly ignored by life. He was pissed off and not very happy to se me. When I told him I wanted to make a movie out of his book, he said to me, 'What the hell have you written? Can you even write a screenplay? What are your credits? I've written screenplays. Worst job in the fucking world.' And that was what his attitude was: 'How would you know how good my book is?'

I'm still not convinced it's going to be a great movie — the reviews have been all over the map — but I hope it is. Who knows? I might even see it.