Alex Beam's "Gracefully Insane"

Alex Beam is a columnist at the Boston Globe and author of Gracefully Insane: The Rise and Fall of America's Premier Mental Hospital.Is there a movie to be filmed based on this work of social history? You bet. The author explains:My non-fiction book about the storied, celebrity-choked (Sylvia Plath, James Taylor, Ray Charles, et al) McLean mental hospital outside of Boston has attracted the usual eyeball-rolling "film interest." Most of it was of the slavish, me-too variety, with half-literate agents and producers hyperventilating at the thought of optioning the next "Girl, Interrupted,"

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Anya Ulinich, "Petropolis"

I asked Anya Ulinich who should star in a film version of her new book, Petropolis.Her response:I can't come up with any actors. So my response will be much under 200 words. Actually, it'll consist of just two words: Todd Solondz. He is my dream screenwriter and director for Petropolis the movie. He can pick the actors, too.Pithy.Todd Solondz's films include Palindromes (2004), Storytelling (2001), Happiness (1998), and Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995).Here's how Anya describes her protagonist:Sasha Goldberg is a biracial, Jewish, socially maladjusted "child of the intelligentsia" from the S

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Allison Burnett's "Christopher"

Novelist-screenwriter Allison Burnett on the film version of his novel(s):The hero of both my novels, Christopher and The House Beautiful, and of my upcoming one, Death By Sunshine, is named B.K. Troop. B.K. is a tall, bald, middle-aged, potbellied, spindly legged, bearded, grey-toothed, dandruff-flaked, chemically imbalanced, erudite, witty, gay alcoholic. Sadly, Bea Arthur is past her prime. I am left with slim pickings.I have adapted Christopher into a screenplay myself. In my discussions with agents and producers, some names have been bandied about: Kelsey Grammar, Harvey Fierstein, A

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