From Film to Book Sales

Contemporary cinema continues to drive viewers into bookstores for the original sources and background information that can add greater dimension and context to the film experience. Many booksellers note that an awareness of current films can generate intriguing displays and assure that relevant books are on hand.

When the subject of a film is an influential writer such as Truman Capote, numerous book tie-ins emerge -- some obvious and some less so. After seeing Phillip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of Capote in the film of the same name -- which centers on the period when Capote wrote In Cold Blood -- it's not surprising that many filmgoers are looking to read the book about the murder of a rural Kansas family that gained such notoriety. But viewers are just as likely to search for other books by and about the prolific author. New editions about Capote include the October Carroll & Graf paperback of Gerald Clarke's Capote: A Biography and the September paperback version of Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote, published by Vintage. Capote is also credited with being the inspiration for characters in other novels, including Dill Harris in To Kill a Mockingbird (HarperPerennial), which was written by his childhood friend Harper Lee, and Strekfus in Jackson Tippett McCrae's novel, The Bark of the Dogwood: A Tour of Southern Homes and Gardens (Enolam Group).

In theaters now, Good Night and Good Luck, the independent film written and produced by actor George Clooney, about broadcaster Edward R. Murrow's battle with Sen. Joe McCarthy, provides many options for booksellers to feature biographies, histories, and fiction. Among them: Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism (Turning Points in History) by Bob Edwards (Wiley); McCarthyism: The Great American Red Scare: A Documentary History, edited by Albert Fried (Oxford University Press); The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism by Haynes Johnson (Harcourt); The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History With Documents by Ellen W. Schrecker (St. Martin's); Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator by Arthur Herman (Free Press); The Redhunter: A Novel Based on the Life of Senator Joe McCarthy by William F. Buckley, Jr. (Little, Brown); and Whittaker Chambers: A Biography by Sam Tanenhaus (Modern Library Paperbacks).

The film Jarhead opens around the country this week, with Jake Gyllenhaal in the title role, and booksellers can anticipate great interest in the memoir on which it's based, by first-time author Anthony Swofford (Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles, Scribners).

Zathura, based on Chris Van Allsburg's popular fantasy, will open on November 11 starring Tim Robbins, Josh Hutcherson, Jonah Bobo, and many spectacular effects. For information about a consumer sweepstakes sponsored by publisher Houghton Mifflin for stores with Book Sense, click here.

Pride and Prejudice will be released in the top 30 markets on November 11, then in wide release on November 23. It may surprise some young filmgoers, who know star Keira Knightley only from her roles in Bend It Like Beckham and Pirates of the Caribbean, that this story is based on a book of the same name. Those who are well schooled in author Jane Austen-arcania may note that Knightley, as Elizabeth Bennet, is shown at the beginning of the film reading a novel titled First Impressions. This was the author's original title for Pride and Prejudice. Knightley has also been tapped to head the cast for the Miramax production of The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory (Touchstone).

November 18 spells the release of the fourth of J.K.Rowling's seven-part tale of the education of Harry Potter. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was directed by Mike Newell (Mona Lisa Smile and Four Weddings and a Funeral), and will introduce Ralph Fiennes as the evil Lord Voldemort and Miranda Richardson as journalist Rita Skeeter, a.k.a. Ms. Run Amok.

For those who like to prepare well in advance, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will be released in June of 2007 and directed by David Yates. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince will be released in 2008 but no other information is available.

Renewed interest can be expected in Arthur Golden's bestselling Memoirs of a Geisha (Random House), when the film, featuring an all-star Asian cast, is released on December 9. On the same day, a photographic companion book to the film, Memoirs of a Geisha: A Portrait of the Film, will be released from Newmarket Press.

C.S. Lewis' classic tales of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe will also be released on December 9, from Walt Disney Pictures. The paperback The Chronicles of Narnia: Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe -- Official Illustrated Movie Companion is now available from HarperSanFrancisco.

On January 1, 2006, the fun stops when An American Haunting, a film based on Brent Monahan's The Bell Witch: An American Haunting (St. Martin's), opens around the country. Based on a series of horrible events that took place in Tennessee between 1818 and 1820, the film involves poltergeists of the worst kind, and stars Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek.

Opening on December 23 in New York and Los Angeles, and on January 13, 2006, everywhere else, is Freedomland, from the novel and screenplay by Richard Price (Broadway). Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Julianne Moore, Edie Falco, and Rod Eldard, Freedomland was filmed entirely in New York.

And in the pipeline is a film from an unlikely combo: filmmaker Richard Linklater (Slacker and School of Rock) and Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (HarperPerennial). According to a recent article in the New York Times, Schlosser's bestselling 2001 expos of the fast food industry is being transformed into a drama, starring actor Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace), and it is giving many executives in the food industry agita. The film's co-producer Ann Carli told the Times, "We're just using the fast food industry as a backdrop for a multitude of characters. It's not a polemic."

Watch BTW for more information about upcoming film adaptations of fiction, nonfiction, children's books, comics, and graphic novels. --Nomi Schwartz