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Hollywood Buys Rights to Gabo Book

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1278952,00.html

Author green lights Cholera film

After denying Hollywood for years, Gabriel García Márquez agrees to sell the rights to his 1985 novel

Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
Monday August 9, 2004
The Guardian

Unswerving defender of Fidel Castro and Latin American literary patriarch he may be, but Gabriel García Márquez appears to have finally succumbed to Hollywood's call, signing over the film rights to Love in the Time of Cholera.
The Los Angeles production company Stone Village Pictures is reportedly paying the Colombian Nobel laureate between one and three million dollars to make a movie of what producer Scot Steindorff recently termed "the best love story ever told, next to Romeo and Juliet".

Despite selling millions of books around the globe, the 76-year-old novelist, who is battling with cancer, is said to be worried about the financial future of his lifetime partner Mercedes and their two sons Gonzalo and Rodrigo.

García Márquez, who has lived in Mexico most of the time since 1961, reportedly sank substantial sums into a news magazine called Cambio that he started in Colombia before launching a Mexican version with mixed results.

Born in Colombia in 1928, García Márquez spent years as a struggling journalist before making his name crafting fantastic tales told with breathtaking naturalness, often inspired by the lives of his own family and the turbulent history of his native country and continent.

He shot to international literary fame with his 1967 novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, loosely based on the experiences of his own grandparents. In his recent autobiography Bill Clinton described the book as "the greatest novel in any language since William Faulkner died".

Love in the Time of Cholera, published in 1985, follows the struggles of Florentina Ariza to win the heart of Fermina Daza. It takes the hero 51 years, nine months and four days, but he wins her in the end.

The Colombian newspaper El Espectador quoted a triumphant Steindorff as saying it took him two years of constant badgering to persuade the novelist to agree to sell the rights.

"Like the main character in the book I persevered and never lost hope until I achieved my goal. We are going to work very hard to make the most beautiful film Hollywood has ever made."

The project is an apparent about-turn for García Márquez, a veteran defender of Latin American independence under pressure from successive US regimes intent on imposing their political priorities and cultural trends on the whole hemisphere.

The novelist has remained fiercely loyal to Fidel Castro, even after many others on the left distanced themselves from the Cuban leader because of his apparently indiscriminate crackdown on dissidents and political use of the death penalty. Last year this issue drew García Márquez into a bitter polemic with Susan Sontag, who publicly lambasted the author for not criticizing his old friend.

Up to now García Márquez has always resisted the temptation to allow high-budget English language films of his work. The most commercial adaptation of his books to hit the screen so far was the 1987 Italian version of Chronicle of a Death Foretold, directed by Francesco Rosi and starring Rupert Everett.

Details of who may direct or star in the movie have yet to be released, although the names of Nicole Kidman and Jude Law are already circulating. Steindorff himself has reportedly hinted that García Márquez could be persuaded to write the screenplay.

By Sam Salmon on Aug 8, 2004, 18:51 in Friendly Talkzone.