We're getting three starry Patricia Highsmith adaptations in the next year or so at the cinemas. First up is The Two Faces of January (Viggo, Kiki & Oscar Isaac) and then Carol (Cate, Rooney & Sarah Paulson).
The latest to ready itself for the cameras is The Blunderer. The cast will include Patrick Wilson, Jessica Biel, Imogene Poots and Toby Jones.
Highsmith adaptations are nothing new for the cinema and soon there will be little left to adapt.Walter Stackhouse (Wilson) is a successful architect married to the beautiful Clara (Biel) and leading a charmed and perfect life. But his fascination with an unsolved murder leads him into a spiral of chaos as he is forced to play cat-and-mouse with a clever killer (Jones) and an over-ambitious detective. Walter's obsession, his lies and his lust for another woman (Poots) will collide in a crush of guilt, innocence and, ultimately, fate.
Highsmith adaptations are nothing new for the cinema and soon there will be little left to adapt.
But why hasn't anyone made a biopic yet?
She was a complicated character in her looks, her art, and her temperament: famously misanthropic (and racist, too), an alcoholic, complicated lifelong relationship with her mother (who once confessed to trying to abort her) who lived to be 95, bisexual with volatile affairs, and a crazy cat lady to boot.
Who should play her in a biopic? Two names came immediately to my mind but I want to know your thoughts before I reveal them. A few more pictures after the jump [one NSFW] and a few more notes about Hollywood's interest in her work.
Highsmith was uninhibited enough to pose for nude photos
Highsmith as a young novelist in New York
Highsmith in her later years, still a public figure
Since she worked exclusively in the crime drama realm, Hollywood has always loved her. They've been transferring her suspense work ever since Alfred Hitchcock started the ball rolling with Strangers on a Train (1951). Her Tom Ripley novels have been the biggest source of the camera's obsessions adapted multiple times to the screen in French, British, and US films -- most famously with Purple Noon (1960) and The Talented Mr Ripley (1999).
Are there any novels left for the movies to adapt? Here is her complete list of novels - the ones in bold have been adapted OR are part of the Tom Ripley series so they've sort of been adapted. It's only a matter of time for the ones who haven't made it to the screen yet.
- Strangers on a Train (1950)
- The Price of Salt (as Claire Morgan) (1952), also published as Carol
- The Blunderer (1954)
- The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)
- Deep Water (1957)
- A Game for the Living (1958)
- This Sweet Sickness (1960)
- The Cry of the Owl (1962)
- The Two Faces of January (1964)
- The Glass Cell (1964)
- A Suspension of Mercy (1965), also published as The Story-Teller
- Those Who Walk Away (1967)
- The Tremor of Forgery (1969)
- Ripley Under Ground (1970)
- A Dog's Ransom (1972)
- Ripley's Game (1974)
- Edith's Diary (1977)
- The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980)
- People Who Knock on the Door (1983)
- Found in the Street (1987)
- Ripley Under Water (1991)
- Small g: a Summer Idyll (1995)