Secret history of Donna Tartt's film

IT was meant to be the defining film of the Nineties. A stellar cast, Hollywood's hottest director and millions of dollars were to be lavished on a mysterious story that had enraptured millions of readers across the world.

And then nothing.

It's not unusual for studio bosses to grow cold on what they temporarily perceive to be a sure-fire hit, but no one expected the script for The Secret History, Donna Tartt's wonderfully evocative debut novel, to lie forgotten on a dust-strewn shelf.

On the eve of the release of the 39-year-old recluse's longawaited second novel, The Little Friend, a murder mystery set in Sixties Mississippi that has taken 10 years to complete, Tartt's fan base and Hollywood's power players are once again asking: "What on earth has happened to the film of The Secret History?"

The story is laden with as many twists and turns as the haunting novel, and none more surprising than the fact that the custodian of Tartt's story is now Gwyneth Paltrow in her debut role as a producer who has, surprisingly, assigned her novice brother Jake to direct. Rumours abound that she's primed for one of the starring roles, too.

Set in an elite New England arts college in which a band of effete classics scholars are embroiled in Ancient Greek ritual and murder, The Secret History was a Nineties publishing sensation.

All wintry landscapes, supernatural experimentation and homicidal conspiracy, it was little wonder Hollywood salivated. Before it even hit the bookshops in 1992, Warner Brothers lavished several million dollars on acquiring the screen rights, hoping to ride the trend for fast-tracking middlebrow literary delights onto the silver screen. Then began the tortuous job of transforming the novel into a filmable screenplay.

After several script rewrites, it was handed to esteemed filmmaker Alan Pakula (All The President's Men, Presumed Innocent) to produce.

He had enlisted Australian director Scott Hicks - then a Tinseltown darling thanks to his 1996 triumph, Shine.

Unfortunately, transposing Tartt's novel - full of latenight dormitory discussions and intellectual discourse on classical mythology - to the screen proved no breeze.

Having gone through a succession of established screenwriters, including Joan Didion, John Gregory Dunne and our own Christopher Hampton, no draft met with Pakula's satisfaction. Meanwhile, Hicks's star waned with his own underachieving literary adaptations, Snow Falling on Cedars and Hearts in Atlantis.

With Pakula's death in a 1998 car accident, the project languished in "development hell".

Until last November, that is, when the hugely successful Miramax (The English Patient, Chocolat) rescued it, entering into partnership with Warners, no doubt wise to the fact that Tartt would soon be back in vogue.

What raised eyebrows was the disclosure that the guardians of Miramax's new version would be the Paltrow family.

"I know that a script is being worked on as we speak," says Tartt's US agent, Amanda "Binky" Urban, "and Miramax would certainly show the finished product to Donna. But I don't think anybody's at that point yet." It's coming, though.

After such notable screenwriters failed to crack the text, however, it is a surprising revelation that it is none other than Jake Paltrow who is tackling the screenplay.

Since Jake is only 27 and has a CV that includes work on a nine- year-old series of NYPD Blue, this would appear, according to Tartt's fans, either an act of folly, or, worse, relegation of Tartt's work to family vanity project.

"It's not the sort of project you would imagine a first-time director working on because it's very large-scale," says Jamie Graham, reviews editor of Total Film magazine. "The characters go through a great deal of change.

They're acting out bacchanalian rituals - frenzies and blood lust.

"It takes all that on board and weaves it into a modern-day story. I can't imagine someone with so little experience taking on something that large."

Perhaps we should not rush to judgment. Tartt herself is rather more laid-back. "I don't have anything to do with the moviemaking end of it and I really just try to stay out of that because it's gone through so many hands," she says.

"After about five years I finally lost interest."

Let's hope Gwyneth doesn't.

Copyright 2002
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