James Franco has locked down the film rights to D.J. Waldie‘s memoir HOLY LAND, according to Variety. The book stuck in actor Franco’s mind when he was studying at UCLA, and now it seems that the star wants to bring it to screens as a documentary feature.
We’ve tracked down a synopsis of the source material from Amazon below.
James Franco will next be seen in Danny Boyle‘s 127 HOURS.
Waldie, public information officer of Lakewood, Calif., as a boy moved with his family to one of that town’s suburbs that was designed and built nearly overnight during the 1950s. In this unusual and compelling memoir organized into a series of short, episodic essays, some of which were previously published in journals, the author describes both a place and the mindset of a decade. Built on a grid, the subdivision of identical houses on similar lots was owned by three businessmen whose Jewish background would have prevented them from living there at that time. Homes were quickly sold to young couples — many of the men were WWII veterans purchasing a house for the first time. The design of a shopping mall within Lakewood that was opened in 1952 included a half-mile civil defense fallout shelter and reflected the fear of Soviet attack that was mirrored by the attitudes of the Roman Catholic nuns who taught Waldie in school.
