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Staying true to Dennis Lehane's words

Hollywood won't mess with the author. Gone Baby Gone follows his novel to a T.

By Steve Persall, Times Film Critic
Published October 18, 2007

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Dennis Lehane isn't just an author anymore; he is a movie marketing point.

Check the TV ads for Gone Baby Gone, the latest film adaptation of one of his novels, opening Friday nationwide. Lehane isn't mentioned by name but "from the author of Mystic River" is the sort of acknowledgement usually reserved for the Grishams and Clancys of his business.

The movie Gone Baby Gone is so thrilling that future Lehane adaptations should mention it - maybe even his name - in advertisements, too.

"That's what I want," the Eckerd College graduate recently joked from his Boston home. "I want to take up the first 30 seconds of every commercial, listing my credits."

Lehane is clearly enjoying his Hollywood flings, while less fortunate writers barely recognize their work onscreen. Clint Eastwood turned Mystic River into an Academy Award-winning film, faithful to the novel's blue collar Boston vibe. Except for the usual streamlining, the most drastic change to Gone Baby Gone was removing two commas from the title.

"It's all fine with me, as long as they spell my name right," Lehane said. "At the end of the day I have a working-class attitude about that sort of stuff."

Not that Lehane leaps whenever Hollywood calls. Selling the rights to Gone, Baby, Gone was tough since it is his favorite of a five-book series featuring private eyes Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. "I said something like: 'Over my dead body,' " Lehane recalled.

But he trusted producer Alan Ladd Jr., who already owned the rights to the fifth Kenzie-Gennaro mystery, Prayers for Rain. A few weeks after the deal was sealed, a Hollywood punch line was assigned to write the screenplay and direct.

"Ben Affleck has a better sense of humor about himself than anyone else does," Lehane said. "At first there was trepidation; that was right around Gigli, during the whole J-Lo thing.

"What else would my reaction have been? I was a little worried. Then I just got locked into the book I was writing and stepped far, far away from the project, had nothing to do with it."

Lehane coincidentally moved back to Boston in 2006, around the time Affleck began production. They went to dinner and the actor-filmmaker touted his Boston roots as a means of telling the story properly. Lehane read Affleck's screenplay and felt better.

The author visited the set only a few times. He was immediately impressed by Ed Harris' portrayal of a detective investigating a young girl's disappearance, and later by Casey Affleck's turn as Kenzie, a storefront sleuth getting in the way.

"I saw Ed nailing his role, and Amy Ryan making everybody's eyebrows rise up, playing the girl's mother," Lehane said. "Casey's performance is so quiet that only the camera captures it. Live on the set, you couldn't see it. I think it's a career-changing performance.

"They really captured the spirit of the book. When I wrote it, I was just so enraged that we can solve so many problems and send people to the moon but we cannot figure how to raise children safely in this society.

"I remember feeling at one point that maybe I'd go for a slightly more uplifting ending. Then I decided that would be unconscionable. It would be an insult to every abused child to let anyone walk away from the book or the movie and feel this problem is solved."

Real-life kidnappings shaped Lehane's book - a child was kidnapped and killed close to the author's home while he wrote - and now affect its debut overseas. Miramax indefinitely postponed the U.K. release due to its resemblance to the recent disappearance of 4-year-old Madeleine McCann in Portugal.

"I understand the actress who plays the little girl in the movie looks a lot like this little McCann girl," Lehane said. "Of course I understand Britain's situation. I was just in Europe where there is hysterical coverage of this, 24/7. Everybody figured this movie could be just one more monkey wrench in the works that they don't need."

Meanwhile, Lehane completed a historical novel, The Given Day, based on a 1919 police riot in Boston. No publication date has been decided. Anything coming out of his printer these days gets Hollywood's attention, but this book isn't a dark drama like Mystic River, Gone, Baby, Gone or two other works - Shutter Island and Until Gwen - currently owned by producers.

"The Given Day is a new direction for me," Lehane said. "But since I entered this world 15 years ago, my editor and agent knew I would follow a path that wasn't clearly defined. That aspect of my career is something I've tended like a garden. Everybody knew: This isn't a guy who'll write a book a year, and we're not sure what kind of book is going to roll out of his laptop.

"But they know there won't be aliens or UFOs in it."

Steve Persall can be reached at (727) 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com. Read his blog at blogs.tampabay.com/movies.

[Last modified October 17, 2007, 17:42:28]