01 April 2008

Keeping a low profile

El Tiempo links to an article discussing Hilda Hidalgo's adaptation of Del amor y otros demonios (Of Love and Other Demons). The "day on the set" piece describes the modest ambitions and artistic heart of the project, currently in its fourth week of filming in Cartagena.

Here's some additional (English) information:
Already Hidalgo has been treated more generously by the Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author; while Garcia Marquez sold the rights to "Cholera" to Hollywood for $3 million, he was rumored to have given away the rights to "Of Love and Other Demons" to his fellow Latin American artist. "We agreed on a symbolic figure, an amount I'm not going to reveal," said Hidalgo, who is Costa Rican.

Hidalgo met the author when she took a class he taught in Cuba two years ago on "how to tell a tale."

2 comments:

Carmelo V. Bella said...

I'm curious if anybody has read or seen anywhere an in depth discussion of Gabo's decision to sell the film rights to "Cholera." I didn't dislike the movie, mostly because of its obvious respect for the book and the strong male performances but I still wonder what the motivation was to sell to Hollywood, and $3 million does not seem like enough ...

amcorrea said...

The only story I can specifically remember seeing is what producer Scott Steindorff had to say about it--that he kept bugging him about it and finally compared himself to Florentino Ariza, saying that he would be just as relentness...which supposedly won him over.

But a couple of years prior to this, I heard that he sold the rights (or at least became willing to sell the rights) because of the financial pressures of his cancer treatment. Not sure about how true this is.

You're right--$3 million seems pretty low.