WWW- [LA Times]- What do you do if you’re a screenwriter who becomes blocked while working on an extremely difficult assignment? You may go for a jog, let’s say. Or start slamming vodka tonics at Tom Bergin’s (you know who you are). Maybe stalk the racks at H&M. Or, if you’re Merritt Johnson, you may just stick a bookmark in your copy of “The Sound and the Fury” and settle in to watch a little cinema masterpiece called “Deep Throat.”, www.xxxdeepthroat.com.
OK, I know what you’re thinking: This sounds like nothing more than the go-to procrastination tool for every sad soul with the shocking temerity to gaze upon Final Draft with anything resembling hope. But before you think I’m libeling Johnson, you should know that he can actually make a legitimate case for it. In addition to adapting William Faulkner’s monumental, multiple-viewpoint tour de force, the Shreveport, La., native is also writing a biographical film about America’s original porn star, Linda Lovelace – sometimes in the same day.
It’s more the rule than the exception that screenwriters work on several assignments simultaneously. And turning to your other project is often a successful way to provoke a breakthrough. Johnson has recently been making this work for him.
As for Lovelace, Imagine Entertainment once had the rights to her life story and books, plus a draft of a script that she reportedly didn’t like. After Lovelace died in a car accident in 2002 at the age of 53, producer Brian Grazer decided to make the documentary “Inside Deep Throat” instead, a jauntier enterprise than the darker journey of the film’s complicated star. Johnson later got in contact with a producer friend of Lovelace’s who had reclaimed the rights and sold her on a treatment he had written for a film version.
“The thing that was interesting to me is that she represented the two conflicting attitudes toward sex in America,” Johnson says. “She was the very first porn superstar and then she flipped and became the antiporn, feminist activist. What happens that one person can embody both of these?”
In his script, Johnson splits the story around these two periods of Lovelace’s life: the thrilling ride in the ’70s as “Deep Throat” becomes a phenomenon and her struggle in the ’90s as a welfare mother on Long Island trying to distance herself from her previous life. Courtney Love, who has played Larry Flynt’s wife and Andy Kaufman’s girlfriend, signed on to executive produce and star as the later-years Lovelace.
“She was the first one to say, ‘Nobody’s going to believe me as a 22-year-old just off the hay truck, but people will believe that I’ve faced some of these similar demons,’ ” recalls Johnson, who is still working on a first draft for Paramount. “She’s looking for her next great role. When you think about it, in terms of Courtney Love and who she is now, she’s not going to be playing Nanny McPhee. So this is a good match.”