Savage Screenplay

Writing Professor's Adaptation Brings Murder to Life on the Big Screen

One of the hallmarks of the School of Cinema-Television is an environment where theory and practice interact-even, at times, collide. For faculty who balance careers in the industry and university, it can prove an interesting juggling act. Just ask Howard A. Rodman, who's spent the past year chairing the writing division and teaching, while at the same time penning a pilot for HBO and edging his adaptation of the 1985 nonfiction book Savage Grace toward the big screen.

"The teaching keeps you engaged, and is a lovely balance to what can often be a very solitary profession," said Rodman, whose credits include episodes of the Showtime anthologies Fallen Angels (1993) and the drama Joe Gould's Secret (2000). "And the skills I've learned as Chair-about budgets, about leading and learning from a large cohort of colleagues, about navigating bureaucracies, about managing time, about the arts of inspiration-have been very portable. They're the same skills you need to will a film into existence."

The task of adapting Savage Grace originated in 1999 when Rodman was first introduced to the story by Killer Films' principals, Christine Vachon, Pam Koffler and Katie Roumel (Boys Don't Cry, Far from Heaven). Adapted from the book of the same name by Natalie Robins and Steven M. L. Aronson, Savage Grace is the true crime tale of the 1972 murder of Barbara Baekeland. Once married to the heir of the Bakelite plastic fortune, Baekeland, played by Academy Award-nominee Julianne Moore, desires to remain entrenched in her ex-husband's world of high society while taking an all-too-personal interest in curing her son of his sexual orientation.

Contact Information:

Joe Smith
888.222.3344
jsmith@cinema.usc.edu