Patti Smith has begun work on adapting her National Book Award-winning bestseller Just Kids into a feature film, one that could finally shed some light on the New York experience in the 1970s and the early days of punk rock. All kidding aside, Just Kids at least has a compelling central relationship to go with all the zeitgeist, capturing all of the tender, personal moments she shared with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe before she went on to inspire generations of female singers and he went on to inspire a national debate over public funding for the arts with nothing more than a dream and a strategically placed bullwhip. Plus, famous people—including run-ins with Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol, and particularly a bar scene where Smith is surrounded by Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Grace Slick that no writer would ever get away with if they pitched it as fiction. Smith is developing the screenplay with John Logan, the screenwriter who’s done everything from Star Trek Nemesis to Any Given Sunday to Gladiator, but whose most applicable credit here, given the sense of history, may be The Aviator. Either that or the Lou Diamond Phillips horror film Bats. [via Deadline]
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