Noonan will 'rule'
'Babe' scribe-helmer takes on Banks book
"It’s about coming of age, and it’s a tough story, really," said Noonan, reached at his office in Australia, "because this kid is destined to be one of the casualties of life, and through a series of events, and a little magic, you realize he’ll be a survivor."
"Bone" was published by HarperCollins in 1996. Protagonist, a 14-year-old pothead named Chappie, seems equal parts Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield: Living in upstate New York with his mother and abusive stepfather, slowly drifting into criminality, Chappie moves into an abandoned school bus with an old Jamaican mystic. On the lam from the INS, he and the Rastafarian head back to the Caribbean.
After the success of "Babe," Noonan said he elected to turn down nearly 400 studio offers (Col’s "Godzilla" was among them) while pondering his next writing project.
Noonan’s search for inspiration has surely been one of the more unconventional in Hollywood: After wrapping his animated porcine pic for Universal, Noonan spent several months in the middle of the Pacific with his wife. On Aitutaki (pop. 400), one of the Cook Islands, he spent much of his time recording and collecting the spiritual music of the island’s native Polynesian inhabitants. He even considered making a film about it, but then instead returned to Australia to write.
Most recently, Noonan exec produced last year’s small-budget Aussie indie "Feeling Sexy" by tyro helmer David Allen, which his wife Glenys Rowe ("Idiot Box," "Greenkeeping") produced.
After "Babe," "I’d felt a great deal of pressure to say yes to things I didn’t quite believe in. But I have no moral objection to the Hollywood studio system," explained Noonan of his absence. "If there’d been a project of Hollywood excess that’d tickled my fancy, I’d have said yes."
Needs home
It remains unclear whether "Bone" — which Noonan says he envisions as modestly budgeted, just under $20 million — will become a project for a studio like Mendel’s home base, U, or if it will be served up as an indie remains unclear. (Mendel, before ankling the world of tenpercenting to produce pics like "Rushmore" and "The Sixth Sense," had served as Noonan’s first U.S. lit agent.)
"Bone" will be the third Banks novel to transfer to the screen: "Affliction," published in 1989, and "The Sweet Hereafter," published in 1992, were adapted and released in 1997 as films by Paul Schrader and Atom Egoyan, respectively.
Noonan is repped by United Talent Agency.
