Eve Babitz’s quadrilogy of memoirs, which chronicle LA in the ’60s and ’70s from the POV of a young bohemian, has been optioned by former Sony execs Amy Pascal and Elizabeth Cantillon.
TriStar Television is developing Babitz’s four books: “Eve’s Hollywood,” “Slow Days, Fast Company,” “Sex And Rage” and “LA Woman.” The goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky, Babitz initially gained fame as an artist’s muse, photographed playing chess with Marcel Duchamp while nude. That image made her “an icon of modern art and sexual liberation,” notes Deadline.
“Anyone who knows Amy and me is familiar with our deep affection for LA,” commented Cantillon. “And, having grown up here and known each other since high school, this seemed like the perfect thing for us to do together. Eve captures the spirit of Los Angeles, specifically, the feeling of what it’s like to grow up here and see it not as a wasteland but a wonderland.”
“Elizabeth is one of the most talented and intelligent producers I have ever had the good fortune to work with,” added Pascal. “And to be working together with her on this is literally a dream come true for both of us. Eve’s stories are so smart and witty and she captures LA in the ’60s and ’70s in such a unique and brilliant manner — I cannot wait to get going on this project.”
TriStar TV’s Suzanne Patmore Gibbs will also produce.
Here’s the synopsis of “Eve’s Hollywood,” the first of Babitz’s memoirs:
Journalist, party girl, bookworm, artist, muse: by the time she’d hit thirty, Eve Babitz had played all of these roles. Immortalized as the nude beauty facing down Duchamp and as one of Ed Ruscha’s “Five 1965 Girlfriends,” Babitz’s first book showed her to be a razor-sharp writer with tales of her own. Eve’s Hollywood is an album of vivid snapshots of Southern California’s haute bohemians, of outrageously beautiful high-school ingenues and enviably tattooed Chicanas, of rock stars sleeping it off at the Chateau Marmont. And though Babitz’s prose might appear careening, she’s in control as she takes us on a ride through an LA of perpetual delight, from a joint serving the perfect taquito, to the corner of La Brea and Sunset where we make eye contact with a roller-skating hooker, to the Watts Towers. This “daughter of the wasteland” is here to show us that her city is no wasteland at all but a glowing landscape of swaying fruit trees and blooming bougainvillea, buffeted by earthquakes and the Santa Ana winds — and every bit as seductive as she is.
