Oregon Movies, A to Z

Will Ferrell in Everything Must Go (2011)

Here’s the game.

Open up a New York Times, and see how much Oregon you can recognize. With Ann Curry (Ashland) accepting a job promotion, and the Oregon Symphony taking a bow at Carnegie Hall, the game has been easy this week.  But Oregon Movies, A to Z would like to direct your attention to the Movies page, where you can find more Oregon connections.

1. Review of Everything Must Go, Dan Rush’s adaptation of Raymond Carver‘s short story “Why Don’t You Dance?”, published in the  Carver collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Love in 1981.

2. Interview with Gus Van Sant, whose Restless just premiered at Cannes.

3. An appreciation of Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild (1986) which has a screenplay by E. Max Frye.

4. Article about the next installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, which was launched in 2003 by Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl.

The Pirates: Curse Of The Black Pearl screen story was written by four writers, only one of which, as a college student, in the early 90s,  participated in an exchange program with Oregon State University.  Stuart Beattie has credited a trip to the Oregon Coast with inspiring Curse Of The Black Pearl, which is odd, because Australia, where he is from, also has plenty of coastline. But Oregon had the pirate ghosts.  Beattie took the idea with him to Hollywood, and Pirates of the Caribbean was the end result.

So the running total there is:

One film adaptation of a short story by an Oregon born author.

One Cannes premiere by an Oregon director.

One critical reappraisal of a film written by an Oregonian screenwriter.

One speculation about the next sequel of a franchise launched by a story conceived in Oregon.

I am especially fond of the last category of Oregon films, so please alert me as to films, or books-upon which films were later made – which were conceived in Oregon.