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EXCLUSIVE: In its first original project for the stage, Kennedy/Marshall has optioned Columbine, the 2009 book by journalist Dave Cullen. First published in 2009, the book won the Edgar Award and is a comprehensive look at the massacre that occurred in April 1999 in Littleton, Colo., where high school students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a shooting rampage that took the lives of 13 before the students killed themselves. Scott Z. Burns is writing the stage play, with an eye toward a fall start. Burns’ credits include The Bourne Ultimatum, which he did with producers Kathy Kennedy and Frank Marshall, and Contagion, the Steven Soderbergh-directed thriller that stars Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet and Jude Law. The play will deal specifically with the events surrounding the murders inside the school library. The UTA/Anonymous Content-repped Burns is also writing for Soderbergh and George Clooney The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
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Great book. It de-bunks “myths” such as the Cassie Bernall christian martyr story, the so-called trenchcoat mafia, and the fact that Klebold & Harris were quite popular and successful students (Klebold went to the prom 3 days before the massacre and went on college road trips with his dad).
Not quite popular. Just not as outcast as originally made out. (I live nearby.)
Scott is very talented…The Informant! was hysterical.
Eric and Dylan get exactly what they wanted with projects like this: eternal fame. Let the victims rest in peace. Bad idea. Mass murder as entertainment? Creepy.
loved the book. simply delicious.
Wha…??
This was one of the saddest books I’ve ever read. As for “glorifying,” I think it’s potentially humanizing, which is valuable given the bogeyman status the two shooters have. If we think these guys were some kind of monstrous ‘exception’ and pretend like it could never happen again by sweeping the facts of the story to the side, we’ve learned nothing.
Damn, good post
I loved the book too, it’s one of the best of its kind. BUT I don’t think it should be a stage production. It’s just not something people want to see.
Yeah, can’t wait to relive this moment again… good times!
fantastic book. i have a feeling this play may be akin to ‘the laramme project.’ tough material, but so much to dig into. as paul greengrass showed us in ‘united 93,’ it can be accomplished with taste.
Yeah, this subject has been WELL DOCUMENTED. Leave it as a book, what will turning it into a play really do? Will it honesty reveal “deeper truths” or tell you anything you didn’t already know? I guess the art house crowd needs its cheap thrills but are too embarrassed to rent Saw 5.
This was a momentous book – a real page-turner. Although it is unforgiveable what these two teens did, it was chilling AND important to read how such things can happen and to discover some of the underlying cruelty that truly does infect high-school culture in America. I think this deserves a national platform and considering the bullying & its tragic results, we still live in that culture today.
stupendous book. I will see this play.
YES!Can’t wait for the Virginia Tech killer musical, the Russian school massacre Cirque de Soleil show and the much anticipated Arizona Assasination Opera.
let them be well used; for
they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the
time: after your death you were better have a bad
epitaph than their ill report while you live.
Wm. Shakespeare
Cullen , who first reported on the story for the online magazine Salon, acknowledges in the book’s source notes that thoughts he attributes to Klebold and Harris are conjecture gleaned from the record the pair left behind.
Jeff Kass takes a more straightforward approach in “Columbine: A True Crime Story,” working backward from the events of the fateful day.
The Denver Post
Mr. Cullen insists that the killers enjoyed “far more friends than the average adolescent,” with Harris in particular being a regular Casanova who “on the ultimate high school scorecard . . . outscored much of the football team.” The author’s footnotes do not reveal how he knows this; when I asked him about it while preparing this review, Mr. Cullen said he did not necessarily mean to imply that Harris was sexually active. But what else would such words mean?
“Eric and Dylan never had any girlfriends,” the more sober Mr. Kass writes, and were “probably virgins upon death.”
Wall Street Journal
this is disgusting. Columbine is not proper subject matter for popular entertainment.
have not read the book…..and think the idea is interesting (in any form…) oh wait…..there is already a play….called The Columbine Project….has had a run here and nyc. now…..i don’t think there is anything wrong folks doing lots of things on the same subject…..i mean how many movies are there about world war 2 and those events….so…..sure…..i can see where this can be the “new thing to make movies and plays about…” since not a lot goes on in the world…..and it is hard to find new stuff…
They’re hiring someone who’s never written a play?
For those of you that say this would not do well as a play, or that people would not want to see this, you should look up “The Columbine Project.” The Columbine story is already a play, and an incredibly successful one, at that.
There is already an amazing play on this subject called “The Columbine Project.”. It’s been done in LA a few times and it’s really beautiful. It teaches a lot of important lessons and has a lot of heart. I was there one night when the parents of one of the girls who was shot came. Rachel Scott’s parents. They really supported the play and the people in it but I don’t remember them saying anything about Cullen’s book. Interesting.
Great News! I can’t wait to see the play. I grew up in Littleton and am a 1986 graduate of Columbine High School. My brother and sister and I were shocked the day of the shooting, when we saw on CNN, some of our former teachers running from the school. I trust the play will respectful to the memories of the individuals who were killed that day, just as the Columbine Memorial in the park beside the school pays homage to their lives.
Good book, although I have heard it heavily criticized by some of the people who witnessed and lived through the Columbine massacre and it’s aftermath.
I was involved in a stage production about Columbine which originated in LA and toured off broadway. People’s reactions were positive. They constantly suggested that our show needed to tour and be seen by as many people as possible, because it educated people. Even family members and friends of the victims gave positive feedback. We learn from our history, and as we all know, it repeats itself. Educating people about this event could help prevent similar tragedies from unfolding in the future.