Edward Abbey’s 1975 environmentalist novel The Monkey Wrench Gang is headed for the silver screen. Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, who worked on the 2010 Sundance Film Festival documentary Catfish and Paranormal Activity 3, will write and direct the adaptation.
Edward R. Pressman (American Psycho) and Grammy-winning album cover artist Gary Burden are producing.
The producers have been discussing ideas for the film for about 15 years, but now feel they have the right filmmakers to move ahead in the project, according to Deadline.com.
The novel is about a group of four men who are protesting industrial development in the 1970s American West. Their method of protest consists of attempts to damage industrial equipment without ever harming humans, animals, plants or rocks. The plan is followed, with the exception of one member, a Vietnam veteran named Hayduke, who wants to blow things up.
We’re excited and honored to turn this book into a movie,” Joost and Schulman said in a release on Deadline.com. “People often ask us why we work together, and as Edward Abbey used to say, ‘One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothin’ can beat teamwork.’”
Pressman said he feels the duo will do a good job with the comedic nature of the book, according to the same release.
Henry and Ariel’s approach to the film adaptation will connect to the humor and cultural zeitgeist of today in the same way Abbey’s book does,” Pressman said. “I’m delighted to collaborate with them on this irreverent comedy.”
See the official plot synopsis below:
Ed Abbey called The Monkey Wrench Gang, his 1975 novel, a “comic extravaganza.” Some readers have remarked that the book is more a comic book than a real novel, and it’s true that reading this incendiary call to protect the American wilderness requires more than a little of the old willing suspension of disbelief. The story centers on Vietnam veteran George Washington Hayduke III, who returns to the desert to find his beloved canyons and rivers threatened by industrial development. On a rafting trip down the Colorado River, Hayduke joins forces with feminist saboteur Bonnie Abbzug, wilderness guide Seldom Seen Smith, and billboard torcher Doc Sarvis, M.D., and together they wander off to wage war on the big yellow machines, on dam builders and road builders and strip miners. As they do, his characters voice Abbey’s concerns about wilderness preservation (“Hell of a place to lose a cow,” Smith thinks to himself while roaming through the canyonlands of southern Utah. “Hell of a place to lose your heart. Hell of a place… to lose. Period”). Moving from one improbable situation to the next, packing more adventure into the space of a few weeks than most real people do in a lifetime, the motley gang puts fear into the hearts of their enemies, laughing all the while. It’s comic, yes, and required reading for anyone who has come to love the desert.”
There is no word yet on when this adaptation is predicted to be released.
