The long-awaited screen adaptation of My Friend Dahmer appears to be moving forward.
The Revere Local Schools district has been contacted about being used in the movie based on writer-artist John “Derf” Backderf’s 2012 account of his youthful acquaintance with the serial killer Dahmer, including at Revere High.
The issue came up at a recent school board meeting and district superintendent Matthew Montgomery may be close to a decision.
The saga of My Friend Dahmer goes back 25 years, when Derf — as he is best known — first wrote a short story about Dahmer. After several revisions and re-publications, it became a 224-page book which received widespread acclaim, including a spot on Time magazine’s list of the best nonfiction books of 2012.
That same year, Derf sold the screen rights to Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Ibid Filmworks, a company consisting of the husband-and-wife team of writer-director Marc Meyers and producer Jody Girgenti.
“It’s a curious thing to pass on a very personal work for someone else to interpret, but I decided, why not?” Derf said. He called Meyers “just the kind of filmmaker I thought would do right by the book.”
Meyers and Girgenti have been featured at the Cleveland International Film Festival, including with How He Fell In Love this year and Harvest in 2010. The latter won the CIFF’s prize for best independent American film that year.
Since getting the Dahmer rights, Meyers completed a script that made the 2014 Black List of best unproduced screenplays. Derf said he had read the screenplay and made suggestions but “that’s the extent of my involvement.”
Instead he has focused on graphic novels, including his book Trashed, which has also been a hit with critics and audiences, and sold to the movies.
But he is aware of the pitfalls facing the adaptation, writing “Don’t F--- It Up!” in Meyers’s signed copy of My Friend Dahmer.
“Any film will be compared to the book and comics fans are VERY vocal about these things,” Derf said.
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal, Ohio.com, Facebook and Twitter. You can contact him at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.