'The Virgin Suicides'

Eugenides' cult classic moves to the big screen

By Donna Freydkin
Reporting for CNN Interactive

April 28, 2000
Web posted at: 2:37 p.m. EST (1837 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- To hear him tell it, Jeffrey Eugenides doesn't aspire to be a Michael Crichton or John Grisham.

Eugenides is more a hip college professor than a slick author-turned-movie-man. He doesn't write books with the overarching intent of having them end up as blockbuster films. In fact, to date, Eugenides has one book to his name, the 1993 cult classic "The Virgin Suicides." He says he's as dazed as anyone now that it's actually made it to theaters.

Yet the hoopla surrounding the film adaptation of his novel belies Eugenides' relative obscurity. Thanks in large part to the big names attached to "The Virgin Suicides," the Hollywood hype machine has been working overtime on this film. Sofia Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola's daughter, wrote the screenplay and directed the movie. Kirsten Dunst plays the most evocative of the suicidal Lisbon sisters, while Kathleen Turner and James Woods portray the girls' sheltering, strict parents.

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Despite his short publishing resume, Eugenides is no babe in the woods. He sold the movie rights within one year of the book's publication; it was optioned by numerous people before falling into Coppola's hands.

Yet the writer, who is currently living in Berlin and working on "a really long novel" about a genetic disease passed down through a family, says he's still somewhat dazed by the thought of his Lisbon girls lighting up the big screen.

CNN: Did you know girls as vivid and tragic as the Lisbon sisters during your own youth?

Eugenides: I got the idea from my nephew's babysitter. This is when I was older, I was about 30, and she said that she and all her sisters had tried to commit suicide. And it stuck in my mind: the idea of a group of sisters who were all suicidal. And then I put it back into my own life, in the '70s, and used girls I knew growing up. People who know me always ask which family of girls it was, and I know which one it is -- but I never say.

CNN: You seem to have this very tender, idealized vision of the Lisbon girls, fiercely protected by their parents. Did you grow up with sisters?

Eugenides: I had no sisters, so that's probably why I paid attention when I went into houses that had girls. I had the sense of it being a different world.

CNN: What is it about this book that has struck a chord with so many readers?

Eugenides: Everyone seems to relate to that feeling of growing up with a lot of nosy neighbors in everyone's business. I think that's what people tell me the most. That it reminds them of the kind of perceptions you have when you're young.

CNN: As a writer, what do you think of books being turned into films?

Eugenides: I do think books are best as books and movies are best as movies. They're really just different animals. Especially in a book like this, where so much depends on the narrative voice and not knowing who that voice is.

CNN: Were you ever tempted to write the screenplay?

Eugenides: When I finished the book, I so wanted to get on to something else that I didn't want to do that. I just couldn't imagine going through it again. And I think it would have been difficult to change the book for producers. I didn't want to get involved with it.

CNN: Now that your baby has finally made it to theaters, how do you look about on the entire experience?

Eugenides: I would do it again. It seems very unreal to me that it's a movie. I wrote this book, it exists as a book, and the movie is another world, sort of far away from me. I don't feel that it's stolen my soul or my book.

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Official 'The Virgin Suicides' film site
Paramount Classics

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