By Jolene Fisher
Webster Groves native Timothy Sexton fell in love with movies at the old Ozark Theater, where, as a kid, he would sneak in to watch Billy Jack over and over. It was a romance that earned him a nomination at February’s 79th Oscars for his work on the screenplay adaptation for last year’s Children of Men. For Sexton, adapting a work for the screen is a lot like starting fresh: “At some point, even in adaptation, you have to make it your own.” We asked him what he’d like to bring to the big screen next.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez
Sexton is intrigued by the book—considered Márquez’s masterpiece—because it “tells the story of the modern world,” but he admits it would probably necessitate a trilogy.
Anything written by Walker Percy, such as The Moviegoer
The award-winning author was Sexton’s favorite in college, but his interests in existentialism and semiotics would make an adaptation tricky: “He writes such interior books.”