In his attempt to bring "Jack Weyland's Charly" to the big screen, Adam Thomas Anderegg has already managed to impress possibly the most important person: Weyland himself.
The author has publicly declared that the film is "even better than the book," an endorsement that practically guarantees the movie's success.
"Wow, that means I must have really done something right," Anderegg said with a laugh, after hearing Weyland pay him the ultimate compliment.
Anderegg and Weyland recently participated in interviews to publicize the film, which opens in area theaters today. (Its theatrical release will then "expand" to include Arizona and Idaho in following weeks.)
Ironically, when Weyland began writing "Charly," he intended it to be a screenplay. But his drafts were met with general disinterest from producers, and he turned it into a novel instead.
"I believe that they thought it was too similar to (Erich Segal's "Love Story," which was also turned into a feature film). They didn't really understand it," said Weyland, who added that he never planned to become a novelist.
When it was released in 1979, Weyland's book about the unlikely romance between an LDS man and the title character, a free-spirited New Yorker and non-member, it became something of a local phenomenon.
"The response was overwhelmingly positive. And after hearing for so long that maybe I shouldn't be doing this, I was completely blown away by it," he said.
Today, "Charly" has thousands of devoted fans, including Anderegg, who read the book when he was 16. ("Charly" even helped bring together Anderegg and his wife, Carol, who introduced him to it.)
"It really touched something in me," Anderegg recalled. "I knew that somebody had to make this into a movie, and I was hoping it would be me."
Easier said than done. While Anderegg has worked as assistant editor on TV's "Touched by an Angel" and has produced several well-regarded short films, at that point he hadn't directed a feature.
And so many prospective "Charly" production teams had come and gone. ("I can't tell you how many broken promises there were since the book first came out," Weyland said.)
Still, Anderegg was confident he was the man for the job — even driving up to Rexburg to take Weyland and his family out to dinner as a method of persuasion.
"It would have been impossible to tell him no after he went through so much effort," Weyland said. "And I could see how much he loved the book and how much wanted to do it justice."
The next step was finding the right script. Anderegg and producers Micah Merrill and Lance C. Williams commissioned a script treatment by Janine Whetten Gilbert (a fellow professor of Weyland's at Brigham Young University-Idaho).
"She really kept the story intact," Anderegg said. "Changes were necessary, but she really nailed it — made sure it still had the heart there."
Then Anderegg and the production team had to cast the film. To play strait-laced Sam Robertson, they found local actor Jeremy Elliott, who has had roles in a pair of fairly high-profile LDS films ("Out of Step" and "The Testaments: Of One Fold and One Shepherd").
More troublesome was finding the right lead actress. Luckily, local stage performer Heather Beers "became Charly" for both Anderegg and Weyland.
"I can't even read the book now without thinking of Heather's voice and face," Anderegg said.
"She really is Charly," Weyland agreed.
In fact, with Beers, Elliott and a slightly modified, expanded story in place, the novelist is convinced that Anderegg has come up with something that's better than his book.
"I'm finally satisfied with the story," he said. "This is how I originally envisioned it when I was writing my screenplay."
But Weyland isn't resting on his laurels. He's a physics professor at BYU-Idaho and continues to write. (His next project may not be as well-read as "Charly," considering it's a textbook.)
As for Anderegg, he's hoping that the movie version of "Charly" can come close to being as successful as the novel and that it helps launch his filmmaking career.
"We have some very exciting things in the works. But there's still a lot riding on the success of this film," he said.
E-mail: jeff@desnews.com