On the surface, the news that the Lauren Conrad, former star of “Laguna Beach” and “The Hills,” has successfully sold the rights to her first novel to Temple Hill Entertainment sounds like a bad thing. However, I am actually quite pleased with this news and I will tell you why.
According to the Variety article, Conrad’s book L.A. Candy is semi-autobiographical look at what it’s like for a 19-year old girl to become a reality TV star in California. A quick perusal of the 1 and 2-star Amazon.com reviews reveals that even though the book is crap, there’s some interesting things that it reveals about exactly how much “reality” is in a reality TV show.
This is echoed by Marty Bowen, one of the movie’s producers:
“Lauren, who became an icon in that reality show world, came to us with a structure of how to tell the story in an interesting fashion that was separate and apart from the book,” Bowen said. “We loved her take. Her book is an honest portrayal of what it must be like to set out to be normal, then sign on to become famous and eventually realize, wow, this isn’t at all what I’d planned for myself.”
And yes, I know that The Truman Show and EDtv have already covered this ground, but think of how many good movies there have been about the same subject! Like you wouldn’t throw out A Star is Born just because you prefer Funny Girl, would you?
Truly, how good or how bad this project will be hinges completely on the screenwriter’s identity (which is yet to be determined) and how good Bowen and co-producer Wyck Godfrey will be at getting Conrad to stay out of his/her way, even if she is an executive producer and has it written into the contract that she gets to have a hand in the direction the script takes.