Stars line up for Stephen Elliott’s film

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Author Stephen Elliott has written his first feature film, and unlike most novelists, he’s not stopping with the screenplay. He’s going to direct. The movie is called ‘Cherry.’

Variety reports that Heather Graham, James Franco, Lili Taylor and Dev ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ Patel are all in talks to appear in the picture, which is scheduled to go into production next month.

The movie is about a young woman who moves to San Francisco and finds herself in the porn industry. She has a devoted best friend (Patel), a boss (Graham), a troubled mother (Taylor) and a cocaine-fueled lawyer boyfriend (Franco).

If that sounds like bad-to-worse, Elliott says it’s not. During the Festival of Books, he told me that the story is about the young woman finding her way where you might not expect it: As he envisions it, she’s empowered by pornography.

So who will be at the center of ‘Cherry’? If the role has been cast, it has not yet been announced. And that’s one detail about of the movie that Elliott didn’t reveal during the Festival of Books.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

First photo: Heather Graham at the Golden Globes in January 2010. Credit Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times.

Second photo: Oscar co-host James Franco poses for a picture in advance of this year’s ceremony. Credit: Bob D’Amico / ABC

Third photo: Lili Taylor. Credit: Ben Gabbe / Getty Images

Fourth photo: Dev Patel. Credit: Francois Durand / Getty Images