A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : NO SALE : Guess You’ll Have To Read the Book

Think the controversial best-selling biography of poet Anne Sexton might make a good movie for, say, Meryl Streep, Jessica Lange, Debra Winger or even Madonna? Put away your checkbooks: The film rights are not--repeat not --for sale.

“Anne Sexton: A Biography” has created a stir since it was revealed that the book’s author, Diane Wood Middlebrook, had access to audiotapes made during Sexton’s psychiatric sessions with her longtime psychiatrist, Martin Orne. The biography includes material about the poet’s sexual abuse as a child and her explicit writing about suicide, sexuality and her affairs.

According to the book’s editor, Peter Davison of Houghton Miflin, there have been numerous overtures from Hollywood, but everyone connected with the book is standing firm. “The family and the author do not want a movie made,” he insists. “Anne Sexton’s husband is still alive and there are all kinds of people who gave their permission for their words to be quoted and their actions described in the book who would hate to see themselves in a movie.”

Davison said another reason for the reluctance to have a film made was the 1987 court case involving the film version of poet Sylvia Plath’s novel “The Bell Jar.” In that case, Harvard psychiatrist Jane Anderson filed a $6-million lawsuit against a number of defendants, including Plath’s widower Ted Hughes, CBS Inc. and Home Box Office, claiming that the 1979 movie based on the book defamed her by changing a character based on her into a lesbian. Lawyers eventually reached a court-approved settlement in which Anderson received $150,000.

“That case scared a lot of people in the business,” says Davison.

Even so, Jim Stein, a William Morris agent who handles book authors, finds the family’s decision unusual. “I’m surprised that they’re not willing to have something done with the film rights,” says Stein, “given the fact that they let the book be done and released the audiotapes.”

Stein recently handled the latest Plath biography, written by Paul Alexander, to be released Oct. 15 by Viking. Stein says the film rights will definitely be for sale.