A look inside Hollywood and the movies : The ‘Devil’ and Mr. Washington

Denzel Washington has moved one step closer to the lead role in Carl Franklin’s film adaptation of Walter Mosley’s period mystery novel “Devil in a Blue Dress.” Franklin would also direct the TriStar Pictures release.

While no deal has yet been signed with the Oscar-winning actor, Washington called executives at TriStar (where his production company is based with an overall deal) last week after reading Franklin’s first draft to say he loved the script and is hoping “Devil” will be his next movie after “The Pelican Brief,” which he is currently shooting for Warner Bros.

Washington--who has long been a fan of Mosley’s work--also placed a call to “Devil” executive producer Jonathan Demme, for whom he recently completed filming on TriStar’s AIDS courtroom drama “Philadelphia.”

In a phone interview from New York, where he is finishing the cut on “Philadelphia,” Demme said: “Carl’s script is extraordinary. To read it is to fall in love with it. Denzel (also) read it and communicated feelings like that to me.”

Demme, who will share executive producing credits on “Devil” with Ed Saxon, cautioned that “it’s clearly premature to say that Denzel’s going to do the movie,” though based on his respect for the actor and their experience on “Philadelphia,” he clearly hopes that will be the case.

Washington’s agent, Ed Limato of ICM, declined to comment on his client’s involvement with the “Devil” project, but sources close to the actor said in addition to his admiration for Mosley, Washington has wanted to work with Franklin, whose low-budget 1992 crime drama “One False Move” garnered a lot of critical attention and strong support from the independent filmmaking community.

Jesse Beaton, who produced “One False Move” with Ben Myron and will serve as producer on “Devil” with Gary Goetzman, said that “we are all inspired by the opportunity of working on ‘Devil’ and with such rich evocative material combined with the generous talents and spirits of the people involved.”

Demme says “Devil” will go before the cameras “this fall for sure.”

The role Washington is mulling is war veteran “Easy” Rawlins, the lead character in Mosley’s continuing series of mystery novels, which TriStar purchased last September and hopes will be a movie franchise. In “Devil,” the first of the books, the story is set in 1948 Los Angeles, where Rawlins has just been fired from his defense plant job and is worried about how to pay the mortgage when he’s hired to track down a blonde in a blue dress who frequents black jazz clubs.

Demme said that though Mosley’s story “risks being in that ‘40s private-eye genre,” in Franklin’s adaptation “Carl has really emphasized the characters’ dimensions and dynamics--which makes it a lot more than an excellent moody period piece. It’s very much about the social situation in America during the ‘40s.”

If the movie series takes off, Demme says he hopes to be involved with all of TriStar’s Mosley book-to-big screen ventures.

When asked why he didn’t chose to direct “Devil” himself, Demme said, “Since the moment I saw ‘One False Move,’ I wanted to see Carl Franklin movies more than I wanted to see Jonathan Demme movies.”

As for his next directorial assignment, Demme, who won the Oscar for his hit 1991 movie “The Silence of the Lambs,” said that after he finishes “Philadelphia” he plans to just “lay down and take a long rest for a while.” Until? “The next great script comes in.” The director, who said it is still undecided whether “Philadelphia” will be released in December, January or February, acknowledged that he is “very proud” of his controversial movie about an AIDS-stricken attorney (Tom Hanks) who’s fired from his job and hires a hot-shot homophobic lawyer (Washington) to get it back. The story centers on the friendship that develops between the two.

As for Franklin, he has a miniseries, “Laurel Avenue” (formerly “Shelter Avenue”) appearing Saturday and Sunday evenings on HBO.