Author’s capacity as a screenwriter

When Laguna Beach-based writer Sherwood Kiraly’s second comedic novel, “Diminished Capacity,” was published in 1995, MGM snapped up the rights. But Kiraly wasn’t asked to write the adaptation.

“That’s more the L.A. style,” he says. “They don’t really think the novelist is going to be flexible enough to deal with a screenplay.”

That production never came to fruition. Then, two years ago, he got a call from actor-director Terry Kinney (“Oz”), one of the co-founders of the Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago’s famed acting troupe that includes John Malkovich and Gary Sinise. Steppenwolf, Kiraly says, was looking to enter the movie business, and Kinney wanted to direct “Diminished Capacity” as its first feature.

Kiraly, who hails from Chicago, agreed to meet Kinney and producer Tim Evans to talk about the project. “Because we are all Midwesterners, we all kind of understand each other,” he says. “I told them I had a not-great experience before where it didn’t work out. I said, ‘Would I be the guy [to write the screenplay]?’ ”

“And Terry said, ‘We’re not doing it without you, dude.’ I remember being so impressed about that remark, and he meant it. I got to be there for the whole shoot. I added enough lines [during production] I didn’t feel guilty about standing in the buffet line, so it worked out really well.”

“Diminished Capacity,” opening Friday, stars Matthew Broderick as Cooper, a newspaper editor now working on the comics pages since suffering a debilitating concussion. After he receives a frantic call from his mother (Lois Smith), he travels to rural Missouri to visit his irascible Uncle Rollie (Alan Alda), who is about to lose his home, as well as his memory.

When Rollie shows Cooper a rare antique baseball card, the two set out with Cooper’s high school sweetheart (Virginia Madsen) to a memorabilia expo to make the sale of the century.

“We had [script] readings a week before we shot with Alan Alda and Matthew Broderick,” says Kiraly, who is working on his fifth novel. “The other actors hadn’t arrived, so I got to read the other parts. That was a big thrill. Matthew Broderick said once I was good [in the reading], so I called my wife and told her.”

-- Susan King