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On January 27, 2002 I met John Sanford.<\/p>\n
It is a cool Sunday, overcast and gloomy. I’d read his novel, The People From Heaven back when Andrew Davis was looking for something to develop by a Santa Barbara writer. The book, an experimental novel about a black woman named America coming to a hostile New England town, still resonates for me today.<\/p>\n
I’m going to see him about Maggie: A Love Story<\/a>, a little thing I picked up at Leon’s Bookstore in San Luis Obispo. It’s a lovely valentine to his wife Maguerite Roberts<\/a>, who died in 1989. At one time, she was one of the highest paid screenwriters in Hollywood. The year she died was the year I moved to Santa Barbara. He wrote Maggie the year after her death, and when I read it I realize that their story would make a beautiful movie. Charlotte, my agent at the time, tracks him down and writes him a letter. She gets a positive response from him so I place a phone call. The conversation goes something like this:<\/p>\n “Is this Mr. Sanford?”<\/p>\n “Yes.”<\/p>\n “My name is Will Keightley.”<\/p>\n “Oh, I seem to remember hearing that name recently.” I told him where he’d heard it and he asked, “What can I do for you?”<\/p>\n So I launched into a stammered summary about how I’d read The People From Heaven and just loved it and blah blah blah and then told him just why the hell I was on his phone line. “I’d love to try and turn Maggie: A Love Story into a movie.”<\/p>\n So he suggested we meet at his place at 11:00 on Sunday. “I’m finished writing by then,” he said, “I’m still writing, you know.”<\/p>\n “I know. You just finished a new novel.”<\/p>\n He laughed. “I’m 98 years old. I still have a few weeks left. So I’m still writing.”<\/p>\n Now I’m finally sitting in his living room. He’s a small man, with a shock of gray hair and incredibly sharp eyes. He admits right off the bat that he never imagined someone would want to turn their story into a movie. I tell him that I think it’s wonderfully cinematic, and the love that he shared with Maggie so profound that I thought it just begged to be a movie.<\/p>\n So he shrugs and then proceeds to tell me, over the next three hours, just why he was so in love with Miss Maggie.<\/p>\n He likes the idea of a movie, he admits at last, though necessary financial considerations would have to be addressed before I could work on something like that. I understand perfectly, and I tell him that some of my other projects threaten to give me a financial boost. I promise to get in touch when that happens and we part ways.<\/p>\n Of course, I’m still coming around to that financial thing. I’m under the gun, in a way. He was 98 when I met him. He must be a hundred and one now. Curious about recent news about Sanford I Google him this morning. Of course, this is what I get<\/a>.<\/p>\n He died two years ago. I’m surprised. I knew he wasn’t a popular writer, depsite all the critical acclaim he received, but I thought I’d have heard about it in my travels. This depresses me.<\/p>\n But I so want to write that story…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On January 27, 2002 I met John Sanford. It is a cool Sunday, overcast and gloomy. I’d read his novel, The People From Heaven back when Andrew Davis was looking for something to develop by a Santa Barbara writer. The book, an experimental novel about a black woman named America coming to a hostile New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,9,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gone","category-screenwriting","category-stories"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t![](\"https:\/\/www.sixsquare.com\/blog\/images\/0205\/sanford_2.jpg\")
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