Justin Chatwin may star in Pornographer's Poem adaptation

By M&C News Aug 4, 2005, 10:12 GMT

Justin Chatwin (The Chumscrubber) is in negotiations to star in a movie adaptation of Michael Turner's novel The Pornographer's Poem, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The book is a first-hand account of the life of an unnamed pornographic filmmaker. At the age of sixteen, the narrator gets his first taste of adult cinema. Shortly before that, he shoots his first adult film, surreptitiously capturing his neighbours having sex on their back porch. From these linked experiences, he realizes that through representations of sexual activity he can comment on that which he finds both painful and confusing. In the films that follow, the narrator imagines in positions of dominance those who are disadvantaged in their everyday lives, now sexually belittling those who have once held them down. Nettie, an idealistic poet and the one person with whom the narrator genuinely connects, sees in pornography the opportunity to do something artistic, liberating, and socially relevant. She pushes the narrator to make films that subvert the way the world is constructed. Ultimately, despite his radical intentions, the narrator falls into a world of greed, delusion, and hypocrisy, the same world he once rebelled against.

You can read more about the novel in our database.