{"id":3124,"date":"2009-09-29T14:49:57","date_gmt":"2009-09-29T14:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2009\/09\/anne-frank-the-diary-that-endu.html"},"modified":"2009-09-29T14:49:57","modified_gmt":"2009-09-29T14:49:57","slug":"anne-frank-the-diary-that-endu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/09\/anne-frank-the-diary-that-endu.html","title":{"rendered":"Anne Frank&#8217;s Diary: Lauded by Prose, But Mamet&#8217;s Version Canceled by Disney"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/assets_c\/2009\/09\/anne frank-prose book-8159.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/87\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/09\/anne frank-prose book-thumb-240x366-8159.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"366\" alt=\"anne frank-prose book.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0 20px 20px 0\" \/><\/a><\/span>As a young Jewish girl with a pen and simultaneous dreams of becoming a Hollywood star and being a famous writer, I was drawn to Anne Frank and her diary at an early age. Obviously, and thankfully, there were major differences between how I led my life and how Anne was forced to live hers. But the relationship was there &#8211; while her circumstances forced her to grow up more quickly, she was still a teenager at the time of her hiding in the attic, and she had a teenager&#8217;s dreams and desires, for herself and for the world. When I grew up and had an opportunity to write about teenage experiences in the Holocaust, it seemed fitting that I landed once again in Anne&#8217;s world, <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=2VW1i2ZZE9YC&amp;pg=PA12&amp;lpg=PA12&amp;dq=anne+frank+kustanowitz&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=l-yqS4hGoB&amp;sig=z6xdOMuEIXiVOQzD6Qfj66RvnB0&amp;hl=en&amp;ei=X1fCStqnJoz8sQPqko3vAg&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=book_result&amp;ct=result&amp;resnum=2#v=onepage&amp;q=&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">writing about other hidden children<\/a>, but ones who had survived.<br \/>\nI&#8217;m not the only one so drawn to Anne&#8217;s purity of expression, insightful analysis, and ultimately tragic story &#8211; Hollywood has made and remade the story, as has Broadway, with its multiple productions. This week, while one well-known writer publishes her book on Anne&#8217;s life, a famous playwright has his proposal for a new Anne movie rejected, by Disney.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nFrancine Prose (best surname for a writer ever) takes a critical approach to reading Anne&#8217;s work, in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.harpercollins.com\/books\/9780061430794\/Anne_Frank\/index.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife<\/a><\/em>, as the book&#8217;s publisher&#8217;s site notes, &#8220;a work of literary criticism unravels the complex, fascinating story of the diary and effectively makes the case for it being a work of art from a precociously gifted writer.&#8221; Furthermore, according to Prose, the diary is far from an unorganized slapping together of reflections from an immature teen. &#8220;During her last months in hiding,&#8221; the site notes, &#8220;Anne Frank furiously revised and edited her work, crafting a piece of literature that she had hoped would be read by the public after the war.&#8221; (You can listen to an audio <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tabletmag.com\/podcasts\/16980\/a-frank-reader\/\">podcast interview with Prose at Vox Tablet<\/a>.)<br \/>\nMeanwhile, over in Hollywood, <a href=\"http:\/\/moviesblog.mtv.com\/2009\/09\/25\/david-mamets-the-diary-of-anne-frank-rejected-by-the-walt-disney-company\/\" target=\"_blank\">David Mamet had pitched Disney <\/a>on a new imagining of the Anne Frank story: one that focused on &#8220;a contemporary Jewish girl who goes to Israel and learns about the traumas of suicide bombing.&#8221; While the word (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thewrap.com\/ind-column\/mamets-anne-frank-turnaround-disney_7659\" target=\"_blank\">in the Wrap, via the MTV blog<\/a>) is that Disney chairman Dick Cook&#8217;s departure from the studio might have frozen the project, other voices say that the idea might be a bit too dark for a place like Disney.<br \/>\nMamet&#8217;s idea sounds interesting, as it seems to cast the diary and its author in a role of inspiring context rather than a straight telling of the story, as we have seen it so many times. Perhaps he&#8217;ll be able to take the film to a studio that can take more of a risk &#8211; after all, when people think &#8220;Holocaust&#8221; or &#8220;suicide bombings,&#8221; they don&#8217;t really think of Disney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One new book is published about Anne Frank&#8217;s diary, and David Mamet&#8217;s proposed film on the subject is rejected by Disney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,7,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-entertainment","category-movies"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Anne Frank&#039;s Diary: Lauded by Prose, But Mamet&#039;s Version Canceled by Disney<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/09\/anne-frank-the-diary-that-endu.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Anne Frank&#039;s Diary: Lauded by Prose, But Mamet&#039;s Version Canceled by Disney\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One new book is published about Anne Frank&#039;s diary, and David Mamet&#039;s proposed film on the subject is rejected by Disney.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/09\/anne-frank-the-diary-that-endu.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-09-29T14:49:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta 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