I suspect that Diana Nyad was not truthful when she said the “running in the other direction” part five years ago.
Tomorrow, March 10 (Wednesday) at 3 p.m., Nyad will chat live on Facebook about her recently-announced biopic, away from which she does not appear to be running.
Before your watch party begins, here’s your chance to brush up on Nyad’s cinematic history.
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A Diana Nyad movie has been on her sonar for over 40 years. In 1978, both the Miami Herald and Ms. Magazine reported that she had written a screenplay about herself.
In 2015, Robert Specland’s script for a film based on Nyad’s memoir, Find a Way, made The Black List “a survey of the most liked unproduced screenplays of that year.” (For more, see About The Black List.)
At the same time, though, Nyad was saying that she wanted to write the script herself. She gave no indication that anyone else had written a word. In October 2015, she said:
…I’m probably gonna get a chance to write the adaptation for that film. But it’s gonna be a collaboration. Whole bunch of people are gonna come in and say, “no, no, no, no — we need to have this theme and this scene and whatnot….” (KQED, 26 Oct 2015—clip here)
But she’d prefer to go it alone:
I can’t see myself sitting with a writer and telling them about my life,” she says. (Seattle Times, 22 Nov 2015)
At this point, she’s also casting the lead role. In one interview, she mentions Sandra Bullock and Charlize Theron as possibilities. (KQED, 26 Oct 2015—same clip as above)
Sometime during the next two years, though, Nyad realizes she’s not up to writing the script. However, because she can’t fail (not that this is a failure, but she sees it that way), Nyad gives a rambling justification for why she “turned it over to a seasoned screenwriter” whom she, of course, never names. I recommend reading Nyad’s whole explanation — see question #1 here. It’s pure, unadulterated Nyadian nonsense.
By late 2017, she says that she’s not just considering Sandra Bullock, but that Bullock has shown interest:
Hollywood has come knocking. And, yes, evidently they’re going to do the story of my adventures and my life. Evidently Sandra Bullock’s interested in playing my role. (Visionary Women, Keynote Speaker: Diana Nyad, 1:27)
By late 2018, the movie remains in the works. “The feature film is evidently going to be made of my life and story,” she tells Nely Galán. Nyad hopes the movie will be the timeless classic that Find a Way, according to its author, proved to be. (Nely Galán, “Diana Nyad Self Made Story”, 16:27)
And now, with the die and the lead role cast, we again find Nyad fawning over and reaching for the stars:
Ms Bening is now the exact age I was when I made the historic crossing. My hope for the film is that it will be a classic, that it will touch audiences for generations to come. And my hope for Ms. Bening is that this will be the role that will bring her the coveted Oscar. (Facebook, 4 March 2021)
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But wait, didn’t someone already make a movie about Diana Nyad?
Yes! Timothy Wheeler, Nyad’s nephew, released The Other Shore: The Diana Nyad Story, a documentary about his aunt, in 2013. That spring, He entered an unfinished version in a couple of film festivals. Just after his aunt walked up onto Smathers beach a few months later, Wheeler tacked on a new ending and posted The Other Shore to his website. It premiered on Showtime that November.
Nyad fell head over flippers for it — at first, anyway. She gushed about the film during her September 3, 2013, post-swim press conference:
Tim has made an astounding film. It’s creative. It’s dramatic. There is no sports cliché moment in it, not one… And Tim also was here yesterday shooting so that he can massage that ending that I wanted. The film was already beautiful. It’s poetic, it’s deep, it’s really my life. What it is is my life…. (view clip on YouTube)
But here’s aunt Diana two years later:
And as a full disclosure, Timothy Wheeler is my nephew, is my personal nephew. And he’s a very talented filmmaker. So is that the exact story I would have told? No, but it’s his film. (36 seconds into this clip)
Alas, how evanescent perfection ever proves.
I’ll have to get back to you on the difference between a “personal” nephew and the other kind(s). Meanwhile, here are two more of my personal fish:
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NOTES
- Nyad also talks about the biopic juggernaut at…
- Workplace Summit (2016) — “Well, I guess it was inevitable. Hollywood has come a-knocking. Yes, they want to do the movie version of my story, my life.”
- Visionary Women (2017) — “Hollywood has come knocking. And, yes, evidently they’re going to do the story of my adventures and my life.”
- I borrowed much of the above from a previous post: “Nyad: The Motion Picture.”
