Marielle Heller, who made her directorial debut with the highly-praised The Diary of a Teenage Girl last year, is set to write and direct a feature-film adaptation of HBO’s documentary The Case Against 8. The 2014 documentary, directed and produced by Ben Cotner and Ryan White, centers around the legal battle to overturn California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage.
The Case Against 8 goes deep into Perry v. Schwarzenegger, which reached the Supreme Court as Hollingsworth v. Perry. It’s an award-winning documentary that’s worth a watch, and I also recommend Kenji Yoshino’s book Speak Now: Marriage Equality on Trial if you’re interested in learning more about the landmark civil-rights trial.
I don’t know if it’s because I just finished watching HBO’s Confirmation which stars Kerry Washington as Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings, but I’m really excited to see how Heller will approach the film. Confirmation allowed me to learn about an important case around sexual harassment that happened before I was born. It made me angry, upset, inspired, and grateful. Anita Hill spoke about the importance of remembering, saying, “It will help them understand where we come from and hopefully give them information to keep going forward.” Having grown up in a small Californian city where Prop 8 campaign signs littered lawns in 2008, I hope that this film might accomplish a similar task and I have high expectations for Heller’s adaptation.
(via Indiewire, Image via Sundance Film Festival)
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