Trivia / A Confederacy of Dunces

• Development Hell: The Film of the Book, production of which seems to be cursed. Every popular fat comedian since 1980 has been attached to play Ignatius and all of them (John Belushi, John Candy, Divine, Chris Farley) died before the latest attempt of the movie got out of pre-production. So in the early 2000s, the producers of the most recent version decided to avoid the whole "fat comedian" thing and got tall and gangly Will Ferrell to play Ignatius (with prospectively some fat makeup) and Lily Tomlin (then later Anne Meara), Mos Def, Paul Rudd, and Alan Cumming in supporting roles. Things were going well for this version's eventual production, but then the head of the Louisiana State Film Commission was murdered. Then Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. While the film still hasn't been made, Nick Offerman starred as Ignatius in a stage version that was widely praised and had a run on Broadway in 2016.
  • The book itself went through this. The manuscript was finished by the mid-sixties, but Toole's attempts to get it published were consistently rejected, with most editors claiming they didn't get it, or that the book was pointless or didn't have a coherent plot. After Toole's suicide, his mother took it upon herself to get the novel published, and struggled with it for 11 years. When it was finally released in 1980, it won the Pulitzer the following year.
• Died During Production: John Kennedy Toole spent five years unsuccessfully pitching his novel to publishers before his suicide in 1969. His mother Thelma rediscovered the manuscript a few years later and made her own pursuits to get the book published. In 1976, she gave the manuscript to writer and Loyola University professor Walker Percy, who fell in love with the book and helped get it published in 1980. Dunces subsequently became a literary sensation and won Toole a posthumous Pulitzer Prize. Demand for more works from the long-dead Toole led to The Neon Bible, a novel he wrote as a teenager and didn't think particularly highly of, to be published as a follow-up to Dunces in 1989.
• The Production Curse: The movie has been in Development Hell for years, initially since every fat comedian announced to be playing the lead died (John Belushi, John Candy, Chris Farley), and then when Will Ferrell and a supporting cast was announced, the head of the Louisiana State Film Commission was murdered. Then Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. And that seems to be the end of the attempts to make the film for now.
• One-Book Author: John Kennedy Toole was a one-book author for awhile, but not even in his lifetime - he committed suicide before A Confederacy of Dunces was even published. After his mother died in 1989, however, publishers released his sole piece of juvenilia, The Neon Bible, a novel Toole wrote when he was 15. Oddly enough, despite A Confederacy of Dunces being far better known and acclaimed, The Neon Bible has had a film adaptation, whereas plans to adapt the former have never escaped Development Hell — usually because the suitable leading men (viz, genuinely funny large comic actors) keep dying: first John Belushi, then John Candy, and then Chris Farley, were all set to play Ignatius J. Reilly and then died before the project could move forward. A theatrical adaptation was mounted in Boston in 2015, starring Nick Offerman as Reilly.
• Referenced by...:
  • How NOT to Write a Novel opens by mentioning A Confederacy of Dunces, and how an unpublished author might cite its case to claim their own work is a hidden gem waiting to find the right audience. It then says that the difference between the two is that Toole actually happened to have written a masterpiece that he just got unlucky with, while this unpublished author's manuscript really can't count on that gamble and probably needs improvement.
• What Could Have Been: The various attempts to adapt the book:
  • In 1982, Harold Ramis was to write and direct an adaptation starring John Belushi as Ignatius and Richard Pryor as Burma Jones, but Belushi's death prevented this. Later, John Candy and Chris Farley were touted for the lead, but both of them also died at an early age, leading many to ascribe a curse to the role of Ignatius. ^note  Belushi, Candy, and Farley were each also cast in the lead role of the still-unmade film Atuk before their deaths.
  • Comedian Sam Kinison was also attached to the film after Belushi's passing. He passed away from complications from an automobile accident before filming.
  • John Waters was interested in directing an adaptation that would have starred Divine as Ignatius.
  • Stephen Fry was at one point commissioned to adapt Toole's book for the screen. He was sent to New Orleans by Paramount Studios in 1997 to get background for a screenplay adaptation.
  • John Goodman, a longtime resident of New Orleans, was slated to play Ignatius at one point.
  • A version adapted by Steven Soderbergh and Scott Kramer, and slated to be directed by David Gordon Green, was scheduled for release in 2005. The film was to star Will Ferrell as Ignatius, Lily Tomlin as Irene, Anne Meara as Irene, Paul Rudd as Officer Mancuso, Kristen Johnston as Lana Lee, Mos Def as Burma Jones, Rosie Perez as Darlene, Olympia Dukakis as Santa Battaglia and Miss Trixie, Natasha Lyonne as Myrna, Alan Cumming as Dorian Greene, John Shea as Gonzales, Jesse Eisenberg as George, John Conlon as Claude Robichaux, Jace Alexander as Bartender Ben, Celia Weston as Miss Annie, Miss Inez & Mrs. Levy, and Dan Hedaya as Mr. Levy. Various reasons are cited as to why this version has yet to be filmed including disorganization and lack of interest at Paramount Pictures, the head of the Louisiana State Film Commission being murdered, and the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. When asked why the film was never made, Ferrell has said it is a "mystery".

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