On 18 August, I was fortunate to give a tour of some Sylvia Plath sites to four women involved in the current The Bell Jar film adaptation: Kirsten Dunst (director), Dakota Fanning (lead actress), Lizzie Friedman (Producer, Priority Pictures), and Brittany Kahan (Producer, Echo Lake Entertainment). To my surprise, I was not nearly as nervous as I thought I would be. In part because I know the sites like the back of my hand, and also because all four were very relaxed and engaging and put me instantly at ease. We started in Winthrop where we saw Plath's house at 92 Johnson Avenue before carrying on to Deer Island and Point Shirley were we experienced Plath's writings in living color. Armed with the Journals of Sylvia Plath , her Collected Poems , and of course a copy of The Bell Jar , I read selected passages in situ which helped contextualize the real places Plath wrote about in her works. This exercise illustrated how she may have made creative changes after recording them...

On Wednesday, 20 July, it was announced that Kirsten Dunst is set to make her directorial debut with a new adaptation of Sylvia Plath's only finished novel, The Bell Jar , starring Dakota Fanning in the lead role as Esther Greenwood. Since then, the news has gone viral which is not surprising in the least. In 2007, word spread that a film was in the works headlined by Julia Stiles and Tristine Skyler (screenplay), but unfortunately this project did not come to fruition. In fact, a blog post about the project was the second post ever here on the Sylvia Plath Info Blog. In May 2008, I posted a letter from Julia Stiles  herself on this blog about the project. We can and should lament that the Stiles/Skyler project never happened. I witnessed them conducting research at Smith College and provided information and resources when asked. So I know first-hand the lengths to which they went in creating a screenplay that would honor Plath herself and the work she did in writing The Bell ...