Cuarón On The Starting Blocks

After sending two young men on a roadtrip in Y Tu Mama Tambien and riding around on a broomstick in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Alfonso Cuar clearly has a feel for the open road. He has signed on to direct The Memory of Running, from the book by Ron McLarty that is taking America by storm. The book follows an overweight, alcoholic 43-year-old factory worker who, still reeling from the death of his parents following a car accident, discovers that his sister has also died on the other side of the country. Somehow he finds himself taking a bike from the garage and riding across the US in order to claim his sister's body, meeting strange characters and odd situations along the way. You know, as you do. The real story about this book is that it wasn't published for 15 years after it was written. Every major publisher rejected McLarty, who is also an actor who has appeared in Sex and the City. It wasn't until 1997 that an audiobook publisher read it and insisted that it be recorded in audio form. Four years later, McLarty auditioned for a role in Kingdom Hospital and met Stephen King, to whom he sent a copy of the audiobook. King loved it, recommended it in an Entertainment Weekly column and suddenly there was a bidding war for the manuscript. Which just goes to show, it's not over till the fat lady sings, goes back to her dressing room, has a nice cup of tea and puts her feet up. So it's a happy ending in real life at least, but we won't give away the ending of the book. There's no word as yet on cast or shooting dates, but Cuarón is also due to make sci-fi drama The Children Of Men, as well as a drama about the Mexican student uprisings in 1968, called, unsurprisingly, Mexico '68.