Latest Hollywood script deals

Reuters, September 29, 2000
By Reuters

Angry Films producer Don Murphy, who's based at Sony, and Scottish filmmaker Susan Montford, whose last picture "Strangers" screened at last year's Edinburgh Intl. Film Festival, have optioned Jack Carter's "Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons," published in July by Feral House.

Murphy and Montford, who optioned the book using personal funds, will produce.

Parsons, a rocket scientist, inventor of WWII weaponry and co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., was a Satanist who held ceremonial orgies at his mansion and was a friend-partner of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. He came under investigation by the FBI and eventually died in a mysterious explosion that destroyed his home.

Feral House, run by Adam Parfrey, is the L.A. house that published "Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood Jr.," which served as the basis for the Oscar-winning Tim Burton biopic.