Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons To Become Movie Directed By Liz Friedlander

I wonder if they'll film it on Duke's campus. Gasp. The last time Tom Wolfe, the dainty literary dandy, had one of his novels adapted to the big screen it proved disastrous (1987's The Bonfire of the Vanities), but THR reports that video director (U2, Avril Lavigne) Liz Friedlander will helm I Am Charlotte Simmons, Wolfe's "shocking" depiction on the American college experience. Released in 2005, Simmons plunges the titular, naive "country girl" into the shark-infested waters of fictional Dupont University, where she's quickly schooled in the ways of promiscuous sex, rich kids and Duke-esque vapidity.

Friedlander's feature work is limited to the 2006 Antonio Banderas dance-off Take the Lead, so who knows how the film will play out. Wolfe's novel was humorously and notoriously panned, one of those works that can wreck an otherwise respectable and showoff-y book collection. The horror! Screenwriter John Watson (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) will adapt and produce. This has the potential to be the Any Given Sunday of college films more so than The Rules of Attraction, and hopefully Wolfe cameos as a white-clad dean or distinguished white-clad professor.

Discuss: What young actress should play the corrupted country bumpkin Charlotte Simmons? What's the most accurate depiction of your college years on film?