Writer/Director Stephen Chbosky on The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky has been influenced by a lot of angsty classics, like The Graduate and Catcher in the Rye. In 1999, he made his own contribution to the canon, releasing The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a young-adult novel whose tough themes helped make it a formidable word-of-mouth success, becoming the best-selling title from MTV Books by 2000. Within seven years, it sold nearly 800,000 copies, while also getting regularly challenged by the American Library Association for its exploration of drug use, homosexuality, and adolescent suicide. A film version seemed inevitable, but Chbosky wasn’t ready to hand over his polarizing […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on Sep 21, 2012
