The long life of Pest Control

In The L.A. Times, Jay A. Fernandez outlines the long and winding road travelled by Bill Fitzhugh and Matt Hansen's feature film script, Pest Control.

Sixteen years after it was first written, it has been through numerous rejections, landed a $500,000 option, been turned into a novel and is now being considered for a German radio adaptation and a Broadway musical. Still no film, though.

"People get excited about stuff and then they lose their enthusiasm," he [Fitzhugh] says, while pointing out that writing the novel in the wake of the screenplay's "failure" led to a bigger payday and more complete version of the story than if the original script had just been sold and sat on a shelf all these years. "I'm aware enough that you've got no control over it, so that it's insane to sit there and worry about, 'Are they gonna do it?' If it happens, great. Meanwhile, be working on the next thing."