“Season of the Witch” — The Movie

The screen rights to my other books, Brothers and The Devil's Chessboard, have been bought by producers and directors several times. (Let's see if either one ever gets made.) Even my "pulp history" about antiwar Marine hero Smedley Darlington Butler was once optioned as a dramatic movie. But Season of the Witch -- my bestselling chronicle of the wild years in San Francisco between 1967's Human Be-In festival in Golden Gate Park, the 49ers' first Super Bowl victory in 1982 and the wounded city's heroic response to the AIDS epidemic -- has never attracted screen interest.

This Hollywood oversight must and will be corrected. San Francisco -- along with London and Motown -- invented the '60s. Our "San Francisco values" continue to be a beacon of human liberation in a dark world. The story of how this city liberated itself -- for a brief and shining moment -- is deeply inspirational.

Fresh off writing a screenplay for a major Hollywood director, I've drafted a fictionalized story line that draws together all the tumultuous events that rocked SF (and the world) in those years: the creation of the counterculture (including free heath care, food, housing and music in the park) and the gay freedom movement; the violent backlash (Altamont, SLA and Patty Hearst, the Zebra serial killings, People's Temple and the mass deaths at Jonestown, the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk); and the bleeding city's wondrous resurrection.

It's one of the greatest stories never told. The right producer or director will contact me.