American actor John Malkovich wants to make a film version of the novel 'The story of my baldness' (de geschiedenis van mijn kaalheid) by Dutch author Arnon Grunberg. Grunberg, however, passed up on a request to write the screenplay for Malkovich, who wants to play the main character’s father.

Malkovich, who was in the Netherlands at the weekend to promote the documentary 'Mondays & Strawberry Pies' by Dutch filmmaker Coco Schrijber, for which he did the voice-over, told the Volkskrant newspaper about the project. Grunberg, in an email to NRC Handelsblad, confirmed that he had dinner with Malkovich in the autumn of 2007.

Grunberg, who lives in New York, is a controversial figure in his home country, notorious for provoking the literary establishment. He wrote the novel The story of my baldness under the heteronym Marek van der Jagt and received a prize for the debut novel in 2000. Grunberg had already won that prize under his own name in 1994.

The story of my baldness is about an awkward young philosophy student from a rich and eccentric Austrian family who dreams of being a great poet and lover, but works in a drugstore. Malkovich is to play the student’s father, a man who beats his children on a regular - monthly - basis.

Grunberg says Austrian producer Wolfgang Ramml took an option on the rights to adapt the book, and it was from him that the author first heard that Malkovich was interested in filming the novel.

Malkovich says he has approached US writer Evgenia Citkowitz to write the screenplay. Grunberg says he isn’t interested in doing the adaptation. “Why give yourself all the trouble that inevitably comes with writing screenplays? Dozens of people who know better than you, etcetera…”

What’s more, he’s reserved about the chances of the project actually going ahead. “When it comes to film and love, seeing is believing,” he wrote in the email. Neither does he have any illusions about his own chances of having any artistic influence. "That way you avoid unnecessary bitterness and time-wasting.”

However, he is keen on Malkovich as a director and is full of praise for the actor’s directorial debut 'The dancer upstairs'. Grunberg: “In that sense there’s hope.”