JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY - BLINDNESS HALTED SHANLEY'S DIRECTING DREAMS

BLINDNESS HALTED SHANLEY'S DIRECTING DREAMS

Playwright and moviemaker JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY gave up his Hollywood dreams after losing his sight.
More than 18 years have passed since Shanley directed Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in Joe Versus The Volcano, but now he's back after adapting his acclaimed play Doubt for the big screen.
And he admits sight and sanity issues drove him out of Los Angeles. He also adopted two children.
Shanley explains, "About 14 years ago I was losing my life in Los Angeles because it was becoming just about my career and I needed to go home to New York. I sort of fell apart, which I needed to do, and then I adopted two children and I got a crippling eye disease and had five rounds of eye surgery.
"I went blind in one eye... and that went on for five or six years."
He returned to moviemaking once his kids had grown and his sight had returned: "My kids were 15 and I could see again, which is why I made the decision to do Doubt.
"As a writer you have to live a life and have real experiences of life. I remember saying when a great reversal came in my life like a bunch of bad reviews or an illness that there was another page of Shakespeare that I understand now that I didn't understand before."