Israeli novelist Yoriam Kaniuk is no stranger to the film industry; his stories have been adapted for Israeli cinema since the late ’60s. But now, Variety reports, his 1968 novel Adam Resurrected (translated into English the following year) is headed to the big screen with Paul Schrader writing and directing. It’s the story of a former circus clown who spent his time in the concentration camps trying to bring a smile to his fellow Jews as they made their way to the gas chambers; after the war, he winds up in an insane asylum where he’s “more brilliant than the doctors and more insane than any of the patients.” (So says the dust jacket, anyway.)
So is it One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest meets Sophie’s Choice? Because it sounds an awful lot like The Day the Clown Cried, only not as, you know, legendarily awful.