Back when it played Sundance this winter, Gawker’s Foster Kamer had this to say about Joel Schumacher’s Twelve, a film based on the 2002 debut novel of Upper East Side rich kid turned literary sensation Nick McDonell:

The problem with Twelve is that you don’t even have to see it to know that it makes a boldfaced joke not just out of Sundance’s former reputation as a place where independent art once thrived, but of the word “independent,” as well, because Twelve is a total fucking reach-around vanity project that represents nepotism and interests who are, as always, trying to capitalize on overwrought subject material and reinforce the status quo. Besides which, it apparently sucks.

After watching the trailer, we can see that he was right.

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You’ve heard the buzz: three novels by age 25, raised in the warm embrace of old-school New York media, toast of the Harvard crowd, handsome, mannered, well-traveled. What you may not know is that Nick McDonell, author of campus novel-cum-spy thriller An Expensive Education, has the work ethic to back up his admittedly blessed existence. After stints reporting from Iraq, Sudan, and Mongolia for the likes of TIME and Harper’s, McDonell is back in New York planning his next adventure and witnessing the film adaptation of an old one (Twelve, the book he wrote at age 17, is being directed by Joel Schumacher and stars a rapper, a Gossip Guy, and Pretty Woman‘s niece). Our interview after the jump. Read More »