To Have Not

The Last Days of Ernest Hemingway

To Have Not is set during Ernest Hemingway’s last, controversial years of life, when his fame and reputation were long established and could only have been cause for celebration…

Unquestionably these were tumultuous times. Cuba had been Hemingway's home away from home for over 20 years, when resistance to Batista’s tyrannical dictatorship had spread revolution through the island nation, at the same time the cold war intensified on the world stage...

The writer's sympathy for the underdog, for those who struggle for justice at a disadvantage, his past involvement in similarly idealistic conflicts such as the Spanish Civil War and undoutedly his own writing; are all factors that earned him his own FBI file and the personal almost obsessive attention of FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, keeping Hemingway's file under his close personal supervision. It all came to a head by the time the Cuban revolution triumphed, as Hemingway had become increasingly fearful he was under constant surveillance from the FBI.

However, his suspicions are dismissed as paranoid delusions, even by his closest family and friends... Hemingway is torn, but when said suspicions of surveillance escalated to a practical certainty and assertions of harassment by the writer, those closest to him proportionally upgraded his actions as most likely being paranoid delusions or mental illness with insinuations hew may require therapy / treatment.

His memories, the ghosts haunting him, the pressures that forced him to leave ‘Finca Vigía’, his tropical home and creative refuge, forced to return to Idaho to be interned for treatment at the Mayo Clinic. The sporadic moments of lucid clarity amidst his own hallucinations, are all likely causes for the writer’s premature concluding gesture of dignity towards himself.

Ideal Cast: Toni Colette, Helen Mirren, Ron Perlman.