The Double

by Jeremy Leven (Screenwriter), Fyodor Dostoevsky (based on the novel by)

An American about to be executed in a French prison recounts to a priest the tale of his encounter with a mysterious doppelganger and how he came to be arrested for murder. Based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky. This "director's draft" was written in 1995 for a Roman Polanski project that never made it out of development.

120 pages, Screenplay

Published January 1, 1995

About the author

Born in South Bend, Indiana and raised in Rye, New York, Jeremy Leven was educated at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland (Philosophy and other liberal arts), Harvard University (Education and Child Psychology), the University of Connecticut (Neuroscience) and Yale Medical School where he was a fellow in the Yale University Department of Psychiatry's Child Study Center. He has also been a member of the faculty of Harvard, a Professor of Psychopharmacology, Director of a Mental Health Center, and Director of Drug Treatment and Methadone Programs for Western Massachusetts.

Leven has written two critically-acclaimed novels, published in 17 languages: Creator (Coward McCann) and Satan's Psychotherapy (Knopf), as well as the screenplays for The Notebook, Creator, The Legend of Bagger Vance, My Sister's Keeper, Real Steel, and Wers Glaubt Wird Selig, among others. He also directed and wrote Don Juan DeMarco, and Girl On A Bicycle.

Leven divides his time between homes in Connecticut and Manhattan. His wife of 41 years, the acclaimed psychotherapist Roberta Danza, died in 2017. They have five grown children and four grandchildren.