Catch to release of ‘Graduate’ sequel

Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft starred in The Graduate.

Ever since Elaine fled the altar, leapt aboard a bus and rode off into the sunset with Benjamin nearly 40 years ago, fans of The Graduate have been asking: what happened next?

Plans for a sequel to the film - starring Dustin Hoffman, Katharine Ross and Anne Bancroft as the predatory Mrs Robinson - have become part of Hollywood mythology. Now the speculation can finally be put to rest: the sequel has been written.

Home School picks up the narrative several years later. Benjamin is now a father who, scarred by his own education, decides to teach his children at home. He has not, however, entirely escaped his past, as the seductive spectre of Mrs Robinson looms again.

But for devotees, the agonising wait is not over yet. Charles Webb, who wrote The Graduate in 1963, has declared that Home School, which he completed two months ago, will not be published until after his death.

He explained that when he sold the film rights for The Graduate, a contract clause stated he also signed away the rights to its characters, meaning that any follow-up could be turned into a film without his consent.

He claims he offered to work with the rights owner, the French media company Canal Plus, on a big-screen version of Home School but was rebuffed, so he now intends to leave the novel to his sons in his will.

"It would be devastating to publish the book and then be a bystander and watch a mediocre movie made of this story," said Webb, 65. "I guess I was naive to think it was an obvious thing we would all agree on."

Webb, a Californian hippy now living a frugal existence in Hove, on the English south coast, drew from his own experiences in both The Graduate and its sequel.

Benjamin Braddock, disenchanted after his time at university, was based on himself; Elaine Robinson on his real-life partner, a woman named Fred; and Mrs Robinson was based on a doctor's wife who visited his father's house to play bridge.

Home School owes its inspiration to Webb and his partner's decision to take their children out of school and teach them at home, an illegal act which left them on the run from the United States authorities and seeking refuge by running nudist camps.

It is this unorthodox subject matter which causes Webb to fear that a film version would wreck the integrity of his creation. "There's never been a film before about a family that home educates its kids. Very few people in the movie world have had that experience, so I don't think it's a subject that would be treated objectively. It's an underground, counter-culture kind of thing."

Webb sold the film and theatrical rights for The Graduate for 14,000 ($35,000) and missed out on any share of the 1967 movie's 60 million ($154,000) gross, though he has no regrets and was delighted with director Mike Nichols' Oscar-winning interpretation.

But the small print of the rights, which have changed hands several times on their way to Canal Plus, has now given him a headache.

"As soon as any sequel is published it is their property and I have no legal recourse. It's frustrating. I hoped something could be worked out with the company. I didn't want to control the film but I did want some basic say over the story."

While the impasse continues the 130-page novella will remain locked inside Webb's laptop and on floppy disks - no hard copy exists - until bequeathed to his sons, John, 40, and 36-year-old David.

The author, who has published seven novels since The Graduate, said: "I guess posthumously it could be done."

"The children will face the same problem. They can publish the book but the company can go ahead and make a bad movie. I won't know anything about it."

Larry Turman, producer of The Graduate, who bought the original rights 40 years ago, believed Webb was being unnecessarily pessimistic in assuming he would be frozen out of a new film. "I don't think that would happen at all," he said from Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, The Graduate industry continues to thrive. After the success of a stage version, Rob Reiner is directing the forthcoming movie Rumour Has It, in which Jennifer Aniston plays a woman who learns that her family was the inspiration for the story of The Graduate and that she might owe her existence to its famous seduction.

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