With the success of Julian Schnabel's art-house movie Before Night Falls, based on the autobiography of Arenas and starring Spanish actor Javier Bardem, Arenas has begun to solidify his place in the ...

That anyone should consider making a film of Reinaldo Arenas’ memoir Before Night Falls is curious. That the person to do it should be painter-turned-film director Julian Schnabel is truly unusual.

That anyone should consider making a film of Reinaldo Arenas’s memoir, Before Night Falls, is curious. That the person to do it should be painter-turned-film-director Julian Schnabel is truly unusual.

The story of Reinaldo Arenas is one of the saddest to come out of Castro's Cuba -- especially sad because, by many accounts, he was on his way to becoming the finest Cuban writer of his generation.