Kitchen Confidential by Jason Anthony — The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander – Film option — Did a 14-year-old boy witness the gruesome slaying of the Russian royal family by the Bolsheviks? That’s just one of many mysteries explored in The Kitchen Boy (Viking, 2003), Robert Alexander’s New York Times bestseller about the bloody July 1918 evening that ended the Romanov dynasty and ushered in seven decades of Communist hegemony. Glenn Williamson, who counts Hollywoodland and The Omen among his credits, has optioned Kitchen Boy for his four-year-old Back Lot Pictures. Alexander got the idea for the novel from a tantalizing actual entry in Empress Alexandra’s diary penned hours before the family’s execution. Alexandra writes that the revolutionaries have abruptly whisked their kitchen boy, Leonid Sednyov, to safety without explanation. In the author’s imagination, Sednyov, now a frail immigrant living in Chicago, holds the answer to two real-life puzzles surrounding the Romanov murders. Judi Farkas of Judi Farkas Management negotiated the film deal for lit agent Marly Rusoff.
