The entry begins:On February 22, 2012, I was seriously injured in a rocket attack whilst reporting the Syrian uprising. The same explosion that caused my injuries, killed my good friends and colleagues, Marie Colvin and French photographer, Remi Ochlik. It was nine days before I would receive proper medical treatment to the fist sized hole in my thigh and the multiple shrapnel wounds that peppered my body.Learn more about Under the Wire, and follow Paul Conroy on Twitter.
After the most harrowing of escapes, I was confined to bed in London for three months. While surgeons patched me up, I was approached by Annabel Merullo of the PFD literary agency, to write an account of events in Syria.
Initially I never saw it as a book, let alone a film and I was happy just being alive in the immediate weeks after my escape. To begin with the writing was difficult, I was on large doses of morphine for my injuries and finding a balance between pain and the haze of drugs, was a real challenge. Purely by accident I woke at 4am one morning, the pain was tolerable, my head was sharper and more focused as the effects of the morphine wore off. I turned on my laptop, wrote till 9am and then passed out as the pain levels rose and the morphine kicked in again. That's how I wrote the book, a daily ritual from 4am to 9am.
On completion people immediately talked about the possibilities of a film adaption. 'Jolly good,' thought I, still intensely relieved to have delivered the manuscript -- almost on time.
Inevitably, people started asking,"Who play you in a film?" "Who will play Marie?" To be honest, I thought they were all crazy, however, as the concept of a film grew legs and started to take shape, I started to think up the actors who would best capture mine and Marie's relationship.
To be honest, it was easy picking an actor to portray Marie -- Meryl...[read on]
My Book, The Movie: Under the Wire.
--Marshal Zeringue
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