Wolff's autobiographical account, This Boy's Life: A Memoir, was filmed in 1994, with Robert DeNiro in the part of Dwight, his stepfather, Ellen Barkin as his mother (called Caroline here) and eighteen-yearold Leonardo DiCaprio as young Toby Wolff. The film was directed competently by Michael Caton-Jones, perhaps best known for Memphis Belle (1990), and very effectively photographed by David Watkins who won an Academy Award for Out of Africa (1985) and who beautifully contrasts the striking landscape of the Pacific Northwest with the bleak lives of the characters. DeNiro and DiCaprio deliver superb performances, and the screenplay by Robert Getchell (nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, 1974) is a sensitive adaptation of the book.

The film offers another angle of interpretation for some of the material that appears in stories in The Night in Question. DiCaprio's conception of the character...