They focus on the life, travails and relatives (running from comedic to tragic to endearing) of Horace Robedaux, a humble Texas haberdasher, the same as Mr. Foote's father was.
PublicAffairs, a New York company that is fast becoming the publishing house for Kremlin politicians, is preparing to rush into print in May with an English translation of the memoirs describing the life, travails and cold war spying adventures of Russia's acting president, Vladimir V. Putin.
To follow a character's life travails in reality would be kind of gorgeous and original.
Mr. Lender said that he had consciously based his novel's insider-trading plot on the real-life travails of Mr. Milken and Ivan Boesky, the central figures in the 1980s insider trading ring.
It's just that it's not always age-appropriate love, and films like Mighty Aphrodite proved that there's nothing creepier than watching an old man seduce a young girl - even without the context of Allen's real-life travails.
For all his uplifting Billy Graham crusade performances, and there were many, it was his dark real-life travails — the horrific death of his older brother Jack by a wood-shop blade, his penchant for gobbling amphetamines, his bouts of infidelity — that inspired his most enduring art.
However, their relationship, or at least its bitter end, lives on in the shape of Justney (as no one called them) Part 2, Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez, whose recent love-life travails have been played out through earnest acoustic renditions of Cry Me A River.
The fall-out from du Pont's tormented sports patronage made scandalous headlines in the US in the mid-90s, but UK viewers unfamiliar with the real-life travails of Olympic wrestlers Mark and Dave Schultz are advised to avoid googling the details in advance.
Many viewers will find it difficult to watch the new season of "CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM" (HBO, Sunday at 10 p.m .. They'll have to sequester their thoughts of the real-life travails of the show's centerpiece, Larry David, now separated from his wife, the environmental activist Laurie David.
Mr. Lurie was nearby, reshooting a scene in "Nothing but the Truth," which stars Kate Beckinsale and will remind some viewers of the real-life travails of Judith Miller, the former reporter for The New York Times who spent 85 days in jail in 2005.
Although I can understand the filmmaker's sorrow at having missed the chance to work with Marlon Brando himself -- on the script that is still central to the film, but is now paralleled by the real-life travails of Behi and the cruel twist of faith of Brando's demise -- I also imagine that the film is now so much deeper because of the added turmoil faced by all.
