Legal Sci-Fi

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

Imagine a film with the legal smarts of a John Grisham novel and a sci-fi concept wilder than Deep Space Nine. Reginald and Warrington Hudlin, the filmmakers behind House Party and Boomerang, are in discussions with New York University law professor Derrick Bell about making a movie version of a short story in Bell's book Faces at the Bottom of the Well. Bell's story is a sharp commentary on the way the legal system mistreats minorities. The plot: aliens buy all the blacks in America and transport them into outer space. Bell, who lost his job at Harvard Law School after taking an extended leave to protest the lack of minority women on the faculty, is also working on a TV project for PBS that deals with the Declaration of Independence.