And now, like proud parents, they have let him go.

Ed Harris, in his directorial debut, played the tortured artist in Pollock, earning an Academy Award nomination for best actor. SONY PICTURES CLASSIC

For the better part of the 1980s, Mr. Naifeh and Mr. White Smith immersed themselves in the world of the late abstract expressionist, with the goal of writing a definitive biography of the complex and troubled painter. The result was Jackson Pollock: An American Saga - nearly 1,000 pages of the facts, faces and events that shaped the artist's life. The book, which won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for biography, was the basis for Pollock, a film produced, directed by and starring Ed Harris. The movie is nominated for two Academy Awards - one for Mr. Harris as best actor and one for Marcia Gay Harden as best supporting actress for her portrayal of Mr. Pollock's wife, artist Lee Krasner.

Mr. Naifeh and Mr. White Smith understood from the outset that translating a life into literature is a daunting task. They were careful in choosing Mr. Pollock as their subject, feeling that he was interesting and important enough to warrant a book and that profiling an artist would make the best use of Mr. Naifeh's art-history background. What they were not prepared for was the way the story took on a life of its own, ballooning into a project that would occupy their lives for so long. Even splitting the workload, with Mr. Naifeh doing the research and Mr. White Smith the actual writing, the task quickly became larger than they had ever imagined.

``When we started, we drew up a list of people we thought we should talk to,'' Mr. White Smith said. ``It was 12 names long. In the end, we talked to 800 people. The truth is we really had no idea what we were getting into. If we did, we might not have started it.''

During the initial stages of the writing process, only Mr. Naifeh was a fan of Mr. Pollock's work. Mr. White Smith said it was only after he became immersed in the task that he grew to appreciate the man and his art. Mr. Naifeh said that skepticism was not detrimental to the writing. Rather, he said, it allowed Mr. White Smith to look at the work with the objective eye required for such an extensive project.

``When Greg was writing, he felt it was very important that everything in the book had a purpose and move the narrative along,'' he explained. ``So even though the book is very long, it's because it covers a lot of territory. There isn't any fluff.''

After years of work amid the constant fear that another biographer would beat them to the punch, they saw the book published in 1989 to mostly positive reviews. A rather vocal group of critics disagreed, however, with the pair's interpretation of some of Mr. Pollock's creative motivations and the authors' analysis of his psyche.

Steven Naifeh (left) and Gregory White Smith spent almost 10 years researching and writing Jackson Pollock: An American Saga, which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1990. CHRIS THELEN/STAFF

``So the Pulitzer Prize was a real surprise to me,'' Mr. Naifeh said. ``Greg always thought there was an outside chance, but because there were some mixed feelings from some very influential people, The New York Times in particular, I was shocked.''

Less shocking was the idea that the book might one day be turned into a movie. From the early stages of the book, the men entertained ideas of who might play the volatile painter. One of their original choices was Robert Duvall. They heard that Robert DeNiro and Willem Defoe had expressed interest, but those projects did not involve their book.

Mr. Harris became interested when his father gave him a copy of an earlier biography of the artist because he thought his son and Mr. Pollock looked alike. Mr. Harris spent 10 years trying to get studios interested in making the film.

The idea of using Mr. Naifeh and Mr. White Smith's book as the basis for the film occurred long before the book was even finished. Because Ed Harris' father and Mr. Naifeh's father were old friends, former college roommates, in fact, the actor found himself following the book's progress with great interest.

After choosing their biography as the basis for the script, Mr. Harris assigned the daunting task of adapting it to screenwriter Barbara Turner, best known for her work on the critically acclaimed 1995 film Georgia.

``Barbara Turner was wonderful,'' Mr. Naifeh said. ``She came and spent a week with us here, and she was so conscientious that not only did she know the book almost by heart, but she had color-coded every sentence and could tell you where it was in the book. The result is that the movie is staggeringly historically accurate.''

Paring down the book was a difficult process. Ms. Turner's original draft of the screenplay came in at 260 pages. Using the standard Hollywood equation of one minute of screen time for every page of screenplay, that would have translated to a film of almost 41/2 hours.

``What I basically did was to put up huge pads, all around my living room, for every year in Pollock's life,'' Ms. Turner said from her home in California. ``On each pad I wrote down the key events for that year. Then I would just walk around the room until I really felt I knew him. Then I began to write.''

Ms. Turner said that her first screenplay, much like Mr. Pollock's work, had no real form. What it did have, however, was all the material that would eventually make its way to the screen.

``It had no beginning, no middle and no end,'' she said with a laugh. ``But what it did have was a line, a sense of character, that ran through it. When we cut the script, that's what remained.''

Like Mr. White Smith, Ms. Turner knew little about Mr. Pollock before she researched the script. She had seen some of the paintings and was aware of the man, but beyond that Jackson Pollock was just a name. The process of transforming Jackson Pollock: An American Saga into Pollock changed that. She said she now sees Mr. Pollock as tortured but certainly aware of his gifts; as doomed, but an artist who, when he applied paint to canvas, understood his place in the world.

``Really though, you can't psychoanalyze genius,'' she said. ``He certainly had his demons, demons I think the press fed. One day he was America's greatest painter and the next, was passe. But all that stuff, his work, that they said was turmoil, I find there is peace in. It's work that just functions as a whole. I think that's why, while doing this, I really fell in love with both the work and the man.''

For Mr. Naifeh, Mr. White Smith and Ms. Turner, the real reward came when the lights dimmed and they saw 10 years of research and writing come to life onscreen.

``I told Ed and Barbara both the same thing,'' Mr. White Smith said. ``I told them I didn't care how faithful they were to the book. I just wanted to see a good movie, and that's what they've made. But I'll tell you, watching it for the first time, it was surreal, impossible to assess. I was just amazed to see those scenes and people we had described come alive. In fact, it wasn't until the third time Steve and I saw it I think that we could watch it as an entity of its own.''

After the difficult writing process, Ms. Turner said, she knew that the success or failure of Pollock would hinge on just one thing - Ed Harris' ability to transform himself, emotionally and physically, into the famous artist. She said he succeeded, beyond her wildest expectations, even re-creating Mr. Pollock's physical approach to painting.

``It was strange for me,'' Ms. Turner admitted. ``I sat there, in the theater, really kind of stunned. I think everyone who worked on this film, Ed, Marcia, Steve and Greg, were extraordinary, with the most extraordinary person being, of course, Pollock himself.''

The book

Jackson Pollock: An American Saga is a biography of the artist by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith of Aiken. The 934-page book was published by Woodward/White in 1989. It won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for biography. It's available in paperback for $27.95.

The movie

Pollock (122 minutes, Rated R) was produced and directed by Ed Harris. Screenplay by Barbara Turner. Based on Jackson Pollock: An American Saga by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. The film stars Mr. Harris, Marcia Gay Harden, Amy Madigan, Jennifer Connelly, Val Kilmer, John Heard and Bud Cort. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival in Italy on Sept. 6 and had its American premiere at the New York Film Festival on Sept. 30. Since its limited release on Feb. 16, the film has been making its way into theaters across the country. It's now showing at the United Artists Tara Cinema in Atlanta. Regal Cinemas booking agent Bob Sedlack says he plans to bring the film to Augusta but is unsure when it will be available because there are so few prints.

Reach Steven Uhles at (706) 823-3626 or suhles@hotmail.com.