Looks like director Azazel Jacobs has caught the Portland bug.

After filming the terrific Terri, written by Portland novelist Patrick deWitt, Jacobs is collaborating with deWitt on a second screenplay—and has just finished co-writing an adaptation of Raymond Chandler's story "Spanish Blood" with Gill Dennis, a Portlander best known for penning the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line.

"Something in the air in Portland, I guess, right?" Jacobs tells WW. "I very much have been in love with Chandler and Hammett, and have wanted to be in that world for a long time."

Dennis may not be one of Portland's most known cinema names, but his Hollywood legacy stretches back to working with Sam Peckinpah and marrying ingenue Elizabeth Hartman, as well as doing script work on Apocalypse Now. Dennis was Jacobs' teacher at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles.

Jacobs says casting will soon begin for Spanish Blood, which is about a detective investigating a politician's murder: "I'm looking for my Elliot Gould," the director says.