Breakfast at Tiffany's (film) loosely based on the novella by Truman Capote. Changes were made to fit the medium of cinema and to correspond to the filmmakers' vision. Capote, who sold the film rights of his novella to Paramount Studios, wanted Marilyn Monroe to play Holly Golightly, whom he had described perfectly in the book. Barry Paris cites Capote's own comments on the choice of actress: "Marilyn was always my first choice to play the girl, Holly Golightly." Screenwriter Axelrod was hired to "tailor the screenplay for Monroe". When Lee Strasberg advised Monroe that playing a "lady of the evening" would be bad for
Breakfast at Tiffany's (novella) began asking for changes to the novella's tart language. By this time, Attie's montages had been completed, and Alice Morris, the fiction editor of "Harper's", recounted that while Capote initially refused to make any changes, he relented "partly because I showed him the layouts...six pages with beautiful, atmospheric photographs." Yet Hearst ordered "Harper's" not to run the novella anyway. Its language and subject matter were still deemed "not suitable", and there was concern that Tiffany's, a major advertiser, would react negatively. An outraged Capote soon resold the work to "Esquire" for $3,000 ($ today); by his own account, he specified