Britt's On

Another book down. I read a lot. Did I mention that? And I also like the idea of casting the books I read on digital paper. Because then, maybe, on the off-chance Hollywood picks up one of the books I've read and decides to butcher it with a movie edition (okay, at least POTENTIALLY butcher it) perhaps I can have some influence on the casting. Doubtful. But let's just say the casting of 'Something Borrowed' made my heart bleed, and thus I feel the need to document someway, somewhere, my less-than-important take on book-to-film adaptations.

Today's book was Sarah Pekkanen's 'Skipping A Beat'. As far as I know, there is no movie in the works - yet. But her book had a pretty cinematic quality to it, and it has a relatively consistent following from what I've seen on the interwebs / witnessed firsthand (months and months of waiting to get the SINGLE copy of the book from my city library because there was a giant wait list in front of me). The only tricky part I can see would be the flashbacks, particularly to when the main characters, Michael and Julia, met as teenagers.

The plot, in summation: Michael is a multi-millionaire entrepreneur of a VitaminWater-type company called DrinkUp. His wife Julia is a successful event planner. As the book opens, Michael dies from a heart attack - but is miraculously revived just over four minutes later. When he awakes, he's literally awakened - he decides to give away his fortune, and repent for his sins as a well-to-do, business-obsessed workaholic, including his mistreatment of his wife.

Today's casting of Skipping a Beat will only be for Michael, Julia, and Isabelle - the best friend of Julia, an heiress with a relative heart of gold. Our characters are supposed to be in their 30s - although flashbacks take them to teenagehood and their twenties (which I'm mostly ignoring). They live in Washington. And they're all relatively average looking (by Hollywood va-va-va-voom standards).

MICHAEL

Adrian Grenier
My go-to choice for curly-haired protagonists. The thing I like about Adrian here is he polishes up nice, but also he has that bright-eyed boyish thing going for him. He's 35, which is the exact age of our male anti-hero, making him perfect for the part.


James Franco
I mean. If you had to go for another actor, James might be someone to consider...although I have yet to see him play a convincingly romantic lead, and that's sort of what Michael evolves into post-death (although the portrait painted of him by Julia is less than flattering). He could do the aloof, over-ambitious, didn't-realize-what-I-was-losing thing though. Plus I've seen him with curly hair. He's 33, a tad younger than Michael but still workable.


Ben Affleck
I have my reasons for picking and NOT picking Ben here. I honestly think he'd be fantastic in the role - definitely more subtle in the various shades of the character than the other two actors above could be, BUT my pick for leading lady makes him a longshot to do the film. He's 39, a little old, but still a good choice.

JULIA

Jennifer Garner
I vacillated between many different actresses before landing on J Garn about halfway through the book. Why? Well, Julia is a super conflicted lady. So much so that it defines her character. And no one does fierce-meets-conflicted better than Sydney Bristow I tells you. I feel like she can portray Julia's meek beginnings and sensitive heart mixed with her desire for security and anger at how her life has turned out. Again, she's also a tiny bit old for the part at 38 (and Hollywood loves to tweak the age of characters when taken from books), but I think she'd be perfect for it. Doubly so if she and Ben were co-stars!


Reese Witherspoon
The second person I had in my head for Julia before settling on Jennifer Garner - she fits the Type A event planner / socialite part of the role perfectly...but I don't know that she can do the super conflicted, angry, reluctant side of the role. I feel like she's too sweet for it almost. She would actually be a good Isabelle, if she were willing to do 'the friend' role for a change. She is 35! Right age.


Rachel McAdams
My original pick for Julia, but she was pretty quickly eliminated when I realized this wasn't about a loving relationship suddenly gone awry, but a long-crumbling relationship that had gone sour eons ago. Not really what I picture Rachel doing - too sweet for the role, like Reese. If the story were more sentimental and less complicated, she'd be great for it though.

Isabelle

Zoe Saldana
Yeah, I don't know why. I figured the casting director might want to add some diversity. Isabelle is supposed to be utterly confident but also a little frivolous. I'm not saying Zoe embodies that exactly, and it's not who I ultimately gravitated towards for this role, but she wouldn't be the worst choice EVER.


Christina Hendricks
She's still doing b-role parts right now, so she'd actually be perfect for this. She was who I ended up picturing after the first few chapters...I feel like knowing her as Joan Holloway makes me a little biased to be uncertain that she can't be so prim and proper - you need a gal that's willing to show an uglier side for this part - but I can totally picture her and J Garn laughing it up / loving it up.

There you have it! Another movie cast dreamcasting session down.

- Britt's On

Well, well. For everyone who says the publishing industry is in trouble, I don’t believe it will go anywhere soon. Why? Because books provide the source material for such a HUGE portion of the movie industry these days – especially as evidenced in my reading of last night’s “Summer Movie Preview” issue of Entertainment Weekly.

Even just rewinding to the last Academy Awards, of the best picture nominees, Up In The Air, Precious, and The Blindside (3/10) were all based on best-selling books. Some of the biggest movie franchises today – Harry Potter and Twilight – are based on book series, and comic books are providing no end of heroes and villains to bring to life on the big screen.

As glorious as this all might seem, Hollywood also has a problem with adapting books. On one hand, books provide scriptwriters an incredible wealth of character motivation and back story that should make it easier to bring fully-rounded characters to life on screen. On the other hand, books almost provide too much, that it’s rare for a film to live up to its book origins.

Exceptions to that rule? The first Bridget Jones film outshines anything else in the franchise. The Devil Wears Prada was leaps and bounds more interesting and cheeky than the book (although some people say they love them both equally). Sex and the City the TV show was shockingly better compared to the book characterization. And to my surprise, I think I kind of enjoyed Precious the movie better than Push the book. For all the hype the story got about how dramatic and sad it was, it hit me a lot harder the way the story was told in the film over the book.

I’m sure I could cite a few more. The Godfather, although I haven’t read it yet, I imagine shines on film more than in ripped-up paperback form. My book club actually specifically reads books that have been turned into movies, so I should have more to say on that specific topic. I think the only book I really enjoyed the Hollywood-ization of (making the actresses younger / more interesting) was The Jane Austen Book Club. In every other case I think the book has edged out the movie, sometimes by leaps and bounds (Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil), sometimes marginally (Breakfast at Tiffany’s). We’re doing PD James’ Children Of Men next – I was surprisingly enamoured with the film so I hope the book lives up to my high expectations.


The entire point of this post was to talk about two movie/book projects that I’ve definitely got my eye on. The first is Sara Gruen’s ‘Water for Elephants’, a book I absolutely adored when I read it back in 2008. It made my top 5 list (from 50) for the year quite easily.

With the casting announced, I have some reservations. I ‘cast’ books in my head when I’m reading them, most of the time. Sometimes I can conjure up a vague image of a character without leaning back on a celebrity stand-in, other times I can easily picture who should play a role. I generally hate when, going into a book, I know who the actors are – unless I think they’ll actually be good for it (Reese Witherspoon’s decision to option London is the Best City in America is a prime example, she’s right on for the role). Anyway, to my surprise, Hollywood appears to have aged our characters a bit from what I envisioned when reading the book.

Water For Elephants will feature Robert Pattinson in the main role of Jacob Jankowski, a young almost-vet who, after the demise of his family & home life, finds himself as part of a traveling circus. Reese Witherspoon plays Marlena, the star of the show and the apple of Jacob’s eye, but also the wife of ring master August, who will be played by the incredibly awesome Christoph Waltz.

My initial general thoughts?:


Reese is way older than I thought Marlena would be (I was picturing Hayden Panettiere at some points during reading it), but she does do a good feisty / pious hybrid


Christoph is way older than I thought he’d be, but sort of a brilliant choice, and a great choice on his part in terms of a follow-up from Inglourious Basterds. I had pictured Mad Men’s Vincent Kartheiser (Pete) in my younger casting.


R Pattz. Ech. I’d like to believe you can judge a book by it’s Twilight-y cover, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt in terms of acting abilities. But he’s just so far from what I pictured in terms of age, appearance, voice, everything! Then again, I can kind of picture him in depression-era clothing. Kind of.



Now, I happened to get a copy of the WFE script. I don’t know if it’s *the* script they’re actually going to be shooting off of right away, but I imagine it very well could be, or at least be pretty close to it. I have to say, the script reads great. The characters leap off the page as they did in the book, and I could see how the lines / performances would play to the strengths of each of our three leads. The story is surprisingly more skewed to Jacob and August so far (I’m about halfway through), more than I remembered it being in the book, but the hints of a flirtation between Jacob and Marlena are there. So far the script captures the magic of the circus, a bit of honest humour, some action sequences that fit with the plot, and sparks of young love. I like it, and I’m growing to accept the characters in their roles, however off-base my mind-casting was.



On the flip side, we have Emily Giffin’s first two novels, Something Borrowed, and its follow-up, Something Blue. Emily Giffin is pretty much one of the top chick lit writers out there – her work is consistently engaging, well-written, intelligent, and relevant. I was surprised but also not surprised to see her stuff coming to life on the big screen, my main fear being that they’ll totally pacify the intelligence in her writing in favour of cheap gags and girly giddiness (as per the horrific adaptation of Confessions of a Shopaholic).

The casting for this one is even more disconcerting than the above. The story in Something Borrowed follows the point of view of a mousy lawyer named Rachel, forever in the shadow of her to-be-wed best buddy Darcy. On the night of Darcy’s stagette however, it’s Rachel who engages in some debauchery when she ends up in bed with Darcy’s fiancée Dex. What unravels from there is a question as to who Dex really belongs with (or to), the complicated rules of frenemies, and shocking revelation after revelation.


Darcy is supposed to be a show-stopping glam girl, feisty, bossy, snobby…your proto-typical Mean Girl, but a brunette! I also pictured Lila Fowler from Sweet Valley. In fact, I pictured the exact image of Lila Fowler from the Sweet Valley board game that I own. Instead, I find that she will be played by the ever-dippy Kate Hudson. This is so wrong in so many ways. I’m ambivalent about Kate on the best of days, but her in this role is mind-bogglingly wrong. Even when she’s trying to be slightly more serious or interesting (like her character Andee in How To Lose A Guy…), she still comes off as “Hey, look at me, aren’t I cute?”

Darcy is NOT that character, and it does NOT bode well this is who they’ve cast in her role. Added to that? Darcy is supposed to be a bodacious brunette. No offence to Kate, but her body type / if they have indeed recast her as a blonde, is just not Darcy. Agh!

I think that part of the casting angers me the most. The guy they picked to be Dex seems decent (another top choice in *recent* memory would be the guy starring in that White Collar show), Colin Farrell as Marcus is an interesting / surprisingly good choice, and John Krasinski as Ethan is a sweet, but different choice than I’d have expected.


Our other leading lady is Rachel, who has been cast as Ginnifer Goodwin.


I picked Alicia Silverstone for this, because let’s face it – she’s likable, she’s the right age, and she can play a dressed down humble friend next to a more bombshell actress (ugh, if that actress weren’t Kate Hudson). Ginnifer…to date, her roles have all been unsympathetic, irritating, chit chattery girls. The moral complexities are already blurred in this retelling of the story if you have a “why me? Poor me!” actress in the Rachel role over someone that you want to root for a bit, even when you lament over how *wrong* everything is. I’m worried that Ginnifer will play it as a ‘rise of the ugly duckling’ which is only part of the story at hand.


Circling back to Darcy, I’ve given you my Rachel casting. Darcy was a hard one for me to cast even as I read the book (hence the Lila Fowler image). When I heard about the horrendous casting of Kate Hudson, I rattled off a list of other potentials, including:
- Malin Akerman (with dyed hair)
- Olivia Wilde
- Lake Bell (actually a perfect choice as Alicia & Lake costarred on Miss Match)
- Diane Kruger
- Sienna Miller
- Rachel McAdams (circa Mean Girls but with brown hair – girl can take a mean girl and make her sympathetic, which is what this role NEEDS)
- Mischa Barton
- Megan Fox (probably too young)

I mean, who knows, maybe Kate Hudson will put on a transformative performance and I will buy her as Darcy. I’m trying to think of movies that have accomplished such a transformation…Cameron Diaz as the mom, Sara, in My Sister’s Keeper. That’s one! She was great in that movie, shockingly so as she falls into the “Love me for my cuteness!” category with Kate. But I’m still having a really hard time getting excited for Giffin’s books on the big screen with this ominous casting.

Well this was a mammoth post. Time to finish reading the Water for Elephants screenplay.

- Britt’s On