Nic Pizzolatto's "Galveston"

Nic Pizzolatto's fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, The Oxford American, The Missouri Review, The Iowa Review, Best American Mystery Stories and other publications. His work has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award, and his story collection Between Here and the Yellow Sea was named by Poets & Writer’s Magazine as one of the top five fiction debuts of the year.

Here he shares some ideas about adapting his new novel Galveston for the big screen:

We've sold the movie option to a production company that's very enthusiastic about the work, so hopefully a movie will go forward. In my fanboy imagination, though, I suppose I'd fantasy cast something like this: Sam Peckinpah circa 1972 to direct. I of course would write the script. Starring Nick Nolte circa 1985 as Roy (I'd also take Warren Oates,'76), Natalie Portman circa 2002 as Rocky, Harvey Keitel as Sam Ptiko, Annabella Sciorra as Loraine, and, uh, Marisa Tomei as Carmen. Sure, why not.

Obviously Roy and Rocky are the two big roles, and you need a brutish, atavistic man to play Roy, an old-school tough guy possessing range, with a voice that can be played like a box guitar. Nolte, of course, would have done outstanding work. I know Warren Oates isn't always classified as a tough-guy, but the important thing here is that he was a bad motherfucker, and there's even a line in the book where somebody basically tells Roy he resembles Warren Oates. Nowadays...? Viggo Mortensen? Liev Shreiber? Bruce Willis? Rocky is a sprite, albeit a damaged one, so for that I think of a petite actress with a well of emotional depth. Forgetting the Star Wars movies, that'd seem to be Portman.

For the crew at the donut shop, I'd say they could just CG in the old cast of Barney Miller.

Learn more about the book and author at Nic Pizzolatto's website.

The Page 69 Test: Galveston.

--Marshal Zeringue