Isaac Marion's "Warm Bodies"

Isaac Marion was born in north-western Washington in 1981 and has lived in and around Seattle his whole life, working a variety of strange jobs like delivering deathbeds to hospice patients and supervising parental visits for foster-kids. He is not married, has no children, and did not go to college or win any prizes.

The author, on a big screen adaptation of Warm Bodies, his first novel:

This is hard to discuss hypothetically because my book actually is being made into a movie and the casting process is already well underway. I've been slapped on the wrist too many times for making even the most innocuous comments about the movie (Hollywood makes the KGB look like Wikileaks.) so I think I'll circumvent the issue a little and give you a different kind of answer. Who of my real-life friends would I cast in the movie? For R, the undead main character, I'd have to cast myself, because he looks like me, thinks like me, and occasionally smells like me. For his love interest and spiritual savior, Julie, I'd have to cast my girlfriend Nichole Hughes, because the character was not-so-loosely based on her, and because she might not approve of me getting romantic with some hot young starlet on screen, even for the sake of art. For R’s friend M (whose post-apocalyptic insights you can follow on Twitter @MtheZombie) it would have to be noted comic artist and self-proclaimed “Big Bald Guy” Dale Woodruff. M was based, again not-so-loosely on this BBG, although I assure you Dale is much better looking than the shambling mass of rot that is M. Thankfully, I don’t have a personal friendship with anybody who could convincingly portray Julie’s lethally conservative, spiritually imploding father, so I’ll have to dip into Hollywood for this one. (It should be safe to speculate, since General Grigio is nowhere near cast yet.) Clint Eastwood would be incredible in this role. Just the right amount of grief and vulnerability under the bitter, leathery exterior. Not that we could ever dream of getting Eastwood, but I could settle for an Eastwood Type. As long as they don’t give him a flat-top and a southern accent and turn him into the cardboard cutout “Bad Military Man” from Avatar, I’ll be happy.

Learn more about the book and author at Isaac Marion's website and the Warm Bodies Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Warm Bodies.

Writers Read: Isaac Marion.

--Marshal Zeringue