Debbie Levy writes books—fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—for people of all different ages, and especially for young people. Before starting her writing career, she was a newspaper editor with American Lawyer Media and Legal Times; before that, she was a lawyer with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now called WilmerHale).Here Levy dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, Imperfect Spiral:
Imperfect Spiral has two storylines. One concerns the aftermath of a terrible accident, in which a five-year-old boy runs into traffic to chase down his football while in the care of his fifteen-year-old babysitter. The other is the tale of the deep connection forged between the little boy, whose name is Humphrey, and the babysitter—Danielle—during the summer they spend together as babysitter and babysittee (he coins that word) before the accident. Casting those two characters is key to the movie. Danielle feels, as teenagers often do, that she is impossibly peculiar. And she is, in fact, peculiar, but only a little bit, as so many of us are. Humphrey is also a little bit peculiar and wonderfully and completely unaware of this. And he thinks Danielle is absolutely the greatest. For the perfect Humphrey, I’d cast Jonathan Lipnicki—not as the 23-year-old that he is now (sorry, Jonathan, wherever you are), but as the six-year-old adorable little kid, Ray, he played in Jerry Maguire. As for Danielle—here’s a thought—Renée Zellweger, who played little Ray’s young mom in Jerry Maguire. I mean, of course, not as the forty-four-year-old she is now, not even as the young woman she was in Jerry Maguire, but rather Renée Zellweger as a teenager. We can make this happen, right?Learn more about the book and author at Debbie Levy's website and blog.
--Marshal Zeringue
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