Lorna Landvik's "Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes)"

Lorna Landvik's novels include the bestselling Patty Jane’s House of Curl, Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons, Oh My Stars, Best to Laugh, and Once in a Blue Moon Lodge. She has performed stand-up and improvisational comedy around the country and is a public speaker, playwright, and actor most recently in the one-woman, all-improvised show Party in the Rec Room. She lives in Minneapolis.

Here Landvik dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes):

My terms during contract negotiations: I write the screenplay (I want Screenwriters Guild dental insurance!) and act in a minor comic role (maybe as Caroline’s evangelical Christian mother), and the film be directed by a woman (Mimi Leder or Greta Gerwig or Patty Jenkins). Other than that, I’m easy.

I never picture a real person or actor while I’m writing and in fact, while I feel I intimately know my characters, I see more their essence than their physicality but as a fan of old movies, I’d make suggestions like these to the casting director:

For Haze Evans, who appears in the book as a vibrant woman in her thirties — how about a young Rosalind Russell. For Haze Evans, who also appears as a comatose (!) octogenarian — how about an old Rosalind Russell.

For Susan McGrath, the newspaper publisher dealing with a dissolving marriage and a teenaged son (what a combo!) — Irene Dunne

For Sam, Susan’s dorky/thoughtful, sullen/open-hearted, scared/full-of-bravado son — hmmm, maybe a teenaged Jackie Cooper?

P.S. I don’t live in the past, I just cast there…

Visit Lorna Landvik's website.

--Marshal Zeringue