Leila Meacham's "Titans"

Leila Meacham is a writer and former teacher who lives in San Antonio, Texas. She is the author of the bestselling novels Roses and Tumbleweeds.

Here Meacham shares some thoughts about adapting her new novel, Titans, for the big screen:

I’m afraid my answer will disappoint your curious readers if not outright make them laugh. The fact is that I rarely attend movies except for the Oscar contenders now and then and so have little if any knowledge of who is who in the movie business. I no longer recognize anybody on the cover of People magazine or the faces on supermarket tabloids, let alone know who the headlines are exposing. I’m from the era of Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood, and (sigh) Robert Redford. Now if I had those warm bodies in their heyday or their likes to choose from, I’d know exactly who to cast for Titans. One of the most sobering moments for me—one that reflected my age—was the question put to me by an interviewer when Roses was published. “Who would you like to see play Percy and Mary in the movie?” I was stumped for an answer. Elizabeth Taylor was dead and Robert Redford too old. Even Brad Pitt was beyond the age of the novel’s young Percy Warwick. Perhaps . . . when Percy had aged? I thought. In 2010 when Roses was released, I recognized the names and faces of only a few of the movie stars making headlines, and none of them seemed right for the roles of the characters. But I can tell you who I’d like to see direct Titans. He would be none other than Robert Redford. That boy is a tried and true man of the land! He’d film the ranch of Las Tres Lomas de la Trinidad as it was described in Titans and stay faithful to the characters that lived upon it.

Visit Leila Meacham's website.

The Page 69 Test: Roses.

The Page 69 Test: Titans.

--Marshal Zeringue

Stephanie Kate Strohm's "The Taming of the Drew"

Stephanie Kate Strohm is the author of Pilgrims Don’t Wear Pink and the Confederates Don't Wear Couture.

Here Strohm dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, The Taming of the Drew:

There is only one sassy redhead for me, and that sassy redhead is Emma Stone. I love her voice and her brilliant comic timing. I think she would make a perfect Cass. Plus, she seems like she was totally a drama dork. She probably crushed the role of Beatrice in her high school production of Much Ado About Nothing. Emma Stone is a banter queen, and this book is nothing but banter. I bet she’d also come up with some awesome improv. (See Emma? I’m open to collaboration!) Personally, I find her very likeable, and I think she’d do a great job of making sure the audience is rooting for Cass, despite Cass’s prickly nature.

As for Drew…Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield may have split up in real life, but I think they’d be great reunited on screen as Cass and Drew. I think Andrew could capture both Drew’s arrogance and his secret sweet side well. I’ve also seen a picture of him with a crazy beard, so I know he can grow that essential lumberjack beard – and then be cute as a button once the beard is shaved off. (Not that he’s not cute with the beard, but you know what I mean.) This picture could basically be a promotional shot for the movie! Interested, Emma and Andrew? Let me know!

Visit Stephanie Kate Strohm's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Taming of the Drew.

--Marshal Zeringue

Howard Blum's "The Last Goodnight"

Howard Blum is the author of New York Times bestsellers including Dark Invasion, the Edgar Award–winner American Lightning, as well as Wanted!, The Gold Exodus, Gangland, and The Floor of Heaven. Blum is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. While at the New York Times, he was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.

Here Blum dreamcasts an adaptation of his new novel, The Last Goodnight: A World War II Story of Espionage, Adventure, and Betrayal:

Way back when I was still writing my book, I had the good fortune to sell The Last Goodnight to the movies. Columbia Tri-Star stepped up with interest, enthusiasm, and some money when the book – a true story - was just a proposal. Part of what attracted them, or so I was told, was the opportunity to cast Betty Pack, the real-life heroine in my book. And so I’ve had a bit of time to think about whom I’d like to see in that role.

Betty Pack was a spy. She had all sorts of derring-do exploits during World War II that did nothing less than help the Allies win the war. She was American, came from a Social Register family, and she was, to use Hollywood shorthand, glamorous. When she died, Time’s obituary described her as a “blonde Bond…using the boudoir as Ian Fleming’s hero used the Beretta.”

That’s the shorthand casting description of Betty.

But in the book, which in its way is as much a psychological detective story as a suspenseful non-fiction spy thriller, I try to dig a bit deeper into Betty’s character. I try to reveal what made her such a perfect spy. And these are all elements that I hope would be essential for any actress playing the role of Betty Pack. The reality is a lot more complicated than the shorthand, and it would be nice – and effective cinema, to boot – if this were reflected on the screen.

Consider, then, Betty’s beauty. Sure, she was a looker, but it was a careful, controlled sort of beauty. A fellow spy wrote that when he had first met Betty he had, after hearing all the stories about her, a small pang of disappointment. A quick look suggested, he said, nothing more than an “attractive, wholesome All-American girl.”

But once Betty started talking, her voice soft as a whisper yet authoritative, her laugh uninhibited, even naughty, her eyes fixed on him like a marksman’s, all his oversimplifications, all his stereotypes, were quickly undone. “She had a force, or magnetism to a terrifying degree,” he realized. “What,” he wondered, “is this pacing tiger doing in this conventional disguise?”

Try bringing that to the screen.

Then there is Betty temperament. She didn’t have romances, she had adventures. Life for her was a roller-coaster of emotions, rising to great joyful highs and then tumbling down towards seemingly bottomless lows. And she was always mercurial. She possessed what is perhaps the spy’s greatest gift: the ability to pledge love one moment, and then betray her lover in the next. The trick, as every spy learns, is to mean what you say only in the moment when you say it. Betty had only one enduring loyalty: to the country and spymasters she served.

There is a bit of advice the CIA offers its new recruits: “The last person to whom you say goodnight is the most dangerous.” Betty personified this warning.

And so any actress who plays Betty on the screen must be able to convey all these complicated and often conflicting qualities. There needs to be an aura of refinement as well as incipient danger whenever she appears on the screen.

Every spy is an actor, playing one public role while concealing another hidden agenda. And the actress who plays Betty Pack in The Last Goodnight must bring this coiled tension and ambiguity to the screen.

So, who do I see in the role?

Well, I’m not the producer, just the author of the book upon which the movie will be based. But given all the qualities I have just offered up, I think that Jennifer Lawrence would play the role quite nicely. Quite nicely indeed.

Visit Howard Blum's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Howard Means's "67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence"

Howard Means is the author or coauthor of many books, including Johnny Appleseed: The Man, the Myth, the American Story, the first biography of Colin Powell and Louis Freeh’s bestselling memoir My FBI.

Here Means dreamcasts an adaptation of his new book, 67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence:

The great challenge here is focal points — the Kent State shootings involved a cast of thousands. Choices have to be made.

Of the four dead, I think I would linger longest on Sandy Scheuer, the most random of all the fatalities. She was funny, sweet, the classic girl-next-door, and she was doing nothing more threatening than walking between classes when a .30-06 projectile entered her neck and severed her jugular vein. Had the movie been made in the early ‘60s, Annette Funicello might have played her.

Glenn Frank, the hero of the post-shooting confrontation on the Commons, bears a strong physical likeness to Drew Carey, who enrolled in Kent State in 1975 and was twice expelled for poor grades before dropping out altogether in 1978. A serious role for Carey? Why not.

Robert Canterbury, the mission commander for the National Guard, comes across as cocksure, imperious, and grimly unimaginative. George C. Scott’s Patton might be the model here. Could Robert Downey, Jr., march his troops into a cul de sac, watch them kill four students on the way back up the hill, nearly repeat the horror at a far greater magnitude back on the Commons, and then write: “Lessons Learned: None” in his after-action report? If so, he’s the man.

For a representative student, I’ll take Ellis Berns. He was with Sandy Scheuer when she bled out. Later, he threw the jacket he was wearing, now covered with Sandy’s dried blood, at an armed Guardsman. Again going back in time, I would have him played by Leonardo DiCaprio – not the current version, but the edgy, explosive late-teenage DiCaprio of This Boy’s Life and The Basketball Diaries.

And for a closing scene, I would borrow shamelessly from Schindler’s List: all the survivors of that day I could find — now in their sixties — cresting Blanket Hill, where the killings took place, led by Dean Kahler in his wheelchair.

Learn more about the book and author at Howard Means's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Christopher Morgan Jones's "The Searcher"

Chris Morgan Jones worked for eleven years at the world’s largest business intelligence agency, and has advised Middle Eastern governments, Russian oligarchs, New York banks, London hedge funds, and African mining companies. The author of The Silent Oligarch and The Jackal’s Share, he lives in London.

Here Jones dreamcasts an adaptation of his latest novel, The Searcher:

The hero of The Searcher is Isaac Hammer: in his late fifties, an American living in London, once a journalist and now the proprietor of a successful private investigations firm that he founded twenty years ago. He’s never married, and he’s a serious but not wholly observant Jew. He has a beautiful house near the park and runs a lot, too much, if anything, but what he really lives for is his work, and he’s immensely good at it. He can talk, but he’s a deceptively good listener, too - and a watcher...

The actor who plays him needn’t be big. Hammer is slight and birdlike, in the book, but we could compromise on that a little as long as he didn’t end up being some towering specimen. And he’d need a sense of humour, because Hammer uses his a fair amount. He’s no comedian, but he likes the occasional wisecrack.

Ed Harris would do a great job, I think. He has the right combination of reserve and control - and it would be easy to imagine that he was at once hugely clever and, in the situation he finds himself in, out of his depth and scrambling to get back to the surface. The book opens with Hammer in the Republic of Georgia, a country he doesn’t know and seems likely never to understand. He gets caught up in a riot, and in short order loses all his luggage, his passport, and a deal of self-respect. After that he’s reliant on his wits, and Harris would have no problem conveying that.

For the other characters: Vera Farmiga for Natela, the blunt, chain-smoking, sceptical widow who Hammer inadvertently pulls into the conspiracy he’s investigating. Clive Owen for Hammer’s former colleague and former friend Ben Webster, who’s gone missing in Georgia. Cate Blanchett in the role of the precise, cool, duplicitous spy Elene Vekua. And an actor with no vanity for the role of Otar Iosava, a local oligarch whose face has been disfigured by poison, in proper former Soviet Union style. He needs real menace, and a terrifying voice. A great English actor, Ralph Ineson, would be perfect.

Visit Chris Morgan Jones's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Karen Odden's "A Lady in the Smoke"

Karen Odden received her PhD in English literature from New York University. She has contributed essays and chapters to books and journals, including Studies in the Novel, Journal of Victorian Culture, and Victorian Crime, Madness, and Sensation; and has written introductions for books by Dickens and Trollope. She has worked as an editorial assistant at McGraw-Hill, as a media buyer for Christie’s Auction House, and as a bartender at the airport in Rochester, where she learned how to mix a mean martini. She currently serves as an assistant editor for the academic journal Victorian Literature and Culture and resides in Arizona with her husband, two children, and a ridiculously cute beagle named Rosy.

Here Odden dreamcasts an adaptation of A Lady in the Smoke, her first novel:

There were times when I was so lost in writing A Lady in the Smoke that I felt as though I were watching a movie and merely writing down what was happening on screen. For example, the day I was writing the first confrontation between Lady Elizabeth and Tom Flynn—when he thinks she’s an earl’s daughter, flirting with Mr. Wilcox out of narcissistic boredom, and she assumes he’s an unethical newspaperman intent on digging up dirt to sell papers—I could see her hands tugging on her shawl and watch the changing shape of his mouth; I could hear their words and the tones in their voices. They did everything; I just wrote it down. So although it sounds like a complete fantasy to have this book turn into a movie, I guess it’s been in previews for a while, in my head.

There are so many talented British actresses who might play my heroine Lady Elizabeth Fraser—but I think I’d pick Emma Watson. Lady Elizabeth is sensitive, an avid reader, fiercely loyal to her friends, and courageous when it’s needed; she has also buried the pain from observing her parents’ warped marriage for years. To me, Emma Watson seems a bit of an “old soul,” and there’s a vulnerability, wry humor, and intelligence to her that I love. I’m thinking of her in The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

For Paul Wilcox, railway surgeon and love interest, there’s never really been a question: Ben Barnes, who played the lead in Prince Caspian. I think Barnes was in my mind from the first because my kids were on a Narnia binge, and we watched Prince Caspian several nights running. Again and again, I was struck by how Barnes registered emotions such as uncertainty, humility, responsibility, and affection on his face.

For Tom Flynn, my clever, straight-talking, impassioned, and slightly pugnacious newspaperman for the London Falcon—and Paul’s deeply loyal friend—I might pick Johnny Galecki, from The Big Bang Theory. I think he has the timing, the humor, and the heart for the part.

For Lady Margaret Fraser, Elizabeth’s laudanum-addicted, embittered mother, I had no idea, so I asked my friend Andrew Fish. He has been connected with Hollywood, interviewing people in the film industry and writing about production for years. I told him about Lady Margaret’s character, and he suggested Melissa Leo, from The Fighter. That felt just right.

Visit Karen Odden's website.

Writers Read: Karen Odden.

The Page 69 Test: A Lady in the Smoke.

--Marshal Zeringue

Alex Gordon's "Jericho"

Kristine Smith is the author of the Jani Kilian series and other science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories under her own name. As Alex Gordon, she has written the supernatural thrillers Gideon and Jericho.

Here she dreamcasts an adaptation of the books as a miniseries: 

Jericho is a supernatural thriller with a horror chaser. It continues the story of Lauren Reardon, who was first introduced in Gideon (2015). Over the course of the books, Lauren is coming to grips with the fact that she is the latest in a long line of witches and that the world is a very different place than what she has grown up believing it to be.

Ideally, the books would be filmed together, as a single season miniseries. I have no clue who should direct, but they would need to prefer a low-key approach to horror and prize character over kabooms! I am guessing that anyone who has directed episodes of The Walking Dead, The Expanse, or a number of other cable series would do well.

In keeping with the supernatural flavor, the actors chosen can be living or dead, and if necessary will be age-adjusted to suit.

Lauren Reardon—a 30-something Sandra Bullock. Lauren is an outdoorsy woman who enjoys kayaking, backwoods camping, rock climbing. Girl-next-door attractive, and very down-to-earth. Bullock appeals to me in those respects. She’s always struck me as someone you could run into at the local drugstore or mini-mart and have a friendly, funny no-drama conversation with. But there’s a toughness there, and a sense that something happened to her that she simply does not discuss with anyone.

A couple of characters who make their first entrances in Gideon:

Virginia Waycross—quiet, no-nonsense, spine of steel and work-roughened hands. A 60ish Billie Whitelaw. Maybe her turn as Mrs. Blaylock in The Omen stuck with me, or maybe it’s just her sharp-boned face, but she’s who I see in straight-legged jeans and a man’s shirt, talking to her horses over the fence as she casts her wards.

Leaf Cateman was always, always John Huston. His Noah Cross in Chinatown made an indelible impression—the powerful patriarch who convinces himself that everything he does is justified.

Moving on to characters who make their first appearances in Jericho:

Gene Kaster—my initial vision was of a 40ish Willem Dafoe, and though I’ve cycled through Lee Pace and Eric Roberts, I keep going back to Dafoe. No matter who else is on screen with him, he draws the camera, the eye. There’s charm there that can flick over to menace in a blink of an eye, and a hint of the strange in that angular face.

Andrew Carmody is a mogul in the guise of a surfer dude. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau does rich rumpled very well.

Peter Augustin—Orlando Jones, who I first saw as Captain Frank Irving in Sleepy Hollow. He can project a world-weary decency that reminds me of a younger Morgan Freeman or Harry Morgan.

Visit Alex Gordon's website and Kristine Smith's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Kristine Smith & Gaby.

--Marshal Zeringue

Billie Livingston's "The Crooked Heart of Mercy"

Billie Livingston is the award-winning author of four novels, a collection of short stories, and a poetry collection. Her novel One Good Hustle, a Globe and Mail Best Book selection, was nominated for the Giller Prize and for the Canadian Library Association’s Young Adult Book Award. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Here Livingston shares some thought about the above-the-line talent to adapt her latest novel, The Crooked Heart of Mercy, for the big screen:

Directed by: Jodie Foster

Casting suggestions:

Francis, male, 34 years old : Robert Downey Jr., Philip Seymour Hoffman
Maggie, female, 32 years old: Brittany Murphy, Toni Collette, Marisa Tomei
Ben, male, 35 years old: Young Jeff Bridges, Mark Wahlberg, Ray Liotta

To cast The Crooked Heart of Mercy, you’d need three actors who could really pull of strong working class people. Jodie Foster has played dozens of these kinds of characters and to have her take the helm, as director, would be really interesting. I bet she could direct the hell out of a story like this.

Francis, though a supporting character is something of a linchpin to the story. A gay, promiscuous, alcoholic priest, Francis is playful, confused, funny and ultimately gifted with a grace that helps people forward with their own secret burdens. A 30-something Robert Downey Jr. would be fantastic. You’d need that kind of temperament—great sensitivity and a sharp sense of humor. Philip Seymour Hoffman would have made a great Francis too.

Francis’s sister Maggie: Like Francis, Maggie is a smartass with a smart mouth, both fierce and fragile, and enormously sensitive. She’s on the other side of a huge loss, and her husband is in the psych ward with a hole in his head. A 30-something Toni Collette could nail it. Brittany Murphy, had she lived the life she should have, would also have made a great Maggie. When I think of the job Marisa Tomei did with In the Bedroom, I bet she too would really brought Maggie home.

And finally Maggie’s husband Ben. Ben has just woken up in the psych ward with a hole in his head he can’t explain. A working class guy, Ben is a limo driver, gentle, with a keen mind and great sense of the absurd —before he retreats into a bit of madness. Mark Wahlberg could pull off Ben. Actually The Crooked Heart of Mercy is story with a Catholic underpinning and from what I understand Wahlberg is a pretty serious Catholic. He would probably bring an intriguing undercurrent to the character. A young Jeff Bridges would have been good. A young Ray Liotta would have made a great Ben too – but you’d need a strong actress to balance Liotta out or he might come off as pure maniac!

Read more about the author and her books at the official Billie Livingston website.

My Book, The Movie: Cease to Blush.

The Page 69 Test: The Crooked Heart of Mercy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lucinda Riley's "The Storm Sister"

Lucinda Riley is the New York Times bestselling author of The Orchid House, The Girl on the Cliff, The Lavender Garden, The Midnight Rose, and The Seven Sisters. Her books have sold more than five million copies in thirty languages She lives in London and the English countryside with her husband and four children.

Here Riley dreamcasts an adaptation of The Storm Sister, the second installment in the seven book series, The Seven Sisters:

As a former actress, there is nothing more satisfying than the game of casting my own characters. I remember sweating before auditions in London, and then wondering what was going through the casting director’s mind as I read for a part. While my acting days are long over, I do so admire the young British actors of today. So for my main character Ally in The Storm Sister, I would have to choose Eleanor Tomlinson, who was so brilliant in the BBC adaptation of Poldark. With her vibrant red hair and feisty personality, she would really do Ally justice. Ally’s half-American lover and fellow sailor Theo would be played by Jake Gyllenhaal.

For all my sisters in this series, I imagine that their historical ancestor will be played by the same actress, as they are physically similar. So Ally’s great-great-grandmother Anna would also be played by Tomlinson, but perhaps with the voice of Birgit Nilsson, the wonderful Swedish soprano, as we hear Anna sing Grieg’s enchanting music in the first production of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt in 1878. A younger Alexander Skarsgård could lend that certain charm and edge to the musician Jens Halvorsen who Anna falls in love with.

Of course we catch glimpses of Ally’s five sisters in The Storm Sister as well. Maia, the eldest, finds her heritage in the heat of Rio de Janeiro, as told in the first book in the series, The Seven Sisters. Anne Hathaway is a perfect fit, with her large dark eyes, and her ability to express such intense emotion, as she did in Les Miserables.

I’ve given the reader a little look into Star’s perspective at the end of The Storm Sister. Her own story, The Shadow Sister, will be available in the US in Spring 2017, and I have imagined her to look rather like Léa Seydoux (who was most recently in Spectre). I think she would portray Star’s shy intelligence wonderfully.

For the other sisters: CeCe would be played by the talented Australian Aboriginal actress Jessica Mauboy, Tiggy by the beautiful Lily Collins, and Elektra by the British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw.

As for the elusive seventh sister … well, I can’t reveal anything until the very last book in the series….

Visit Lucinda Riley's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Storm Sister.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tessa Arlen's "Death Sits Down to Dinner"

Tessa Arlen, the daughter of a British diplomat, had lived in or visited her parents in Singapore, Cairo, Berlin, the Persian Gulf, Beijing, Delhi and Warsaw by the time she was sixteen. She came to the U.S. in 1980 and worked as an H.R. recruiter for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee for the 1984 Olympic Games, where she interviewed her future husband for a job. She lives in Bainbridge Island, Washington.

Here Arlen dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, Death Sits Down to Dinner:

This is the tale of a murder at a fashionable English dinner party to celebrate the birthday of Winston Churchill a year before WW1. It touches on the anxiety and paranoia of a country on the edge of war, the differences in class, in race and social dependence that is in the financial dependence of women.

For Winston Churchill the English actor Robert Hardy immediately springs to mind, as he was in The Wilderness Years. He did a splendid job of portraying Churchill in the 1920s which is just a little later than the book which is set in 1913. Hardy looks like Churchill, he sounds like him and he played the part with all the wit, charm and the stupendous ego that are such hallmarks of Churchill’s rather overwhelming personality and complex nature.

Edith Jackson, our amateur sleuth Lady Montfort’s ‘Watson’, should be played by Emily Watson the way she played Elsie the housemaid in Gosford Park. Emily Watson displays the same sang froid that I imagine Edith Jackson has. Both characters are intelligent and aware of what is going on around them, and are self-contained and not given to showing their emotions. There is a big exception in Watson’s role in Gosford when she completely throws in the towel and is of course fired because of her emotional outburst. Mrs. Jackson would never have behaved this way: she prides herself on her self-discipline!

Julia Ormond as she was in Smilla’s Sense of Snow for Clementine Talbot the Countess of Montfort, our amateur sleuth. I imagine that Clementine has the beautiful skin, dark hair and large expressive eyes as Ormond. Though Clementine is a little more charming and playful than Ormond’s Smilla -- behind Clementine’s beautiful serene face there is a brain ticking away ... and nothing escapes her notice.

Hermione Kingsley absolutely must be played Phyllida Law as she was in The Winter Guest. Phyllida Law (who is by the way Emma Thompson’s mother) plays strong, quirky, elderly characters and can be extremely amusing especially when she is being imperious and commanding.

Visit Tessa Arlen's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Tessa Arlen & Daphne.

The Page 69 Test: Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman.

My Book, The Movie: Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman.

The Page 69 Test: Death Sits Down to Dinner.

--Marshal Zeringue