Dot Dead Diary

If I Got To Cast Drop By Drop, The Movie....

Out of the blue, a pair of award-winning screenwriters optioned my second book, Smasher, back in 2010. Reading the actual script last fall, I could just imagine the characters up on the silver screen in the local multiplex. Alas, not going to happen--at least not anytime soon. The option expired a few weeks ago. The screenwriters told me they have picked up assignments from producers who liked their treatment, but Smasher: The Movie was not going to be “greenlighted.” My agent went on suicide watch, but I had expected nothing so wasn’t disappointed (much).

What about my next book? In her review of Drop By Drop, Lynn Farris wrote she “wouldn't be surprised to see this as an upcoming movie. Five stars out of five." So why not Drop By Drop as feature-length film even if not Smasher? Why not go along with the fantasy? After all, I live in the world of fiction. Let’s cast the film!

Here’s a précis of Drop By Drop:

Stanford professor Sam Rockman suffers the crushing loss of his wife in a bombing at San Francisco Airport. Seeking meaning in the ruins of his life, he accepts an offer to work for the Senate Intelligence Committee. What Sam wants out of his stint in D.C. is revenge for the death of his wife. What he gets is danger and betrayal. Secret documents are showing up on his doorstep. Russians are trying to poison him. Sam finds allies among a savvy Kentucky senator, a billionaire investment banker, his wife's old rabbi, and the president's national security advisor. Too often, he finds himself thrown together with his counterpart on the other side of the aisle, the whip-smart, six-footer Cecilia Plant. Mourning still for his wife, Sam steels himself against Cecilia's appeal and remains suspicious of her motives.

So we have to cast Sam and Cecilia first. We know he’s six feet tall because he’s the same height as she is. Other than that we don’t know what he looks like. Kind of nerdy maybe. After all, he is a Stanford history professor in his mid-thirties. Lots of candidates then but I’m going to with Jake Gyllenhaal. He’s six feet tall and 32 years old. Earnest in Love and Other Drugs, driven in Source Code. He should be bankable, too.

Next is Cecilia. Getting this part right is the key to the movie. Readers love her. Joe Hartlaub wrote in his review in Bookreporter.com, “With regard to the characters, Plant almost steals the book from Rockman; if Raffel would see fit to bring her back in a future work, I certainly wouldn’t object.” Here she is in her first meeting with Sam: 

“We need to get the motherfuckers who did that.” She didn’t snarl as she cursed. She spoke in soft tones, as if to minimize the attention that would come unbidden to a foul-mouthed, red-headed woman with a seventy-five inch span between the tips of her heels and the crown of her head.

She’s six-feet tall (the extra three inches are from her heels) and an ex-athlete. Wait, I got it! Adrianne Palicki. She’s within an inch of six-feet. She can definitely handle the bad language--having played bad-girl Tyra Collette in "Friday Night Lights." While in high school she played basketball and ran track. I’ve seen her on the screen as both a blonde and as a brunette; no reason to think she wouldn’t look just as great with auburn tresses. (Calling Clairol!) And even when she played a bad girl, she projected underlying intelligence.

Did I mention I myself worked for the Senate just as Sam Rockman did? One of my colleagues back in those days was Fred Thompson who (much later) showed his acting chops on TV’s "Law and Order." And he actually served as a senator from Tennessee. Not too much of a stretch then to see him playing a member of the upper house representing the neighboring state of Kentucky. (Always glad to help out a former colleague.)

Billionaire investment banker George Fairchild has made the Forbes list of richest people under 40. Here’s where we first see him in the book:

George measured no taller than five-five, an inch shorter than Rachel and weighed in at about 130, only five pounds more than her. No banker’s suit for George. He wore khakis with a crease sharp enough to slice a loaf of bread and a blue-striped button-down crisp enough to crackle like cellophane.

Let’s go with Ryan Phillippe most recently seen on TV in "Damages." A baby-faced 38 he makes the age cut.

 

My own rabbi says she likes the fact that rabbis in my novels are not figures of fun. Can comedic actor Paul Rudd play a serious clergyman? I say yes.

 

The president’s national security advisor is a tough, cigarette-smoking, New York dame. Let’s go with Dianne Wiest of "In Treatment" and Hannah and Her Sisters.

 

And finally, what about President Lucas? Here we see him on TV:

The guy looked so damned presidential. He reached the same six foot four Lincoln had. His hair was swept back in a Reaganesque pompadour. An aversion to ties part of his brand, he wore an open-neck French blue shirt and navy blazer. He conveyed to the voters that he was no empty suit, but the perfect fit of his clothing, the way his jacket hung from his shoulders, distinguished him from Joe Sixpack even more surely than gray pinstripes.

Here’s the casting coup of the 21st century. Mitt Romney was a neighbor of a friend of mine. I met him at her birthday party. Don’t know how good an actor he would be, but from the description of President Lucas above it wouldn’t be much of a stretch, would it? And it’s my hunch that he will be looking for work after the first Tuesday of November. 

 Thanks for humoring me in my reverie. (But if the agents of Mr. Gyllenhaal or Ms. Palicki see this post, please do not hesitate to get in touch.)

Keith

Keith’s Drop By Drop is available for a free download from Amazon.com through Saturday. (Click here.)

Thanks to imdb.com, igossip.com, huffington post, Wikipedia, accesshollywood.com, and mediaite.com for the photos above.

Confessing the Truth

In my last post, I listed one true and six false statements.  Now I'm 'fessing up.  My comments on the veracity of each of the seven statements are in italics below.

1. I dated Stephanie Zimbalist of the Remington Steele TV show.
No such luck.  (I am ignoring Diana's comment.)  Loren figured this one was true, saying he knew I struck out with Ali MacGraw.  Two things, Loren: 1) she was married to Robert Evans when I met her and 2) I do have a handwritten souvenir of our "relationship" on my office wall.

2. I flew on a small plane with Paul Newman.

 

Bingo!  I was taking a late flight from DC to Boston.  Noise abatement rules had already kicked in at Logan, so I climbed on a petite turboprop which made little noise compared to a jet.  We were going to be polite and not awaken the slumbering Hub.  Anyway, just about the only other passenger was Mr. Newman.  There were a number of flight attendants, but I don't recall being attended by any of them; they all hovered around him.  (Richard B picked this as the correct statement over on Facebook.  You win, Richard!)

3. I was lost for over six hours in the sewers of Paris.

 

In the summer of 08, I was stuck in King Hezekiah's 2700 year-old tunnel under Jerusalem.  But nope never been in the Parisian nether lands.

4. I went to a garden party at Buckingham Palace and met the Queen.

 
I did go to a party at the American Embassy in London where I noted a Picasso over the loo, but, nope, Her Majesty never invited me over for a cuppa and crumpet.

5. When camping, I found a rattlesnake cuddled on top of my sleeping bag when I awoke.

 

Diana says I'm not the camping type.  Say what?  I was a boy scout.  Still this is a whopper.

6. My first marriage lasted less than three months.

[Not posting a photo here!]

I didn't get married till I was 35.  So, I just skipped the first marriage and went right to the trophy wife.

7. Vice President Mondale asked for my input for Jimmy Carter's infamous malaise speech.  (That's me on bottom right)

 
Deb says she thinks the guy in the bottom right is indeed me.  She is correct, but we were discussing intelligence legislation, not the malaise speech.  (That's Director of Central Intelligence Stansfield Turner to Vice President Mondale's right.)

Thanks everyone for playing along.  Your guesses were inspired!

Self-Absorbed Writers of the Silver Screen

I watched Starting Out in the Evening on DVD downstairs last night while my wife, #3, and #4 watched No Reservations upstairs.  Any serious flick about a novelist gets bonus points from me.  Funnily enough, the film starred Frank Langella as a mostly-forgotten, self-absorbed writer living in an apartment on the Upper West Side.  (Of course, the place looks great.  Real estate porn.)  Into his life waltzes a grad student who wants to resuscitate his reputation as a way to make hers.  Why funnily enough?  Because the first movie I remember Mr. Langella in was Diary of a Mad Housewife where he again played a self-absorbed writer.  Somewhere in the 37 years between the two films he moved from dashing to decrepit.  Anyway the verdict on the movie?  Intelligent and thought-provoking.  See it for what it has to say about aging and the writer's compulsion.  I'm going to track down the novel by Brian Morton that the movie's based on.

As a sidelight, I laughed when Langella's character approached an editor he had known.  The editor tells him that no one prints literary fiction anymore.  In real life, my manuscript was turned down by an editor at a very large publisher who told my agent I'd written "a gripping book that kept me turning pages from the very start," but that what I'd written was "too firmly rooted in the genre world" for her house.  Can't win nowadays.

 

Rewriting, Rebirth, and Groundhog Day

My wife, two friends, and I celebrated Groundhog Day (which was February 2.  What do you mean you missed it?) by going out for burgers and coming back home to watch the eponymic cinema masterpiece starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. 

Mark Terry, my fellow Inkspot blogger, asked a couple of weeks ago what advice you would give to your 15-year old self.  "Groundhog Day" builds a movie around a similar theme -- what if you could keep repeating your life till you got it right? 

Apparently, the film has great appeal to Jews, Christians, and especially Buddhists.  A 2003 New York Times article, reports that Angela Zito of the Center for Religion and Media at New York University tells her class that "Groundhog Day perfectly illustrates the Buddhist notion of samsara, the continuing cycle of rebirth that Buddhists regard as suffering that humans must try to escape."

On top of everything else, the movie resonates for me as a novelist.  Writing gives me just the opportunity that Bill Murray gets in "Groundhog Day."  I can live in my fictional world and keep going back over and over what's happening till I get it right.  Draft 2 is closer than the first draft.  Somewhere around Draft 8 I usually get it the way I want it. When rewriting, I live in an alternate reality where the premise of "Groundhog Day" comes true.  It's all part of the continuing cycle of suffering which we writers try to escape.

Hitch and Me

It’s a little embarrassing when I’m asked which writers inspire me. Now, I love mysteries and have been reading them since I picked up my first Hardy Boys book decades ago. Like so many crime fiction authors I count Hammett’s Maltese Falcon, Chandler’s Philip Marlowes, and Macdonald’s Lew Archers among my all-time favorites.

But here’s the thing. All three of that Holy Trinity write about private detectives who solve mysteries and rescue maidens as part of their job. One of Chandler’s books is even titled, Trouble is My Business. When it comes to my own scribbling, I like writing not about someone who seeks trouble, but someone whom troubles ambush. You know, a poor schmuck whose comfortable existence is shattered by an unexpected crisis. I find inspiration for that kind of story not from any particular book, but instead from movies, from Alfred Hitchcock movies, in fact.

In a prototypical Hitchcock film some unsuspecting soul (often Jimmy Stewart) gets embroiled in a crisis. (Here are five of my favorite examples: A tourist stumbles upon the key to an insidious spy ring, ("The 39 Steps"), a tennis pro strikes up a conversation with a psychopath ("Strangers on A Train"), a small town woman discovers her uncle is a serial murderer ("Shadow of a Doubt"), an invalid sees a murder across the courtyard ("Rear Window"), an advertising executive is mistaken as a secret agent ("North by Northwest").) By the end of the last reel, no matter what initial reluctance has been shown, the protagonist has discovered unexpected resourcefulness and courage in doing the right thing.

I think the power in the Hitchcock formula is that the audience can identify with the protagonist. “Hey,” we might think, “I wonder how I would react if caught up in a spy ring or if the target of a serial murderer.” I know when I submerge myself in writing, it’s this idea of testing whether the main character has what it takes that drives the story forward.

In the private detective novel, main characters don’t change much; they do their job. In the Hitchcockian crime novel, main characters may lead a boring life at the outset, but by the end they have grown and become heroes.

(Cross-posted at the Inkspot blog.)

Two Crime Flicks, A Visit to Kate's, Good Food & Lots More

#1 did not come home for Thanksgiving.  My godson was having an engagement party five miles from #1's dorm this past Saturday night.  Time to hop on a plane, don't you think?  There was a small logistical problem.  Of course, I had to be in town for Thanksgiving at my sister's.  And I didn't want to skip out early on my brother, sister-in-law, and two nephews who were in town for the holiday.  The upshot was that, despite vowing to never take another red-eye to the East Coast, after shabbat dinner Friday night, I drove to Oakland and left on a JetBlue flight at 11.45PM.  I did manage to sleep for a few hours.  Good thing, too.  #1 and I had a busy Saturday.

We breakfasted at a local diner and then checked out the art at the Gardner and MFA.  #1 loved the sense the Gardner gave her of being in a villa.  As always, I feasted my eyes on the Sargents including the MFA's wondrous "An Artist in His Studio."  We then made it to the Brattle to see the William Powell-Myrna Low 1934 mystery classic, The Thin Man, one of #1's all-time favorites.  I think I caught a fifteen minute catnap which was the freshening I needed before heading to the country club for the engagement party.

Couper and Julia's wedding is in just a few weeks, which means they're in the home stretch.  The party was great, especially toward the end when we had time to catch up with   Couper and Julia (on the left with me) and we had a chance to meet Julia's parents.  I knew a fair amount about them since I'd read Julia's mom's witty, nostalgic, and perceptive memoir.  Couper's mom regaled the attendees with the true story of how the couple's paternal grandfathers had lived on the same block as grad students in the 1930's.  BTW, it was Couper who generated the all-time busy day for this blog when he linked my posting on Mel Gibson and Hebrew National to defamer.com.  Julia's blog attracts plenty of hits on its own.

Sunday morning #1 and I did the crossword puzzle over breakfast in a cafe and then strolled over to Kate's Mystery Books in Cambridge.  Proprietor Kate Mattes and I shmoozed about books, California, publishing, and such for an hour or so.  I walked out with two mysteries set in Turkey (The Janissary Tree and Belshazzar's Daughter) with nary a clue that her store would be named a winner of MWA's Raven Award the very next day.

Monday and Tuesday I checked out three of #1's classes including the Cuban Revolution (the Castroites were not nice to the opposition), Introduction to History of Science (heard a lecture on Darwin), and Introduction to Comparative Politics (learned lots about how countries regard their constitutions -- I think the professor said Bolivia has had 18).

I ate awfully well, too.  For dinner we hit the extremes from Oleana, a yummy and not cheap Mediterrenean restaurant where I had fish in a claypot, to Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage, whose fare was called out in a Wall Street Journal article last spring as among the best in the nation.  I made friends with the server at Hi-Rise where #1 and I had breakfast one morning and I met Couper's parents, Bill and Susan, my treasured friends from grad school days, for tea another afternoon.

#1 and I also managed to fit in another mystery film, Gone Baby Gone which, like last year's Oscar-winner The Departed, was set in South Boston amidst police corruption. It was also the better movie.  Critics must not have noticed or perhaps been a little reluctant to say a film directed by Ben Affleck is superior to the one Martin Scorsese finally won an Oscar for.  Monday and Tuesday we checked out other museums and other cafes.  Along the way, I met a lot of #1's classmates. 

All in all, one great trip. It did end on a bit of a sour note, though.  The winds were blowing so hard that our plane (manufactured by Airbus) could not make it all the way across the country.  We stopped to refuel in Denver which meant I got home at 1.30 AM.  I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep tonight.

Deborah Kerr

English actors switch back and forth between stage and screen with more facility than their American colleagues.  When I lived in England, the theater was cheap and fun and amazing.  For a couple of quid, I could see Alec Guiness from the second or third row at the Oxford Playhouse (in "The National Health"), Ingrid Bergman (in "The Constant Wife"), and Wendy Hiller (in "Crown Matrimonial").  Along with these giants, I saw all-time fave Deborah Kerr in "The Day After the Fair."  When it comes to her film roles, others will remember Ms. Kerr for "From Here to Eternity with her famous beach scene with Burt Lancaster.  But for me her two best roles were in "Separate Tables" where she plays a mousy woman who defies her mother and social convention to become heroic in a small, understated way and in "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" where she plays a nun who resists the temptation offered by Robert Mitchum.  The "Separate Tables" cast also included David Niven, Gladys Cooper, Rita Hayworth, Rod Taylor, and the aforementioned Wendy Hiller and Burt Lancaster.  Among those stars she shined brightest.  Here's what the Times review said:  "Most brilliant and true of the performers is Deborah Kerr."  She once said:  "I adore not being me.  I'm not very good at being me. That's why I adore acting so much."

Deborah Kerr died Tuesday at age 86.  Read the Independent's obituary here.

Reading - From Generation to Generation

When kids started popping up around the Raffel household, I resolved to do my best to pass along a love of books to them. I started reading to #1 before her first birthday. What a time we had with Anne of Green Gables, The Black Stallion, and so many more! But like a car that’s been push-started, she rolled away with me just watching by the time she was five. #2 lasted a little longer. When she was six, I read her the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone before bedtime. By the time I got home from the office the next day, she’d finished it. That was the end of bedtime stories for her. #3 was reading solo by seven. I think she endured that long because she was feeling a little sorry for me. #4 is a son and I long dreamt of reading him some of my own childhood favorites, you know, the “boy” books. He loved Tarzan of the Apes and Howard Pyle’s King Arthur and His Knights. He tolerated Tom Swift and the Hardy Boys. He rejected Chip Hilton, Howard Pease’s Tod Moran series, and more. Together we discovered a new favorite series which I call “Ingrid” -- Peter Abrahams’ Echo Falls books.

Now #4’s done, too. He'd rather read on his own. In the last couple of weeks, he’s read Rick Riordan’s Lightning Thief and its two sequels on his own. The latest Harry Potter, too.

After seventeen years of reading to my children at night, I’m done. A superannuated bedtime reader, that’s me. It’s a long wait till grandkids. Sigh.

OTOH, I can take comfort in this – my mission was accomplished. All four kids are readers. #1 and I even share books. Heck, she came with me to Left Coast Crime and Thrillerfest this year and had a great time at the panels and meeting writers.

All’s not lost. We can have shared experiences with stories so long as we watch them and not read them. This week #3, #4, and I have been checking out old episodes of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. They love them, just as I did. Last night I went to the Stanford Theatre with #4 to see Creature from the Black Lagoon. And this weekend #1 and I are going back to the Stanford to see my all-time favorite, The Maltese Falcon.

(A version of this posting also showed up on the Inkspot blog.)

No Rest for the Wicked (Okay, Maybe a Little)

I finished draft #5 of Two Graves at the end of July.  Since then I've been waiting for comments.  Now I wasn't sitting on my rear doing absolutely nothing.  I did do my 2006 taxes.  (When I handed them over to my accountant for review, he said, "What?  It's not October yet.")  In addition, I saw my first non-kids first-run movie in a blue moon (The Bourne Ultimatum), watched Barry break the home run record, went to Davis to see my niece in Beauty and the Beast, lunched with friends, celebrated my wife's birthday, and hung out with #1 while the rest of the family spent five days in Montana.  Those lazy, hazy days are over. 

Today I got the comments pack on draft #5 of Two Graves.  It's getting close. 

When my father, #4, and I went to see The Legend of Zorro, a mediocre sequel to The Mask of Zorro (which, in turn, was a pale imitation of the best swashbuckler ever, The Mark of Zorro), my dad said, "Needed more action."  Now that's #4's catchphrase for any movie that does not keep his eyes glued to the screen.  Why do I bring this up?  Because essentially that was the comment on this draft:  "Needs more action in the first hundred pages." 

Gotta get going.  En garde.

Bogie with Gloria and Ingrid

What a double feature!  The main reason #1 and I went to the Stanford Theatre in downtown Palo Alto tonight was to see In A Lonely Place, the 1950 Bogie film co-starring the cool blonde fatale, Gloria Grahame.  I'd seen the movie decades ago and remembered it as being terrific.  It's based on a novel by Dorothy Hughes, the unsung noir crime novelist of the 1940's and '50's.  Grahame was as good as could be especially right at the beginning when she held Bogie off with a razor-sharp tongue.  The problem with the film, #1 and I agreed, was Bogie's over-the-top performance.  No wonder she's scared of him.  I understand the novel's much different.  Going to put that on the list.  Still, the film should not be missed.  (Would have been worth a trip up here with Wes, Naomi.)

No ambivalence regarding the other half of the twin bill, Casablanca. In the 1973 film Blume in Love, George Segal asks Kris Kristofferson what movie he's going to see.  Kris says (according to my memory) "Gone with the Wind."  Haven't you seen it? asks George.  Sure, many times, says Kris, but why go to movie that I don't know whether I'll like, when I can go to one I know I will?  That's exactly how I feel about Casablanca.  I still laugh, cheer, and tear up in all the right places.  Can't help it.

Next week at the Stanford is Dial M for Murder.  #1 and I will be there.

P.S.  There's little doubt that Gloria Grahame inspired the artist who drew the cover of Megan Abbott's The Song Is You.