Claire and Mia Fontaine's "Have Mother, Will Travel"

Mia Fontaine is an author, writer and motivational speaker whose past appearances include Good Morning America, The O’Reilly Factor, and The Montel Williams Show. She has spoken nationally about drug addiction and the long-term cost of child sexual abuse. Claire Fontaine is the author of two memoirs, a national public speaker and a former screenwriter.

In their bestselling memoir, Come Back: A Mother and Daughter’s Journey Through Hell and Back, readers around the world were inspired by the story of Mia’s harrowing drug addiction and her mother, Claire’s, desperate and ultimately successful attempts to save her.

Here Claire Fontaine shares some suggestions for cast and director of Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World, their second book together:

Two of the most significant characters in the book aren’t people, they’re the world itself and the mysterious, medieval Avignon, France, where we lived for four months. So the director is key. Some locations can be faked, many would be shot on location or in the region – Katmandu; Beijing; Cairo; Budapest; Meteora, Greece; ancient sites unique to Bulgaria; Dracula’s castle; Provence; Singapore, among many others. It would need someone who’s worked in a big arena, who can convey global grandeur as well as the intimacy of the intense, primal relationship of a mother and daughter. It would also have to be an American. The more we traveled the more we learned that while some things about mothers and daughters are universal, the experience, POV and attitude of American women in general, and the American mother/daughter dynamic in particular, is distinct and unique. You couldn’t possibly know the subtleties unless you were raised here, an audience of American women will pick up on it. Director Kathryn Bigelow, who won the Oscar for The Hurt Locker, would be perfect.

The perfect actress to portray Claire would be a cross between Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who’s earthy, emotional and funny (as in we’re laughing with you, Julia, not at you. Really!), and the aloof, guarded Angelica Huston. That would also make me Italian Jewish, which I am. If you’re old enough to know who they are, an even better Claire would be a fusion of the Italian actress Anna Magnani, who’s intense, emotional (and looks a lot like Claire), and the late great, wacky Lucille Ball. Good luck, future producer.

Mila Kunis is definitely Mia. She’s got Mia’s spark, humor and beauty (can you tell it’s the mother half of us writing this?), as the same look. She’s also from the Ukraine, where Mia’s Bubbie is from, though it was Czechoslovakia when Bub was born (“don’t call me Bub!”). In the book, we visit Budapest so Mia can see where her Bubbie was in hiding from the Nazis during WWII. Bubbie lived there from age thirteen, but she was born in a small town in Czechoslovakia in 1927. And we do mean small – they actually got the news from a town crier. He would listen to the latest news on the only telephone in town, which was at the only post office in town, and then stood in the center of town, played a melody on his drum that Bub still remembers, and then cried out the news. Now you know where the term town crier comes from. See what you can learn on this website?

In adapting the book (Claire is a former screenwriter) we’d do some flashbacks to Bubbie’s wartime experiences, as they loomed large in Mia’s childhood. Not in a bad way. Part of the fallout of the sexual abuse we chronicled in our first memoir, Come Back: A Mother and Daughter’s Journey Through Hell and Back, was a long period of nightmares where Mia was trapped and in danger, and her Bubbie would appear to take her into safe hiding with her. Mia and her Bubbie also have many other things in common to children who suffered extreme trauma. German actress Diane Kruger, who was terrific in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, is perfect, she’s a dead ringer for Bubbie when she was young. And it was Bub’s flawless German that often saved her (she could scrub it clean of Yiddish when necessary.)

Claire’s husband, Paul, stuck back home with the famous fixer-upper (or fixer-downer) is played by Aiden Quinn, whose big gray eyes look sad even when he’s happy, that Irish thing.

Our angel in Avignon, Chyrstelle, plays a big role in the second half of the book. She’s a dear old friend who scolded, coddled, entertained and educated us, as only a proper Frenchwoman can. Arielle Dombasle, absolutement, she’s beautiful, charming, whip smart and she can sing. Isabelle, our cute young landlord and now friend, looks and sounds like Audrey Tautou. Our American friend, Kristen, of French-word-a-day.com, is Julie Delpy, who is half American, half French, and all adorable.

Our Greek chorus, Leah Komaiko, a little muse whose tart and tender words of wisdom spice up the story here and there, would be Lisa Kudrow.

Visit Claire and Mia Fontaine’s website and the Have Mother, Will Travel Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue

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Stephen Blackmoore's "City of the Lost"

Stephen Blackmoore is a Los Angeles-based writer of crime and horror.

Here he dreamcasts an adaptation of City of the Lost, his first novel:

I've been wracking my brains for a while now wondering who would make a good Joe Sunday, the protagonist of my urban fantasy, City of the Lost. He's not a nice man. He's a thug. He's brutal. He's borderline psychopath, if not already well over the top.

He's not the one you call to rough up some guy who owes you money. He's the one you call when you need to stick that guy's hand down a garbage disposal until he tells you where the money is then light him on fire after sticking him to the wall with a nailgun.

Like I said, he's not a nice man.

It gets worse in that he's killed and brought back as an undead monster. Because, you know, a regular human monster just isn't scary enough.

So, yeah, I've been having trouble figuring out who would make a good Joe Sunday.

Until a few days ago when I saw this short video.

That's the Punisher fan film Dirty Laundry starring Thomas Jane who had the role in the 2004 Punisher movie. I didn't much care for that film, but this one? Yeah. This one works.

And that's totally Joe Sunday. Well, maybe if he were meaner. Particularly around the 6:30 mark.

Some of the other characters are harder than others. Samantha, sort of a femme fatale of the book, is easy. That's Veronica Lake hands down. That's who I had in mind when I wrote her. She's got a vibe of someone who doesn't quite fit in the modern day. She's a little too classy, a little too practiced. And there's a reason for that. But you'll have to read the book to find out what that is.

The tough one is the main antagonist, Sandro Giavetti, an old Chicago mobster who turns out to be a lot more than he looks. A lot older, too.

When I wrote him he had a John Huston vibe in my head. Like in Chinatown, then he was a little more Pacino, then Robert Duvall, then maybe Christopher Walken in twenty years.

I think Walken would probably make the best Giavetti. Or maybe Willem Dafoe. Somebody who can do crazy and monstrous one second and then look like he's your best buddy the next.

I think Jessica Alba during her Dark Angel days might make a good Gabriela, a witch who's running a downtown flophouse for homeless vampires.

A couple of odd thugs, Archie, a roid-rage slab of muscle in a suit and his twisted, midget companion, Jughead, are echoes of each other. I see someone like Dwayne Johnson in the role of Archie, but Jughead would probably have to be CGI, because he looks like Archie's half-formed twin.

Get those people together and a director who can do some decent grindhouse like Robert Rodriguez and I think it'd be pretty kick-ass.

Visit Stephen Blackmoore's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

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Amy Franklin-Willis's "The Lost Saints of Tennessee"

An eighth generation Southerner, Amy Franklin-Willis was born in Birmingham, Alabama. She received an Emerging Writer Grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation in 2007 to complete The Lost Saints of Tennessee, a novel inspired by stories of her father’s childhood in rural Pocahontas, Tennessee. Atlantic Monthly Press published The Lost Saints of Tennessee in 2012. It is an “Indie Next” Pick and received glowing reviews in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Atlanta Journal Constitution and others.

Here the author shares some suggestions for casting a big screen adaptation of her novel:

It would be a denial of epic proportions to say I’ve never considered who might play the lead characters in a film adaptation of The Lost Saints of Tennessee. Here’s the dream cast I think could make my story about three generations of a working-class Tennessee family come alive on the screen.

Ezekiel is our main character/anti-hero. When we meet him, he’s 42 and living in a converted shed behind his mother’s house in Clayton, Tennessee. After the loss of his twin brother in a mysterious drowning ten years before, grief and guilt have wrapped themselves around Zeke so tightly that he withdraws from life. My top pick to play Zeke is Matt Damon. This might seem an odd match since Lost Saints is a fair distance from Jason Bourne but I’ve seen Mr. Damon in “softer” movies of late like The Informant and We Bought a Zoo and he possesses the key element for Zeke—vulnerability. Damon also has a high likability factor and if the audience is going to go along for the ride on this redemption story/hero’s journey, they must like Zeke. His character will prove frustrating and the audience may want to throw things at the screen when he makes one of his dumb decisions but they must like him enough to want to see him triumph in the end. Women are drawn to Zeke’s handsome face and innate, though complicated, goodness and Damon is certainly easy on the eyes.

After Zeke, we have to cast his mother Lillian—who is in her early sixties and facing a life-threatening illness. Lillian exists in that pantheon of grand Southern mothers who can chain-smoke, dominate their families, and look fantastically tragic all at that same time. Casting requires making the choice to use a younger actress who can pull off the scenes that take place when Zeke is growing up and then aging her as the story moves through time or using two different actresses, a younger one and an older one. If we choose the two actresses route, my top picks for “older Lillian” would be Gena Rowlands, Helen Mirren (though I’m not sure how her Southern accent is!), or Jessica Lange. Each of these great actresses could convey Lillian’s combination of faded dreams, regret and beauty but also the passion and strength she possessed to weather the crises that come as she raises her family.

For “young Lillian,” Reese Witherspoon or Jessica Chastain would be divine. Witherspoon’s work in Walk the Line as June Carter proved that she has serious dramatic chops and I think she’d thrive tackling the complicated role of a flawed mother struggling to keep herself and her family together. Chastain appears to be the Meryl Streep of her generation and is stunning and perfect in every movie I’ve seen her appear.

Zeke maintains two romances over the course of the story—one through an affair with his ex-wife Jackie, who has re-married, and one with new love interest Elle, whom Zeke meets when he moves to his cousins’ farm in Virginia horse country. Robin Wright would be a perfect match for Jackie—Ms. Wright has such a powerful controlled presence on the screen. I loved her in The Conspirator and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. For the role of Elle, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone other than Charlize Theron as the gorgeous divorced riding instructor who captures Zeke’s heart. Elle had a disastrous first marriage and generally prefers the presence of horses to people.

For the secondary characters cast:

Zeke’s daughters. Fifteen-year old Honora: Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) or Dakota Fanning. Twelve year old Louisa: Joey King (Crazy, Stupid, Love). Zeke’s three sisters. Violet: oldest, sweet, quiet. Ellen Pompeo (Grey’s Anatomy). Daisy: bossy big sister always in everybody’s business. Amy Poehler. Rosie: only sibling to make it out of small town Clayton; successful country music manager. Parker Posey.

Learn more about the book and author at Amy Franklin-Willis's website, her Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

--Marshal Zeringue

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Jessica Brody's "52 Reasons to Hate My Father"

Jessica Brody's books include two novels for adults--The Fidelity Files and Love Under Cover--and the young adult novels The Karma Club and My Life Undecided.

Here she shares some insights on casting the lead in an adaptation of her new YA novel, 52 Reasons to Hate My Father:

I have to admit, I normally have a really hard time answering the question: “who do you see as the lead role if your book were turned into a film.” Because as the writer, I don’t actually picture my character that often in the writing process. I see the world through her eyes instead. I become her. So it’s hard for me to say who would play her. However, with this book, the movie rights were optioned before I even started writing it and so I kind of wrote the book imagining (and hoping!) that it would become a movie someday. Which I think helped me make the story more visual as I wrote. But I still didn’t have an actress in mind. Then, more recently, I was told that Victoria Justice (from the show Victorious on Nickelodeon) had expressed some early interest in starring in the film (although nothing official has been decided yet) and as soon I heard that, I couldn’t not picture her in the role. She would be absolutely perfect as Lexington Larrabee. She even kind of looks like the girl my publisher put on the cover! But regardless of who gets cast (or if the movie even gets made!), it’ll be fun to see someone else’s interpretation of the character.

Learn more about the book and author at Jessica Brody's website and blog.

Writers Read: Jessica Brody (October 2009).

--Marshal Zeringue

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Chris Nickson's "The Constant Lovers"

Chris Nickson has written since he was a boy growing up in Leeds, starting with a three-paragraph school essay telling a tale of bomb disposal. That brought the revelation that he enjoyed telling stories, and then more stories, teenage poetry, and music, as both a bassist and then a singer-songwriter-guitarist.

Nickson spent 30 years living in the US, playing in bands and writing. He's made a living as a writer since 1994. Much of his work has been music journalism, combining the twin passions of music and writing, specializing in world and roots music. He's the author of The NPR Casual Listener's Guide to World Music and dozens of other non-fiction books, most of them quickie biographies.

The Constant Lovers is the latest of his Leeds novels featuring Richard Nottingham. Here he shares some thoughts about adapting the story for the big screen:

Quite frankly I’d have reservations about them making movies from my Richard Nottingham series. The characters would become concrete, set in my mind, and when I wrote I’d be seeing their faces and hearing their voices (they’re currently recording an audiobook of the first book in my series, The Broken Token, and hearing my characters’ words spoken by someone scares me a little for the same reasons).

However, if it were to happen I’d like Christopher Eccleston to play the lead. He’s Northern, for a start, a superb actor of seemingly limitless range, and one who can use silence as well as words. The age is about right, and he could bring quiet intensity to the role. For the other parts I’ve absolutely no idea; I consciously try not to think about it, as odd as that may seem…

One thing’s for certain, though, I’d want my friend Alice Nutter to write the script. She gets it, completely, and she’s a superb playwright for the screen, with an Emmy under her belt (more than justified) and an even more glittering career ahead.

Director? I think Ken Loach’s political heart would be in the right place.

Learn more about the book and author at Chris Nickson's website, and view the book trailer for The Constant Lovers.

--Marshal Zeringue

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Katie Crouch & Grady Hendrix's "The White Glove War"

Katie Crouch and Grady Hendrix are co-authors of The White Glove War (Magnolia League Series #2).

Here they share some ideas about cast and director for adaptations of the series:

Though we both truly loved The Hunger Games, Snow White and the Huntsman, and the bevy of other movies out about earnest female characters kicking evil-doer butt this year, as writers we yearn for something a little more ironic and twisted. After all, we were in high school during the reign of Heathers. Our cynical minds ache for humor and darkness.

Our dream is to see both The Magnolia League and its sequel, The White Glove War, made into awesome, smart black comedies with heart. We're thinking a Heathers-meets-Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil film. So, while sharing a pitcher of southern sweet tea spiked with the teeniest bit of hooch, we did all the hard work and came up with the perfect cast.

The books are about Alex, who moves to Savannah, Georgia after her mother dies in a terrible car accident. She's forced to live with her grandmother, Dorothy, a beautiful, ageless, very rich and powerful Southern lady who heads a women's society that rules Savannah with weapons-grade perfect manners, and hoodoo, the distinctive Georgia version of voodoo.

The books have three trios of characters at their hearts: the three evil grandmothers - who are perfect roles for femme fatales of a certain age - their three granddaughters, and Dr. Buzzard, the conjure man, and his two children.

For Dorothy, Alex’s grandmother, well, who does icy and unforgiving like Demi Moore? Besides, don’t we all think that she probably sold her soul to a hoodoo doctor in order to stay hot forever?

For the other two evil grandmothers, let’s get Sharon Stone and Michelle Pfeiffer. Who better to personify brittle Southern ladyhood than the woman who tried to kill Michael Douglas with an ice pick and Catwoman?

Chloë Moretz would be an awesome Alex. She's just a fantastic actress. Alex has to transform from a hippie pot farmer to a (reluctant) Southern belle, and Moretz has done everything from Martin Scorsese’s Hugo to Martin Lawrence’s Big Momma’s House 2... and did anyone catch her on 30 Rock? She’s got range.

Alex’s two best friends, Hayes and Madison, need careful casting, as they are the respective stars of the sequels. Whenever we pictured Hayes, we thought of Blake Lively, but she's too old now (producers, why didn’t you call earlier?). Elle Fanning (Super 8, We Bought a Zoo) would be perfect, and besides, she’s originally from Georgia so we’re keeping it local.

Madison gets all the best lines and is the kind of girl who says what everyone else is thinking, only with more profanity, so let’s give Selena Gomez a chance to kick some onscreen butt. Besides, we need a Texan for a part this big.

And last, but not least, there’s the ageless conjure man, Dr. Buzzard, his conflicted (but mostly good) son, Sam, and his not-very-conflicted (and mostly evil) daughter, Sina. Dr. Buzzard should be Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland) because he doesn’t get to play evil often enough. We also want Amandla Stenberg (Rue in Hunger Games) to play Sina. Why Stenberg? Because she was one of the best things in The Hunger Games and she deserved more screen time. Sam needs to be played by Mos Def, because we’ve noticed a direct relation between the amount of Mos Def in a movie and how awesome it is. Ben Harper would also work, because Katie has loved him savagely for fifteen years.

Hollywood, we’ll make a deal with you. We’ll get working on a third Magnolia League book, if you guys get working on the first Magnolia League movie. Michael Lehmann, you directed Heathers, yes? Tear yourself away from those naked True Blood bodies and get to work!

Learn more about The White Glove War, and visit the websites of Katie Crouch and Grady Hendrix.

--Marshal Zeringue

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Ben H. Winters' "The Last Policeman"

Ben H. Winters is the author of several novels, including the New York Times bestseller Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, and the middle-grade novel The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman, an Edgar Award nominee and a Bank Street College Best Children’s Book of 2011. Winters’ other books include the science-fiction Tolstoy parody Android Karenina, the Finkleman sequel The Mystery of the Missing Everything, and the supernatural thriller Bedbugs, which has been optioned for the screen by Warner Brothers. Winters also wrote the book and lyrics for three musicals for young audiences: The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, A (Tooth) Fairy Tale, and Uncle Pirate, based on the award-winning children’s book by Douglas Rees.

Here he shares some ideas for casting a big screen adaptation of his new novel, The Last Policeman:

Detective Palace, the hero of The Last Policeman, would be hard to cast, at least as I’ve described him: He’s extremely tall and thin. People call him “Stretch” or “Tallboy,” and he is very uncomfortable in his lanky frame—he sits awkwardly, folding one leg over the other, and he’s always banging his knees on things.

He doesn’t really sound like a movie star. And I expect, if I were lucky enough that Hollywood took this to the screen, they won’t waste a lot of time finding an action-movie lead who looks like Ichabod Crane—they’ll just skip over the detail.

But when I imagine Palace, I imagine a body and a face like that of Jim True-Frost, who played the role of Pryzbylewski on The Wire. I don’t know how tall that guy is, but he plays like I imagine Palace—thin, wiry, hunched, interesting looking, inward, unconventionally handsome.

So then, as long as I’m in Wire world, I’ll take Wendell (“Bunk”) Pierce as Detective Culverson, Palace’s quasi-mentor and (per page 22) “the Only Black Man in Concord”. For Palace’s screw-up sister, Nico, who may or may not be involved in overthrowing a government conspiracy that may or may not exist, I imagine Rose Byrne, from Damages and Bridesmaids. She’s got this kind of angular toughness that emerges in Nico towards the end of the novel, though we’d have to scruff her up a little for the first three-quarters of the movie.

Finally, some stunt casting: in the role of tough but kindly Chief Ordler, who appears exactly twice over the course of the book, for one page each, I cast Tom Waits. But only because I’d really, really like to meet Tom Waits.

Learn more about the book and author at the official Ben H. Winters website.

--Marshal Zeringue

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