Here's my preliminary casting for the soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture.

I think I'd like Christopher Walken to play the killer. Joe Mantegna would be Max Fine. Melanie Griffith is Cynthia Ames (a hot babe homicide cop yet to be introduced). Russell Crowe is Riordan (a thuggish homicide cop who works with Max Fine). Ned Beatty is Hogshead. Anthony Hopkins is Quirt. Val Kilmer is Krasny.

Does this help?

-Jerry-

There's a potential danger in getting too far ahead.

The screen writer-producer in Elmore Leonard's "Get Shorty" appears in a subsequent book in which he too is writing out of life. He is often approached by characters who want to be in his movie. It gets violent sometimes. He has to spend a lot of time saying that he's still "plotting" and is not yet "casting."

If you announce, as you have here, that your thinking already about casting you may find your life intruded on too insistently by having actors and others who may begin to stop you on the street (you do have a distinctive appearance which has been published) asking you for parts in the movie that will obviously be based on your unfinished novel.

On the other hand, Ibsen, is said to have claimed that he never wrote the first word of a play until he could picture all of the concrete details of all of his characters down to the buttons on their clothing. Sounds like he might have given a thought or two early on to his casting.

(I think I'm getting older. I go to a movie almost every Friday. I see lots of movies I shouldn't see. And still I don't recognize any names suggested here except that of Melanie Griffith. I must not be paying attention. But do,if you have a chance, go see an Iranian film out now called "A Time for Drunken Horses." Kurdish poverty, portrayed vividly. One wedding procession. Can't see the rug much.)

Regards,

R. John Howe

Thank you for your concern. Being accosted on the street by eager potential cast members is about the coolest thing I can imagine happening.

"No. No. Quit begging, Jennifer Connelly. I've already promised the role to Melanie Griffith. Yes. I know. She's kinda' old for the part, but she's got the kind of world-weary street smarts that you're too nymphette-ish to be able to portray. Now stop rubbing up against me like that! Cease! Desist! Oh, mama."

Yeah. It would be positively hellish.

By the way, I've reconsidered Val Kilmer and agree that he's way too glamorous for Krasny. Jon Lovitz, on the other hand, is almost too much of a caricature of a slimy, scummy weasel. William H. Macy would be just right. (He was the car dealer who hired the kidnappers in "Fargo.")

The Coen Brothers are the obvious choice as directors (and co-screenwriters if they'd like to work with me on adapting my story for the silver screen).

And thanks, John, for even mentioning my work in the same posting as a reference to Ellmore Leonard. "Dutch" is my hero...right up there with Thomas Harris ("Black Sunday," "Red Dragon," "Silence of the Lambs" and "Hannibal.") If there's a style to which I aspire in these little books, it's an amalgam of Leonard's dialog and Harris' dark characters. All of you might keep this in mind as you make your contributions.

-Jerry-