The entry begins:Turning a nonfiction book about a TV show into a movie certainly comes off as a bit … meta, at first glance. But the people connected to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, particularly those behind the scenes, could make for some pretty juicy roles: There’s Treva Silverman, the first woman hired to write for the show and a take-no-prisoners trailblazer who also happened be a former beauty contest winner and piano prodigy. There are James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, the polar opposites who ran the show: Jim all manic creativity and hippie beads and beard, Allan all Clark Kent hair and affability. There’s Mary Tyler Moore’s TV executive husband, Grant Tinker, a great businessman, champion of creativity, and Captain America Type. There’s Pat Nardo, Jim and Allan’s too-smart-for-shorthand secretary from the Bronx, and Susan Silver, the bombshell writer who rocked hotpants and could write a killer joke.Learn more about the book and author at Jennifer Keishin Armstrong's website.
I could go on, but we’ll stick with these for now, and then do a little dream-casting of the famous folks who played the characters in my title, too, just for the heck of it. I never did that thing that fiction writers do, where they inevitably cast the book in their heads as they write it, if only to help them flesh out their characters. I had talked to the real people, after all, during my research. But I’m intrigued by the idea of a modern-day Mary or Valerie Harper, who played Rhoda.
But first, the behind-the-scenes folks. I want to see Julia Stiles more in general — I realized I’d missed her when I saw Silver Linings Playbook — and she has the gravitas to pull off the role of...[read on]
My Book, The Movie: Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted.
--Marshal Zeringue
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