Jessica Brockmole's "Woman Enters Left," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Woman Enters Left by Jessica Brockmole.

The entry begins:

Woman Enters Left takes place in the 1920s and the 1950s over two cross-country road trips—one with an aspiring screenwriter driving a Model T towards hopeful fame in Hollywood, the other with a jaded actress driving across Route 66 to escape that same Hollywood. In each storyline, I tried to evoke films from that era—1950s Louise narrates a story in widescreen Technicolor and, in the 1920s, Ethel and Florrie tell theirs like a silent movie, through written words (in their case, diaries instead of intertitles) and close-ups of expressive faces. As I wrote the book, I watched a lot of movies from both eras and called it “research,” so when asked to mentally cast the film version of Woman Enters Left, I can’t help but do it with actors from those eras. So if you will indulge me….

Florrie, the screenwriter with the Model T and a big secret, is all quiet emotion. On the screen, she’d be the one with big, expressive eyes, emoting for all she’s worth to the close-up shots. With delicate features and what her best friend Ethel describes as hair “like Botticelli’s Venus,” I see her as played by an actress like Maud Fealy or...[read on]

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The Page 69 Test: Letters from Skye.

My Book, The Movie: Letters from Skye.

My Book, The Movie: Woman Enters Left.

--Marshal Zeringue