Nicole Galland's "Boy," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Boy: A Novel by Nicole Galland.

The entry begins:

My two 19-year-old protagonists are largely described in contrast to each other. Alexander (Sander) is an actor: ethereally, delicately attractive, a bisexual man-boy desired by nearly everyone in London. A singer and dancer, he moves with androgynous grace. Black-haired, blue-eyed, marvelous bone structure that has been praised since childhood. In contrast, his best friend Joan is the living embodiment of nondescript. An unschooled intellectual, she pays little attention to her own appearance: blandly light brown hair, blandly hazel eyes, with an unremarkable physique, and a soft, forgettable face. Her sole distinctive feature: beautifully expressive lips, which live on her face without adding to its overall beauty. She spends a good chunk of the book disguised as a boy – a boy as nondescript as Joan herself.

In general, I never think about who would play my characters in a movie adaptation. I develop such specific mental images of them, an actor would strike me as a mere impersonator.

But…

…virtually every early reader of Boy cooed, “Ooo, based on your description, you’re obviously thinking of Sander as Timothée Chalamet.” Because I’m bad with names, I wasn’t sure who Timothée Chalamet was, so after the fifth time someone said it, I Googled him – and found myself staring at someone who looked remarkably like Sander! But once I’d been prompted to contemplate Sander portrayed by a not-Sander in the flesh, I realized a young...[read on]

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--Marshal Zeringue