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A Fan Letter Answered

I did something completely dorky last week. I wrote a fan letter to an author.

In the last couple of years I have read three books by William Lashner, who writes a series of mystery novels starring financially challenged lawyer Victor Carl. His books have great twisty plots that keep you guessing and unusual characters, not the least of which is Carl himself: a somewhat flawed man who would like to take advantage of situations to better his lot, would like you to believe he is capable of being unscrupulous, but who somehow, in spite of himself, always manages to do the right thing.

Lashner’s books are darkly atmospheric, ingenious, and very, very humorous. The dialogue is sharp, well-crafted and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny but manages never to tip over into farce.

I like to cast books as I’m reading them as one might cast a movie, and the last two I read I pictured John Cusack playing Carl (The first book I read, Past Due, I pictured James Woods, but he’s actually too old for the part, as I think Carl is meant to be in his early 40’s.) As I read Marked Man, I can seriously start to see potential for this character in a movie or on TV, what with the current trend for flawed but lovable characters like House and Shark (Woods again.) If it were a TV show I’d watch every week.

Anyway I found Lashner’s official website and it had his contact e-mail address. I couldn’t resist. I wrote a short letter expressing my admiration, and saying how I thought Victor Carl would make a great TV series.

Well, today I actually got a reply from Mr. Lashner, which totally made my week! I offer a brief quotation:

‘There has been some talk about Victor being on TV, but no one has ponied up the cash yet.  In Hollywood there's always a lot of talk, but its surprisingly harder than you might think to get them to give you a million dollars.  Who knew?’

Heh, heh.

Now, what would it take to make this a reality? I don’t live in Hollywood and I don’t have a million dollars, but I wonder if a few words in the right ears by someone reading this could make the right people think this was a fabulous idea, even for a movie? With all the rehashing of plots, remakes of classic movies that don’t need to be remade, old TV 70’s series and other dreck that gets spewed out of Hollywood every year, you’d think someone (besides Wes Anderson) might be up for a fresh idea.

Filed under General, Feb 6, 2008
 

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