Jen Lancaster - If You Were Here

I’m sitting in a casting session. I’ve been in LA for about two weeks and we’re just starting to test people for principal roles. Since I’ve been here, we (meaning a big team of people who seem to know what they’re doing, and me, who does not) have done a lot of the legwork that happens before a film goes into production.

Before I even signed on, financing was secured 161and now key personnel have been hired, casting directors have been engaged, scouts are checking out potential locations, etc.

To be honest, I still don’t really understand the process. I tried to do research before I came out here but, surprisingly, Google didn’t have a lot of answers when I typed in, I sold my book to a movie studio for a whole bunch of money; now what?

My agents are thrilled this film wasn’t only green-lighted but also fast-tracked, which is fancy movie talk for “going a bit too quickly for my liking.” Two and a half weeks ago I was staring into a hole in the bathroom floor, and now I’m in meetings with a bunch of suits estimating opening-weekend box-office sales. It’s surreal.

On the one hand, the more swiftly this process moves, the sooner I can go home to my husband and pets and albatross of a house. On the other, I fear we’re rushing and getting sloppy. Can’t we all have a minute to get our bearings?

Also, and more important, I thought my job out here would be, you know, writing . I penned the initial screenplay for Buggies Are the New Black years ago between books, because I was told that everyone in Hollywood is lazy and that no one would want to convert my writing from a novel to a screenplay.

Actually, I enjoyed the challenge, because it was fun to dabble in such a different medium. At first I was all, How different could it be? Words are words , but that’s not the case. When you adapt a book, all you have to work with is dialogue. You can’t really set the scene other than a line noting where the scene takes place. Plus, you’re not supposed to provide too much background in scene headings or include many parentheticals, 162because that’s for a director to interpret.

I was worried that someone would get hold of my story and change it too drastically, so I wrote the screenplay myself to avoid all of that. Yet here I am in a casting session while some writer I never met gives my screenplay a “polish.” I’m told he’s going to be listed as one of the cowriters in the credits. Somehow this feels wrong.

But in terms of wrong, nothing’s been more wrong than the parade of bimbos who have tottered through here today. Seriously, can we talk about Miriam for a second? She’s supposed to be a quiet, reserved, gentle Amish girl who inadvertently gets turned into a zombie. (Although, really, does anyone go zombie advertently ?) But Miriam’s propensity for goodness is such that she keeps all her undead flesh eating to a minimum, and that’s how she earns Amos’s trust and love.

Yes, I know her story sounds a tad Twilight -y.

Yes, more than a little.

I know.

I know.

I’ll thank you all to quit pointing it out, and did you ever consider that MAYBE I HAD THE DAMN IDEA FIRST AND THAT ASSHAT STEPHENIE—

Ahem. Moving on.

Anyway, when I picture my Miriam, I envision someone slight and darkly lovely, with luminous skin the color of fresh milk and enormous, soulful, haunted eyes — kind of like a young Winona Ryder before all the bat-shittery.

Miriam might appear weak and unassuming, but she’s got a well of hidden strength. She should dwell in that netherworld somewhere between childhood and adulthood, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old. I’m looking for an actress who possesses a certain innocence, someone who can portray the kind of child/woman who knows of disappointment and adult problems but hasn’t yet been jaded by the world. Every time she curls her delicate lip or raises her eyebrow, I want her to be able to telegraph the emotion she’s expressing all the way to the back row of the theater.

When I explained this to the casting coordinator, he was all, “Oh, yeah, like Kristen Stewart?”

NO, NOT LIKE KRISTEN STEWART.

But I’d take K-Stew in a second over these ridiculously implanted Rock of Love girl wannabes.

Ladies?

For the record?

The Amish don’t have hair extensions, and that I know for a fact.

The woman auditioning now claims to be twenty-two, but she’s as close to twenty-two as I am. In what I imagine is her nod to the Amish, she’s plaited her blond hair (with pink highlights) into two braids and tied her completely unbuttoned shirt under where her bra would hit, were she wearing one. She’s clad in shorty-short cutoff jeans, and the charm hanging out of her belly-button piercing is a cowboy boot. If she were auditioning for the porn version of The Beverly Hillbillies , yeah, I could see her being appropriate, but otherwise? Blech .

“That was great, Amberleigh, just great, thanks! Hope to see you back again,” says Seth. He’s running the show here and was brought in by the studio executives to head up my film. I keep trying to defer to him, because he’s the one with all the experience, but damn.

As soon as she steps out of the room, I whip around to face him. “You were joking, right?”

He’s the very picture of innocence. “Whatever do you mean?”

“I mean she was thirty years old and probably spends her weekends in the grotto at Hef’s pool.”

Seth seems genuinely puzzled. “You didn’t think she had a certain farm-fresh innocence about her?”

“She’s as fresh as Bea Arthur 163and innocent as Paris Hilton.”

“Hey, that’s an idea! We ought to talk to Paris about playing Rebecca! What a twist, huh?”

Words escape me, so I simply shake my head in mute frustration.

When the next actress enters, I get an overwhelming feeling of déjà vu. She seems so familiar. I lean in and whisper, “Hey, what’s she been in? How do I know her?”

“That’s America’s sweetheart.”

“Who?”

Seth’s whole face lights up at the mention of her name. “That’s Lolly. Everyone knows Lolly .”

I’ve been trying to sound cheery and upbeat and not utterly and completely frustrated at everything that comes out of this man’s mouth. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he was screwing this up on purpose. One of my author friends got to sit in during the casting session for her movie, and she said every actress was more perfect than the next, and all of them were better than she could have ever imagined. But here, unless I imagine Miriam as someone who’d make out with Flavor Flav in a bathtub, that’s not the case.

“Everyone except for me, Seth. I’m drawing a blank. Help me out?”

“Mia, she’s been on the cover of every tabloid for two months.”

“Forgive me; I haven’t really been to the grocery store for a while.”

Or, I have been. I just haven’t had the cash to throw around on four-dollar celebrity rags.

“Lolly was the bachelorette who got dumped at the altar! How did you miss it? She was all over the news.”

“Whoa,” I say, a little louder than I mean to. Lolly stops and the cameraman has to tell her to keep going. “Now I remember. She was the superslutty one who had sex with all the guys on their fantasy dates.”

“Yes, that’s her.” Seth nods enthusiastically. “We were really lucky to get her in here. She’s a hot commodity now.”

“And. . and you find the woman who’s famous for banging a whole bunch of unemployed dudes on national television to be the most appropriate choice to play a seventeen-year-old Amish virgin?”

“Absolutely!”

Oh, my God, I can’t believe this joker is in charge of this whole goddamned production; ergo, my fate.