Casting Novels

Casting is a complicated business. Because of the extent to which audiences follow movie stars as indicators of film quality and sensibility, the money (following the audience) wants to know that a script has the right stars signed on. Conversely the wrong star can put money off.

This is especially complex for novels and other fiction, where there is no set appearance. Audiences will have extremely specific requirements in the appearance, but they may be mutually exclusive. Personally I understood Frodo for the first time in Elijah Wood's portrayal of him, but I though Jennifer Ehle was not as lean and long-limbed as Jane Austen had made her Elizabeth. Harison Ford is not fat enough to be Colonel Graff, but I can go with it.

I have a couple of firm casting opinions for films I wish were coming:

No1. Ricky Gervais for Chiark-Gevantsah Jurneau Morat Gurgeh from Iain M Banks' "The Player of Games". Gurgeh goes the gamut from lightweight Culture personality yearning for more risk, to Azad-addicted power pervert, back to Culture person and instrument of world-collapse for the Empire of Azad. He's got the beard, the sneer and the pathos to be Gurgeh. The other characters are mostly aliens and machines, but Lal Yay is a type* and Shohobohaum Za could be a Ryan Gosling smooth operator, or Idris Elba with a big Afro and some speed.

No2. Jesse Tyler Ferguson (from Modern Family) to be Dr Talos from 'The Book of the New Sun' by Gene Wolfe. Dr Talos is a homonculus - Severian thinks of his ur-self as a stuffed and mounted fox. It's mostly the red hair and beard, but Dr Talos' menace, vaudevillean streak, cruelty and yet his almost feminine care for the giant Baldanders seem like they would be within his range if he could play it a little less snarky.

No3. Who to be Gully Foyle from Alfred Bester's 'The Stars My Destination'? Someone massive, big and tall, with a barely restrained violence. He should be fat at the beginning and lean down and muscle up as he quests for more life. The cupboard of my awareness of actors is pretty bare.

* I'm unable to think of a young blond actress - is that weird? Britt Marling seems too smart, insufficiently frolic. But she might work out. Lal is a game player Gurgeh has some time for.

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