Casting

I'm enjoying that venerable author's game of casting my novel, Anything Goes. It's about a small, second-rate vaudeville company struggling through a tour of the mining towns of the Northwest in 1896, a tour so perilous that it must rely on sell-out houses or fail.

There are some delightful parts in it, most of them vaudeville acts. The impresario who runs the show, August Beausoleil, is none other than Jeff Bridges. I can't even imagine anyone else in the role. He's got the right seamed, weathered face, and the right bright eye for the part.

There is a singer who joins the show midway through the novel, and I wish it could be Reece Witherspoon, but she's too old. I'm stuck with Taylor Swift, the right age but a lady with many false faces, for the part. The role calls for a formally-trained singer, and Miss Swift is too much of a squawk-box for that.

There are other acts, difficult to cast, such as Mrs. McGivers and her Monkey Band. She's a fine old slattern, who could be played by some of Hollywood's gifted antiques. There's a juggler, a singing trio, some tap dancers, you name it. But Jeff Bridges is the guy who could put it all together

Meanwhile, the novel tumbles along, not yet reviewed, and I am content.