Cast Away

Eight months ago, at the party celebrating the publication of The Practice House, a friend who works in Hollywood asked me if I had actors in mind for the characters in the book. Just in case!! 

I laughed that particular nervous laugh that comes of not knowing the answer and also knowing I would never need to know the answer and secretly, privately, shamefully wishing I would some day need to know who should play Ansel in the movie {SO RIDICULOUS TO EVEN BE SAYING THIS} of The Practice House.

This friend was very serious. "Think about it," he said. "You should definitely know the answer to this question. That's how these things happen." 

I must make it clear right now: this is not an announcement. I did not sit on a plane with Reese Witherspoon a month ago JUST BY CHANCE and modestly slip her a copy of my book. No, this is a version of a game I used to play with my best friend Janet Kopp in Clovis, New Mexico, when we were six.

It went like this: Janet and I would dream about who we were going to marry when we grew up, and it was the same men every time. I was going to marry Starsky, and she was going to marry Hutch.  But get this: I would not be myself, because why would Starsky marry me?  I was going to be the Prell girl when I grew up--the beautiful girl in the Prell ads of 1973--and  Prell-Me would marry Starsky. 

In that spirit, and to celebrate selling 50,000 copies of The Practice House, I'm going to sit down on the shag carpet with Janet and cast the main parts, and after that we're going into her backyard to push the welded seams of her swing set to the very limits by swinging super hard on that two-seater thing while singing the theme song from "Gilligan's Island":

Aldine McKenna: Saoirse Ronan
Ansel Price: Casey Affleck
Ellie Price: Amy Adams
Clare Price: Timothée Chalamet
Charlotte Price: Kiernan Shipka

Fun, right? I never got this technical in 1973, but in the dream scenario, the whole thing would be sensitively directed by Reese Witherspoon, so if you know her, it's totally fine with me if you mention it.

As ever, 

The Prell Girl