So my stack of unread books is now finally down to the point where I can see it all (it's actually an entire bookcase, and I'm proud to say that I've read through enough that it's no longer stacked two deep on every shelf.) This means that I can now read some of those series that have been sitting in the stack for a while, since I can now find every book in the series instead of going, "OK, there's Book Two, Book Four, and Book Seven...Books One, Three, Five and Six must be in the back somewhere."
So I'm now reading the "Phule" series, by Robert Asprin. The first book, "Phule's Company", is an old favorite of mine, I enjoyed the second and the third books, but after that it got away from me a bit and I'm just now getting back to them. As a result, I'm starting by re-reading the ones I've read already to refresh my memory. They hold up pretty well on re-reading so far--it's always a danger, going back to old favorites, that you might find that you've outgrown the book (the Narnia books, for example, just didn't seem the same to me at thirty-three as they did at five.) But I'm still enjoying Asprin's characters, and aside from noticing that the book does make a hero out of a wealthy playboy with dubious business ethics and finding some unintentional humor in Asprin's description of a futuristic "Port-A-Brain" that apparently costs as much as a small company but does about what a Blackberry does today, I'm having just as much fun as I ever did.
And halfway through the book, it hit me. For the first time, I know exactly who should play Willard Phule in the movie version of this.
David Tennant.
He's absolutely perfect. He's the right age (actually maybe a little older than the character, but actors play younger than their real age all the time.) He's physically perfect for the part--Phule is described as tall and lanky. And he's got the right attitude for the part--Phule is constantly described as filled with energy, constantly pacing and moving and jumping from thought to thought as fast as he can and expecting everyone else to keep up. Sound familiar?
He can even fence. (A must for the part, if you've ever read the first book.)
So there, that's casting underway. Now, I just need a script. And money. And the film rights to the book. And a director. And the rest of the cast. And locations, props, costumes...
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2 comments:
So good to find another Phule fan. I've only read the first four - I understand there are some new ones out? For some reason I like the first two the best. I didn't enjoy the ones with Peter Heck quite as much, though I couldn't tell you I didn't. Hmmm, maybe I better sit down and do a reread. :)
I'll warn you now, I wound up being very disappointed with the last three...and reading them back-to-back-to-back, it was pretty clear that the drop-off in quality started when Peter Heck joined the series as co-writer. It's my feeling, based on reading them all in a group, that Asprin's input diminished as the series went on, and Heck didn't pay a lot of attention to elements established in the books he didn't co-write. (And he's not very funny.)
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