I'M ACHING TO SEE MY HEROINE

The new installment of "Can You Picture That?" is now online, and it is a Popular lovefest. I also reveal that I am the only guy to ever work in comics who didn't hate high school.

When Cut My Hair came out, a couple of Hollywood types took a look at it. I never was expecting anyone to bite, it's never seemed all that commercial to me. (People always respond, "What about SLC Punk?" Sure. What about it? Huge box office, eh?) The usual showbiz evaluation was, "If you want to write a screenplay, then we can see if we can sell that." It was always too big an if, and I had only just gotten the story out of my hands. It was too early to pick it up again. Plus, I never actually wanted a movie anyway. While I would let it happen if the opportunity arose (the benefits are good, let's be honest), I find the whole need to have movies of everything utterly ridiculous.

Plus, I never see what I write as anything but what I wrote it as, and even though I crafted an opening sequence to a screenplay a couple of years later under the idea that maybe I could fix things I didn't like about the novel, I never really got into it. Why do I tell you these things now? Well, only because when Popular was on the air, I wanted there to be a Cut My Hair movie so Leslie Bibb could play Jeane. As an actress, she was everything I wanted for that character. It doesn't change the picture I have of Jeane in my head, which Andi Watson captured dead accurately in the first illo of her in the book, but if it was ever put to celluloid, they'd have a tough time making me stop thinking of Brooke McQueen.

I thought Christopher Gorham could probably play Mason, too. As Popular's resident nice guy, he managed the balance of funny and smart vs. insecure and awkward. He never quite embodied Mason in my imaginaton, though, not the way Bibb became Jeane. I am not sure anyone can do that.

*

Margaret Cho has a sassy ad up at MoveOn. Click here, and check it out. Love is love is love.

Current Soundtrack: The Creatures, A Bestiary Of...

golightly@confessions123.com * The Website

[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2004 Jamie S. Rich