Saturday, December 4, 2010

Ken Harmon's "The Fat Man"

Ken Harmon's new book is The Fat Man, "a satire of traditional Christmas stories and noir" in which "a hardboiled elf is framed for murder in a North Pole world that plays reindeer games for keeps, and where favorite holiday characters live complex lives beyond December."

Here he shares his vision of some classic actors and a director to bring his story to life on the big screen:
In The Fat Man – A Tale of North Pole Noir, Gumdrop Coal is a hard-boiled elf framed for murder in a Kringle Town that’s got more than its fair share of Naughty guys and dolls. In paying homage to the great detective novels of the 30’s and 40’s, naturally I imagined Gumdrop played by a diminutive Humphrey Bogart, a well-traveled fedora pulled down over his pointy elf ears and a wrinkled trench coat to keep the chill of the North Pole in its place. Dingleberry Fizz, Gumdrop’s ever-optimistic best friend, would be a grinning, cow-licked Mickey Rooney and Rosebud Jubilee, a peppermint stick chewing reporter is a mix of the great dames from that era of movies, Barbara Stanwyck, Rosalind Russell and Jean Arthur. Orson Welles would take a star turn as Charles “Candy” Cane, naturally, and the grotesque Not So Tiny Tim could only be played by Charles Laughton. I would sprinkle the rest of the cast with cameos with as many stars of yesteryear that heaven would give me and if Billy Wilder could direct it – that would suit me right down the ground. Perhaps one day there will be a technology that allows us to do just that. (Is there an app for that?)
Visit Ken Harmon's website.

Writers Read: Ken Harmon.

The Page 69 Test: The Fat Man.

--Marshal Zeringue