Nic Bettauer wrote and directed an independent film called “Duck,” starring Philip Baker Hall and the duck from the Aflac commercials. We spoke by phone:
Philip Baker Hall is one of my favorite character actors and it was a real pleasure to see him in a lead role. How did that come about?
I’ve been known to try to do things backwards, but in this case there was no way other than protocol. I made an offer through his agent and the system worked. I did not have him in mind while I was writing it because if you picture a patticular actor you get lazy and think of all the wonderful things he could do with the role, but once I’m done, I like to think about what the actor can bring to it, sometimes things I never thought of. With Philip, this was different than a lot of the roles he’s been playing. I like to offer someone something he hasn’t done on every level. That’s how without having a lot of money you take a risk on people. It is also how you make it worth it for them in other ways than money.
He has a gorgeous voice, wonderful for this movie because so much of it is essentially a monologue.
His voice is a stunner, it just cuts to the quick, love to have him read the audio book.
Most directors worry about working with animals, especially those not easy to train. How did you come to write a movie starring the Aflac duck?
When I was writing I tried not to censor myself but then when it got to making it I was like wow. It was important that it was all live, so I went after the best quality duck. We had great ducks and trainers. Ducks are very social. Our “hero duck” #30 was the best listener and we had stand-ins with different personalities. So we would say, “Is this a job for #27 who liked to walk ahead?” or for another who loved to be held. You might have to switch ducks because you could not have it all in one shot. But they were very charismatic. We had to know the ducks and think like a duck in a way. With three different ages of ducks in the movie, we had 1-2 babies, some teenage, and about 6 big ducks, always more than one on the set just in case. At one point we wanted the duck to look grubby but we learned the derivation of the expression “water off a duck’s back.” They just always look pristine.
What is the duck’s purpose in the story?
Philip Baker Hall is so real and his character’s relationship with the duck was like the one I have with my dog, who is my writing partner. Philip plays it so straight. When he was working with the duck he was looking at his alter ego, almost speaking to the part of himself that was keeping him alive. He is almost speaking to himself or treating the duck like a replacement for his son or his wife. As long as he is teaching or learning life is worthwhile, so taking care of the duck gave him a purpose. Now Philip and I have been intellectualizing it but it’s not really the way I think when I write.
How did French Stewart become involved in this project?
I really adore him. He is so interesting. He came in and read. It is problematic not to be typecast when you are so huge on a TV show. He was doing a lot of theater, smaller projects. He was a bit different than I had thought of the character and that is so exciting, it brought so much to the film. People capable of being funny are usually capable of the exact opposite.
The one smart thing I did unbeknownst to myself at the time — because the movie is a set of vignettes, we would end up filming one additional character a day. Some really interesting people worked with us because we only needed a day of their time. People really came through for us, a nice influx of creative energy, a breath of fresh air each day.
The movie is set in 2009. Why set it in the future and why just a couple of years in the future?
I wanted it to be slightly in the future so that it was a bit of a cautionary tale about where we were headed but still with hope to make a change. I not want to make it so far ahead that it was irrelevant. It is a fable. It’s not what I necessarily predict. At one point he says the President is Jeb Bush. That was not a prediction. I did not want to use a realistic candidate because it would be distracting. By chosing Jeb Bush as the answer I was talking about this administration.
What’s next?
Next is my version of a cop movie, a character piece, an anti-hero cop, and I am currently obsessing over Chris Cooper [to play the lead]. The character says everything I wish I could but shouldn’t in polite company. I would love to keep this character, maybe a series. I grew up on the 70’s NY cop films.
Duck is bittersweet, but also funny, isn’t it?
I do think there’s a lot of humor in “Duck.” It is a bit surreal, a bit acerbic, a little Sartre. You never know what people will see, absurdist kind of humor but also sad. I like to find the funny in sad, if you can do that in real life you’ll be okay.
I interviewed Jeff Feurzeig, director of The Devil and Daniel Johnston, a documentary about the artist/singer/songwriter who has struggled with bi-polar disorder but produced prodigious amounts of highly acclaimed work.
I have to begin by asking why your interview of Gibby Haines [of the Butthole Surfers] takes place as he is in the dentist chair. Were you making a statement, was that his only availability, or both?
Both! I had seen the Butthole Surfers in their first tour in the 1980’s. They projected medical films, like operations, on the screen in front of their fire, strobes, and naked dancing girls when they played. It was quite a spectacle. So this was a reflection of that, plus that was when he was available. He had seven cavities. But he was under novacaine and just kept on talking. The dentist was really into it.
I saw that you referred to Daniel Johnston’s view of the world as “unfiltered.” In what way? Isn’t mental illness a filter?
Madness is the key that removes the filters we all have from our exterior and interior life, our public life and private life. Most writers, musicians, whatever,
their goal is to present their raw emotion what they’re feeling inside. But I don’t think everyone’s able to do that. Daniel is able to do that and that is the
power of his music and art. Anything that he is feeling inside comes directly out all his thoughts and feelings, so incredibly raw and honest. To my ears
and eyes that is very refreshing. It sucks you into his mind.
He is an enigma. The only way to know him is through his music and art. I don’t feel i know him because there is no give and take in that relationship. Any relationship is a two way street and he can’t do that. Kathy [McCarty, who appears in the film] fell in love with the art and couldn’t love the man. She did a tribute album and married his best friend.
In many ways they’re all heroic, his parents are heroic. Jeff Tartakov [the manager who devoted his life to Johnston and then was replaced] — this is a tragic story but out of that tragedy there is incredible beauty. Jeff was like [the Beatles’ first manager] Brian Epstein, so devoted, believed so deeply. The movie is very much a tribute to him, for him as much as Daniel.
Do people respond to Johnston’s real-life story or his art?
People laugh and cry. That’s real. That’s talent, period. All art is subjective and its up to the audience to walk away with everything or nothing. If they have open hearts and ears its a wonderful epic journey to take.
Why was making this film important to you?
That was my life’s work. I thought about making this film since 1990. I’ve been obsessing about his art and music since 1985. It all came together on the radio show.
All the theories I had about him presented themselves as truths; there was incredible humor and comedy that should not be overlooked. The radio drama was just another medium that he did so well, like when he was playing all the roles and directing himself in those early films, making humor out of the darkness. He was like [the Woody Allen character] Zelig. He could transform himself. He is in control of his art. I believe he plays the guitar that way intentionally, not that he is not as good on the guitar as the piano. That authentic, straightforward, simple guitar music is his signature sound. This is the first time we’ve had a chancde to go as close to that fire that burns where madness and art and genius meet, but doesn’t glorify it or sugar coat it on purpose.
Who understands him best?
If anyone understands him, it’s probably his mom and dad. But the only way even the dad knows what’s going on in his mind is when he reads the captions over his shoulder, to really know him is through his music and his art. Daniel is always the smartest person in the room but has arrested development. He’s stuck in this high school world, those characters are very real to him and he has relationships with them. He’s having a party in his head at all times. You can’t really reach him. Maybe Casper the Friendly Ghost is closest.
The Johnston family asked me to do this. They said I should share their story to help other families. They made me make them a promise to tell the truth. They said, “Don’t leave out the drugs and LSD. Just make sure you tell everything.”
Super-producer Frank Marshall (the Indiana Jones series, the “Back to the Future” trilogy, E.T. 
I had the great pleasure of talking with Marshall about his newest film, “Eight Below.” Inspired by the true story of dogs who were left in Antarctica and found a way to stay alive, the movie tells the story of eight sled dogs who are left behind and the man who loves them. In parallel stories, both humans and canines learn something about teamwork and what it takes to survive.
(Warning: some spoilers below)
NM: How do you deal with the challenges of filming in such cold and remote locations?
FM: The wind was the worst. The cold was okay but we had to hunker down with the wind. It really became spiritual, because it was so remote and beautiful, and we were all in it together because there were no trailers for people to go to and because being the captain I didn’t want anyone to do anything I didn’t do.
At night, in the town, we did have a hot shower and a bed but it was really like battle conditions, making sure we had the right clothes, boots, sunscreen, a buddy system to watch each other. If your buddy’s nose started to get red that meant it was frostbite. We had to be very careful with feet and hands. When you’re skiing you’re pumping a lot of blood into them but when you’re filming they get cold and numb very fast.
NM: What drew you to this story?
FM: I’m a dog lover and this is an uplifting heartwarming story about the dogs. I was also drawn to the challenge to make it %u2013 this was a story I could tell. It’s about survival, the power of hope, and spirit, with loyalty, trust, determination, teamwork %u2013 on the dog side and the human side. I didn’t want it to be cute; I wanted to respect the dogs in the telling of their story.
NM: How did you handle all that white?
FM: I went to a lot of great pains to create not only the harshness but the beauty of the environment. We had a saying I came up with after Alive
NM: Were the dogs trained as sled dogs and then taught to “act” or the other way around?
FM: There were four dogs for each character, two sled dogs, and two stunt and acting. That meant we were dealing with 32 dogs every day. And they came from everywhere, even Tennessee and Florida.
NM: What do you know as a producer that helps you as a director and what do you learn as a director that helps you as a producer?
FM: You’re supposed to know as a director not to do stories with animals, so I didn’t learn that lesson! The producer side was the challenge of learning how to do this, the organization and logistics and the ability to put together all the elements to make it look like it was one place. I worked very closely every night on the phone with the second unit director to make sure that we had a consistent sense of place even though in some scenes when you’re looking one way it’s Canada and another way Greenland. Those were tricks I learned as a producer.
Another one was that we couldn’t wait for the weather. We designed a system where every day we would prepare three scenes %u2013- one for sunny, one for white out, one for blizzard %u2013 so whatever weather we encountered we could still get a day’s work. And there was everything I learned on Alive
NM: How do you handle issues like abandonment and the death of the dogs and the challenges of the Antarctic environment in a PG context?
FM Those are important life lessons, but you have to be very careful about how you tell the story. In the original script three dogs were lost. I felt the audience couldn’t take that. Today’s kids have seen a lot of movies and they know about loss, but you have to balance it with success and uplifting moments. For Jerry (played by Paul Walker), it’s a growing up journey as well. He has to face the real world. He decides that the way for him to combat his demons is to go back one way or the other and honor them for saving his life. Kids understand the alpha dog stuff and the themes of friendship and teamwork for both the dogs and the humans.
NM: How did you adapt the “inspired by” story and how much did you take from the original Japanese film?
FM: Just the event %u2013 the fact that the dogs were left for over a year and some of them survived. We tried to introduce the real animals that the dogs in the real story interacted with in finding food and in protecting themselves. The sea leopard is the top of the food chain in the South Pole the way polar bears are in the North Pole. They are very vicious and very violent carnivores.
The characters were all created to help tell the story. Jason Biggs, what a joy to work with, sitting in the snow reading a book every day. We wanted some comic relief and people who work in Antarctica are pretty eccentric and quirky, so he was that character. He’s funny without telling jokes. Then there’s Bruce Greenwood (who plays the scientist), the total opposite of the Paul Walker character (who plays a guide), so that both discover something, learn something from each other. Greenwood has such dignity and carries himself so well. He is smart %u2013 you believe that he’s a scientist.
NM: What do you want people to take away from the movie?
FM: It really is dedicated to the explorers and dogs who lived down there, in that incredibly demanding place. When I first read the story I thought it was incredibly compelling, inspirational, in its way spiritual because hope is a very powerful thing. You can underestimate anyone’s will to survive. I would go up the mountain every day alone in this remote place. Even though making a movie is different from the experience that the characters and the real-life people who live there experience, it still gives you a special kind of spiritual awareness of yourself, and that is one of the things that drew me to that story.
The Movie Mom (Nell Minow) sat down with actors Macaulay Culkin and Jena Malone to talk to them about their work on ‘Saved!’
Movie Mom: This movie has a large cast of young people with a wide variety of backgrounds and styles. How did you all figure out a way to work together so well? Jena Malone and Macaulay Culkin together at the same time: Shock therapy!
Macaulay Culkin: Other people have different processes, and you have to be respectful of that. You watch. You see how they work. Some are method; some don’t like to run lines. You have to try to figure that out and try not to interject.
Jena Malone: For one scene Eva (Amurri) was banging into the wall with such force that she got crazy bruises. So I did tell her she didn’t have to throw herself into it so completely!
Movie Mom: Most of the cast in this film is very young, but you did work with two of the finest grown-up actors in movies today, Martin Donovan and Mary-Louise Parker. What was that like?
Macaulay Culkin: I was only in one brief scene with Mary-Louise, and she was only around for a short time at the end of the shoot. But we worked with Martin (who plays the school principal) a lot. It took a little while to open him up. He has a very serious air. What finally got him was a discussion about the proper name for a group of ducks. I got totally into this thing about the names of groups of animals — a murder of crows, for example. A group of geese are called a gaggle in the sky and a flock in the air. But we couldn’t find the name for a bunch of ducks. Finally, we tracked it down: it’s a paddling of ducks.
Movie Mom: Good to know! Macaulay, tell me how you got so adept at using the wheelchair for the film.
Macaulay Culkin: A couple of months in advance, I had the producers send me a wheelchair to try out at home. My apartment has hardly any furniture and no rugs, so it was easy to get around. I also worked with some people at a rehab facility, including a therapist and a kid about my age who had only been in a wheelchair for six months. He helped me to learn about how to get out of bed, get up from the floor, go to the bathroom, and other strategies that wheelchair-bound people have to cope with every day. One really important thing is “shifting in the chair” to prevent bedsores. As an actor, you have to get used to doing the scene from lower down than the person you are talking to a lot of the time. It was fun to learn, but that was because I knew I could get out of it any time I wanted to.
Movie Mom: And you, Jena, had to wear a pregnancy pad. What was that like?
Jena Malone: Believe it or not, this is the third time I have been pregnant in an acting role. Once was on an episode of “Homicide” when I was just 12! It isn’t just adjusting to the changed shape and size of your body. You also have to remember the health issues, feeling sick and all that, making that a part of the performance.
Movie Mom: Did you visit with some evangelical Christians to help you prepare for the part?
Jena Malone: Yes, we visited a New Age youth group, really church squared. It really helped to see the kids my age together and also one on one as they talked with me about their faith. It was important to get acquainted with their ferver and absolute passion for their belief because it is very specific.
Macaulay Culkin: I went to a concert and rally in a big 40,000 seat field, with a U2-sound-alike band. What was interesting was that at the concert there were Christians picketing other Christians, Christian groups protesting the kind of Christianity being celebrated inside the field. Everyone thinks everyone else is doing it wrong.
Movie Mom: What’s next for you?
Jena Malone: Well, he has a pilot….
Movie Mom: You’ve been doing this so much you can answer each other’s questions?
Macaulay Culkin: Yes, we can! I have done a pilot for NBC and I hope it works out. I’d also love to do more theater anytime. I love the process of the six weeks of rehearsal and the immediacy of it.
Jena Malone: My next movie is ‘The Rose and the Snake’ with Daniel Day-Lewis.
Movie Mom: One thing I liked a lot about the movie was that while it is very tough on the way some people interpret Christianity, it is very respectful of the teachings of Christianity. What do you think is the most important message of the movie?
Macaulay Culkin: It has two messages that mean a lot together–you should have respect for your beliefs and the strength to question your beliefs.
Jena Malone: That’s right. The movie is about having faith and re-evaluating your faith.
April 29, 2004
The alpha girls are doing what they do best — taking center stage. You
know who I mean — those impossibly perfect beings who mask ruthless domination
with artificial sweetness. They seem to appear out of nowhere in middle
school, instantly and infinitely confident and cool, as exotic as another
species.
Just as the rest of us feel like a hopeless mess of hormones in the midst
of an ever-changing and incomprehensible world, these creatures seem to
understand and master whatever they do not actually control.
Almost 10 years ago, Mary Pipher’s surprise best seller “Reviving Ophelia”
(Ballantine Books, $14.95) described an almost-epidemic among teenage girls
of anorexia, substance abuse, self-mutilation and depression. Inevitably,
adult concerns that adolescent girls are fragile and even self-destructive
have become manifest in our fictional representations of them, both as predators
and victims, in comedies and in more serious films.
“Mean Girls,” which opens Friday, and several other recent movies give families
a great opportunity to examine the way social dynamics change in middle
and high school, especially the way alpha girls recognize and exploit whatever
ideals of fashion and behavior they happen to be able to pull off.
In the movies, “13 Going on 30” has a 7th grader longing to be one of the
“Six Chicks” clique, moaning, “I don’t want to be original — I want to
be cool!” In Disney’s “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen,” Lindsay Lohan
plays a high school sophomore who clashes with an alpha princess over who
will get the lead role in the school musical.
Last year’s harrowing “thirteen,” co-scripted by then-13-year-old Nikki
Reed based on her own experiences, had Reed herself playing the middle school
alpha girl who leads the main character into sex, drugs and piercings.
Even those proto-alpha girls, Cinderella’s mean stepsisters, are still trying
to keep her away from the prince in the most recent filmland version of
the story, “Ella Enchanted.”
We also see alpha girl behavior in reality TV and the real-life adult world.
On television, we have the “Protege Corp.” women of “The Apprentice”; we
see women on the extreme makeover shows trying to be molded into idealized
alpha images. In the gossip columns, Paris Hilton reigns. And let’s not
forget Martha Stewart, who made a career out of the alpha girl’s most important
technique for domination: appearing to be supportive and helpful while making
everyone else feel clumsy and inadequate.
The source for “Mean Girls,” written by “Saturday Night Live” head writer
Tina Fey, is Rosalind Wiseman’s non-fiction best seller about alpha girls,
“Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip,
Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence” (Three Rivers Press, $14.95).
In the movie, Fey gives us the aptly named Regina and her two sidekicks
who rule Evanston’s fictional North Shore High School as “The Plastics.”
Newcomer Cady (Lindsay Lohan) arrives from Africa, where she had been home-schooled
by her zoologist parents.
Since everything about the high school experience is new to her, Cady brings
an outsider’s perspective to the social interactions of the suburban teenager,
drawing a social network map based on the seating selections in the school
cafeteria. She compares the Old Orchard shopping mall to a watering hole
in the savanna, a site for the various species to observe and interact with
each other.
The approach that had always worked for Cady in the past — assuming that
everyone is sincere and means what they say — turns out to be inadequate.
Even dressing up for Halloween is more complicated than she thought. Regina’s
social control is so complete that when she ends up wearing a torn blouse
as the result of a prank, everyone instantly copies it as the latest fashion.
No wonder Cady is happiest in math class, where everything follows the rules.
She doesn’t even make sense to herself anymore, admitting, “I could hate
[Regina] but I still wanted her to like me.”
The movie illustrates Wiseman’s descriptions of the way alpha girls establish
their power, usually supported by a “banker” sidekick who deals in information
and carries messages. Wiseman says she hopes the film will help girls and
boys understand that they have choices.
“It shows what girls do. It may make people uncomfortable to see it, but
the message is a positive one,” she said in a phone interview. “I like it
when the teacher explains that saying someone is fat does not make you thinner.”
Wiseman says teenage girls will not tell someone who has made them feel
angry or hurt how they feel. They use indirection. They tell their friends,
inciting gossip and backstabbing. Or they sugarcoat their hostility with
poisonous put-downs, pretending to be friends in public but creating “burn
books” filled with insults in private. New technologies like three-way calling,
e-mail, instant messages and cell phones become weapons of mass destruction
of fragile self-esteem.
Wiseman’s readers tell her they vividly recall their own experiences. “Adult
women still remember the names of the girls who made them feel bad,” she
said. “One woman who was in her 80s told me, with tears in her eyes, about
getting a letter signed by all the other girls in school that they did not
want her coming back.”
She also hears from former alpha girls: “They write to tell me that my book
inspired them to send apologies for behavior they have felt bad about for
years.”
In their dealings with adolescent girls, it is important for teachers and
students to acknowledge two core realities explicitly. First, young women
become alpha girls not because they are confident but because they are insecure.
Their behavior is exaggerated to cover up their lack of certainty. Wiseman
says they always “over-hate or over-love.” Their domination is defensive
first, offensive second.
Amanda Potts, a teacher at The Field School, a Washington, D.C., private
school for 7th-12th graders, said in an interview, “The adolescent sense
of `everyone’s looking at me’ promotes the need to be on top, to get attention
by making sure no one else is getting it. The goal in middle school is to
hide, and if you can’t hide, be on top. So they think they have to attack
first.”
Second, the techniques alpha girls use work best on the young, vulnerable
and confused. This is why early teen alpha-girl experiences remain so vivid
for so many of us — and for screenwriters. But teenagers need to know that
while conformity and indirection may go far in high school, it is individuality
and the ability to communicate directly that lead to success later on.
Adults can help teenagers notice that after a strong start, none of the
women on “The Apprentice” made it to the final episode. Paris Hilton is
more punchline than role model. Even apart from her legal problems, Martha
Stewart has attracted as much criticism as praise for her “domestic dominatrix”
persona.
Teenagers usually don’t like to talk to their parents about these issues.
So movies, television shows, Wiseman’s book and even the gossip columns
can be a significant tool in showing them how to recognize — and prevent
— alpha girl behavior in themselves and others.
Wiseman’s Empower Program is a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm that
conducts workshops for schools and students to address these issues explicitly
and provide tools for more constructive interactions. Teachers play a crucial
role.
“You have to be conscious of who the alpha girls are and find ways for them
to interact beyond the clothes and the giddiness that they seem to prefer,”
says Potts, who outside the classroom is academic adviser to the Field School’s
extracurricular book discussion club. “We try to create social and academic
situations where cooperation gets them further than competition.”
Potts says teachers can help kids understand that the standards for status
that the alpha girls try to establish are not the way to achieve popularity
and success.
“I praise the craziness I see to let them know that it is their offbeat
individuality that makes them so wonderful,” she says.
Once they learn to celebrate that in themselves and in each other, the “mean
girl” power of the alpha girls will disappear faster than pizza at a slumber
party.
———-
Nell Minow reviews movies for radio stations across the U.S. every week
and on [url]http://movies.yahoo.com/moviemom[/url].
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
Gail Carson Levine, author of Ella Enchanted, is very small, with sparkling eyes that seem to notice everything in case there might be something she might want to use in a book someday. Ella Enchanted was her first attempt to write a chapter book, after several picture books for younger children were turned down by publishers. “I was very much a rejected author. When a picture book I wrote was turned down and the editor asked me to expand it, I learned that I was really a novelist.”
Then her first novel began with the idea of the curse of obedience, which added a lot of life and texture to the traditional story of Cinderella. It also made the story much more appealing to modern readers, who are so used to the idea of independent women with a range of choices that they can find it hard to identify with a Cinderella who would allow herself to be commanded by her mean stepmother and stepsisters.
Once Ms. Levine had the idea of the curse, she had to develop a heroine who would respond to it. “Ella is braver than I am,” she told me. “I developed her to fit what I needed when I developed the curse of obedience, someone who could respond to it.” Because Ella must follow direct orders, she quickly learns to think very carefully about language. And so did Ms. Levine. “As a writer I had to be very careful about the commands I gave her. If someone ordered her to ‘be a good person’ it would be overly vague.” Playing with the language was part of what made writing about Ella fun. Every time Ella was ordered to do something, she looked for ways to bend the meaning of the words to give her as much power to decide how she would obey as possible. That may be why Ella became so interested in studying other languages, and so good at it.
Ms. Levine also enjoyed the way Ella’s thinking about the meaning of the words she said and heard helped her to make jokes, one of her qualities most admired by the more serious Prince Char. Ms. Levine said that she wished she could be as naturally funny as Ella. “Her humor comes from my mother and my husband. When I am writing and something funny comes out, I am the happiest person in the world.”
As she wrote the book, Ms. Levine found that it did not always work the way she thought it would. She solved one problem in telling the story with a little magic of her own. Because the story is told by Ella, and we can only find out what she sees, Ms. Levine had to find a way for Ella and the reader to learn about what was going on with the other characters when Ella was not there. That’s how she came up with the idea for the magical book. The problem of undoing the curse was almost as much of a challenge for her as it was for Ella. She took the advice of a writer friend to “overwrite it” — just to write and write and write until the right answer appeared.
Ms. Levine has enjoyed hearing from readers, including one class that turned the book into an opera. One letter was from a girl who said that she does not resent doing chores as much any more because she recognizes that it is a choice. But Ms. Levine’s favorite letters are those that say “I was never a reader before, but now that I have read this book, I want to read more.”
Her next project will give us another new look at a famous character. This time it will be about Peter Pan’s fairy friend Tinkerbell and her world.
As Ms. Levine looks back on her first book, almost 10 years later, she is proudest of the concept of “big magic” and “small magic.” “I needed Ella to have a friend but I did not want the friend to be too powerful. And I wanted people to think about the way that all of us have so much big power that we don’t think about.” Clearly, both she and Ella understand that humor can be very big power. When I asked her to sign a copy of her book for my daughter, she wrote, “To Rachel – Don’t be TOO obedient!” For a moment, I thought about not giving it to Rachel. After all, what mother wants her daughter to disobey? But then I decided that it was a very good message, just like the story itself. And Rachel and I are both looking forward to big magic in Ms. Levine’s next book.
