Phyllis Naylor Talks About Alice

Posted on June 11, 2011 at 8:00 am

There’s a great interview in the Washington Post with local author Phyllis Reynolds Naylor about the forthcoming final installment to her popular Alice series of novels, Incredibly Alice. “Alice is fictional, though she is like the daughter that I never had. I had no idea that she would become a series, but she was wildly popular. I wanted her to be a girl without a mother raised by her father and older brother who knew nothing about raising a girl. That is what makes the series funny,” says Naylor. And she has some advice for kids who want to try to write:

I tell them to think about the time when they were most happy, sad or embarrassed and then write a few sentences about those feelings. Then start changing things like the main character, the location or even the ending to make the story fun and exciting. Then you have started with something personal, and it really grew with the help of your imagination!

I’m a big fan of the movie based on her book, “Alice Upside Down,” with Luke Perry, Lucas Grabeel, Alyson Stoner, and Penny Marshall.

Naylor wrote her own piece in the Post a few years ago about Alice and the letters from fans. I liked what she had to say about how important it was to her that her parents read aloud.

My parents, they read aloud to us until we were 14 and 15. It was the late Depression, and we really didn’t have much of anything. But we did have books. They read with great drama. I think Dad read almost all of Mark Twain’s books aloud to us. He imitated all the voices, and I just loved it. And I must have thought, “If it’s so much fun listening to books, it must be even more fun writing books.” And it is.

Related Tags:

Books Writers

Happy Birthday Lucas Grabeel

Posted on November 23, 2008 at 8:00 am

Today is the birthday of Lucas Grabeel, an extraordinarily gifted performer I’ve seen in four different movies in the past few weeks. He’s still best known for playing Ryan, the twin brother of the scheming Sharpay, in the High School Musical series.

They highlighted his singing and dancing, especially the third one, where he gets a little more screen time. In Alice Upside Down he played the title character’s older brother, showing an appealing on-screen confidence and a deft touch with comedy. They had to add a line to explain his shaved head — he had just completed an appearance as a young Lex Luthor in an episode of “Smallville.” He took the lead in the cute comedy The Adventures of Foodboy as a high school senior who discovers he has the power to make food appear.

And he has a small role in the prestige film “Milk,” co-starring with Sean Penn in the story of the first openly gay man to win major elective office in the United States. Grabeel plays photographer Danny Nicoletta, and you can glimpse him with a camera in this trailer for the film. I am very impressed with the range, screen presence, and charisma of this talented young actor and I expect him to be a breakout star.

Related Tags:

Alice Upside Down

Posted on November 3, 2008 at 8:00 am

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grades
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Reference to sad death and illness
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters

Based on the popular series of books by Phylis Reynolds Naylor, this understated but sensitive and warm-hearted film is funny, touching, and wise.

Middle school is miserable enough, but for Alice (Alyson Stoner) there are complications that are even more horrifying. She is brand new in town because her father (Luke Perry)
has just bought a music store in Silver Spring, Maryland, so they have moved away from everyone they know. She has gotten off on the wrong foot with just about everyone — a neighbor who is in her class in school (a muddy handshake and un-gracious rejection of her family’s gift of a meatloaf dinner), a boy from school (she accidentally opened the door to the changing room at the store and saw him in his boxers), and her terrifying new teacher, Mrs. Plotkin (Penny Marshall, in a welcome return to performing) by insisting that she was supposed to be moved to another class. But the most important reason she feels out of place (aside from being 11 years old) is that she misses her mother, who died when she was little, and her father does not want to talk about her.

Naylor and screenwriters Meghan Heritage and Sandy Tung have ably evoked the tumultuousness of 6th grade as Alice swings back and forth from misery to ecstasy and from over-confidence to utter humiliation and back again. When Miss Cole (Ashley Drane), the teacher she idealizes, directs the school play, Alice thinks all of her problems will be solved. All she needs to do is get the lead and fix the teacher up with her father so they can unite in marriage and in recognizing Alice as the fabulously talented, confident, and popular girl she knows she is destined to be.

Of course, that isn’t the way it all works out. Alice lapses into daydreams, forgets to do her homework, and finds that she did not inherit her mother’s gift for singing. But she also discovers that she can learn from her mistakes and that everyone deserves a second chance.

Stoner is an appealingly sincere young actress with a gift for comedy and “High School Musical’s” Lucas Grabeel is terrific as her older brother. Co-screenwriter Tung directs with enough respect for his characters and the audience that he lets everyone learn some lessons without having a sit-com resolution to every situation. It’s a fine family film, enthusiastically received when I introduced it at the Tallgrass Film Festival and I was delighted when it came in second for the festival’s audience award.

Return from Tallgrass!

Posted on October 26, 2008 at 9:05 am

Many, many thanks to Susan Moneypenny and everyone at B98 for a sensational trip to Wichita and the Tallgrass Film Festival. I had a blast!
Opening night was the work-in-progress screening of What’s the Matter with Kansas, a documentary from Laura Cohen and Joe Winston that they say is a “sequel” to the best-selling book by Thomas Frank that shares its title. Both explore Kansas as the the heart of Middle America, which twice helped elect George W. Bush. The documentary includes a range of fascinating and stereotype-busting characters, several of whom were in the theater. There was what we in Washington call a “free and frank exchange of ideas” with the film-makers following the screening.
I spent Friday morning in the studio with my beloved Brett, Tracy, and Kathy. I had a tour of the stunning Warren Theater, an art deco masterpiece with white-gloved ushers and a balcony with heated Tempur-pedic loveseats to cuddle in and a full-service menu delivered to you as you watch. And then we had lunch at the best place in town, the Old Mill Tasty Shop. Trust me, it’s worth the trip to Kansas to taste the tomato bisque, chicken salad, and hot fudge sundae brownie.
We saw the documentary shorts:
* Springed Migration (a six-mile portage of a trampoline through the streets of Austin)
* For Tomorrow, The Toms Shoes Story (TOMS shoes gives away a pair of shoes to a poor child for every pair purchased — 65,000 given away so far)
* From My Hands (Fulbright scholar Jessica Tibbits shows us a school for the deaf in Yemen)
* If a Body Meet a Body (the LA coroner’s office has to identify a dead body)
* I See the Music: Baron Wolman The Rolling Stone Years (interview with the man who photographed Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and others for the then-new Rolling Stone)
I got to host the family film screenings, which included <a href="http://www.jumpmovie.com

Related Tags:

Festivals