Sunday, February 12, 2012

Sara Benincasa's "Agorafabulous!"

Sara Benincasa is an award-winning comedian, writer and host of the popular podcast, Sex and Other Human Activities, available on iTunes. Her outspoken, sexually-charged comedy has won praise from the Chicago Tribune, CNN, The Guardian, and The New York Times, and has earned her an ECNY (Emerging Comedian of New York) Award and a Webby nomination. Her new book is Agorafabulous!: Dispatches From My Bedroom, which is based on her critically acclaimed solo show about panic attacks and agoraphobia.

Here Benincasa shares her suggestions for casting a big screen adaptation of Agorafabulous!:
Agorafabulous!: Dispatches From My Bedroom is my memoir of my struggle with mental illness. I take the reader on a magical journey from summer academic camp to a disastrous trip to Sicily to an ill-fated stint at college in Boston to an emergency room in North Carolina to the ashram of a crazy gay spiritual guru in Pennsylvania to a classroom full of boner-haunted 14-year-olds in Texas to a maybe-miscarriage and a definite-comedy career in New York City. It's a heady romp through good times and bad, which is obviously why it should be made into a big major motion picture, and why someone should pay me vast amounts of money for the right to do such a thing.

Obviously, Zach Galifianakis ought to play me. He looks handsome in a dress in my sticky lady fantasies, so he'd look cute as hell in the fin-de-siecle J. Crew and Delia's gear I sport for much of the narrative.

My short Italian mother who rescued me from my agoraphobic cave of filth (a.k.a. apartment) will be played by Sophia Loren, who is maybe slightly older than she is, but evs.

My best friend Katherine, who called my parents in college to tell them I'd gone nuts, will be played by Zooey Deschanel. This is because Katherine looks like Zooey Deschanel if Zooey Deschanel had a huge rack and a New Orleans accent.

My BFF Alexandra, who intervened and also helped save my life, will be played by Julia Stiles, because she looks a lot like Julia Stiles.

Any man I ever hump in the context of the story will be played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, because I would not object to him putting it on me in real life, and also because he and Zach Galifianakis would undoubtedly have sizzling onscreen chemistry.

My dad, who helped me to eat again and to go for walks outside the confines of my house, would be played by fellow ginger Amy Adams in a career-making performance that would surely garner an Oscar nomination.

In short, Agorafabulous! the movie would be the best fucking cinematic experience anyone has ever had, ever. Hollywood can feel free to email me. Let's make this shit happen, world.
Visit Sara Benincasa's website, blog, and Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue