And Josie was based on a friend of mine, as she was at 19, so I’m looking forward to seeing a 19-year-old-who would have been all of 7 or 8 when I started writing the book. I always saw a Meredith as kind of a combination of Marisa Berenson and Anouk Aimee…actresses from the sixties and seventies, so no way could they play Meredith now in any case. JF: I do, but I can’t go too far into this because there will be a Josie, and a Meredith, and I won’t have chosen them. You probably don’t get any input, but do you have any thoughts on who you’d like to see as Josie or Meredith in Paint It Black? TF: White Oleander was so brilliantly cast. And now-based on a reader’s enthusiasm for the book-it’s going to become a film-a very different film from the original inspiration. Then I took that inspiration and wrote a short story, which then, following a strange twisted pathway, became a literary novel. It’s interesting, that this book began with a favorite film, Bergman’s Persona. Some small kernel of inspiration, which magnetizes other concerns and moods and characters, a small stream joining to other small streams, growing wider and deeper. Janet Fitch: What I end up writing, it’s always a surprise. Did you ever imagine that this short gothic story would grow into a book, and then into a film? Tai Farnsworth: Your book Paint It Black is in production to become a movie. She lives in Los Angeles and is presently working on a new book set in Russia. In 2002, “White Oleander” was made into a movie and just four years later Fitch published Paint It Black. After her second book, White Oleander, made the Oprah Book Club, she was swept up in a whirlwind of critical acclaim. She published her first book, Kicks, in 1996. During a student exchange in England, Fitch realized she wanted to be a writer.

Janet Fitch is a long-time lover of history and Russia.

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