Get to Know Lisa Rosman Through Her Various Works

My Day With the (Fault in Our) Stars

The following is a report I originally published in Word and Film.

Ordinarily I avoid any occasion at which people are likely to shriek but I caught myself requesting – nay, begging – to attend a recent The Fault in Our Stars event. This, despite the fact that it promised to be a veritable shriekfest. Like so many others, I am absolutely in love with the book from which it’s adapted.

The good news: The movie does justice to the book. Without disclosing any spoilers, it’s safe to say Shailene Woodley is an ideal Hazel and Ansel Elgort an ideal Gus. Also on point: Nat Wolff as Isaac, Gus’s best friend, and Laura Dern and Sam Trammell as Hazel’s parents. Along with director Josh Boone and author Green, they were all in attendance for a post-screening Q&A as well as a press conference the next day. Here are six things to know about this event. Continue Reading →

When ’70s Babies Trust the Force

I was speeding north to Hawthorne today from Brooklyn when my GPS abruptly punked out. Totally flatlined. Since I’m still not iPhoney (they’ll have to pry my Blackberry out of dead fingers), I was plum out of luck; I’d only driven to my destination once before, and had given my car atlas to a friend’s kid as an artifact of the primitive 20th century. So how did I find my destination? I used the Force, of course. Seriously, it was as if I were hurtling toward the Death Star in my tiny Rebel X-wing with a recently deceased Obi Wan Kenobi whispering in my ear, and, in a trance, I had finally pushed away my targeting device. Only the spacecraft in this case was Sadie, my increasingly compromised 2001 Hyundai, and the Imperial Death Star littered with murderous storm troopers was the Saw Mill Parkway littered with murderous Sunday drivers. Whatever, man, it worked. I arrived just in time to tackle the complicated French lesbian movie du jour with the delightful Westchester Cinema Club and afterward celebrated in the Mos Eisley Cantina aka Enchantments. Mawing french fries proffered by the brilliant ladywitch Michelle, I kept one eye peeled on the door lest Han Solo cross the threshold. Appear he did not but I think Yoda would have approved of my imperfect journey. It’s like I used to warble as a little girl climbing into her Star Wars sleeping bag: “Say la veeee.” At that, I’m off to braid my hair into two perfectly coiled puffs, Princess Lisa style.

Not Your Ordinary Euphemism

I’ve surrounded my bed with the last of this season’s peonies. Bouquets cover every surface and the whole room is pink and intoxicatingly perfume-y—very glamorous, darling, really. Even so, I have to laugh at myself. Is this a botanical version of “if you build it, she will come?”

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy