One of the events we attended at the JASNA AGM in Vancouver was a screening of The Jane Austen Book Club, attended by Karen Joy Fowler, author of the novel from which the film was adapted, and Robin Swicord, the director. (And it IS pronounced Swy-cord, after all.) Robin gave away some props and stuff from the film, and we scored, from our neighbor who was more proactive about getting swag than we were, one of Grigg’s business cards! La! (and no, we are NOT giving it away. It’s ours, precious!)

So, on to the news!

There’s a new interview with Karen Joy Fowler at Amazon, in which she talks about the process of having one of your novels adapted.

I didn’t really see how it could be made into a movie so I didn’t expect anyone else would either. I’ve had options on other books so I wasn’t surprised by that part, but the way options seemed to work was that the option period ran out and you never heard another word about it. That’s what I expected.

Robin Swicord discusses the film and Jane Austen with the Montreal Mirror.

Infidelity and other romantic complications were an Austen specialty, and Swicord saw the author’s ruminations on codes of human behaviour as even more invigorating when applied to contemporary characters. “Her father was an Anglican pastor. The Anglican values were really upheld in her family. This was an underpinning of all of her novels. She was very much concerned with moral and ethical behaviour. She believed in the rational mind over the impulsive.”

The Orlando Sentinel also has an article about the film in which they talk to the directors and to Hugh Dancy.

“I was looking for somebody who was Darcy-like (the snob who melts in Pride & Prejudice), somebody whose appearance could be deceptive, ” Swicord says. “He’s too good-looking, too smart to be funny. But you start to re-evaluate him. Just like so many of Austen’s young gentlemen, like Mr. Darcy.”

And while Dancy relished the chance to play “the sort of Austen character women swoon over,” he acknowledges that there’s still that label “chick picture” on any film concerning the late Ms. Jane.

“She’s been marketed as ‘chick lit,’ I think,” Dancy says. “She’s very unsentimental, very dry and very funny. I think that’s why she’s still around, not that she’s a nice way to kill a rainy afternoon.”

Did we mention we have Grigg’s business card?

And lastly, Alert Janeite Amy sent us news of a possible sequel to the film.