Maybe the Moon

Also, Iknow I’m jumping the gun, but I’d think seriously about using a midget instead of a dwarf, someone perfectly proportioned but small, which is less off-putting, I think .
    This is all off the top of my head, of course. I wanted to get things rolling as soon as possible. I can’t remember when I’ve been so excited about a project .
    Love ,
    Di
    P.S. How does Maybe the Moon sound as a title? I found it in the diaries and I think it strikes just the right note of striving for the impossible .
    P.P.S. The enclosed clipping is from today’s Variety—in case you missed it .

Cadence Roth
    Cadence Roth, the 31-inch actress who played the title role in the Philip Blenheim film “Mr. Woods,” died Tuesday at age 30.
    Roth died at Medical Center of North Hollywood of respiratory problems and heart failure, said a longtime friend.
    Roth was discovered by Blenheim at the Farmers Market in Los Angeles and hired on the spot to play the elf in the now-classic film.
    Although the director had urged silence about whether the special effects of Mr. Woods were inhabited, Roth publicly stated that she had played the character in scenes that required movement, while a mechanical Mr. Woods was used in close-ups.
    There are no survivors.
    Services are scheduled for tomorrow at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in North Hollywood.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Armistead Maupin was born in Washington, D.C., in 1944 but spent most of his childhood in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was elected to every major honorary society at the University of North Carolina, graduating in 1966, before flunking his first-year exams in law school. Shortly thereafter, he applied for Naval Officers Candidate School, and, while waiting to be admitted, worked as a reporter at Raleigh’s WRAL-TV, then under the management of Jesse Helms.
    After being commissioned an ensign, Maupin served as a communications officer in the Mediterranean and on shore with the River Patrol Force in Vietnam. He subsequently returned to Southeast Asia as a civilian volunteer to build housing for disabled Vietnamese veterans. For this effort, he was invited to the Oval Office of The White House by President Nixon and later was presented the Freedom Foundation’s Freedom Leadership Award, an honor won two years earlier by singer Anita Bryant.
    Maupin worked briefly as a reporter for a newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina, before being assigned in 1971 to the San Francisco Bureau of the Associated Press. The climate of freedom and tolerance he found in his adopted city inspired him to come out publicly as a homosexual in 1974 in a “Ten Most Eligible Bachelors” feature in San Francisco magazine. Two years later, he launched his phenomenally successful Tales of the City series in the San Francisco Chronicle .
    In 1992 the author was the subject of an hour-long BBC television documentary, Armistead Maupin Is a Man I Dreamt Up . The first volume of Tales of the City has been adapted as a six-hour series for British television’s Channel Four by Working Title Films of London.
    He lives in San Francisco and New Zealand with his lover and partner, Terry Anderson.
    Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

GREAT BRITAIN’S # 1 BESTSELLER
    “A consummate entertainer…Maupin has created a funny, memorable character in Cadence Roth.”
    —Edmund White, Times Literary Supplement
    “An intensely enjoyable novel about friendship and prejudice: the dialogue is word perfect, the psychology laser fine, and there are some terrific jokes…but no synopsis can do justice to this glorious book.”
    —David Profumo, Weekend Telegraph
    “ Maybe the Moon delights, amuses, moves and angers you with the lightest of touches. It is, as might be said of Cadence herself, a small masterpiece.”
    —Simon Callow, Vogue
    “What Armistead Maupin has done, with considerable poise, dash, and subversive wit, is to have created a convincing, bracing, jaunty voice for this doughty person…. An exhilarating and sometimes moving story.”
    —Anthony Thwaite, Sunday Telegraph
    “An affecting, very persuasive attack on bigotry in its subtlest and most insidious forms.”
    —Jonathan Coe, Guardian
    “The prose is airborne all right, and with Maupin at the controls you can be pretty sure that the in-flight entertainment will keep you enthralled till touchdown.”
    —Anthony Quinn, Independent

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