Scene stealer

Miriam Toews on her latest novel The Flying
Troutmansand her burgeoning film career

by JULIET WATERS

Miriam Toews is one of the few writers who really looks like her author’s photo. This turned out to be a great thing for director Carlos Reygadas when he was looking around for an actress to play the role of a Mexican Mennonite in Silent Light. Toews’s breakthrough bestseller, A Complicated Kindness, is about a young Mennonite girl who wants to escape her community so she can hang out in New York with Lou Reed.

We talked about her acting career and her new book The Flying Troutmans, about a woman who hits the road with her 11-year-old niece and 15-year-old nephew on a trip through the Southwestern U.S.

Mirror: How did you get involved with Silent Light?

Miriam Toews: Carlos Reygadas always uses non-actors, and he was in Germany casting for the film, looking for somebody to play this role I eventually took. A guy there, a Mennonite in the Mennonite community in Germany, had a copy of my book and he said, ‘Hey, if you’re interested in Mennonites maybe you want to read this.’ Carlos read it and saw the author photo and thought that maybe I’d be right for the role, and e-mailed me! [Laughter] And it was the funniest thing in the world.

I just laughed and said that’s really funny, thanks for your interest, I’m sure I’m not the person that you want. But he was very convincing and very persistent. I hadn’t heard of him, but I learned he was a legitimate, highly regarded filmmaker. So I talked it over with my friends and family and they were like, yeah, go for it!

M: So how was it?

MT: I learned so much about the process of filmmaking. Just being out there in the middle of nowhere [in northern Mexico]. We had a lot of fun, everyone was really warm. There was a lot of waiting around. Reygadas uses natural lighting for the most part, so there was a lot of lying around in fields waiting for the right light, or waiting for rain.

M: Very Mexican.

MT: Yeah, let’s just wait around. Fry up some meat in this open fire. Kill some rattlesnakes…

M: Have you ever done any screenwriting?

MT: No, but I plan to. This book [The Flying Troutmans] has been optioned, so they asked me if I wanted to co-write with a professional screenwriter. I’m looking forward to that.

M: There are some novels where I think that might be hard, because you’d have to rip a lot out. But I kept seeing this novel as a film. One of the things I really admire about it is that it’s a great road novel with very little scene description, except for that one great observation about the billboards [“We drove straight south into the heartland. Billboards told us not to abort our foetuses or to let our sins get us down or to worry about our bad credit and criminal records. For instant cash, all we had to do was call a certain number.”]

MT: My editor, actually not my editor. It was the copy editor, I think. She suggested, ‘What are they seeing? Maybe there should be more descriptive detail.’ And I remember thinking ‘um—nahh…it’s not really me. I don’t really feel like it.’ [Laughs] It was a worthy bit of advice, but...

M: Wow, good for you. I tried to write a road novel once, and I remember feeling compelled to put in scenery, and I remember how it wrecks everything. I mean, you’re supposed to be moving. And then if you put in scenery, you feel compelled to give it some significance or symbolism because, of course, you shouldn’t be putting in scenery just for the sake of scenery.

MT: Exactly, that’s exactly it. It changes the rhythm and it slows you down. It’s nice to hear that though. Nice to have that confirmed by someone

THE FLYING TROUTMANS BY MIRIAM
TOEWS, KNOPF CANADA, HC,
276 PP, $32