Casting Qwill

Lately (well, a little past lately, actually), there's been a lot of talk on the Cat Who... mailing list about the possibilities for a Cat Who... TV movie (no, Lilian Jackson Braun isn't one in the works - see the FAQ if you don't know why not - this was only a just-for-fun topic to kick around) and discussion of which actors would be best suited to play the various denizens of Down Below and Moose County. In the course of looking over the whole "casting choice for Qwilleran" debate, I came to wondering how the series would be different if some of the actors the folks on the mailing list nominated did indeed play Qwill...

• Charles Bronson - Does over apple barn in outfitter orange and khaki; dumped by Polly after he takes her out for "romantic" evening of fine dining at Otto's Tasty Eats and "arm rasslin'" in Chipmunk; fired from the Something after writing a "Qwill Pen" column about how much more "kickin'" Shakespeare would be if he armed every character with an AK-47 in the fifth act. Gives Koko and Yum Yum generic supermarket-brand cat food, figuring that those "ugly little monkeys don't need nothin' better"; found dead the next morning from massive blood loss from numerous scratches to the temple and jugular vein. Koko acts as own defense lawyer in trial; jury deliberates for fifteen minutes before acquittal.

• Hugh Grant - Wins Polly's heart, but fails to bring murderers to justice. *Solves* murders, mind you, but just can't handle "messy, unseemly" end-of-novel confrontations with the acccused. Hews and haws way through fifteen-stop morning-coffee-klatsch apology tour when facts come out.

• Tom Selleck - Uses inheritance to line Main and North South Street with palm trees, trades in Koko and Yum Yum for a couple of cockatoos, and ditches Polly for a cute little native girl named Kiki; Brodie takes to growing macadamia nuts and wearing loud short-sleeve shirts. Lynched by mob when he tries to introduce pineapple-poi pasties to Moose County; fortune goes to strip clubs in New Jersey, which use the unholy power of the K bucks to turn entire Eastern seaboard into pleasure paradise. The Almighty forced to take Sodom-and-Gomorrah-scale action; world smited and destroyed.

• Sam Elliott - Easygoing manner, affable charm, and down-to-earth reason lull Moose County into golden age of peace and contentment. Science and the arts flourish up north; crime drops to almost non-existant levels. Series stopped after the fifth installment.

• Robin Williams - Massive popularity attracts so many tourists to Moose County that the northeast central U.S. experiences a massive population shift; relocated cranky country folk now gripe about all the congestion and crime "Up There".

• Eric Braeden (of The Young and the Restless fame) - Our team of sleuths is torn asunder right in the first book, when, in a mad gambit to fulfill his ambition to assume the physical body and extrasensory powers of a higher species, Mountclemens uses the income from his Ghirotto scam to finance the world's first human-feline brain transplant between himself and Koko. Newly-biped Koko takes off with Zoe Lambreth; Mountclemens's new work launches series of Why Cats Paint books. In the meantime, Yum Yum, jealous of another female hedging in on her exclusive right to roll seductively around on the rug and "shamelessly" reach up to caress Qwilleran's moustache, kills Alacoque Wright; dramatic trial arc ends with last-minute pardon from Lilian Jackson Braun, who cites that Yum Yum's crime "posed no great loss to society". Series eventually loses fan support over adverse reaction to incredulous plot twist of Qwilleran inheriting millions of dollars from long-lost friend of his mother's and being forced to live in some backwater county up north as part of the terms of the will.

• Tommy Lee Jones - Capowski tries to avoid making joke with "warehouse, farmhouse, townhouse, and outhouse" reference. Capowski fails.

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