ReZoom

Sara Voorhees is a syndicated film critic with a passion for movies. Always willing to explore new creative outlets, she wrote her first novel, "The Lumiere Affair: A Novel of Cannes," after several years of writing only non-fiction.

1. What was the inspiration for your most recent book?
It would probably surprise him to know he was somebody's muse, but Tom Hanks was the reason I wrote "The Lumière Affair." The moment of inspiration came about seven years ago, when I was interviewing him for The Green Mile. I'd spoken to him dozens of times before, but this time I asked him what he'd discovered over the years that made him such a great interview. He said he'd learned the secret: that I was there to get him to tell me things he'd never told anyone before, and he was there to make me feel like I'd done it.

It was an "of course!" moment, that made me think about the artifice of the interview process itself, which has spawned the culture of celebrity that is everywhere around us. We cannot escape it. I decided to write a mystery about that delicate balance between journalist and celebrity, from behind the curtain.

2. What's the most significant change you've made since turning 40?
I wish I could say that I suddenly devoted myself to feeding the hungry, but apart from quitting the movie press junket circuit a few years ago, (which made it possible for me to have a life during the week-ends) and apart from giving up carbohydrates (which relieved me of a lifelong craving for sweets) the single most significant change came from a comment my husband made when I accidently put permanent dye on my hair instead of a rinse, which turned my hair orange. I was embarrassed, miserable, frantic, inconsolable for several days. Until he said, "The problem isn't your hair. The problem is, you're defining yourself from the outside-in instead of the inside-out." That single comment shifted my priorities for good

3. Tell us your thoughts about the Web.
Like everything else that carries any weight in our culture, I think the Web is a mixed blessing. It's certainly brought us closer together -- I have friends with whom I e-mail every morning, who I never used to talk to on a regular basis because they're so far away. Now I know what they're doing, and what they're thinking about on a given day. It's like having them in my living room. Except of course, that they're NOT in my living room. And the illusion that we're closer is pushing all of us farther away from each other.

There's a danger of our evolving into the society of the future that Isaac Isamov wrote about in one of his robot stories: where we've "evolved" to a point where everyone lives miles away from everyone else. We don't need to interact with salespersons -- we can buy food and clothing and anything else we need, electronically. We don't need to go to classes to learn things because we can learn everything from the internet. We don't need to leave our homes for entertainment because everything is available on the web. Maybe I've seen too many science fiction movies.

4. Where do you go when you want to get away?
I have to travel so often, away from my home in New Mexico, that I never really want to get away: I want to get home. But when traveling is a choice, I want to get away to my daughter in New York, or to my son and his family, (including my new grandson), or with friends -- wherever they are. In a perfect world I would have a pied à terre in a cozy little village outside of Paris, next door to a patisserie where I could buy chocolate croissants in the morning and nibble on them all day while I wrote the great American romantic mystery.

5. If you met a genie, what would be your first wish?
A few weeks ago, I had a discussion with friends -- including my 93 year old mother -- about what piece of wisdom we've learned in the last 25 years that we'd like to take back with us if we could be 30 again. Everyone said the same thing, although we all articulated it differently: all of us wished we could take back with us the knowledge that everything changes; that nothing stays the same, that -- as my heroine Nattie says in The Lumiere Affair -- "a happy ending depends on where you stop the story." I would wish to internalize that knowledge every single day.

6. What books are you reading?
I just finished Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, and I'm in the middle of Patricia Volks' To My Dearest Friends, which my bookgroup is reading this month. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I prefer fiction over non-fiction, so for every three novels I read, I force myself to read one non-fiction book, so I'll have something to talk about at the dinner table.

7. Describe your next creative project.
I'm writing a novel about two very different memories of a love affair, from the man's perspective and from the woman's perspective. But to be honest, my most creative energy this month will be spent on the Halloween costume I'm making for my grandson.