Michael Walsh knew when he was "on a literary suicide mission" when he signed on to write "As Time Goes By," a novel that follows the characters introduced in the movie "Casablanca." How dared anyone tamper with "Casablanca," which Walsh himself calls the Holy Grail of Hollywood films?
The book--which goes on sale today--wasn't even out when the first hate mail was posted on bookseller Amazon.com's Internet site by an irate New Yorker:
"Why muck with a classic of one medium, try to force it into another, and then make matters worse by telling us what happened after the fade-out . . . ?"
Walsh says he is prepared for the ire of "Casablanca" devotees who think he should have left Rick and Louis walking off together in the Casablanca fog--just as "Gone With the Wind" lovers wish Alexandra Ripley had left Scarlett alone in the Atlanta fog.
But this isn't a sequel, the Boston-based 48-year-old Walsh insists.
"Sequel's a bad word. It implies kind of slavish following, implies that it's not as good as the original. [This book] is much more like 'The Godfather, Part II' than like 'Porky's II,' not that I ever saw 'Porky's II.' . . ."
Warner Books--which published Walsh's first novel, "Exchange Alley," last year--came to him with the proposal to, well, play "Casablanca" again, an offer he couldn't refuse, though he's quick to say he "didn't get a million-dollar advance like Ripley got" for her GWTW sequel.
Although Walsh hadn't until then numbered himself among the true "Casablanca" aficionados, he had "too much respect for the original to want to wreck it. I intend for this book to burnish the original film, not take away from it." If it's not a sequel, what is it?
"Kind of a frame around it," Walsh says.
Does the world really want to know more about Rick Blaine, Ilsa Lund and Victor Laszlo? Warner Books is betting it does, with a first U.S. printing of 250,000 and editions in 14 other countries.
Those planning to pay $25 to find out what's been done to their precious "Casablanca"--the 1942 Oscar-winner that recently placed second on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 all-time best films--shouldn't read further. For others, here's a synopsis of "As Time Goes By":
* Rick, Louis and Sam escape to Lisbon and later join up with Victor and Ilsa in London.
* All of the above except Sam get involved in "Operation Hangman," a successful British government plot to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, the sinister Nazi who was "Reichsprotektor" of Czechoslovakia.
