Noah Baumbach and Jonathan Franzen’s cooperative adaptation of Franzen’s The Corrections for HBO has already progressed to finding actual actors to bring Franzen’s story of a fractured family to life, because you can’t have a TV show starring a lambswool cardigan and the New York Times crossword. Instead, Baumbach and producer Scott Rudin have chosen indie-film MVPs Dianne Wiest and Chris Cooper to be the heads of a Midwestern clan who have trouble connecting with their adult children (who are still being cast)—because of both the father’s worsening Parkinson’s disease and the mother’s clinging to her repressed Protestant values—and forever replace any mental images anyone might have had while reading the book. To play their parts, both Wiest and Cooper also have to put up with being called “elderly” in their character descriptions, which means they should probably go ahead and get their inevitable Emmy nominations locked down to make up for it.
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