"Playback"

Raised in Los Angeles, Carla Malden began her career working in motion picture production and development before becoming a screenwriter. Along with her father, Academy Award winning actor Karl Malden, she co-authored his critically acclaimed memoir When Do I Start?

Carla Malden’s feature writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, highlighting the marvels and foibles of Southern California and Hollywood. She sits on the Board of the Geffen Playhouse. Her previous novels include Search Heartache, Shine Until Tomorrow, and My Two and Only.

Malden lives in Brentwood with her husband, ten minutes (depending on traffic) from her daughter.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Playback, and shared the following:

“I want to go after him but am glued to the spot, crunched in the crowd. I can feel the blood rushing through my veins. I close my eyes to let my body recalibrate. I’m metabolizing this new reality that once again includes Jimmy Westwood.”

While the rest of page 69 details a specific moment in a specific scene, this first paragraph at the top of the page fulfills the premise of the Page 69 Test astonishingly well. These few lines echo one of the book’s major themes: Mari has been stuck, trapped in her present-day life, having shoved all that she learned about love and life in her time travel trip to 1967 to an inaccessible cubby in her brain. She may not know it consciously, but she has compared everything that has come after her first trip to 1967 to the love she found there. Here, on page 69, she finds herself face to face with that love, Jimmy Westwood, for the first time in seventeen years, precisely half her life. This little paragraph describes her visceral reaction to the moment, a reaction occurring on such a deeply cellular level that it requires “recalibration” and “metabolization.”

The Page 69 Test reveals the internal struggle that so characterizes Mari Caldwell, the lead character. At its simplest level, it’s a mind/body battle. Mari has sculpted the life she thought she wanted, the one that looked perfect. Now that it has crumbled, Mari finds herself revisiting the time – and the love – that cracked open her heart when she was younger.

This paragraph speaks to the heart of the book: Mari’s rediscovery of her capacity for love beyond that she feels for her daughter. Playback passes the test (at least these four sentences do)!

Visit Carla Malden's website.

My Book, The Movie: Playback.

Writers Read: Carla Malden.

Q&A with Carla Malden.

--Marshal Zeringue