Cheryl Pérez-Chatzis

A quick note from a Greece-obsessed author on the eve of Nolan’s Odyssey adaptation: I can’t litigate the casting. I'm an American in Las Vegas (I know) writing about a Macedonian king who's been dead 2,300 years. If loving a people's past from the outside is a crime, I turn myself in. What’s worth mentioning, though: Greece rebated the production €6.5 million to shoot across the Peloponnese. The Ministry of Culture was behind it. This is their national epic. And in the whole cast — Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus, Helen, Menelaus, Agamemnon, Athena, Calypso, the suitors, Eumaeus, Sinon, Tiresias — not one Greek in a named role. During filming, Greek and Cypriot writers sent open letters to the production with a single message: We are still here. A living people whose story has never stopped being written. A €250 million production used their country, their myth, and their money, and found no room in it for them. Whatever that is, it isn't inclusion. It's a beautiful backdrop and a favorable exchange rate. So I stand by the tried-but-true adage: the book is always better.