No one reading this book can fail to envision Humphrey Bogart as Rick, Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa, Paul Henreid as Laszlo, or Dooley Wilson as Sam. Accordingly, I have embraced the material's cinematic source, right down to incorporating selected dialogue from the script into the novel, partly in homage, partly from dramatic necessity, and partly to let the reader know that the author is in on the fun, too. Rick's bitter wisecracks, Laszlo's lofty pronouncements. Sam's wise empiricism, and Ilsa's passion and confusion all find their source in Casablanca . One bit of film business I have incorporated is the incessant smoking and drinking of nearly all characters.
Time Goes By .
Thus it was important to enlarge the scope of action for several of the characters, most notably Ilsa and Sam, while maintaining plausibility. Dramatically, Ilsa needs to be more than simply the object of desire and competition between Rick and Laszlo, but she cannot grab a Tommy gun and start shooting Nazis. Similarly, the spirit of Sam's dialogue, which in the original script verges on dialect, must be maintained, but there is no reason not to give him a far richer inner life than is apparent in Casablanca not to mention a considerable, indeed cruciaI, role in Rick's activities in the back story. In the end, the reader will decide whether I haste succeeded in my attempt to breathe new life into the characters of the most beloved motion picture in fi1m history. As Time Goes By , though, is simple.