I’m no fan of Mitt Romney, but I have to admit he delivered a good dig at Hillary Clinton this morning on Morning Joe, which I was watching live. “When you see her on a stage or when she comes into a room full of people, she’s smiling with her mouth, but her eyes are saying, you know, ‘Where’s my latte?’,” Romney said. I don’t want to see Hillary lose but on the other hand I don’t like her very much and I have to say that I laughed when I heard this. Why? Because it contains a grain of truth. And trust me — this will persist on Twitter. It’s an instant meme.

“Far more at ease in Tehran than England, Gertude Lowthian Bell (Nicole Kidman) allows herself to be politely seduced by embassy secretary Henry Cadogan (James Franco, looking tired but charming, and acting almost entirely with his eyebrows). Their courtship is the stuff of Merchant Ivory movies, complete with scenic marriage proposal and an old Macedonian coin split in two for the lovers to remember one another by, though Bell’s father refuses to give his blessing, spelling tragedy for the couple.

“At the next stop on her travels, she encounters a young T.E. Lawrence (a consternated-looking Robert Pattinson, who, like Franco, elicited laughs in Berlin when he first appeared onscreen). Though she clearly makes a strong impression on every man she meets, he surprises her by asking, ‘Gertie, will you please not marry me?’

The sad but oddly touching saga of Joyce “Tillie” Mitchell is a movie waiting to happen. I’m imagining a serious drama starring Melissa McCarthy in a potentially riveting dramatic performance (definitely Oscar bait) but also, conceivably, a Werner Herzog documentary. Or maybe it’s an HBO movie — I need to think this through. But I’d be hugely surprised if eagle-eyed producers weren’t all over this story right now. Mitchell is probably looking at jail time but if she writes an honest book she could see the rights to someone like Scott Rudin or Cassian Elwes or Mike Deluca. She could have a chance at some happiness — a second act — when she gets out. Seriously.

(l.) Joyce “Tillie” Mitchell; (r.) Melissa McCarthy in Tammy.

Call her reckless or foolish or even pathetic, but Mitchell, the pudgy prison employee who’s confessed to not only helping a pair of killers escape from the Clinton Correctional Facility but had also planned to drive their getaway car and wanted the escapees to zotz her husband Lyle, was looking for love, intimacy, a profound bond. She was obviously desperately unhappy and at least tried to do something to brighten her world.

Joyce wasn’t getting what she wanted from Lyle — that’s for sure — and before she came to her senses and decided against enlisting the escapees to kill her husband she was carried away by what she undoubtedly believed was profound love as well as great sex with the “well-endowed” Richard Matt, one of the escapees. She may have also had relations with co-escapee David Sweat, according to what I’ve read/heard.

The bottom line is that Mitchell was miserable and desperate for the real thing. Okay, she may not be the sharpest tool or the brightest bulb but your heart goes out to her.

If McCarthy doesn’t want to play Joyce (but how could she not? Joyce is basically Tammy in a dramatic downbeat mode) Amy Schumer would be an excellent second choice. Schumer’s sarcastic. fatalistic woe-is-me, low-self-esteem thing fits right into the Mitchell profile. I’m serious — any woman in a loveless, joy-less, all-but-spiritually-dead marriage (what would that be, 30% or 40% of all marriages in this country?) will relate. Especially if the right actors play Matt and Sweat. I’m thinking maybe Mark Ruffalo as Matt. It’ll be a great part, and you know that actors will be attracted on general principle to playing a guy with a large appendage. I’m just being honest.