Big development with my screenplay

No brides allowed

Major news: interest in my script, my screenplay adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd [FFMC], which has, for several months, been off the radar of Helen, my producer. I’m calling her “my” producer because...


Monday night, I got an email from my producer with the words “interest” and “Miramax” in the same run-on sentence. Pretty amazing. However,  there’s a wrinkle. A crevasse, actually.


Helen hadn’t been returning my emails since late June, except the reply she sent on Labor Day, around 3:32 PM: “Believe me, if I move the script, you’ll be the first to know.” That was right after that she started work on a production in Nova Scotia.

Then there were unconfirmed reports—from my friend Thomas, my connection to Helen -- that her fiancé, Martin, had been running around in her absence. Apparently, Helen set up some kind of Wiki My Fiance [WMF]among her girlfriends. By Fashion Week, a rash of postings had appeared. These were followed by pics. Martin with a lot of  aspiring  models  with long skinny legs and designer dominatrix shoes. I’m not sure how much of that is true. The Wiki thing, I mean. It’s clear to me, from the my recent email exchange with Helen—Helen, my producer--that her engagement’s over.

This is what Helen wrote to me at 9:58 PM, Monday:

"Need revisions to FFMC interest Miramax. Working dinner? Dec 18? my place? Moved from LES to CPW."

I didn’t ask her about the move from the Lower East Side to Central Park West; we know what that means. And Helen and I are hardly friends; I’d never ask that question. In fact, I’m kind of surprised she invited me to dinner at her apartment. In nyc, the eating of food in another’s apartment is quite intimate. It makes one feel a strong urge to: pry. In the geographically desolate dwellscape I inhabit, natives invade each other’s feeding space with startling regularity. Different vibes for different tribes.

When I go to dinner at Helen’s, can I bring just a bottle of expensive wine? I won’t be expected to show up with a miniature Koons, will I?

In response to her email, of Monday, 9:58, I did ask, “What sorts of revisions do you have in mind?”

“Discuss over dinner.”

Me to her: “Looking forward! But how about general contours, locations of revision so I can be giving it some thought?”

“The ending,” she emailed back.

“A little more to go on?” I pressed, in reply.

“No marriage. Ending’s outdated. Bathsheba’s marrying Oak is just silly. Targeted demographic audience will hate it--kill it in previews. Discuss over dinner. Rack of lamb; thoughts?”

I thought: “Are you fucking kidding me? It’s a period piece. Even Jane Eyre got married. American girls, aged 19-36 believe strenuously in marriage. It’s Bridget Jones in a bonnet. What  next? Bathsheba becomes a single mother who moves with her daughter—Lulu or Liana-- to London to open an art gallery in Brixton?”

I did not write the foregoing [what a satisfying word, “foregoing”].

I wrote: “Sorry, am allergic to all lamb products. No other dietary constraints.”