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Authors: Marian Keyes
Tags: Fiction
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they're all thinner and more glamorous than me and their makeup bags are cornucopias of breaking-news wondrousness. While I'm still reading about something, they're already wearing it. (Do you know how long it took me to realize that blue shimmer shadow was back in? Honestly, I'd be too ashamed to tell you, and even though it's a cliché, it is something to do with having a man and not being “out there.”) Despite our divergent lifestyles and living several thousand miles apart, my friendship with Emily has endured. We E-mailed each other two or three times a week. She'd tell me about all her disastrous relationships, then she'd debrief me on my dull married life, then we'd both go home happy.
It was a great source of sadness to me that we couldn't seem to manage to live on the same continent. Garv and I had been married only a few months before we moved to Chicago for five years. Then less than four weeks before we returned to Ireland, Emily departed for Los Angeles.
What happened was, Emily had always wanted to be a writer.
She'd tried her hand at short stories and novels and ANGELS / 53
gotten nowhere. Her stuff always seemed good to me, but what would I know? Like Helen says, I've no imagination.
Then, five or so years ago Emily wrote a short film called A perfect Day , which was picked up by an Irish production company and gotten shown on television. It was whimsical and charming, but what normally happens with a short is that it gets shown once, then disappears. It's regarded as a type of practice run for wannabe filmmakers. But something unprecedented happened with A Perfect Day , all because it was a very odd length: fourteen and a half minutes. Whenever Ireland had some sort of corruption scandal (every other week), the nine o'clock news would run long and a filler item would be needed to occupy the airwaves until ten o'clock, when things could get back on schedule. Three times over a four-month period A Perfect Day was that filler, and it began to work its way beneath the skin of the nation. Suddenly, at watercoolers and photocopying machines and bus stops throughout the land, people were asking each other, “Did you see that lovely thing that was on after the news last night?”
Overnight, in Ireland at least, Emily became a householdish name—people didn't exactly know who she was, but they knew that they'd heard of her, and they had definitely heard of her film.
She could have made a decent enough living in Ireland. If she'd been prepared to be flexible, and do sitcoms, plays, ads—apparently they pay very handsomely—as well as films. But she decided to go for broke, left her dreary day job, and departed for Los Angeles.
Time passed, then news came back that she'd been taken on by one of the big Hollywood agencies. Not long after that came the announcement that she'd sold a full-length script to DreamWorks.
Or was it Miramax? One of the big ones, anyway. The film was called Hostage (or it might be Hostage !) and was about a tiny honeymooner's island in the South Pacific that is invaded by terrorists who kill the few locals and take several of the honeymooners hostage. Others
54 / MARIAN KEYES
escape into the undergrowth, survive castaway style on twigs, etc., and plot a rescue mission. It was described as “an action movie, with a love story and comedic overtones.”
The Sunday Independent did a feature about the deal, the television station ran A Perfect Day again, and Emily's mother bought a long, navy, spangly dress for the premiere. (She got it on sale, at 40 percent off, but it was still fairly pricey.) More time passed, and not much happened. No one got cast, and whenever I asked what stage they were at, Emily said tersely,
“We're still fine-tuning the script.” I stopped asking about it.
Eventually Emily's mother called her and asked Emily would she mind if she wore the long, navy, spangly dress to Mr. Emily's Christmas work do. Only it was nearly a year since she'd bought it, and
It was a great source of sadness to me that we couldn't seem to manage to live on the same continent. Garv and I had been married only a few months before we moved to Chicago for five years. Then less than four weeks before we returned to Ireland, Emily departed for Los Angeles.
What happened was, Emily had always wanted to be a writer.
She'd tried her hand at short stories and novels and ANGELS / 53
gotten nowhere. Her stuff always seemed good to me, but what would I know? Like Helen says, I've no imagination.
Then, five or so years ago Emily wrote a short film called A perfect Day , which was picked up by an Irish production company and gotten shown on television. It was whimsical and charming, but what normally happens with a short is that it gets shown once, then disappears. It's regarded as a type of practice run for wannabe filmmakers. But something unprecedented happened with A Perfect Day , all because it was a very odd length: fourteen and a half minutes. Whenever Ireland had some sort of corruption scandal (every other week), the nine o'clock news would run long and a filler item would be needed to occupy the airwaves until ten o'clock, when things could get back on schedule. Three times over a four-month period A Perfect Day was that filler, and it began to work its way beneath the skin of the nation. Suddenly, at watercoolers and photocopying machines and bus stops throughout the land, people were asking each other, “Did you see that lovely thing that was on after the news last night?”
Overnight, in Ireland at least, Emily became a householdish name—people didn't exactly know who she was, but they knew that they'd heard of her, and they had definitely heard of her film.
She could have made a decent enough living in Ireland. If she'd been prepared to be flexible, and do sitcoms, plays, ads—apparently they pay very handsomely—as well as films. But she decided to go for broke, left her dreary day job, and departed for Los Angeles.
Time passed, then news came back that she'd been taken on by one of the big Hollywood agencies. Not long after that came the announcement that she'd sold a full-length script to DreamWorks.
Or was it Miramax? One of the big ones, anyway. The film was called Hostage (or it might be Hostage !) and was about a tiny honeymooner's island in the South Pacific that is invaded by terrorists who kill the few locals and take several of the honeymooners hostage. Others
54 / MARIAN KEYES
escape into the undergrowth, survive castaway style on twigs, etc., and plot a rescue mission. It was described as “an action movie, with a love story and comedic overtones.”
The Sunday Independent did a feature about the deal, the television station ran A Perfect Day again, and Emily's mother bought a long, navy, spangly dress for the premiere. (She got it on sale, at 40 percent off, but it was still fairly pricey.) More time passed, and not much happened. No one got cast, and whenever I asked what stage they were at, Emily said tersely,
“We're still fine-tuning the script.” I stopped asking about it.
Eventually Emily's mother called her and asked Emily would she mind if she wore the long, navy, spangly dress to Mr. Emily's Christmas work do. Only it was nearly a year since she'd bought it, and
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