A Valentine’s
Day Selection.
This should have been our
selection for February 2016 at the Brown Bag Book Club.[1]
As you can see from the citations below, this won an “unpublished” book award in Australia (?). The author sold the movie rights {but no
movie}. He did get an Advanced Diploma of Screenwriting in 2013, and when he
wrote the sequel, he got, in 2014, a Diploma of Professional Writing and
Editing; both from
the University of Melborne. [This was not his undergraduate, but his graduate
school.]
We all love Canadian R/C novels, but
Australian ??? Even Crocodile Dundee
wasn’t what I would call romantic. I
can’t recall what prompted me to originally order this book – I actually bought
it for a friend. This is another entry
into the genre-world of O/C behavior comedies.
The protagonist is off the charts of “normal” and the reader is
encouraged to feel sympathetic as one might to a child with learning
disabilities. Robin or Padma could
comment on what variations are being portrayed.
The plot line is a basic boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl -- a
romantic comedy. It’s funny – it’s
romantic – but it’s stupid, and not well developed..
Like Christopher Boone, the 15-year-old
narrator of Mark Haddon's 2003 novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-Time, he's appealing not just despite his eccentricities but because
of them. We read that book in June 2005
(see next page for what I wrote then).
The O/C behavior just spices up an
otherwise standard R/C plotline that has been done for as long as I can
remember: movies like “It Happened One
Night”, or anything with Tracy and Hepburn; stage plays like with Burton
and Taylor. Even the author tries to
spice things up with mentions of Billy Crystal and Gregory Peck. This is the basic essence of writing for
social communication – Conflict – Yin and Yang – Opposites Attract – Salt and
Pepper.
The
predictability of the storyline is only matched by our, the reader’s, capacity
to insatiably digest an infinite set of variations on this popular theme. It’s a fun read. But the unbelievable plotlines appeared to be
even too stupid for Hollywood’s mega$$stars.
Well,
while “Oh, gee,” loveable and sweet, this wouldn’t have made it beyond three
episodes as a sit-com. It appears that
there are saccharine limits to even Jen Lawrence’s agent’s taste[2].
[1] Simsion won the 2012
Victorian Premier's Unpublished Manuscript Award for his book, The Rosie Project. Text Publishing has sold the rights to the book internationally for over
$1.8m. The Rosie Project was published in Australia in January 2014, and
has since sold more than a million copies in over forty countries around the
world. The screenplay has been optioned to Sony
Pictures Entertainment. A sequel to The
Rosie Project, titled The Rosie Effect, was published on 24
September 2014 by Text Publishing.
[2]
Richard Linklater Follows Jennifer Lawrence Off Sony's
'Rosie Project’ by Borys Kit 10/14/2015 10:57am PDT
Sources say Linklater left when Lawrence left on the heels of Jennifer
Lawrence dropping out of Tri-Star’s The Rosie Project, The
Hollywood Reporter has learned the romantic dramedy's director Richard
Linklater has also departed.
Sources say both actress and
director left the project Monday. Lawrence’s
departure had to do with scheduling, according to several sources. The actress
has been jumping from one movie to another — she went from X-Men: Apocalypse
in the spring and summer to currently shooting Passengers— and the
studio was hoping to shoot Rosie in the winter. Instead, the
Oscar-winner needed a break. Rosie
was developed as a Lawrence vehicle, and Linklater, then making his first move
since nabbing six Oscar nominations for his film Boyhood, came on board
for a chance to work with the actress.
The studio considers the project
a priority and will look for a new filmmaker and star immediately.
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