Our big Hollywood break!

As always, our weeks are busy and so I didn't have time to write about something that happened last Monday until now. I did teach my Monday class to the high schoolers last week (although only about half were in class because the roads were unusable). When I was done and got back to my car, I saw on my phone that a new email had arrived from the department secretary, Martha. She was forwarding a voice mail message that had been left while she was away at lunch. Here it is:

[phone number] Jamie Anderson I'd like to do a movie on jamie's book -- Lawson be able to you soon -- Harvey rock my name is Lauren he could have Jamie anderson's of call assignment cursing -- or both if you are rearrange discuss doing a movie about.

Apparently the gist of this garbled message is that a film producer (I'll leave out his name to protect the innocent, but we checked that he really existed on IMDB and he has a couple of films to his credit - one involving Neve "Scream" Campbell and a "short" involving the now-ancient Ed Asner) contacted the department with an idea of making a movie of the book that we edited. (Simon is the "cursing" part of the message.) I found this out when I called him back later that evening. Stupified I asked what the movie would be about (the book is, after all, a collection of academic papers!).  Now, a documentary I could almost imagine (though how that would be done now, I can't imagine, since most of the relevant events are 7 years in the past). But no, he was envisioning a full-length (100 minutes) feature film. "What would happen?" I asked, still incredulous. Apparently that where we come in. All we need to do is to whip up a "movie treatment"--and don't think in words, think in images as movies tell a story with images (duh!) that "tells the story." What story? That's what we put into the movie treatment! It's simple, when you think about it.

So, this is what I came up with: a moderately successful professional woman, mother of two, receives word that her younger son is autistic. Initially bummed, this causes tension in the household: the older son becomes a drug addict and his previously stellar grades slip, he stops bathing or even getting hair cuts; the marriage crumbles and the husband is killed in a car crash (probably drunk/stoned at the time after spending the evening at an all-night rave). Faced with a "do or die" moment, she pulls her socks up, quits her job (being supported by the generous life insurance policy she had the wisdom to take out on her husband during better times), and bravely soldiers on. Final scene: she is walking on a beach into the setting sun, each hand holding a hand of one of her kids.

Simon, however, being the killjoy that he is, decided that the whole thing would be too stressful and that we should go on as if we never got The Call.
[This is of course complete fiction - Jami was the one who decided it couldn't be done.  I suggested she give him her long-planned zombie movie outline instead.]
Jami:  No way.  That is going to Bruce Campbell and no one else.