And honestly, because the idea seemed bigger than the ninety to one-hundred ten pages you have to tell a screen story.īut back up. The reason I quit this time was because I didn't think anyone in the movie business would ever in a million years buy a script like this. And I asked myself, “Why is she so young?” And then I answered myself without really thinking, “Maybe because she's aging backwards?” Unfortunately, this was a very difficult concept to describe in a screenplay, and I probably wrote about twenty pages before quitting again. The mother's name was Betty Bloom even in those earliest screenplay scenes. When Owen got to the pier, he encountered a banner that read “WELCOME TO ELSEWHERE” and a second later, he is met by his mother, only he couldn't recognize her because she was younger than he had ever known her in life - I didn't know why this was so at the time. My Owen was a fortyfive year-old man and a heart doctor - my notes, I'm embarrassed to say, may have described him as “George Clooney-ish.” I wrote the first screenplay scene to be a ship arriving at a pier as in my earlier novel sketch. I named the main character Owen because one of my favorite books in those days was John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany. “I think I'll try writing a couple of scenes,” I told Hans. About a week later, I was still thinking about it. Complications.” And I think Hans said, “Hmm, that's interesting.” At which point, we started discussing something else.īut the idea stuck with me. So, I brainstormed to Hans, “What about a screenplay with an afterlife love triangle? Guy loves wife. Or the love triangles were incredibly imbalanced - somebody always loved somebody else more. We talked about, for example, how you always knew exactly who the heroine would end up with after the first scene, so the movies were incredibly predictable. In any case, I didn't think too much of it, and I abandoned the project soon after.Ī couple of months later, I was having a discussion with my filmmaking partner, Hans, about how there were no good romantic comedy movies anymore. I had no idea where the family had arrived aside from the haziest sense of an afterlife. Neither the brother nor the father was speaking to the mother. I sort of fooled around with this concept for a while, and the only thing that really came of it was one scene: the girl's deceased family (a mother, brother, and father) disembarking a cruise ship. My idea was something about a girl who survived an incident in which everyone else in her family had died. I had an idea for a novel though I wasn't doing or even thinking of doing any novel writing at the time. The first time I quit writing Elsewhere was early in 2002. How can Liz let go of the only life she has ever known and embrace a new one? Is it possible that a life lived in reverse is no different from a life lived forward? This moving, often funny book about grief, death, and loss will stay with the reader long after the last page is turned. And now that she's dead, Liz is being forced to live a life she doesn't want with a grandmother she has only just met. She wants to graduate from high school and go to college. But Liz wants to turn sixteen, not fourteen again. Here Liz will age backward from the day of her death until she becomes a baby again and returns to Earth. It is a place so like Earth, yet completely different. Need to talk to someone about your problems? Stop by Marilyn Monroe's psychiatric practice.Įlsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she has died. Curious to see new paintings by Picasso? Swing by one of Elsewhere's museums. It is warm, with a breeze, and the beaches are marvelous. nbsp Elsewhere is a 2006 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year. And now that she’s dead, Liz is being forced to live a life she doesn’t want with a grandmother she has only just met. nbsp Elsewhere is where fifteen-year-old Liz Hall ends up, after she has died. Need to talk to someone about your problems? Stop by Marilyn Monroe’s psychiatric practice. Curious to see new paintings by Picasso? Swing by one of Elsewhere’s museums. Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin Is it possible to grow up while getting younger? Welcome to Elsewhere.
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