Jane got a movie? About HER life?
Dang.
Yet another career milestone to aspire to. Or perhaps a perk of being dead 200 years? Okay, okay, in 200 years I doubt I'll care whether or not my books are remembered, cherished, beloved by millions, and made into miniseries. My daytimer doesn't run that far into the future. It's from Staples.
But it doesn't hurt to dream. And maybe prepare a bit.
It's my understanding that Jane Austen didn't leave a juicy, tell-all autobiography. There is official record of her life-- where and with whom she lived, when she died, when and with whom she published. And a few letters and some personal pennings. And of course, the fact that she never MARRIED, which by the standards of the day means she probably never had. . . you know. . . "thex." But almost everything else in the movie was gleaned from what she would have had to have known or seen in order to have written the books she wrote. Hmmm. Now I'm not an expert on memoirs or autobiographies, but I don't think that qualifies the movie in anybody's book as "truth," much less "fact."
Which means. . . in 200 hundred years they won't care about the "facts" of our lives, either. What they'll want is a good rock 'em, sock 'em story. So, since we have no idea whose books will survive and become the stuff of legend, I suggest. . . we all leave them a story. Write up an autobiography that's the way you'd like it to be and salt it around in places it's likely to survive-- attached to wills, in lock boxes-- or, hey!, on the internet. We've got fabulous imaginations, I bet we could come up with some killer autobiographies.
I can hear your necks creaking as your heads shake. [I have just decided I have supernaturally terrific hearing. (Note to self: establish early on in autobiography-- perhaps as the reason for decidedly un-stellar elementary school career)] And I can hear the gasps. This is not lying. This is spin. Which is an altogether different thing. Just ask anyone in Washington.
I can just see in now-- Betina, blissful child of the backwoods, at one with nature. . . cruelly ripped from her environment and forced to go to SCHOOL. . .where they made her sit in cramped little desks and write her letters over and over. She yearned to return to nature, but was constrained to live her entire life in hideously artificial houses with indoor plumbing and dishwashers and sleep-number beds. (Are you crying yet?)
Okay, so I'll work on it. Maybe there's still time for me to do some shocking, juicy stuff that will be memorably cinematic.
What about you? How would you fictionalize your life? What would be the high and low points? Would you be a Gone with the Wind or a Carrie? Oooooh-- better yet-- who would you like to play you from today's crop of actresses? Personally I'm hoping they cryo-freeze Michelle Pfeiffer so she'll be available to play me. . .
Cough, cough.
