SOMETIMES IT’S ABOUT BUTTERING YOUR BREAD

In 1989, my first novel, DEAR DIGBY, was published by Viking Penguin. The novel’s heroine was Willis Jane Digby who worked as Letters Editor at SIS (read MS.) a feminist magazine. Digby responded to random correspondence while wearing rabbit ears, a symbol of her growing sense of madness in the wake of the many outrageous letters she received that were funny and in one case, tragic and critical: the “extreme” correspondence of Iris Moss, an outraged voice, traumatized yet wild and darkly funny.

To top it all off, Willis Digby was being followed by a stalker, who calls himself “The Watcher”.

One day my agent called to say that DIGBY had been optioned by Michelle Pfeiffer. I met Ms. Pfeiffer and her two producers for lunch - about which I remember just one thing – Michelle Pfeiffer and I goofing on the meaning of “haricot verts” on the somewhat pretentious menu. I was charmed.

Amazingly, not long after, DEAR DIGBY was green-lit at Orion, announced in Newsweek and the upcoming book-to- movie mentioned in Liz Smith’s famous gossip column as starring Pfeiffer. (Liz Smith asked Viking for a photograph of me, as “a Pfeiffer look-alike” – certainly a stretch - but which hardly mattered as I found out later that Viking P.R. told Liz Smith they had no photo of me “available” to run alongside Pfeiffer’s photo.)

I should have marked this oversight as a harbinger of bad news to come - because despite the “done deal” hype – something was about to go very wrong.

The producers (remaining nameless) were now about to choose a screenwriter. I believe they interviewed a few contenders, but I only recall their report of one failed interview, which took place over lunch. I remember this detail because the producers, a woman and a man, described it to me later, with mild distaste. They were “put off” they said, because this candidate appeared to have too-extreme notions about how to represent the novel’s protagonist, Willis Jane Digby, as evidenced by how “aggressively” this interviewee buttered her bread. (!)

Hearing about this rejection, I felt a vague sense of alarm, since “my” main character, Willis Digby, was (though I wouldn’t have known to use the term back then) pretty “gender fluid” and had asserted herself against a threat of sexual assault as an adolescent. The daughter of military brass, Digby knew how to appear “aggressive” to defend herself.

Next I heard a little about a second more successful interview. A new candidate was hired, with some fanfare, as screenwriter. (There was mention of her collection of cute stuffed animals as a winning detail in her resume. More alarm.)

The movie of DEAR DIGBY was never made. Attempts at a screenplay never quite worked, I guessed. Which I assume meant that Orion never approved a working draft, let alone a shooting script.

I did, however, remember the name of the rejected screenwriter it was Callie Khouri. If that name doesn’t ring a bell – here’s a quick biographical fact: Callie Khouri wrote the enduring feminist classic, “Thelma & Louise”, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1992 and was inducted into the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress in 2016.

I’m not bitter about this: it’s common knowledge that the film industry is built on whimsy and luck. (+ now, major franchises!) And who knows if my novel would ever have translated well to film?

But this anecdote of good luck followed by bad stays with me. Do I believe that the feminist movement has become entangled in complicated evolving distractions? I won’t mention the divisive political distractions that have undermined the once “sisterhood is powerful” concept. Or why violence against women world-wide has not become a battle cry for all women?

I realize these enormities appear to have nothing to do with this little narrative – though it does not seem to take much to bolster the theory that women are naturally inimical -- or perhaps deterred from a common politics by that sticky “male gaze”.

We seem always way ready to judge each other – based on what?

We’ve all been there , let’s admit it. Women are human, after all, subject to the foibles of taste or random bias.

Joan Didion noted that women would never represent a “class” – as in, I guess, the sense of a class action suit.

Or, you know, it could just come down to how a gal butters her bread? Or makes fun of “haricot verts”?