Sarah Alderson on The Weekend Away

 

As I wandered around Lisbon with my best friend, an idea sprung into my mind for a story about a woman who goes missing on a weekend away. If you’d told me then that the book would one day wind up being a best-seller, as well as a movie on Netflix, and that Leighton Meister would be playing the character inspired partly by my best friend, I’d have laughed, and then eaten another custard tart. 

I’m a novelist and a screenwriter too, so I always write my books with a view to adapting them for television or for features, and The Weekend Away was no different. As I walked around Lisbon, I was mentally imagining what the movie version would look like and where I would set what scenes. Ironically, due to budget and covid reasons, we ended up shooting the movie in Croatia, but the atmosphere is very much the same and Split is a fantastic alternative to Lisbon on screen.

The Weekend Away very naturally fit into a feature structure with a clear three acts, an inciting incident kicking things off (her friend’s disappearance), a heroine who finds herself in a strange world, a mentor figure who helps her navigate it, and a classic ‘all is lost’ moment towards the end. 

Once I had written the book, I wrote out a synopsis for the movie version. It didn’t differentiate wildly from the book, though I did alter the ending slightly, wanting to end the film on a more definitive note than the book in order to give the audience more satisfaction. 

While I started out as a novelist, I’ve now worked in Hollywood for six years, in TV and film, as a writer and a producer. That experience - working with networks, studios, directors and actors - and also the experience of being on set, dealing with issues as they arise while filming, and working with budgets, crews, actors and stuntmen, has been invaluable in helping me better understand how to adapt a book into a movie, not just from a creative point of view, but also a logistical one.

My film agents shopped The Weekend Away to Netflix. The low budget independent department were interested and so I pitched the outline of the movie on Zoom to the executives. This was at the very beginning of the covid outbreak and Hollywood was just moving to online meetings. They loved the pitch and immediately commissioned a script. I set about writing it, already feeling confident in the structure and able to visualize all the scenes already on screen. 

The process was fairly simple and very fast. Netflix loved my first draft and greenlit the movie off of it. As with most scripts though, by the time it comes to shooting, you’ve rewritten it twenty times or more. 

Unlike with books, scripts are much more collaborative. Feature writers are very often replaced at each draft stage with a new writer. Most movies end up with several writers taking credit. I was lucky to remain the sole writer on this project and worked very closely with the director, Kim Farrant, as well as the execs to shape the script and to adapt it based on locations and the budget.

Netflix also wanted me to change the nationality of the main characters, making the lead American, though keeping her best friend, Kate, English. I was thrilled when Leighton Meester (Gossip Girl) came on board to play Beth, the main character. She is a fantastic actress and embodies the role. Ziad Bakri, a Palestinian actor, who plays a taxi driver who helps Beth in her search for her missing friend, also looks like he’s stepped out of the pages of the book. I’d seen him in the French series The Bureau and had been a huge fan, so was very excited when his name appeared on the casting list.

Watching the final cut with my daughter a few days ago, I found myself on the edge of my seat during several scenes, which considering the fact I’ve seen the movie a dozen times during the editing process and had written the scenes, felt like a good sign. 

It’s always nerve-wracking to put your work into the world, even more so with a feature that will be shown on the biggest streamer in the world, so I’m nervously awaiting its premiere in March.

In the meantime, I’m onto adapting my next book as a feature! 

The Weekend Away will be out on Netflix March 3rd.

The Weekend Away by Sarah Alderson (HarperCollins) Out Now

Miles from home. Trust no one. Suspect everyone. Orla and Kate have been best friends forever. Together they've faced it all - be it Orla's struggles as a new mother or Kate's messy divorce. And whatever else happens in their lives, they can always look forward to their annual weekend away. This year, they're off to Lisbon: the perfect flat, the perfect view, the perfect itinerary. And what better way to kick things off in style than with the perfect night out? But when Orla wakes up the next morning, Kate is gone. Brushed off by the police and with only a fuzzy memory of the night's events, Orla is her friend's only hope. As she frantically retraces their steps, Orla makes a series of shattering discoveries that threaten everything she holds dear. Because while Lisbon holds the secret of what happened that night, the truth may lie closer to home...

An Introduction to Cold Desert Sky by Rod Reynolds

There's a theory I see espoused by authors, from time to time, that we all have a eureka moment at some point during the writing of a story, where it finally becomes clear what the book is truly about. Cold Desert Sky is the first time I can say I experienced that feeling.

Of course, I knew what the plot was - at least in outline - before I started writing: it picks up from where my second novel, Black Night Falling left off, with reporter Charlie Yates returning to Los Angeles and living in fear of legendary mob boss Bugsy Siegel. Charlie becomes obsessed with the disappearance of two aspiring starlets, and his investigations lead to him getting caught up in a murderous blackmail racket, targeting Hollywood bigwigs. 

The action moves to Las Vegas, right around the time Siegel was completing his dream: The Flamingo Hotel, the building which laid the foundation for the city we know today. Yates finds himself caught between Sigel's outfit and a rogue FBI agent, and as his chances of getting out alive dwindle, his only care is to find the missing girls while he still can.

The inspiration for the book came from several places. I've been visiting Las Vegas, periodically, for twenty years now, and I've always been interested in the history of the place. It also tied in with the historical events I based Black Night Falling on - in that Siegel travelled frequently to Hot Springs, where that book is set, and used it as a template for his vision of Las Vegas. With this connection in mind, it was too tempting a historical confluence to ignore.

I also started out wanting to write about the seedy side of Hollywood's golden era. The book was completed before the Weinstein revelations came out, and the subsequent #MeToo movement, and it's striking to be able to look at it now and think about how little has changed in the decades that followed.

But what about that eureka moment? That's to do with the missing girls. Anyone who follows me on social media will know I often post about some of the crazy things my two young daughters say or do. Becoming a father five years ago has changed me in ways I couldn't have imagined; in many ways it's made me more positive and optimistic, but also more fearful. And I realised these two missing girls - much older than my own, but perhaps more vulnerable for it - were the product of my parental worst fears. Those horrible moments where we allow our mind to imagine what it would feel like if something terrible happened. As unpleasant as it is, the emotion provoked is visceral and potent - and that's what I was trying to bring to this book. To have Charlie experience the same sense of terror, and being forced to confront just how far he's willing to go to protect two innocents.

Of course, when he discovers the truth, it isn't so straightforward...

But if I've managed to capture those emotions on the page - or readers can relate to them or have experienced similar, as I'm sure they have - then you'll understand why this is my most personal book yet. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Cold Desert Sky by Rod Reynolds is published by Faber & Faber in July (£12.99)

Guy Bolton on Hollywood Scandals

My first novel The Pictures centres on a studio fixer hired to cover-up the apparent suicide of one of the producers of The Wizard of Oz. So when people ask me about it usually they want to know if it’s based on a true story.

The answer is complex. Yes, and no, I say.

“Was the producer of The Wizard of Oz found dead at his home?” No. “Is Jonathan Craine a real Detective?” Afraid not.  “Was there a Hollywood star called Gale Goodwin?” Sorry, I made her up.

At this point my disappointed audience might make one last plea: “Were there even any scandals and cover-ups in Hollywood at the time?”

Oh yes, more than one. So many you wouldn’t even believe me if I told you.

Indeed, as I began researching my novel I quickly realised that the truth, as the adage goes, was stranger than fiction. Sure, there were rumours and gossip about movie stars then as there is now: Clark Gable had an illegitimate lovechild; Errol Flynn was accused of statutory rape; Spencer Tracy was an alcoholic; Judy Garland was addicted to prescription drugs. But the starting point for my plot was actually MGM megastar Jean Harlow and her producer husband Paul Bern, both of whom died under mysterious circumstances in the early thirties. 

On paper, theirs was an unlikely partnership. Harlow was a wild-child who happened to be one of the most successful movie stars of her generation. Bern was introverted writer-producer twenty years her senior. So when the newly married Paul Bern was discovered naked in his bedroom, shot in the head by a .38 calibre pistol besides a questionable suicide note, naturally the movie studio was desperate to protect their star.

Studio police were on the scene before even the LAPD. MGM’s Head of Publicity (the inspiration for my Russell Peterson) released press stories that painted Jean Harlow as a victim of a troubled marriage. Of course, the District Attorney chosen to handle the inquest happened to have close ties to MGM Chief Louis B. Mayer – he was an important donator to the DA’s re-election campaign. Not only did the District Attorney rule that Paul Bern’s death was suicide, he even went so far as stating that Paul Bern suffered from impotence, giving motive to him killing himself and helping to whitewash anything that might threaten Harlow’s image.

A few years later Jean Harlow herself was dead; gossip columnists speculated that Harlow had died of alcoholism, maybe even a botched abortion or venereal disease. In the end, the official line was that she died from kidney failure. She was 26 years old.

Rumours around Harlow and Bern’s premature deaths persist to this day. Delving deeper, I discovered that our studio-friendly District Attorney was later indicted for bribery and perjury and in a twist of fate took his own life with a pistol to the head. But what the case really highlighted to me was the obscene influence the studios at the time had on the press and judicial system. It was the first of many examples.

One of the saddest scandals I came across was the rape of a 20- year-old dancer by an MGM sales executive in 1937, a tragic tale detailed in Vanity Fair by David Stenn and later turned into a documentary Girl 27. Dancer and bit-part actress Patricia Douglas filed a landmark lawsuit against MGM when she claimed she was raped at an MGM sales convention. The tabloids soon discovered that the “sales convention” was actually a lavish Wild West themed party MGM put on for its national sales teams. After all, MGM was celebrating their success and survival in the depression, coming out as the only major studio to make profits year-on-year.

For the studio, an accusation of rape against its staff was bad enough. But as the story began to make headlines nationwide, the real fear lay in the public’s perception of MGM as a the home of wholesome family entertainment in the face of reports that it was throwing depraved parties filled with free liquor and underage girls.

The studio used its press influence to launch a smear campaign against Patricia Douglas, going as far as hiring private investigators to follow her and dig up dirt. Inevitably, the DA (still the same friend from the Paul Bern inquest), sympathetic to MGM’s situation, used his position to block action against the rapist. Douglas’ case fell apart.

In The Pictures, I have my own studio party and my own sad turn of events. But nothing would ever match up to what happened to Patricia Douglas. She soon fled  Hollywood and spent most of her life alone. In interviews shortly before she died she admitted she never truly recovered from the ordeal.

Drugs. Unruly stars. Debauched parties. The influence of studios on press and the justice system. The consistent and unashamed exploitation of women. I could go on. The Golden Age of Hollywood was founded on a bedrock of sin and corruption.

But perhaps what’s most interesting is that these key plot-points and themes are as relevant now as they have always been. In many ways, the scandals of 1930s Hollywood were no different to anything you might read in the paper today.

THE PICTURES by Guy Bolton is published by PointBlank, hardback £14.99

The Pictures a noir thriller, is set in Hollywood in 1939.  World-weary Jonathan Craine is a detective at the LAPD who has spent his entire career as a studio ‘fixer', covering up crimes of the studio players to protect the billion-dollar industry that built Los Angeles. When one of the producers of The Wizard of Oz is found dead under suspicious circumstances, Craine must make sure the incident passes without scandal and that the deceased's widow, the beautiful starlet Gale Goodwin, comes through the ordeal with her reputation unscathed.  But against his better instincts, Craine finds himself increasingly drawn to Gale. And when a series of unsavoury truths begin to surface, Craine finds himself at the centre of a conspiracy involving a Chicago crime syndicate, a prostitution racket and a set of stolen pictures that could hold the key to unravelling the mystery.

You can find him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter @gpbolton

Epiphany Jones by Michael Grothaus - A Review

Michael Grothaus’s Epiphany Jones is one of those novels that has you gasping not long after you start reading it and continue to gasp all the way through.  It is not an easy book to read as it deals with an issue that is as harrowing as it is brutal.  However, saying that, it is one of the best debut novels I have read this year.

Epiphany Jones is the story of Jerry who is very distasteful, sexist and strange as he tries to deal with his porn addiction alongside his mental health issues. Accused of a theft that he claims not to have done he disappears and meets the eponymous Epiphany a woman on a quest and with an ulterior motive. Only Epiphany can come to Jerry’s rescue. When the two of them meet then Jerry’s rather messy and tumultuous existence is further turned upside down. Dark brutal and very harsh at times the humour that one comes to appreciate very much comes from Jerry’s dry observations.

 

As a debut crime novel it is brilliantly written, shocking in the subject matter but also with black humour that stops the book from becoming overly morbid and depressing.  The author has combined a dark tale of child sex trafficking taking place in Hollywood with hilarity that occasionally borders on the ludicrous. It does however work.   Told in first person, Epiphany Jones is full of pace, excellent characterisation and setting. As a reader you will certainly look at Hollywood with a fresh perspective. Michael Grothaus certainly does not pull any punches with this formidable and impressive debut novel.  In the end this is a very clever thriller about murder, abuse, revenge and unadulterated evil. Sheer genius.

Epiphany Jones by Michael Grothaus (Orenda Books, £8.99)

A man with a consuming addiction. A woman who talks to God.  And the secret connection that could destroy them both… Jerry has a traumatic past that leaves him subject to psychotic hallucinations and depressive episodes. When he stands accused of stealing a priceless Van Gogh painting, he goes underground, where he develops an unwilling relationship with a woman who believes that the voices she hears are from God. Involuntarily entangled in the illicit world of sex trafficking amongst the Hollywood elite, and on a mission to find redemption for a haunting series of events from the past, Jerry is thrust into a genuinely shocking and outrageously funny quest to uncover the truth and atone for historical sins.