Adventures in Austenland #8
I was just wondering what your husband is going to think.
I hadn’t even thought of that. As soon as I got back to my flat, I called Dean and told him the whole story. He had only one question:
dean:
Where did you sign?
me:
On the waistband.
dean:
Wimp.
My supporting artist gig over, it was especially awkward coming onto set the next morning. Not because of the underwear incident. No, because of the fame. I put on sunglasses and kept my head down like an incognito starlet.
Bret McKenzie walked beside me from base camp up to set and asked about my experience as a supporting artist. Since we were now peers and fellow thespians and all, we segued into the many difficulties that come with being a movie star.
The locations manager, Camilla, called out, “Good morning, Shannon! Different outfit today?” I smiled and said yes, and then when she’d passed by I gave Bret a knowing look.
“It’s exhausting, isn’t it?” I said. “For one day I’d like to just be Shannon.”
“Yeah, exactly,” he said. “To just be one of the people.” He slid on his sunglasses and smiled with gorgeous resignation.
THE LAST DAY OF SLEEPAWAY CAMP
As our summer in England ticked toward its close, each time an actor performed their final take in their last scene, the first AD would announce, “That’s a wrap for .
. .” and the whole crew would applaud and cheer, and there were hugs and kisses.
If Ricky Whittle and I went for a cheek kiss and accidentally missed and ended up mouth to mouth for a sec, it doesn’t really matter and I don’t even know why you’re bringing it up.
He was always such a sweetie to everybody and on his last day brought bouquets of flowers for each woman in the cast and crew.
I had no gifts (post–awkward book handout) but I wrote each of the actors and the crew I’d gotten to know a note trying (and surely failing) to express my gratitude.
They had picked up a figment of my imagination and helped make it real, while entwining it with their own vision, creativity, and warm-heartedness. It still gives me chills.
The final scene we shot was one of the first in the film.
Keri Russell was being high school Jane in braids and braces, dining at a Regency-themed café.
The set was incredible, the details knocked my socks off, and yet in the final film you only see it for a few seconds.
I tried to appreciate every moment, soaking it into my tiniest cells right up to the final cut.
So many new friends whom I likely would never see again. Camp friends forever.
That night there would be a cast-and-crew party.
I hadn’t brought anything dressy to England.
The best I had were a couple of elastic-waisted skirts and blouses, the kinds of outfits that might make you assume I was either reluctantly on my way to church or perhaps to the funeral of someone I’d never cared for.
But after being on set all day, in the evenings I just wanted to love on my babies rather than shopping.
Whenever I returned from a day at the set, my babies would hear the apartment door opening and immediately make loud screeches and grunts while speed crawling toward me.
It’s an uncanny and marvelous sight, two babies coming at you as fast as they can go.
I would drop to the carpet, and when they reached me, they’d climb up my body, pull on my hair and ears, and clutch my neck as if they just couldn’t get enough of me, screeching and laughing all the while. There’s no love like twin baby love.
Leave them even longer just to go shopping? No, not worth it. So I resigned myself to looking dowdy and unremarkable. Oh well.
But after lunch on our final day, Steph invited me into her trailer, and hanging up on the wall was a black-and-burgundy party dress with swish skirt, paired with a bolero jacket and black flats.
They were all in my size. I felt like Cinderella.
I don’t remember how Steph knew what I needed, but I remember how much I felt seen and appreciated.
It was not just the gift itself that filled me full of wonder; it was the noticing that I had a need.
How fortunate I feel whenever life presents me moments when I get to play fairy godmother in turn.
Is there any greater joy? Noticing someone in lack and extending a hand is its own kind of magic.
That party was a rowdy and delightful celebration.
We danced, we sang, and we took photos in a booth.
And then the best surprise—some crew had edited together a five-minute sample trailer of the movie!
I watched it like I was in a desert on foot, stumbling toward an oasis.
It was so good, I could barely believe it.
In fact, I couldn’t believe it. I wanted it too much and couldn’t trust myself.
I found myself turning to Jared Hess and asking anxiously, “It looks really good, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s so funny, isn’t it?”
I would have to wait a long time to find out if I was right.
In the meantime, I flew back home with two babies, swooping into my house to embrace my four-year-old and seven-year-old, and then back to normal—kids, writing, housework, grocery shopping, preparing meals, cleaning up, the beautiful mundane.
As if Austenland had been a dream. I had actually been there, right?
But like Jane Hayes, I was left wondering, what parts were real, and what parts were fantasy.
ONE MORE UNEXPECTED AUDIENCE REACTION
A year and a half after wrapping, our film received the incredible honor of being a Sundance Film Festival competition selection.
Sundance was in my home state, so I got to head up the mountain and experience my first red carpet—albeit a red carpet where the stars wear parkas and snow boots.
The morning of our premiere, excited and anxious, I arrived early.
The cast was in hair and makeup, so I was waiting out front alone when someone in a headset grabbed me and said, “They’re ready for you. ”
Whoa, what?
I was rushed to the red carpet area. Someone announced, “This is Shannon Hale, the book author.” And a mass of photographers started snapping photos of me. “Shannon, here! . . . Now here! . . . Look here!”
I stood there alone, while professional photographers snapped pictures of me and the makeup I’d slapped together early that morning in my bathroom.
I’ve never been so aware of my hands and how I had no idea where I was supposed to put them.
On my waist? Hanging down? Making finger guns?
I ended up clutching them in front of me in waif pose, shuffling to the right or the left.
I had gum in my mouth, entirely unprepared for on camera interviews, so when reporters started asking me questions, I hurriedly tucked it into my cheek.
This made my mouth salivate as I spoke, and all I could think was don’t drool, don’t you dare let yourself drool . . .
I was so relieved when the actors came out and all focus slammed away from me. I turned and was elated to see a friendly face—Annie, Jane Seymour’s sister, and a bestie from set. We hugged and chatted out of the way of the Hollywood hullaballoo.
Or at least, Sundance’s form of petit-hullaballoo. Along with the cast, I was ushered from hotel room to hotel room, where we did mini-interviews. Or the actors mostly did.
“Who are you?” the press people asked.
“I’m the writer,” I said.
Once they heard that, there were rarely further questions. I seemed to hear a ghostly memory echoing: No one cares about the author . . .
When it was my turn for a photo, I walked into a tiny room outfitted with backdrop and lights, and a photographer started snapping pictures of me. I stood there and smiled my best yearbook smile. After a few moments, she lowered her camera and asked, “Is that all you do?”
Was I supposed to do different poses or something? Was she expecting Heidi Klum?
“I . . . I’m the writer,” I explained.
“I see,” she said.
Our session was over.
As the Austenland folks crossed Park City’s main street to our next interview destination, we had to get through a mob of paparazzi and Sundance tourists.
Someone screamed, “There’s Keri Russell!
” And then began a feeding frenzy. People were pushing up close to her, cameras out, hundreds yelling her name, “KERI! KERI!”
I’d never imagined how it would feel to be trapped inside that star-crazed mayhem.
My heart pounded, my muscles shook as if in a life-and-death situation, and apparently my primal response was to go mama bear, because I surprised myself by screaming at them, “LEAVE HER ALONE! WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU? GET AWAY FROM HER!”
They ignored me. Despite my manic screaming, in the middle of all the other noise, I doubt anyone could have even heard me.
When we finally got inside, I was furious and shaking, and I said to Keri, “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
She seemed unfazed. That sort of thing apparently happened a lot. And I was so grateful to be just the writer.
When it was time for the showing, we settled into Sundance’s largest theater, seating twelve hundred people for the sold-out premiere.
I’d seen the final cut already, watching a watermarked DVD screener on my laptop alone in my bedroom.
I thought it was funny. I hoped it was funny.
But you can never predict audience reaction.
Would they be on the side of the nuns or of the traumatized teen’s celery-wasting mother?
Or worse—would they have no reaction at all?
Nothing is deadlier to a comedy than silence.
My nervous stomach warned me I was about to find out. After seven years working on the book and three years writing the screenplay and making the movie, everything seemed to be about the next ninety minutes.
The movie started, and I first truly grasped what a gift this experience is to an author.
Watching a movie based on your book off ers us that rarest of opportunities: to actually see someone else’s experience of our story, as if peering inside a reader’s mind as they read.
This version belonged to Jerusha’s and my screenplay plus her director’s imagination; as well as the vision of the actors, the production designer, the cinematographer, the costumers, the editor, the songwriters—all the hundred-plus people who’d poured their time and talents into creating it.
And I was experiencing it with over a thousand strangers.
I hoped, hoped, hoped that they would be delighted right out of their seats. But what if they didn’t laugh?
Reader, they laughed.
From the first moment, when Jane Seymour as Mrs. Wattlesbrook stood there petting her stuff ed lamb, the audience began to giggle, and they didn’t stop. Every joke we hoped for got a response—the only ones that didn’t were those they couldn’t hear because they were already howling.
The audience laughed, and I sat there in the dark and cried. The more they laughed, the more I quietly sobbed. The relief was so humongous, a massive stopper of anxiety popped out of my system and the tears gushed. I wasn’t prepared—I hadn’t thought to bring tissues to a comedy.
Near the end of the movie, I got another top-five career experience.
The story off ers a hopefully unpredicted incident, and twelve hundred people made the same sound at the exact same time: a surprised intake of breath followed by a happy sigh.
This was the moment the entire story was working toward; this was the moment I needed the audience to hope for without realizing that they were hoping for it.
The unified gasp and sigh confirmed—all the work was worth it. I wiped tears off my cheeks.
So this was what it was like to be really present when sharing your story, and to see it met with welcome delight.
It’s laughing and crying at the same time.
It’s feeling warm in the night rain under a crane-light moon.
It’s aching for someone far away because you know they love you.
It’s reveling in the joy of crafting a just-right sentence.
All of it. The purest, strangest, kindest bliss.