Thirty-Three. It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Sweetville
Thirty-Three
IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE SWEETVILLE
Powell Park is positively fecund with Christmas décor. Or at least the town green is, and because it’s April, the police have blocked off a section of Ninety-Fifth Street to traffic and pedestrians to prevent crowds from gathering to watch what’s going on.
For the denizens of my hometown, there’s excitement to see a real working film set right in the center of our normally not-photogenic suburb. I know the feeling, as I’ve still never gotten over driving around LA and seeing blocks taken up by crew trucks for location filming.
I’ve brought my parents for a set visit, and my dad can’t believe there’s a director’s chair with my name on the back—written hastily on a sheet of paper and taped there but still clearly my name and my chair.
“Can I sit in it?” he asks. I tell him to have at it, and he insists my mom take a photo for him to send to his fantasy baseball group chat.
“This is amazing, Jill,” Mom says, clutching my hand tightly. “Imagine—all this created for something you wrote.”
“Powell Park has never looked better,” I agree.
The Sweetville-ization of my hometown’s center means that not only did the crew Christmas everything up, but they’ve added fresh coats of paint to light posts—the better to then twist them with garlands of pine—and traded out some of the town green’s rattier benches for new burgundy ones that will pop better on camera.
Overhead, icicle lights zigzag between lampposts, and the top of the gazebo is layered with a plush coat of (fake) white snow.
Movie magic has cast its spell on Powell Park, but I know the truth about this place: it may look a little rough around the edges, but the only difference between where I grew up and its Heartfelt alter ego is a little set dressing.
I’ll never be an exemplar of all things Heartfelt at the holidays, but there’s a Christmas person somewhere in me, too.
“Just wait until you see the leads. They’re gorgeous,” I tell Mom. Dad has wandered away to talk to the woman handling the tree lights about how she managed to get such an even distribution of her bulbs.
“We’re about to start,” Andy, the associate producer who’s been one of my closest contacts on set, says as he comes to stand beside Mom and me. They’re filming the last scenes first. A lot of the other key moments will be shot on soundstages in Burbank.
“Thank you so much for getting us on set,” Mom tells him. “And for making Powell Park a star.” She winks. It’s corny, but I can tell Andy finds it charming.
“To be honest, Powell Park was so cooperative about the permits for this—so much easier than some shoots in Los Angeles,” Andy reveals. “Your hometown doesn’t mess around, Jill. And the bakery you recommended for craft services? SweetHart’s? To die for. The baker is cute, too. But straight, right?”
“Happy to help,” I say. “Corey is great. And yes, straight.” I wouldn’t know exactly how great Corey’s doing, because I’ve been too shy to go talk to him. Not that he’d remember our relationship in Sweetville, but I do.
“Okay, we’re going to be rolling soon,” Andy says. “Go get yourself a cookie, dammit.”
I slip away from the filming area toward the craft services tent set up behind the scenes along a particularly drab, not-camera-ready section of the Powell Park village hall. Sure enough, Corey is there, setting out a fresh tray of wrapped cookies.
“Hi,” I say, feeling anxious as I step forward. Do I introduce myself? Last time I was in Powell Park, Corey didn’t recognize me, but Sweetville Corey did. And Powell Park Jill of last year was hiding behind sunglasses, which I’m not. But still. It’s been a long time since high school.
“Jill Jacobs!” Corey’s green eyes brighten, and his dimple appears next to his wide smile.
He immediately comes around the table to me and holds his arms out.
I step into what’s an entirely friendly hug, actually relieved that’s all it feels like.
“I was hoping you’d be here for your big shoot!
I’ve been bragging that you made sure I knew how to spell back in high school.
And oh my God, I’ve gotta thank you for using SweetHart’s.
They said that was you. I can’t even believe you remember me. ”
“Of course I do,” I tell him. “I would have had them cast you in the Santa parade, too, but I wasn’t sure you kept your old costume.” I’m teasing him.
“Ha, I probably wouldn’t fit in it anymore,” he says, patting his entirely flat stomach. “But if they need a guy, I’ll suit up. Seriously though, I don’t know how I’m going to repay you. Take as many cookies as you want? They’re not exactly currency, but…”
“They should be,” I tell him. “I had some at the holidays.”
I scan the trays of sweets and almost keel over when I see a set of fanned cookies in the middle. They’re Santa cookies that look a little off-kilter, a little less than perfect, but charming, nonetheless.
“Oh, the Messy Santa,” Corey says when he notices me staring. “Something I’m trying. A differentiator from the store-bought cookies.”
“I like him,” I say. I didn’t write a Messy Santa into my script, so there’s no way Corey would know about him, unless he’s been collaborating with my niece and nephew. Maybe the veil between Sweetville and the real world is thinner than I thought.
“This season—well, the holiday season; I know it’s only April now—is one of those times when I think it’s good to remind people it doesn’t have to be perfect to be delicious.”
I nod, choosing one of the cookies and holding it loosely in my hand.
I smile back at the cockeyed Santa grinning up at me.
It strikes me how much the Messy Santa cookie is like life.
You start out thinking that it’s important everything come out smooth, but as you get to work, the frosting is lumpy, the attempts at a beautiful design emerge a little uneven or askew, and what you thought would be red icing is more hot pink.
“I think they look better this way,” I tell him.
“Like, maybe you were picturing a flawless cookie, but this one is better because it was made with heart.”
“You’ve always had the best way with words, Jill,” Corey says. “Thanks again. And congratulations. The movie is going to be great.”
“It’s definitely my Messy Santa,” I tell him.
I’m back near Andy, licking frosting off my fingers as we wait for shooting to begin.
“I love this scene. Heartfelt fans are going to eat it up.”
“That’s the dream,” I say.
My lead character, Parker Daniels, who is played by a woman who looks exactly like Millie from my Sweetville, is at her lowest moment in the Heartfelt, super Christmas-ified version of Golden Grove, which I named Sweetville in the script.
Because why mess with a good thing? After spending the day with her former crush, she’s realized she doesn’t have the feelings for him that she has for her ex and now fears she’s stuck in Sweetville forever.
But in this scene, she’s about to have a breakdown right before she’s joined by her ex in the Sweetville version of her life.
They kiss until she’s smacked by a wayward snowball.
She wakes up back in the real world, learning that she bumped her head when she tripped over a discarded candy cane in Golden Grove—she didn’t see it because she was rushing away to hide from being spotted by her ex, who she’d argued with the night before.
She comes out of her Sweetville haze in her actual, real-world ex’s arms. He’s worried and ready to make amends after their nasty fight.
We’re filming the part where she comes to.
Parker and a gorgeous lanky actor playing her ex, named Gabe Corrado, take their places under the tree.
“What are you doing here?” Parker says as she comes to, her steely expression most definitely concealing her soft, hidden emotions.
“I’ve been walking around all day in the worst mood.
I was trying to tell myself it’s because I hate Christmas.
But that’s not true. I hate not spending Christmas with you.
And I hate that I’ve let you spend too many Christmases thinking I don’t love you.
Maybe you don’t feel the same way I do, but we had something and we can have it again.
When I’m with you, I’m never worried I’ll be disappointed by whatever I wake up to on Christmas morning.
Because I feel like I’ve gotten the last gift I’ll ever need. ”
Parker gazes up at him with the lights of the tree burnishing her perfect cheekbones.
“But you and Nicole have so much more in common. And I’m going back to Los Angeles. Even if you love me, I’m worried I’m not what you want, or what you need. What if I’m a gift you’ve grown out of?”
The Gabe character takes her by the hands and shakes his head. “I’ll never feel that way about Nicole. I don’t know if I can feel that way about anyone but you,” he says. “If you’re willing, can we try again?”
Now Parker presses closer to him, so that she’s tightly encircled by Gabe’s arms. “As long as we can agree on something this time.”
“What’s that?”
“That we never stop trying.”
They kiss, slow and tender but a little sexy, just like I wrote in the scene description.
I think it’s perfect, even though the director calls, “Cut!” and says they’ll go again. Someone hollers that the snow machine is acting up. “Okay, fine—we’ll try tomorrow,” the director says before dismissing everyone for the day.
“Honey, I love it,” Mom says. There’s a tear wending its way down her face. Bingo! I think. How could I have spent so long talking my way out of writing a movie that would make my wonderful mom this happy?
“I do, too,” I say. It all feels so real that I know I didn’t just write it for Heartfelt viewers.
An ache throbs beneath my breastbone. I’ve tried to tell myself I can move on, but I don’t know if I can.
I want Grant. Or at least to know for sure it’s too late for me to have him.
“And actually, there’s something I need to do. I’ll meet you and Dad at home, okay?”
At the end of When Harry Met Sally , Harry tells Sally, “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” But a lot of people don’t know that Nora Ephron didn’t write it that way to begin with.
She had the two leads cross paths some ten years on, make chitchat, and go their separate ways.
Maybe that’s the more realistic ending, but it absolutely wouldn’t work for me.
At least it wouldn’t anymore. I can’t let Grant become a stranger.
Each of us started the rest of our lives the day after we broke up on Christmas Eve more than three years ago. And we’ve both done a pretty good job with them since then. But what’s the point of all these achievements if you’re missing the one person you most want to share them with?
I wrote a movie, but I’m still waiting for an ending to the movie that’s my life.
And, God, I hope my ending is a new beginning, too.