Elizabeth G. welcomes Shirley Jump

I first met Shirley Jump ten years ago at the national RWA conference in Chicago. We've been friends ever since. At the time Shirley was a multi-published author in nonfiction: We're talking 2000+ articles and several books. Since then she has become multi-published in fiction. In fact, her 19th, 20th and 21st romance novels are coming out respectively in October, November and December 2007. Shirley currently writes for Harlequin Romance, Harlequin NEXT, and Zebra. Please welcome Shirley Jump to RWQ.


BUELLER…BUELLER…WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

My daughter had to watch, of all things, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as an assignment. She had to pick a favorite movie, analyze it for cause and effect, as well as character, and write a paper for English. I haven’t seen this movie in at least ten or fifteen years, but it was just as fun to watch now as it had been back when I was her age.

Since she had to do this analysis, we watched the movie once all the way through, then a second time scene-by-scene, with writer mommy helping if she got stuck on anything, which she rarely did.

I laughed out loud every time the classic "Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?" line came on. Relived a bit of my high school days when the movie showed the droning teachers and the glassy-eyed students suffering through American history.

But when I got to the end, the grown-up in me wondered how Ferris Bueller turned out after the movie ended. Did he marry Sloan? Or did their high school romance fizzle when they got to college and met new people? Did Cameron survive his father’s wrath over the wrecked Ferrari? Or did he get kicked out of the house and end up forced to live on the streets and beg for his meals?

Then the writer in me began concocting all kinds of sequels, a la Ferris Bueller Grows Up. I realized, of course, that the writers never made that movie because a guy who lives like Ferris does wouldn’t make a very good adult. You couldn’t blow off a day of work through a series of lies and subterfuges, only to go sing songs on a parade float in downtown Chicago and still look like a sane adult. He’s not the same sympathetic hero when he’s a shiftless adult skipping out on a job and dodging the boss man. But it’s still fun to wonder what a kid who was so ingenious as a teen would be like as a grown-up.

I love to do that with movies (more so than books, because if the book is really good, then I feel like I got the whole story and don’t have the urge to make up a "what happens next"). I walk out of something like Cold Mountain and make up my own happy ending because I wasn’t satisfied with the one I saw on the screen. Or I sit through The Family Stone and imagine everyone five, ten years down the road. I try to imagine where the dumped exes end up in movies like You’ve Got Mail and Must Love Dogs (I felt sorry for them getting dumped, and want everyone to be happy).

It’s a habit that drives my husband crazy. When he’s done with a movie, he’s done. Finito. The credits roll, let’s get out of the theater, into the car and back home before the popcorn finishes digesting. But me, I love to twist and turn the story around in my mind and see all the other possibilities for what could have happened, or what might happen down the road. And now, in my daughter, I have a partner in those what happens next thoughts.

Ferris Bueller’s adult future--the result of all these things he did as a teenager--won’t be in my daughter’s cause and effect paper, but his "what happened next" storyline will be one that she and I will bandy about for days to come, as we figure out our own little plot for Ferris. It’s already inspired lots of great conversations, and a whole lot of inside jokes, just between her and I. And the best part? There’s been an extra bonus for me, that even she doesn’t know.

We’ve been able to bond a little more. And all because of "Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?"

What about you? Do you rewrite movies and books after you’re done with them? What are some of the stories you’ve had the most fun imagining a new ending or an epilogue for?