This past May 2nd it premieres on Amazon ‘The idea of having you’ Prime Video’s latest big movie hit. Acclaimed by critics – it has an 83% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes – the film starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine (‘Red, White and Blue Blood’) has quickly become the most watched on the platform. It was all good news until the author of the book she adapted gave her opinion about how little she liked that the original ending had been changed.
The obsession with happy endings
‘The Idea of Having You’ tells the story of a 40-year-old mother who begins a love relationship with a 24-year-old young man who is part of a successful musical band. (Beware of spoilers from here on out.) The age difference and belonging to two very different worlds ends up being a problem that leads her to decide to put an end to the relationship between them.
In the book, the character played in the film by Hathaway never gets over the breakup, while he moves on and never contacts her again. Her adaptation also went in that direction until it adds a final epilogue in which he contacts her again five years later and they resume a relationship that will no longer have negative repercussions for her daughter.
Robinne Leeauthor of the original book, was infuriated to discover this change, since, as she stated in EW, “That’s not the story I wanted to tell.“, also confirming that she has not been involved in the film. However, her husband has served as a producer, so “I know some of the reasons why he did things like that.“.
She herself is aware of the differences between a book and a movie, so it was necessary to make changes, but in this case she is clear that everything about the ending is one of the usual concessions that Hollywood makes to avoid sad endings:
It’s America: Hollywood is going to do what it’s going to do and put a happy ending to everything. I do not know why. You hope they stick with what you’ve written because it meant something to you, but you also have to think about the box office and the viewers and what their audience is going to want to see. While there’s obviously a lot of overlap between readers and movie viewers, I think when you’re gearing something toward a movie audience, it’s a slightly different fan base, and maybe American moviegoers aren’t prepared for a sad ending.
Of course, Lee remembers the great impact that ‘Titanic’ had on her, largely because of that tragic ending and that “It’s the only movie I’ve seen in the theater four times because I like to cry. And you will know that I like to cry when you read my book. Crying makes me feel like I’m alive“. He also acknowledges that that epilogue could have happened in the book, but that He’s not at all excited about the idea.since I wanted it to feel real:
The ending of the movie could have also happened in the book, I suppose, years later. But that’s not the story I wanted to tell. I wanted to make it clear that, as women, we put the happiness of others before our own. She chose her daughter over Hayes, and she was also well aware that she was disappointing her best friend, Lulit, her partner and co-owner of her gallery, that she was suffering from the her relationship with Hayes. She had to put those other things first. It would have been great to be able to combine all three, but at that moment she couldn’t.
The curious thing is that Lee later points out that he does not rule out the idea of writing another book exploring the relationship between both characters in the future. Of course, it is not something that is guaranteed, but I imagine that She will want the story between them to end on the terms she decides.
In Espinof:
