
And it’s partially because I have a writing partner whose enthusiasm caused me to space for a few hours, forgetting that this is the day I usually post a few of my thoughts.
Let me start with the weather. Whether you believe in climate change or not, the skies have been a little wonky in our part of the world recently. Unexpectedly, it snowed last night. This morning, only one of us was home to shovel the driveway.
Glynn was not the one who was home.
Since our tiny car won’t make it up a snow-covered driveway – we don’t have a four-wheel drive; we have a slip-and-slide drive – I bundled up and started flinging snowflakes as soon as breakfast was done. An hour later, the concrete was finished, my back decided it was finished, and I put down the snow shovel to find some Advil.
The only thing that wasn’t finished was the sequel we’re writing so, aches and pains or not, I sat down to work on those pages. I was tinkering with the last chapter when I heard the garage door open.
Glynn came in, thanked me for the mostly-dry driveway, and announced he’d come up with the title for a future writing project. The title that he liked so much was Mother, May I Have Rough Sex with Danger?
Once more: Mother, May I Have Rough Sex with Danger? I know what you’re thinking, because I thought it, too.
When you hear a title like this, offered completely out of the blue, you have a moment where you wonder what exactly it is that the Pfizer boys put in their Advil. Not the anti-inflammatory, that’s a given, but do the ingredients also include some kind of hallucinogen? If someone swallows two tablets after shoveling snow for an hour, are they prone to hear voices? And what should that consumer do if that voice is saying crazy, messed up things?
Turns out, the voice I was hearing thought he made perfect sense. Glynn told me, “I heard it on the radio, coming home. There’s this old TV-movie called, Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?, and James Franco is remaking it next year. The minute I heard the news, I knew we had to do our take on the story.”
“Have you ever seen the original television film?” I asked.
“Well, no. But with that title, it has to be hilarious.”
If you’ve seen the classic version of MMISWD, you’re one up on me, because I’d never seen it. Stopping what I was doing, I went on-line to the usual sources. I found out a bunch of stuff, except for the most important thing of all. In the film, does Tori Spelling actually say, “Mother, may I sleep with danger?”
If you know, tell me. I would so love it if she did.
I was pleased to see that the story started out in written form as a suspense thriller. Claire Rainwater Jacobs was clever enough to tag her book with that eye-catching title, and the title did its job. It found a readership, a producer soon snatched up the broadcast rights, and NBC was only too happy to offer the final product. Ratings weren’t too bad, either. Variety offers its review here.
(SPOILER ALERT: Tori falls for a guy, but the new boyfriend causes her mother’s spider senses to tingle. And with good reason. END OF SPOILER ALERT.)
Once Glynn found out the original story wasn’t a parody romance, his enthusiasm faded. He wanted to write a comedy, but we haven’t had good luck with those in the past. The last parody piece we wrote received good reviews, had almost no sales, and has fallen nearly out of sight on the Amazon sales chart. Even the out-of-print MMISW hardcover by Claire Rainwater is ranking higher.
Oh, look. Snow is falling again. This time, it’s Glynn’s job.