The temptation to dedicate this entire blog to wanting to be the female character in my own books is immense…I will try to resist the temptation! But, fair warning, I will say that some of the reasons behind why I have chosen the character(s) I have did seep into my writing so I won’t be able to help myself in mentioning her!
I struggled to single out one character from a film I wanted to be, because there are a few. Then I realised that the three that stuck out the most to me had two major things in common – 1) they live in Manhattan; 2) they are devoted to literature, with two of them being writers. So, for me, they become one character. They are:
- Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City
- Kathleen Kelly from You’ve Got Mail
- Andrea Sachs from The Devil Wears Prada
Carrie Bradshaw and Kathleen Kelly have great apartments that I would love to live in, and my character Amelia Cunningham is a Brit living in Manhattan who wanted to live in the same type of brownstone conversion that they do. So in that respect, Amelia and I have a lot in common! I love the streets in the films, with the cherry blossom trees in the spring which is actually not dissimilar to some streets in London. I love cherry blossom trees, I think they’re so pretty. And I love the scenes shot in the summer in the films, I don’t honestly really know why they just appeal to me on a deep level.
I love Central Park as well, and seeing it in the fall (only in films, I have never been there that time of year) with its beautiful gold and red colours…it’s my favourite time of year and I always like to go on an autumnal walk just to see the trees change in colour. There is a forest near me, Elvedon Forest in South Norfolk, where for a few weeks in autumn you can drive along and it’s like being under a canopy of gold. It is simply stunning, and I have seen images of Central Park at that time of year that speak to me in the same way. It’s a season, I feel, of being cosy. Anticipating winter and all that entails but also anticipating Christmas – my favourite part of Christmas is the anticipation – and feeling the nights start to draw in. By October I am a bit bored with summer, so I love when the excitement starts for Halloween and it starts to get chilly. I even prefer the fashion in autumn.
I have wanted to live in Manhattan ever since I went to visit the first time in 2002, six months after 9/11. I fell in love with the vibrancy of the city, the green lungs such as Battery Park and Central Park. The different bars and restaurants, the architecture of the Park Avenue apartments, even the hot dog stand that gave me food poisoning while I was there! Times Square was so exciting, SoHo drew me in, the museums were immense, a night out in the meatpacking district was interesting(!), I loved Harlem where we were treated like royalty in the Starbucks because we were English despite being white and middle class. I will never forget the kindness I experienced there, in the same way as I will never forget the kindness I experienced on a bus in Atlanta, Georgia. The shock amongst our fellow travellers that white, middle class women travelled on public transport in London was something I will never get over just as I will never get over white middle class Americans staring at us in shock because we were walking on the sidewalk to get somewhere rather than driving. Those culture shocks were huge for me. But, I digress. I didn’t love the subway in Manhattan but I’m not keen on the London tube because underground confined spaces aren’t my thing. But in cities such as those, I will utilise public transport rather than be stuck in traffic!
The thing that also links my three characters, and me, is that they are involved in some way with writing. Andrea and Carrie are journalists and writers, and Kathleen is a bookstore owner and potential editor. So, basically, the characters do what I want to be doing full-time whilst living in a city I love. I mean, why wouldn’t I want to be them? Also, Andrea and Carrie are about fashion and I love fashion. I adore the clothes in The Devil Wears Prada and Sex And The City, it’s part of the charm of those films for me as well. I am a shoe addict, so seeing them both in Manolo Blahnik’s and the like is my idea of heaven. I love to cosy up on the sofa, on my own as my husband and son hate films like those, and just lose myself in the scenery and the clothes.
I will be honest and say that I’m not especially bothered by the storyline in any of the films (except Devil Wears Prada, I aspire to be Miranda Priestly purely because of her glacial stare), for me it is the lives the women appear to live in their careers. The love interests don’t do it for me. Mr Big would have been shown the door and never invited back after all he did, Andrea’s boyfriend Nate was rather wet, and Christian Thompson was up himself despite also being a writer. Joe Fox was…okay…but Tom Hanks has never been a romantic hero for me as superficial as that is. No, I wanted the lives of Carrie, Andrea and Kathleen purely for the city they lived in, the apartments Carrie and Kathleen had, the clothes of Carrie and Andrea, and the careers of all three. They could keep their romantic lives! But the freedom Carrie has as a writer, working from home and being free to meet her friends when she liked, and when they were available, being able to pursue her passion as she did that is my dream. The fact that Kathleen got to work with books all day in her store, got to inspire children into the art of loving books…I mean, who doesn’t want to do that? She was someone who read books for a living. Isn’t that just heaven? Reading and getting paid for it? Okay, she didn’t get paid for it in the end thanks to Joe Fox and his mega-store (I do wonder how that fared against Amazon given the outcome of other bookstores – does anyone remember Borders?), but she was so well respected in the industry that others wanted to pay her for her expertise. Which was reading and spotting children’s literature. Andrea didn’t get to write in Devil Wears Prada, but she was on a trajectory that would lead her to a journalistic career, and at the end of the film got to start on her pathway. She had that focus, that goal which was to write, and while she may have lost her way a little (ahem, lovely shoes and clothes, no judgement here!), she got back on track and achieved the outcome she was looking for in working for the magazine. I honestly can’t think of anything better, being immersed in the world of the written word.
Okay, I can’t resist, I am going to mention Amelia and my books. So, there are some similarities as I have said – she loves the Brownstone apartments of Carrie and Kathleen and secured one when she transferred from London to Manhattan. In my head she loves fashion, but I don’t make a big deal of that in the books because it doesn’t seem to fit the overall story. She loves Central Park and runs in it every morning, and she loves the museums and the multi-culturalism that is Manhattan. But, she is a lawyer so isn’t so much into the written word as I am, though she has written a book. Or, to be precise, her soul Sarah has written a book. But it wasn’t out of the love of language, more out of it being her destiny. I am really cheating here because I have said in the title this is about the film character I would most likely want to be and not only have I mentioned three, I have included a character who isn’t in a film. But, you never know…!
In terms of the actual characters of Carrie, Kathleen and Andrea, I think I prefer Carrie the most. I’m actually not that keen on Kathleen, I find her rather irritating though I would love her job and where she lives. Andrea is also a little grating, though I can see aspects of myself in her with her focus which is to the exclusion of all else including personal relationships. When I am pursuing a goal, I have been known to be similar though since becoming a mother that has fallen back somewhat. My son is my main focus, always. But, Carrie with her close friends and disastrous love life in the TV series if not the films, is one I can relate to in my own single days living and working in London. I do rather like Carrie though her single-minded focus around men and getting a boyfriend does get a bit tiresome (I know, it’s a central part of the story) because there truly is more to life. But her friend Charlotte is even worse, that is a character I can’t warm to.
So, I guess the character of a film I truly love the most is Manhattan. Specifically, the written word in Manhattan. Why? Because it is what I aspire to do. Spend some time being free to write in Manhattan. Bliss.
Louisa Simpson 