ANONYMOUS CONTENT – COVERAGE Title: The Lonely Fajita
Subm'd To: Anonymous Content
Author: Abigail Mann
Subm'd By: Hayley Steed
Form: Novel
Company: AVON / HarperCollinsUK
Genre: Comedy
Budget: N/A
Setting: East London
Date: 09/2020
Circa: Present Day Reader: Kiki Prager ____________________________________________________________ LOGLINE: On the brink of her 26th birthday, newly single and momentarily homeless social media manager Elissa finds an unexpected friendship when she commits to living with a lonely elderly widow named Annie. ____________________________________________________________ COMMENTS SUMMARY: A witty, tender, and relatable take on coming of age in early adulthood, this raunchy book has considerable potential as the basis for a feel-good female comedy for the screen, but could use work on tying up some details and loose ends. ____________________________________________________________ EXCELLENT GOOD FAIR POOR PREMISE
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SUMMARY ELISSA is a young adult trying to budget her way through life in the expensive city of London. She has worked nine months as an intern at a dating app startup called Lovr. Only paid a quarter of minimum wage, Elissa thinks her job is shallow and makes her even
poorer as she merely brings home about 100 pounds per week. Elissa introduces the chaotic spectrum of coworkers she works with as well as her borderline-psychotic boss named MITCHELL and annoyingly gorgeous and “infuriatingly competent” PR manager named RHEA. Along with SUKI, her perceptive bald lesbian friend and coworker, RODNEY is a stressed and awkward coder, LOUIS a successful Stanford dropout and CEO next door, ADAM a salmon polo-wearing dud, JONATHON a day drinker whose poor humor gets him kicked out of meetings, BISMAH a gossip, and RACHAEL, who works at the front desk. Elissa lives with her unsatisfactory rent-paying boyfriend of six months, TOM, in an apartment in Stockwell with two other roommates: the landlord’s bossy daughter SHAMAYA and a cool guy with a buzzcut named YAZ. Tom is a pretentious economics major struggling to make ends meet. Shamaya politely kicks Elissa out of the apartment after being fed up with her use of her hair products and the shared space without contribution. When Elissa and Tom discuss this, Tom is reluctant to move somewhere else with her, so they agree to live apart before finding somewhere new together. Tom leaves for a trip to Las Vegas with his fellow venture capitalist friends. Stuck between living situations, Elissa fills out an application for Eldercare, a charity that allows young people to live with pensioners rent-free. It’s Elissa’s 26th birthday, and Suki and her girlfriend JAZZ take her out to get drinks. The next day, Elissa wakes up completely hungover and answers her phone to hear that Eldercare has found her a match: An 83-year-old widowed housewife named ANNIE, living in Hampstead, London at a place called Evergreen Village. Elissa worries about making a good impression on Annie, who has turned down the last twenty-two applicants. It goes very well when she visits Annie in Evergreen Village, but Annie is no common elderly person. She’s a cheeky, slightly rude yet warmhearted woman with a rich Yorkshire accent and quite the mouth on her. Here she meets NIGEL, the harmless porter, and CRAIG, an extremely creepy warden. Though when her application is accepted, Elissa initially rejects the offer, claiming that she’s not yet ready to abandon her boyfriend. Suki invites Elissa to a charity art auction at a gallery in Mayfair. Tom comes back from Las Vegas and is underwhelmed to see Elissa, telling her that he may join his friend BEN in moving out to Jakarta for a while for work. He implies that he never intended to find another place with her, and the two part ways. Meanwhile, Elissa’s oldest and most trusted schoolteacher friend MAGGIE visits and offers her parent’s place to live until Elissa gets back on her feet. Now essentially homeless, Elissa calls Eldercare back and begins the move-in process. After the move-in, Annie and Elissa chat all day long and then go their separate ways. Before bed, Annie taps on Elissa’s door and offers her an Ovaltine. Here Elissa asks her why she chose her over the others Eldercare
had offered, and Annie responds that she seemed different in a good way, and if nothing else, it’ll be “an experience.” Elissa attempts to bake but burns a pan that was gifted to Annie by her husband. Over pudding, Elissa asks Annie if she and her husband RICHARD ever had any children. Annie says she has a son named Richard, but he lives in Australia with her two grandsons whom she’s never met, due to the fact that she can’t manage travel at her age. Elissa offers her phone so that Annie could video call Richard, but Annie rejects it and snaps for a moment, saying Elissa doesn’t need to waste her time worrying about her and her familial relations. At a board meeting, Mitchell introduces VLAD, who is representing the board of investors for an upcoming addition to the app which Mitchell requested all employees come up with a pitch for. Elissa is worried at first about her pitch idea (or lack thereof), but things go relatively well after each coworker’s idea is individually torn apart by Mitchell. Elissa uses Annie’s bit about doing it “for the experience,” which Mitchell translates into the slogan “Go for the experience, leave with a Lovr.” The next day, Suki tells Elissa that her idea of “community dating” was well-received by Mitchell, and judging by what she overheard, it looks like she’s going to feature in some sort of campaign. She and Rodney also reveal that Mitchell has been having sex with Rhea, the PR girl, in the office two days a week. While uncharacteristically on a run, a man approaches Elissa, offers her a bottle, and winks at her. Suki lets Elissa know that the office is aware of her newly single status, which is later revealed to everyone by Mitchell at a meeting. He announces that her “community dating” idea was the best one they got and tells the other coworkers that across six weeks, the team is going to curate a unique date for Elissa and a few “blokes.” Instead of designing the campaign herself as she thought she would, Elissa is asked to participate in it. The meeting ends with Mitchell informing her that her first date is tonight. The date the team designs is far from what Elissa imagined in her pitch: a night at a “crazy-golf” bar with a man who is much less of the man she had expected. Dating other men makes Elissa realize that Tom was horrible, didn’t treat her right, and that she likely never loved him. During the date, Elissa feels bad because she is missing a promised fajita night with Annie. She notices six missed calls from a number she doesn’t recognize and calls back to find out that Annie has fallen and was found by a pedestrian. While packing up a collection of Annie’s things for the hospital, Elissa stumbles across a collection of love letters in her room, seemingly from a mysterious man who signed his name “H.” Back at work, the man Elissa had met while running is introduced to her by Mitchell as THEO. Elissa uses Suki’s art gallery invitation as a location for her next date, but the man mysteriously bails and deletes his profile. Instead, she meets Suki’s friend named Callum who works as a private
investigator. Online, Elissa lies in her reports of how the dates have gone. Back home, Elissa goes behind Annie’s back and writes an email to her son Richard to try and reunite them. Richard responds, saying he thinks about Annie all the time and has decided the time has come to finally see her face to face. Elissa comes up with an idea for an event that goes more in line with her own idea of community dating – a dating fair/skills swap/food hall aimed at linking members of the community across generations. Mitchell tells the employees that they’re going into liquidation. Back home, Annie comes across the email exchange with Richard that Annie had left open the night prior and grows furious. Elissa opts to crash at Suki’s for three nights, where she finds out that the investors bailed on Lovr because Mitchell has been using company money to pay for hotels for him and Rhea. Richard sends Elissa an email that he and his sons have arrived in London a week early. Richard and his sons arrive at Annie’s, and Elissa apologizes for getting involved. Annie makes amends with her son and is ultimately thankful that Elissa brought him back into her life. Elissa enlists help with the fair from her elderly neighbors GEORGE and MARGARET, to who she’s been providing internet guidance. Calum from the gallery event sends Elissa champagne, and Annie surprises her by making an event page online and sending out a personalized video message to other pensioners in the community. Suki shows her a crowdfunding website she created to get back the money that Mitchell and Rhea lost. Craig tries to shut down the event, but he’s quickly quieted by the residents when they threaten to blackmail him with video footage of him going through pensioner’s drawers and stealing things. Annie’s mysterious lover, “H,” is at the fair and revealed as Harold Higgins. Theo shows up and makes a business proposal to essentially buy Elissa’s idea out. She rejects his offer but adds that she will go for a drink with him. Annie and Elissa celebrate that night with fajitas, symbolizing Elissa’s upgrade from single status. COMMENTS With great descriptions, hysterical merciless dialogue, and a depth of developed characters, this is clearly a very comically skilled writer. Since most of the comedy comes from the protagonist’s internal dialogue, I don’t believe that the author’s narrative style should be lost or wasted in the adaptation. I think this would translate best onto the screen if told by voiceover or a narration of Elissa’s thoughts and feelings throughout the story. I’m thinking Diary of a Wimpy Kid, or even Annie Hall, where there’s a clear comedic benefit to the technique of breaking the fourth wall. This adaptation would have enough flair to be a replication of an Oscar-winning film such as that one, which
connects so intimately with the audience as the protagonist goes on humoristic rants about his personal relationship problems. A chunk of the book includes text messaging format, which can be translated to the screen using motion graphics. In the pandemic era, the production of this film doesn’t seem very realistic given the number of characters and locations. While it is a British novel, a film version risks a potential lack of understanding of this slang for American audiences. There is no shortage of British terminology such as Ovaltine, adverts, telly, bloke, elderly people calling young people “chicken,” and Annie saying “nowt” instead of nothing. Further, the book doesn’t attempt to censor its sexually explicit phrases and relentless use of curse words, which are common on British television networks such as BBC, but not as much in US feature film format. Regardless of cultural barriers, the target audience of rising adults will undoubtedly find relatability in the hilarity of the lengths Elissa goes to budget and save her money. Additionally relatable are the instances of Elissa getting kicked out of her living situation, breaking off a loveless relationship, feeling like she is getting old at age 26, struggling at her job, and failing to “adult” by fainting and almost burning the house down while making an apple crumble. In terms of relevancy, there are a plethora of references to things that millennials of today would understand, such as Yeezy’s/high tops, the computer game Neopets, MSN messenger, and mentions of well-known celebrities like actors Orlando Bloom, Eddie Redmayne, broadcaster David Attenborough, and even President Donald Trump. If there’s one thing that could use work, it’s a greater understanding of Annie’s shady family history and a smoother flow in which the story is told. Specifically, it becomes a bit confusing at the end with the reveal of who “H” from the letters is. The audience doesn’t know enough about Annie’s family history, which leads the character’s background, structure, and detail all to begin to lack clarity. If the minor plot holes can be fixed or overlooked, this original and unapologetic comedy can be a successful film that appeals to audiences of many ages, similar to a book-to-movie adaptation as The Devil Wears Prada. In the end, this book tells a laugh-out-loud, fun, refreshing, and intergenerational tale of a mutually benefitting unlikely pair of roommates while poking fun at twenty-somethings and proving that age is just a number. Because of its casual tone and cheeky British origin, I see this being successful as a light and short romantic Netflix comedy.