Category: Sequels

“[I]f you follow your heart, you’ll find your purpose and end up proving you were right all along.”

I wonder if any of you have seen the original ending to the movie Sleepless in Seattle. The director, Nora Ephron, decided to cut the final scenes after a test audience nearly went so far as to cut them for her. As you know (or if you don’t, get ready to be spoiled), the theatrical version of the film ends with Sam and Annie meeting at the top of the Empire State Building where they introduce themselves and slowly exit the observation deck, neither able to hide their love-at-first-sight astonishment. Cue the credits.

What you may not know is what happened in the scene that originally followed. After cutting to black and a line telling us that 12 months had passed, we’re shown Annie, Sam, and Jonah eating breakfast in the kitchen of the Seattle houseboat. Sam is reading the newspaper, and Annie, while placing her cereal bowl in the sink, asks Jonah if he’d like more Kix. Jonah replies that he is full and runs into another room to turn on the television. Sam places the newspaper on the table, walks over to Annie, gives her a kiss as he places his bowl in the sink, and says he needs to balance the checkbook. Cue the credits.

So how does that make you feel? Disappointed? Relieved that Ephron ended it when she did? Desperate to find the lost scenes on the Internet? If so, let me save you the trouble. That scene was never filmed. It was never filmed because it was never written. And it was never written because Ephron knew better than to mess with the love story formula: Despite the obstacles of X and the efforts of Z, A and B live happily ever after (unless, of course, they were created by Nicholas Sparks’s imagination). Ephron may have taken an unconventional route in placing the Meet Cute at the end of her film, but she knew that once she had established their Happy Ever After, the only thing she could do next was cut to black, or, at the very most, a shot of hearts on the Empire State Building.

Another movie that followed to a T the same formula of X and Z and A meets B at the end was the tiny, near-perfect French film Happenstance. Some of you have seen this movie. Some of you haven’t. And only the most devout readers (read: reader) of mine might recognize it from the afore-quoted May 21, 2009 blog entry. Like most all of the entries leading up to it, that entry dealt with my struggles with relationships and my path in life. What sets that entry apart, though, is the fact that it was the last of its kind. And it was the last of its kind because it came just 9 days before I met the future Mrs. Benchly and found, with her, my Happy Ever After.

I bring this up today, in my first(!) entry of 2011, because I’ve begun to wonder, should I have followed Ephron’s cue and ended this blog with the above quote? You could argue that this blog has been more than just an outlet for my frustrations and joys with dating and relationships and the single life, but you’d lose that argument in as much time as it would take for one to quote my ninth blog entry. This explains, I think, why this blog has been so quiet for so long: Benchly’sWord, though occasionally home to a non-love-life-related insight or two, has always been about my path to love. And now that I’ve found love, my writer gut is telling me to cue the credits, or, at the very most, a cheesy musical montage featuring clips of previous scenes. But, as a writer, I need this creative outlet. So, what’s a blogger to do?

Like most of the questions I’ve posed through the years, I haven’t had a solid answer to the question of what should become of Benchly’sWord. Until today. Now that I can see clearly, it’s silly to think how long it’s taken me to figure out the next logical step for this blog, but I’ve been under the writer’s block weather for over a year: after a 7-month bout with Engagement Brain, I fell ill with a seemingly never-ending case of the Newlyweds. I still have most of the symptoms, but I’ve slowly been able to manage them, at least enough to be productive. And so it is that I can announce today my solution to my writer’s block:

I’m going to write a new story. In blogging terms, I’m changing directions. In movie terms, I’m writing a sequel. Sure, the sequel may have traces of the original in it (because, people evolve and so do relationships and I’ll want to document those changes), but this story won’t be about my path to love. And it most certainly won’t be about reading a newspaper while eating breakfast. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what it’ll be about. Maybe it will be about creating a home. Or a family. Maybe I’ll find out Darth Vader is my father. Maybe Fredo will break my heart. Or maybe a shark will follow me all the way to the Bahamas to settle a personal feud. Who knows? What I do know is the first act of my life has been written and it’s time for the curtain to come up on Act 2. The lights are flashing. Please take your seats.