On Post: Grow Up

Date: January 27, 2014

In the days prior to getting this song as a prompt, I was listening to a Flophouse episode from long ago in which the hosts grouse about Hollywood’s remake fever and mention specifically that there was/is a script or treatment out there to remake DROP DEAD FRED and what a dumb idea that is.

DROP DEAD FRED, if you’ve never encountered it, is a movie about a young woman and the imaginary friend that comes back to her life to ruin it.

When Hayley Williams, Paramore’s lead singer, sings “Some of us have to grow up sometimes,” I pictured it as being directed at an imaginary friend who’s resisting the idea of the POV character growing up because of that will mean for said imaginary friend.

With that situation in mind, I just began to fill in the details. Why now? was a question I easily solved with the whole “going away to college” transition. Once I had that, I just started writing and let myself write in and out of corners.

I think that was helpful in getting the piece to fruition but also created a somewhat uneven tone. I never really decided whether I was scripting a break-up or the impending death of someone, imaginary though they may be, so the tone veers between those two points of sort of normal sadness and really deep, this is horrible sadness. I don’t know…perhaps that mirrors Sally’s own sense of ambivalence as she struggles with moving on and growing up versus staying with her friend Bodio.

Perhaps I’m giving myself too much credit.