MovieChat Forums > Head Over Heels (1982) Discussion > Ms. Beattie are you reading?

Ms. Beattie are you reading?

posted 17 years ago by PenTheater
10 replies | jump to latest

So I wonder do Ann Beattie or Joan Micklin Silver come here and giggle at all of us obsessed fans of this story. We become characters in her own novel. Relishing the good ending that disappeared. Lamenting the DVD version because our videotapes are worn from playing over and over. Does Silver wish she'd kept the ending that actually matched the novel? Does Beattie look at us and say, see there, the characters in my stories are real. Does Ms. Beattie sometimes ponder a follow up novel? How many of you have thought about, just once at least, where Charles and Laura are today? Did she come back to him later? (movie version)? Are she and Charles still together? (novel). Charles should only have a few more years at the civil service job. Mr. Patterson, his boss, got a promotion and moved to Loveland. His son is doing ok. Charles and Laura remodeled grandmas house a few years ago. They still live there, never had children. Laura, stays at home and cooks, she did work at the public library for a few years. She paints occasionally, nothing serious. Of course Rebecca is grown now, visits Laura a few times a year, has her own relationship ups and downs. Ox moved on, retired early from selling A Frames and investing in real estate. He didn’t even notice Laura in that grocery store a few years back. Sam, Sam finally married, but after 6 years is single again, dating a waitress from the Crab restaurant down the street. He can’t even tell if its serious. He got busted for a small amount of doobie a few years ago. His visits to Charles are less and less, and the nights out together even fewer. Even though Laura never objected to Sam, Sam feels he is the third wheel and certainly knows where Charles stands with Laura. Charles’ sister Susan and Mark the doctor never made it together after college. She’s a teacher now, married to someone else. Of course Clara and Pete have died. The blind concession man died shortly after Laura came back to Charles; Charles was able to share with him that most wonderful day in his life. There is a plaque in the Lobby of the office honoring the blind man, right next to the vending machines.
And Betty, what ever happened to Betty?

all of my movies are listed under "Must See" because YOU must.

[–] reel_emotion 17 years ago

, Wonderful, altpensacola.

Actually, I don't think Laura and Charles should end up together. I like the unhappy ending better, but Charles finally realizes that Laura isn't the best thing for him--that his love is one-sided. My only hope is that Charles finds some lovely girl--if we do indeed have more than one soul mate--who catches his eyes and "gets" him. What should happen to Laura? Maybe she will never end up with anyone, but maybe she will go on to go back to college and become a professor or something. As for Betty, I always assumed she and Sam got together, married, moved to the 'burbs, had a bunch of kids and dogs....and Charles was jealous of them for awhile.

And when I'm sittin' real close to the wide, wide screen, I feel like it's happening to me

[–] PenTheater 17 years ago

OK, So Laura does not go back to Charles.
Later in life, The ex Mrs. Ox occaisonaly visits the cafe downtown. Around the corner from the Office library.
Not speaking, except to order, she sits there, and stares into her coffee and laments the love she let get away.
The waitress of course, wonders about her, all they know is that she must have a lot of cats, her clothes are covered in hair.

Accused here of being a 12YO or an 8YO, as if either of those were bad things!

[–] reel_emotion 17 years ago

Oh poor, Laura! I see her more with a bunch of birds as pets--you know parakeets, cockatoos, sparrows. I think after dating for many years, the regret settles in that she let the best one get away--and I'm not talking about Ox, but Charles--and sometimes when she is really depressed, she makes "the dessert" and sits in her rocking chair eating it all by her lonesome.

And when I'm sittin' real close to the wide, wide screen, I feel like it's happening to me

[–] PenTheater 17 years ago

Lets start a fan fiction site!

I like your idea better about the birds, of course, she mentioned that!

[–] reel_emotion 17 years ago

Thanks, but the cats make more sense since she became an old maid.

I think a fan vid on YouTube is also needed.

And when I'm sittin' real close to the wide, wide screen, I feel like it's happening to me

[–] bruce-129 14 years ago

It's funny how you and I see this movie so differently.

I think the movie would be nothing without the sad ending, it was a transformational movie, and we all transform - alone. To do otherwise would have been a betrayal of everything in the movie.

Also, to wonder what if ... I have never and would never ... Charles and Laura are archetypes, they are not real people, they were crafted with such precision and perfection in that apparently, and I don't know much about the director and author, the movie is its own entity - a melange of visions ... that somehow turned out absolutely perfect.

I guess this movie in a way helped me grow up and develop a certain strength, because when I saw it I had more or less gotten over a relationship like Charles eventually did, but it was not conscious ... it was just fading in time. This movie allowed me to put it in perspective and realize what I was doing and had to do ... that is, take care of myself and move on.

Whatever the future holds, for us, or Charles and Laura, does not matter, for now we have to deal with what is the best we can.

I think Charles is the focus because he is somehow special, he is us. Sam is there to tease us that he is so cool and easygoing, and would never fall into this trap of Charles, but Charles is his friend, because he is the way he is, he just needs to fine tune, whereas Sam is a one-hit wonder.

Anything that could be added to this movie, such as your scenario above just takes away from the poiint of the movie ... it is not a soap opera, it is a greek tragedy ... or comedy - that somehow even redefines the "classic" because it refuses to compromise just to maintain a form.

Honestly, as far as form and story, tragedy and comedy I would really be hard pressed to think of any other movie that is as good as this movie. Somehow all the stars aligned when this movie was made.

[–] PenTheater 14 years ago

Oh we were just having some fun.
Fan fiction.
You have to remember most of us have read the book, with the happy ending, and seen both movie endings, where he gets her back, and where he is transformed to live without her. Both work for the character, becasue that's how she wrote it.
In the book he is transformed because she realizes she is supposed to be with him and she is transformed too I guess.
Beattie's book have a lot of ideas about mis spent youth wondering what (their )life's about et all, as most of her readers relate too, some do find love and move on, some don't and move on.

I think Charles is the focus because he is somehow special, he is us.

you are so right, and he is well written.
the Charles that moves on without her is a greek tragedy
the other ending still represents a struggle but has different point, remember she came up with that ending first.

[–] bruce-129 14 years ago

It is not the artist but the work that is the judge ... that makes this story even more peculiar, unusual and better in that the book is one way, but the movie is something different. I would say better, but I have not read the book and do not intend to. I find the idea of another invocation of the fairy tale romantic love ideal not as powerful or real as the learn to take what life gives you and process it and move on if you have to.

Which is more important, to seek some romantic made up ideal, or to seek to see reality in a way that makes all of life better for you?

[–] jonchopwood 13 years ago

Laura didn't gave a damn about Charles. He was just a rebound romance, one-time. The (second) movie ending (as he got her in the first) is truer. In the novel, you can almost think that Charles has had a breakdown and is a fantasy world when she comes back to him.

Charles has his mental demons that he has inherited from his mother. I wouldn't be surprised if he was a suicide.

[–] PenTheater 13 years ago

In the novel, you can almost think that Charles has had a breakdown and is a fantasy world when she comes back to him.

I am going to re- read that with this interpretation. Considering some, no MOST of the imagery of the apartment scene this certainly is plausible. Thanks so much for posting this.

And of course the suicidal aspect of any of these existential characters is always there, remember Charles in the tub with the vodka? He went into the "fantasy " of telling us about Laura. Which would be a temporary rejection of suicidal thoughts.
His mother was always in the tub contemplating suicide. No coincidence there.