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I just read about a real life version of the "isn't there someone you forgot to ask?" meme. Woman finds out a guy in his 30s dated a girl 13 years younger. She writes a story with their details, except in her story the guy is a creep. And now they're making a movie based on the story.
This is the short story: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/11/cat-person
This is the movie trailer: https://youtube.com/watch?v=J2VukOLSxoY
And this is an essay where the girl in the relationship says the guy was great: https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/07/cat-person-kristen-roupenian-viral-story-about-me.html
Alexis, a senior in high school, briefly worked with Charles at a restaurant. She was a hostess and he was a waiter. They liked each other and texted a lot. They slowly started dating. He was the liberal type who wouldn't own a car because it was bad for the environment. He even asked for consent before he kissed her for the first time. She said he was very gentle and caring and they had lots of things in common.
The only downside of the relationship was the fact that she felt people judged her for it, and that she felt she was growing up too fast by being in love with someone so old. They eventually grew apart and broke up when she was a sophomore in college, after dating for 2 years.
A few years later, Kristen Roupenian has an "encounter" with this Charles, after which she finds out that he dated someone much younger than him. She decides to write a story that includes personal details about him and the girl, including their small hometowns, places they worked at, the place they had their first date at, the way the guy dressed and a description of his house. Except in her story the guy is a creep, bad at sex, a liar and manipulator, who becomes abusive when the girl breaks up with him.
The story goes viral during the metoo movement. Alexis and Charles find out and are weirded out. Alexis thinks the author couldn't have known so many details about her life without stalking her online. Charles said he started questioning whether he was really an asshole and would go through old texts to make sure that was not the case.
A few years later, Alexis finds out Charles died. No cause of death is mentioned, other than the fact that it was unexpected. Earlier in the essay she says he was on antidepressants, so suicide is a possibility in my opinion.
Alexis tries to contact Kristen and she responds via email with a half-assed apology in which she says she shouldn't have included some of the details. Alexis writes this essay to tell her side of the story, but it doesn't change much.
And now they are making a movie based on this story.
Also, these are the pictures of the women mentioned in this post. I will let you figure out who's who.
https://imgur.com/2gApE3K
https://imgur.com/l2cfZtd
I enjoyed "Cat Person" when it came out and thought it said something real and true about the dynamics of modern dating (certainly a vastly better #MeToo story than that account of an awkward first date with Aziz Ansari). I received Roupenian's first short story collection (which includes "Cat Person") as a gift a few Christmases ago and for the most part enjoyed it.
But yes, reading the Slate story sullied the experience for me a bit. I won't go quite so far as to say it was an act of character assassination targeting Charles, but Roupenian could have done a lot more to distance her fictional character from his real-life inspiration.
According to Freddie deBoer the movie is laughably heavy-handed. The minute I heard they were adapting it as a "psychological thriller" I was wary, because the story is nothing like that.
Ah, cool! This is exactly what I remember about the discussion here when the story was published, except my feeling about the story was there's something deeply wrong with the whole thing, and the insistence that it, and the reaction to it Says Something About Society felt very gas-lighty. Needless to say I feel quite vindicated with this story coming out, and incredibly frustrated at the demands of taking Current Things seriously, and additional context coming years down the line when nobody cares about it anymore.
I think you could make a great thriller from Alexis' side of the story.
You mean Margot?
No, Alexis. The actual person who dated a guy for a few years, and was stalked by an aspiring writer who took the details of her relationship and twisted them into a dark mirror-universe version of reality. The story became viral, and so acclaimed that it ended up making her doubt her own memories at times.
Oh yeah, now that would make for a compelling thriller.
I didn't think "Cat Person", the story as written, contains the necessary ingredients for a psychological thriller.
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