IMAGINE ME AND YOU

This first novel by Mernit (Writing the Romantic Comedy: The Art and Craft of Writing Screenplays That Sell, 2000), a story analyst for Universal, concerns a screenwriter who employs the tricks of his trade to lure back his wife.

Transplanted New Yorker Jordan Moore doesn’t love Los Angeles, but his temperamental Italian wife Isabella finds it insufferable. Just as Jordan learns that Rumer Hawke, Hollywood’s hottest producer, wants to meet about Jordan’s screenplay, Isabella says basta! and jets to Rome for a long think about their marriage. Given one week to revise his screenplay to Rumer’s specifications, Jordan obsesses about getting Isabella back. He decides her jealous nature might work to his advantage. Unwilling to actually date another woman, he imagines one based on Naomi, a French former student from a screenwriting class he teaches. He conjures her perfectly. Maybe too perfectly, because she starts to appear, but only to him. Initially freaked out by this apparition, Jordan warms to Naomi’s playful spirit…and her savvy screenwriting advice. Soon, Jordan has made headway on the revision and, after he drops a few hints during transatlantic phone conversations, Isabella announces she is coming home. Complication follows: Seeing off a friend at LAX the day before Isabella’s return, Jordan is startled to spy Naomi at an airport phone booth. He is even more startled to discover that it’s not his Naomi now turning around and smiling at him in recognition, but the real Naomi. She is even sexier than he imagined and coincidentally in need of a place to stay that night. The story works best when the author is not trying so hard. The incidental scenes of Jordan trying to keep his cool and pride among the egos of studio execs are genuinely funny, but the female characters—Isabella, the spectral Naomi and the real Naomi—are all dolled-up clichés (or maybe screenplay characters in search of actors to flesh them out).

Mernit should lose the gimmicks and trust his talent.