‘Sleepless in Seattle’ Screenwriter’s ‘Attachments’ (Unique) – The Hollywood Reporter

Although it has been more than 28 years since it was released, the 1993 Seattle film Sleepless, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, continues to be a household name in the romantic comedy world. The film, which grossed $ 17 million on the opening weekend, was directed by Jeff Arch and was his first screenplay after years of struggling writer until he derived the idea for rom-com.

Following its box office success, Sleepless received two Academy Award nominations in Seattle for Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Music. Arch also received nominations for the Writers Guild and BAFTA Awards for his work on the film. His other credits include the Disney adventure film Iron Will, New Lines romantic comedy Sealed With a Kiss, and the independent comedy Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys.

Now Arch is ready to go from the big screen to the bookshelf with a debut novel called Attachments (Sparkpress). In Attachments of May 11, Arch tells the story of three high school students who return to their boarding school in Pennsylvania after the dean of their beloved school, Henry Griffin, suffers a stroke and falls into a coma. Best friends Stewart (“Goody”) Goodman, Sandy (“Pick”) Piccolo and Laura Appleby – the girl they both love – not only have to deal with Henry’s tragedy, but also have to come to terms with longstanding secrets and revelations that could ultimately affect the dean’s 18-year-old son.

Below, The Hollywood Reporter shares an excerpt.

They found the right bus to Hershey and watched Goody keep climbing. He went to a window seat and sat down. He looked at her and waved. Laura and Pick waved back.

“Do you think he’ll be fine?” She asked.

Pick shrugged. “It sounds like a pretty tough deal. As if they had the funeral again. What a thing. “

It was a memorial service for his father, Goody had told them, and it went with the unveiling of the tombstone. This was a common Jewish tradition and it was clear to the family that he should be there. They figured he wouldn’t repeat his funeral performance. No disappearing this time.

Laura had tried to come to Hershey to be with Goody that summer when his father died, but her parents didn’t want to take her with them or let her go all the way – so she had to wait for school to start him again to see. And no one could deny it, it was another goody that came back in the fall. He was sadder, exhausted – the light that was always there could only be seen occasionally now – and never for very long.

Then when Pick showed up, things got better. Griffin knew what he was doing; What these two guys needed more than anything was a friend. They ignited each other and each seemed a lot more alive when the other was around. Proof that improbable pairings can sometimes be the best.

The bus drove away and Laura said she suspected she and Pick should probably go back to school. Pick agreed but didn’t want to; he wished Laura wouldn’t want it either, but she had already said she did. Otherwise why should she bring it up?

“Do you want to see something?” he asked.

“Sure,” was Laura’s reply, and it raised Pick’s hopes that she would say it so quickly. He changed direction and not long after that they were in his house – a place Pick wouldn’t take anyone. Even Goody hadn’t seen this house.

“What kind of lights are these?” Asked Laura. She pointed to some of the fortifications in the row of tall maples that framed the driveway. Up in the branches.

“Security,” said Pick. “At night they can darken the whole place if they have to.” She asked why they had to do this, and Pick gave her about a tenth of the reason. Burglar, he said to her. Every now and then they had been hit by burglars. Among other things, his father had floodlights switched on so that people would think twice next time.

“Wow,” said Laura. She thought of Oneida and how the people there just left their doors open and didn’t even think about it. “What did you take?”

“I don’t know. Nothing about me.” Pick left out that sometimes they didn’t take anything – that people just as often brought things in and planted them there. For example microphones. Once he saw his father get so angry that he punched a hole with his bare fists through three sheets of standing drywall; This is how Carmine Piccolo felt when federal snoops walked into his fucking house and left their fucking shit behind.

“My father sells Buicks,” offered Laura. “‘More Buicks than anyone from Nyack to Niagara Falls’!” she agreed and told Pick that if he had lived anywhere within those limits, that sentence would have been engraved on his cortex for all the times he was on radio, television and in the newspaper. It was on billboards too; Once her father even dropped leaflets from a feather duster. A restored biplane that crashed into a Purina factory the next week.

“I didn’t remember a lot of people buying Buicks,” said Pick. “Be careful or he’ll put you in one.” Pick laughed out loud and he hardly did that. It struck him as weird, this picture of a Dale Carnegie sales guy in New York state slapping his back and trying to put him in a Buick.

Laura told him not to worry – Pick’s laugh sounded great, she said. It sounded real – and she wouldn’t say it if she didn’t think it.

Pick’s skin felt like fireworks; he couldn’t tell Laura what he liked about her. At first he didn’t know how she would take it – and if she didn’t take it well, all the feeling he was having would just tear itself away. And he’d hate it if that happened.

But if she had taken it well. . . What happened if?

They walked the long way back along the river. For a while they threw sticks in the water and made bets that would make them float faster. They watched a train cross the railway bridge about a quarter of a mile downstream. Pick told Laura everything he knew about the valley they were in – about the coal still buried in the hills around them and how the trains ran 24 hours a day. He talked about floods and levees and how the Susquehanna got its name, and when he finished he said he didn’t even know he knew the stuff or how it got into his head – and he knew he was talking only because he was nervous about running out of things to say.

They talked about goody mostly because they thought they should. Laura told Pick about how they met in their sophomore year and how Goody was a lot more sociable back then. She said he dragged her into all sorts of things: the movie club, where you got credit for watching movies if you took part in the discussions. The listening booths in the downtown library where you could listen to almost any record you wanted for free – records, not tapes, with all the cracks and cracks that came with authenticity. Goody also found a photo lab that printed Laura’s pictures for next to nothing as long as she came in on Saturday afternoon and answered the phone. And he drew her attention to bagels and salmon, which she thought were delicious – and since Oneida didn’t seem to see a market for them, Goody had treated Laura with her first. “Judaism on a plate,” he called it.

She admitted that it got quite intense at times; Goody told her he loved her before they had known each other for a week, even though she didn’t see how he could. But she wasn’t against it, she felt good around him; She liked feeling needed, and Goody gave her quite a lot of it. He needed her and he wanted her, and all of this was very, very new to Laura.

Pick was confused: “Who wouldn’t want you?” he asked himself aloud and Laura told him he could start with her parents. Exhibition A was a boarding school; Attachment B was that she had no choice over Attachment A.

Pick was surprised to hear that. “I thought I was the only one,” he said.

“If it were you,” Laura assured him, “we would be in a very small school.” The rest of the way back, Pick’s mind wouldn’t stop once. He wanted to tell her everything – and not about coal trains and the Susquehanna. He wanted to say things he knew he couldn’t say, until well into September, until the day she cleaned those grease traps and sang Darlene Love.

But for the first time in Pick’s short life, things that suddenly interested him were right and wrong. And he would have to do the right thing here – no matter how much it hurt him, no matter how much he wanted it or how right it might end up being. Because you don’t move your best friend’s girl. You just don’t do that. Even Carmine Piccolo’s boy knew that.

Excerpted with permission from ATTACHMENTS by Jeff Arch. © 2021 Jeff Arch Baytown Entertainment Inc. Published by SparkPress, a BookSparks legal notice, a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC