I Can't Think About Marriage

From writer's block to wedding cakes, the wild ride behind making a film—and a marriage.

The Aspiring Writer’s Dream and Reality…

Dorothy Parker once said that if you have a friend who is an aspiring writer, the second-biggest favour you can do them is to give them a copy of “The Elements of Style”. The first-biggest favour is to shoot them now, while they're happy...

When I first started down the path of maybe being an actual, professional novelist and screenwriter, I had lofty expectations of living somewhere writerly and romantic - let’s say Paris. I spent much of this dream life slurping down oysters and a crisp white wine, and doing nothing in between bouts at the typewriter but wrestling with existential angst and the meaning of life. In reality, I realised that having a partner and two (at that time) young children would make living in a French attic somewhat challenging.

Luckily I chose to be with a brilliant, focused woman who I was smart enough to drag into film production. That, of course, meant that lingering for days, or even hours, to think through a page of exquisite prose was a dream that died faster than certain tech tycoons’ commitment to free speech .

Hanan, the Unofficial Timekeeper

Let’s just say that Hanan has an uncanny ability to ignore my insistence that writing well takes time, and then she can also tune out the sounds of my complaining as if it was so much white noise. As I started the screenplay of I Can’t Think Straight, which is based on our own love story, I felt myself initially paralysed with uncertainty about how to approach this momentous task. But Hanan continued to ask me if I'd finished the script every 30 minutes until I realised it would be better for my own sanity to just sit down and do it.

But every writer needs a break once in a while, ideally one involving crisps or chocaIate. As I rose from my chair for sustenance, the phone rang. Hanan.
'How many pages have you done?' she asked chirpily.
'I don't know how to write anymore!' I wailed.
'Just focus,' she said. 'Take your time. You have till lunch.'
I put the phone down with renewed resolve. Tapped a few lines. Deleted them. Then watched emails floating in...

The Struggle Between Quiet and Feisty

Being a quiet girl from Surrey, I had trouble coming up with enough drama, insanity, and plot. Being a feisty world citizen from Palestine, who had been engaged five times (five!) Hanan had trouble toning all her drama down.

That night, finally done with the script, I retired to the bedroom, defeated by having to write so much so fast and feeling extremely sorry for myself, but not so much that I didn't fall straight to sleep. Around 12:30 am, I was woken by the shifting of papers next to me and worse—the sound that strikes fear into the heart of the most self-confident writer: the scribble of my wife’s pen marks vandalising my beautiful, perfect script. I lay awake seething and worried for at least a minute and a half before sleep overtook me once more...

Shooting: Chaos, Wedding Cakes, and Film-Shooting Shenanigans

Somehow we made it to production (a Herculean task for Hanan versus my paltry script-writing) but only Hanan could have proposed getting married right in the middle of pre-production on I Can't Think Straight. Yes, not only were we desperately finding crew, locations, and Eastern women who could act and also consent to lesbian love scenes (times were different then), but we were also planning a wedding! And this was how it went:

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