Daniel Hahn

The cold grip of fear

The narrator of You Should Have Left should have heeded this advice, rather than continue his family Alpine holiday

issue 22 July 2017

A screenwriter sits in a lovely rented house somewhere up an Alp in early December. The air is clear, the views stunning, the isolation splendid. He rented the home through Airbnb — surprisingly cheaply, as it happens. He has come to this place for a family holiday with his wife Susanna and their four-year-old, Esther, but also to get some peace and quiet in which to concentrate on his current job. His last movie, Besties, was a smash hit, and now the producer wants a screenplay for Besties 2, and the sooner the better. And as we read through his notebook, in which he’s hoping the screenplay will take shape, the whole set-up seems quite promising, really.

True, his initial ideas for the movie aren’t quite as brilliantly inspired as he’d hoped, but they’ll do for now.

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