DreamWorks making movie based on eighth-grader's journal, which fortunately belongs to a girl
In your daily reminder that a younger, more motivated generation is not so patiently awaiting the day when your ravaged body can be harvested to serve as a sort of giant potato battery to power their smartphones, Deadline reports that DreamWorks has purchased the rights to make a movie out of an eight-grader’s journal. Fortunately, that journal belonged to an eighth-grade girl—leaving Doodles Of Weiners And The Metallica Logo to be optioned at some later date, possibly by Seth Rogen, and instead picking up the story of the journey into young womanhood with the help of some very old-fashioned advice.
Written by the now-15-year-old Maya Van Wagenen, the journal—which was also given a six-figure, two-book deal at Penguin “in the $300,000 range,” all while you looked at this website and wondered if anyone would notice if you cut out early (they would)—will be published under the title Popular: One Geek’s Quest For The Impossible. It chronicles how Van Wagenen attempted to fit in with her classmates by deciding to follow the rules laid out in the 1950s advice book Betty Cornell’s Glamour Guide For Teens, which includes suggestions like wearing white gloves, pearls, and girdles, always being honest, and, presumably, never fraternizing with Bolsheviks. Van Wagenen persevered to not only make friends, but also make the kind of money where you can just ditch those friends and get better friends. Maybe friends who don’t make fun of your girdle.
And now The Carrie Diaries showrunner Amy B. Harris will use her ownexperience with teens and journals to turn Popular into an inspiring coming-of-age tale. Meanwhile your own eighth-grade journal languishes, the only thing it ever inspired being the laughter of your parents, who totally read it when you were at the movies.