A Day in the Life

John Whittaker, known to everyone as Whit, has written a little short story called "A Day in the Life," a written portrait of twenty-four hours among the people of Odyssey, and has sent it off to Pat Walker, his literary agent in Chicago. He has nearly forgotten all about it when a long white limousine pulls up in front of Whit's End, so big that Bernard Walton jokes you would have to be double-jointed just to turn a corner in it. Pat steps out with astonishing news. The famous film producer Clark Gilbert has read Whit's story, fallen head over heels for it, and bought it. He wants to make it into a movie, filmed right there in Odyssey.

Whit's meeting with Gilbert in the limousine is a whirlwind of phone calls, fax machines, and movie talk. Gilbert declares that he loves the story, then admits he has never actually read it - his assistant gave him a summary. Before Whit can ask his questions, Gilbert is off to catch a plane, leaving Whit with an uneasy feeling.

Word spreads fast. Soon everyone in town wants a part. A friend offers to rent out his horses and his barn, Connie Kendall signs up for acting class, and Bernard, who at first grumbles that a movie about Odyssey sounds boring, shows up in a glow-in-the-dark work outfit hoping for some free advertising. Then the director, Marty Scoresberg, arrives, and the surprises begin. Bernard's character has been cut from the film entirely. The Imagination Station has been changed into a magic time-travel ring worn by a fun-loving ten-year-old hero. The villain has a new name and a tower at the edge of town, even though Odyssey has no tower. Whit himself has been rewritten because the moviemakers found him a little boring. The screenwriter, Alan Booth, explains it all with grand talk about the symbolic Odyssey inside all of us, which makes sense to nobody.

At the auditions things get worse. Connie discovers that her part has already been given to Heather Shapely, a glamorous actress who has not played a teenager since she was one, and that the movie version of Connie has romantic scenes and even a beach scene. Eugene Meltsner auditions wonderfully, but when he refuses to let them perm and highlight his hair, he is replaced too. The friends gather at Whit's End to complain. Someone suggests sabotaging the film, but Whit will not allow it - it would be dishonest and unchristian, and besides, his agent has already signed away all his rights. Marty stops by to say the crew has finished its outdoor filming and is heading back to Hollywood. Movies are made of compromises, he tells them. It is not really them, but nobody said it had to be.

Months later the finished film premieres at the theater in Odyssey, with stars and reporters everywhere. To Whit's amazement, the audience loves it. He slips out to the lobby, where Connie finds him, then Bernard, who has come out to trade his stale popcorn with young Jamie at the counter, and finally Eugene, whose on-screen double looked like a used Q-tip. Connie's character, after all her worrying, has been cut from the movie completely. Whit wonders aloud what he will say when the doors open and everyone tells him how much they liked a film that was supposed to be about him but was not. Eugene proposes the perfect escape: a journey to Whit's End for late-night sundaes. So they go, and as Eugene serenades them on his ukulele, Whit decides he is simply glad to be living in the real Odyssey - the one no movie could ever capture, and, as he says, who says it has to?