Adventures in Uxoriousness

Paul Haggis's new film “The Next Three Days” (co-written by me and starring Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks) of course purports to be about me, Lewis Carroll, and a grown-up Alice Liddell.  It is years after we first met; we are married and have a kid, now.  This 're-visitation' to Wonderland territory will sound in some ways a leeeettle like the recent movie “Alice in Wonderland” by Tim Burton. I even found my son in our movie kind of physically resembles the Alice in that movie. But that’s as far as it goes.  Everybody knows Elizabeth Banks is playing my wife, Alice, the grown up Alice. 

I decided I would try,with this script, something modest, like oatmeal, with a few sparks of espresso rushing it along, for kicks.  I wanted an underplayed Alice, a more sedate Alice, one less questioning as children usually are, and one in trouble.  And I wanted trouble because I wanted her growing up to be almost a crime in and of itself.  To have left those balmy, wonderland days in the countryside, in the world of Wonderland with all that robust fantasy and frilly dilly nonsense.  There is some nonsense to the film, like her getting freed from jail, for instance and getting away to South America unscathed.  The whole getaway and successful escape was an exercise in mature and controlled silliness.  I would have liked to make the movie funnier, in retrospect.  You see, adults enjoy their nonsense, too.  It’s found in every genre.  It’s necessary irrationality.  It’s why I, a mathematician and logical thinker by all accounts, turned my talents inside out to write something that would be enjoyable to a child.  It was the hardest thing I’d ever done.  I thought maybe one day, if I waited long enough, I would marry her, maybe have a child, maybe escape forever from the confines of the terrible, terrible Old World. 

And I did and I wrote about it.  Me older now.  Her older, too.  And us, together, with our son, trying our best to enchant him, to let his childhood be full of magic and an escape from reason.  So I thought about confines and I thought about imprisonment and I thought about adulthood, and I thought about escape.  Escape from all of these.  And this is what I came up with.  This was our life.  We escaped from  a very plain fate --  of growing up --  to bring a little wonder into the life of our child; where he and Alice and I could be free, at last. I admit, Alice and I and our son have been living somewhere wonderful for years now; we didn’t need to escape to South America to be free, to be ageless.  I just thought I’d have a little fun with a story -- something for us.  Something again...