Author Description

The screenplay for the major motion picture The Door in the Floor, based on the #1 national bestseller A Widow for One Year by John Irving In Irving’s introduction to Tod Williams’s screenplay, John Irving calls the script “the most word-for-word faithful translation to film of any of the adaptations written from my novels—including my own adaptation of The Cider House Rules.” Yet Williams has made a radical and insightful choice: namely, to tell only the first third of Irving’s long, dark novel. In this part of the story, sixteen-year-old Eddie O’Hare, an aspiring writer, believes he has landed the perfect summer job when he is hired as the personal assistant to the successful children’s book illustrator and author Ted Cole. But the Coles are a family marked by tragedy. Their two teenage sons were killed in a car accident; Marion Cole, the boys’ mother, has never recovered from their loss. Ted and Marion have temporarily separated, and their living arrangements, which involve their four-year-old daughter, Ruth, are—especially to Eddie’s limited experience—baffling. Ted seems to be having an affair with his model, the acerbic Mrs. Vaughn, and Marion and Eddie increasingly find themselves alone together or alone with Ruth. The Door in the Floor is a smooth and vivid adaptation of the darkest, most disturbing part of A Widow for One Year.