This Is Where I Leave You

I watched the movie This Is Where I Leave You today.  Ho hum.  It would be nice to be more enthusiastic about the film, not least because of its talented cast, but you can see the joins.  It creaks a bit, I'm afraid; not sure if that's the fault of the screenplay or the direction.  It's not awful but it probably had potential to be better.

As the final, foreseeable scene closed the movie some not-entirely surprising tune (uplifting, hopeful but moderately open-ended nevertheless) kicked-in while the screen faded to black.  I thought, this must have started out as someone's partially autobiographical novel.  And so it proved to be.  

A quick Google search told me it's the fifth novel (of six so far) of an American author I've not heard of before, Jonathan Tropper who was born in 1970.  Three of his novels have been optioned as movies, one linked to J J Abrams (coming after Star Wars, one assumes).  My guess is the novels occupy much the same emotional territory as This Is Where I Leave You.

I was, however, particularly struck by one comment on Jonthan Tropper's wiki entry (which, one assumes, he oversees).  It read, "he spent eight years running a Manhattan-based company that manufactured displays for jewelry companies. He wrote at night and on weekends, ultimately publishing his first novel, Plan B, which attracted the attention of an agent, allowing him to leave his job and become a full-time writer." 

He wrote at night and weekends ...

 The journey has to start somewhere, somehow.  Where it leads depends on setting out.  It's not rocket science, Douglas.