Racy TV movie only loosely based on memoir
Delaine Moore has opted for delicate diplomacy when discussing the TV movie based on her book.
The Secret Sex Life of a Single Mom, shot for Lifetime but making its Canadian debut Thursday on Movie Central and The Movie Network and Sept. 18 on HBO Canada, is loosely based on the Calgary writer’s book of the same name, a mix of memoir and self-help that is nowhere near as salacious as the title suggests.
Loosely, Moore stresses, is the operative word.
“I knew when I sold over the rights it was comparable to selling a house,” she said. “It’s something you love but you can’t go back after you sold it and got your money and complain you don’t like the drapes.”
Moore is a therapist, mother of three and journalist who runs the website I Am Divorced Not Dead. Late last year, she released her book with Seal Press. Despite the sexy title and obvious surface similarities to the naughty literary sensation Fifty Shades of Grey, Moore’s is a wide-ranging book that covers family, divorce, friendship and sex. It chronicles her own sexual and emotional reawakening after a painful divorce, including her experimentation with the world of sexual dominance and submission.
It was a personal journey that has become very public. So it’s not surprising that Moore is protective of her story and chooses her words carefully when talking about Lifetime’s adaptation.
She praises the performance of Ashley Jones, who plays the lead role. She applauds Lifetime for tackling the book in the first place, particularly its edgy-for-Lifetime foray into dominance and submission.
But she is also clear the film often veers wildly from the source material and from her own life.
“You have a woman who is invested in a marriage, who is betrayed, went through a divorce and had some sexual experiences, including something with a dom and that is it, essentially,” says Moore, when asked about the similarities between book and movie. “The book obviously has way more. There’s a lot more to the story.
Moore is eager to talk about the major differences between book and film. The skeleton of her story is there. Delaine Morris, as she is known in the movie, is an unhappily married stay-at-home mom whose husband doesn’t respect her. When they both have affairs, they go through a messy divorce and Delaine begins to explore her sexuality with younger men and a rich “dom” named The Duke.
In the movie, the protagonist hooks up with what Moore calls a “dippy young guy” (played by Wesley Morgan), where in reality the younger men she dated were professionals. In the movie, Delaine has what seems like a risky hookup with The Duke, where in real life she only communicated with him online.
In reality, Moore’s experiences with dominance and submission came with a man she calls John the Dom, who doesn’t appear in the film at all. Moore says she took huge precautions for that meeting. She did backup checks, arranged her own travel and lodging and put limits on what she would do.
The fictional Delaine travels to the Duke’s remote lake house in his driver’s car and waits for him to arrive. At one point, he tells her that if she disobeys him he will parade her around naked in the neighbourhood with a collar. It’s those bits, which she calls sensationalistic, that seem to most distress Moore about the film.