Movie in the offing
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ger their lives. Should Joan keep her phone on so she can stay in touch with her husband outside, or will the light from the screen draw the gunmen’s attention? Should she leave cover to get food for her hungry child or let him starve and risk him throwing a tantrum?
But the worst decisions she has to make involve the children of others. Throughout the night, she repeatedly encounters other people and must decide if she should help them and risk Lincoln’s exposure or abandon them to their fates.
“There is the idea, on the one hand, that motherhood is incredibly selfless, that your needs don’t matter as much as this other person’s needs,” says Phillips.
“Yet, on the other hand, it is also selfish – I take care of my child and if anything happened to him, my life would be shattered. What do you owe to your own child and what do you owe someone else’s?”
Movie rights for the book were picked up at the end of last year (before the book’s publication last month) by Australian actress Margot Robbie, who will co-produce the film for Warner Bros through her LuckyChap Entertainment production company.
Phillips is excited, but also feels some trepidation. “It would be hard to see a story I feel personally about turn into something I don’t recognise.”
With the spate of gun violence in the United States, the fear of being caught in a shooting is “in the back of many people’s minds”, she says.
Slightly more than a year ago, on June 12, was the worst mass shooting in the US’ modern history, when a gunman stormed a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 and injuring 58.
Less than a month ago, on June 30, a doctor was killed and six people injured after a former physician opened fire inside a New York City hospital.
Phillips’ own views on gun control are that political labels have made consensus difficult, but that more people are aligned in their views than they realise.
“Most people would actually be in favour of waiting periods, background checks, and ammunition clips that limit the number of bullets you can fire at a time or how quickly you can fire, which are some of the things that have made these attacks so horrible.
“I think it’s absurd that we don’t have more laws in place. Not that that would solve the issue, but there are some things that seem obvious, yet we can’t seem to agree on enough to make them happen.
“Yet we go on through life. There’s no way to live your life if you are constantly afraid.” – The Straits Times/Asia News Network