Latest news with #agent
Wall Street Journal
4 days ago
- Wall Street Journal
House of the Week: A California Mansion Inspired by a French Monastery
A longtime lover of castles, Neil Tuller knew he wanted to buy the Hume Cloister, a sprawling Berkeley, Calif., home fashioned after a French monastery, even before he saw it in person. With the listing agent out of town and unable to show it on short notice, he considered submitting an offer sight unseen. But his agent discouraged him—he needed to physically see the property to understand how much work it needed, she said.
Washington Post
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Carolyn Hax: Husband taken aback by wife's ‘raunchy' novel based on her past
Dear Carolyn: My wife, 'Lisa,' and I have been happily married for 30 years, raised three great children and look forward to a very comfortable retirement. I couldn't have asked for a better wife and partner. Over the years, besides her day job, Lisa has made many forays into creative writing and has been pretty successful. She's published articles and several short stories. Her blog is popular, so she decided to attempt the novel she's always talked about. She told me I could read it anytime, and now that it's in the hands of her agent, I did. The novel is about a 'wild child' of the late 1980s, and I immediately knew Lisa had based it loosely upon herself. It is very entertaining but quite raunchy, so I mentioned that she must have embellished quite a lot — but she said no, she left a lot out. I am stunned. Lisa told me when we were dating that she had a 'misspent youth,' and I knew she had a lot more partners than I did, but I never imagined anything like this. I have two problems now: First, her past is bothering me, and I know that's stupid after all these years. Second, she's completely unconcerned that our friends, relatives and, worst of all, our kids might figure out this isn't exactly a work of fiction. How am I to deal with this without coming right out and forbidding her to publish this nonsense? — Stunned Stunned: Whoa. I was nodding along with you there — it'll be 'gently amused sympathy' in my fictionalized memoir — till 'forbidding' and 'nonsense.' Then you lost me faster than a wild child's impulse control. The two most efficient ways to detonate your snow-globe marriage are to control your beloved wife and talk down to her. So, no to those offensive blunt instruments. Plus, why use them when there are simple, obvious, low-drama options that target your specific concerns respectfully? For your fear of everyone's discovery, simply talk to your wife again. Ask whether she ever intends to reveal publicly what she told you. A calm ask, not an aggressive one. She may have no intention of deviating from the line that her book is fiction, even if, say, her kid asks her point-blank. If she hadn't thought this far, then suggest she ask authors who've been there? A calm suggestion, not an aggressive one. If she responds that she has nothing to be ashamed of or hide — then, ideally, you would agree that's both a fair point and her prerogative. But if you don't, then better to say, 'I need time to clear my mind' — calmly — than to try aggressively to change hers. You may have noted a theme. Pushing your distress onto her will only make things worse. I say this even though I don't agree it's 'stupid' for you to feel bothered. I mean, it's not smart or useful, let's not get carried away — but not everyone is ready to read their spouse's youthful sex diaries, so I think you can let yourself feel normal for flinching. Then forgive yourself. Then decide the bad feelings are too stupid to risk dwelling on at the expense of everything you've built. Because remember, your wife's entire past — not just the parts you're okay with — made her into the person you love and trust. So discuss your wife's plans with the book, yes. But it's not her job to make you feel better about her life before she met you. A few solo therapy sessions might help you — since I assume you won't run this by friends.
Daily Mail
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Jeremie Frimpong: The making of Liverpool's 'little assassin' - the Bible-loving 'kid in an adult's body' with a killer edge
The scene is a rainy morning on the M6 northbound in September 2019 and Jeremie Frimpong is sitting in a car unsure what to do with himself. Still a teenager then, Frimpong was heading north of the border to have talks with Celtic but he asked his agent to turn the car around.
Daily Mail
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Jerry Maguire: Trailer, certificate and where to watch
Tom Cruise shows us the money as the amoral sports agent experiencing an epiphany 1996
The Guardian
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
A moment that changed me: I thought I'd never fit in in rural France – until a revelation at the boulangerie
I was standing in the long queue of a rural French boulangerie when it happened. The sun was just coming up and the glorious smell of freshly baked baguette filled the dawn air. I drank it in and shuffled forward, awaiting my turn, aware I was getting 'looks' – and it wasn't difficult to see why. I had driven all night from performing at a comedy gig in London to get to my home in the Loire valley, and I was still in my work clothes. My stage wear included a check tweed Edwardian frock coat with matching weskit, navy blue dress trousers, brogue monk shoes, a smart Oxford-collared shirt and a knitted blue tie, slightly loosened. Under normal circumstances, I would not invade my local boulangerie dressed as a cross between a late 60s dandy and a roaring 20s duellist, but it had been a long drive, and I was too tired to tone it down. Plus, I had never really fit in locally anyway. We had moved there about 10 years earlier, in 2005 – a catastrophic decision, according to my agent, but a happy one for me, my wife and our then four-year-old son; the pace of life was less frenetic and we felt less hemmed in. And, as I often said only half-jokingly, it was the closest place to London we could afford to buy a house. Things had gone pretty well: my wife, being half-French and fluent, was working locally as a teacher, and my son had picked up the language more quickly than I can change a car tyre. We had two more children and I was … well, I was doing OK. In truth, I was finding it hard. My French, at the time, was barely passable and spoken with a Michael Caine accent in what I have come to call 'frockney'. But that was only part of the problem. Although I desperately wanted to melt into the background, my Englishness felt painfully in contrast with the sheer Frenchness of the vine-growing, goat-farming bucolia where I now lived. No matter what I did, I always felt as if I stood out a mile. Initially I had seen my mod stagewear as a defence at comedy gigs, a suit of armour for the laconic performance. It was only as I became more experienced and my stage act began to more closely reflect my real personality that I realised it wasn't armour – it was me. I had seen how the locals regarded the second-home-owning Parisians who flock to the Loire valley at the weekends in their expensive 4x4s and their too-new wellington boots, and I felt in danger of being seen the same way: a diffident interloper, not one of us. In the end, I rarely went out. I became clumsily mute, dreading any interaction with neighbours and acquaintances. The social minefield of how many cheek kisses were acceptable left me a gibbering wreck. But standing in the boulangerie queue, looking like I'd just flown in from a Mod Weekender crossed with a Doctor Who convention, proved to be my salvation. Despite my exhaustion, my clothing gave me the kind of stage confidence I only usually had in front of a paying audience. I greeted everyone warmly, hearty 'bonjours' all around; I laughed off the cheek-kissing when I got it wrong, ordered my baguettes and croissants and strode out. I didn't realise it at the time, but I had made my mark. I became known locally as Monsieur So British – an affectionate moniker which, ironically, meant I started to feel more at home. Mods call it peacocking – dress up, feel good, parade – and, gradually, I started to do it more often. Part of the reason I'd been hiding away, I realised, was my own misguided stubbornness. Mod clothes are part of my identity and to dilute that look to fit in had felt wrong. So for much of the last decade, I had compromised my look, and peacocked indoors. Standing in line to order my baguette, I realised I needn't have bothered. The rural French, I have learned, rarely do formal wear themselves – but they do love to see the British dress up. I have since attended local funerals where only the undertakers and I have been wearing suits – though mine is high-collared, eight-buttoned, double-breasted, and my tie is never loosened. On Armistice Day, a public holiday here, with street parades, it's typically just me and those in uniform who abstain from casual attire. I wore a pair of two-tone, basket-weave loafers on one of these parades to the local cenotaph and a high-ranking officer from the local airbase said how pleased he was to see an Englishman joining the commemorations. 'How did you know I was English?' I asked in my frockney accent. He chuckled and pointed at my shoes. C'est La Vie by Ian Moore is out now (£7.99; Summersdale)
