I fell in love with my wife at first sight. We met when she came to a meeting about a script I'd written. She walked into the room and that was it; bells, whistles, fireworks. I was gone; still am, ten years on. But our meeting wasn't my first sight of her. She was then, still is, a good and successful actress, and I'd seen her movies. So did I fall in love with her through watching her onscreen? Could I really have known with inexplicable certainty that we were destined to be together? We were, but isn't that what celebrity stalkers think?

Anyway like I say, she walked in, and we're married, and that's a fine thing. So years later, when I wanted to write about love, I thought back to that first meeting. I remembered wondering whether to shave, carefully selecting the least obviously stained of my t-shirts, washing my right hand for a cool yet strong grip. I remembered watching her walk through the door. And I remembered my heart stopping, then starting again, forever changed.

In my movie it's all different, obviously it is. For starters, I'm a woman called Rachel. She's proceeding up the aisle toward her intended husband when she looks to her left, and locks eyes with someone she knows immediately to be the love of her life.

We talked a lot in pre-production about how to shoot that moment, the click. And then we talked a lot in post about to cut it, how to score it, how to sell it. I thought then, and still think, that ultimately it would not be that scene, and our treatment of it, that would convince the audience something momentous has taken place, but the rest of the movie.

But still, the moment itself had to be beautiful, had to be life-changing, as it was for me, even if my understanding of what really happened in that instant is no greater. Did her apocrine glands give off the requisite pheromones to suit my olfactory? Did my brain submerge itself in phenylethylamine? Or did I look into her eyes and see her soul? And in the end, does it matter? What is important is that something happened, everything happened. TS Eliot said that we should not over-examine love, not seek to place it "fixed and sprawling on a pin" - the study of it only devalues the object. It just is. And thank God for that.

- Ol

I'm sorry to impose since I have not seen the film. I had a nightmare about an old friend last night. The type of silvery dream I awake from with a strong sense of urgency. Reality is shattered and I'm still living in that dream. I've lost that friend's phone number and am desperately searching online for some way to reach him. I've found there are quite a few people with his name. I wondered how difficult it would be to locate an average person on the internet and curiously typed in my own name. Surely there couldn't be another Ollie Parker in this crazy world. Do you ever wonder if a name makes a person or if the person makes the name? How similar could two Ollie Parkers be?
ollie

Dear Ol:

As I've written, elsewhere on this website:

Thanks a lot! I used to snorf at the Vincent Gardenia character in "Moonstruck" for sitting and listening to a single Vicky Carr song over and over again ("How could a guy be that in love with something?!"), until I came across your movie, and now I know: I absolutely can't stop watching "Imagine Me & You!" If it's not the greatest love story ever filmed, I'm not sure what is! I don't know if the zillion or so nuances that Piper and Lena (and Matthew and Darren and Boo and ad infinitum) bring to their performances is a result of their immense talent or yours, but regardless, it's like ferreting out all the nuances of flavor in a thousand-dollar bottle of wine! Absolutely unbelievable! So, thank you, thank you, thank you for bringing us this story/film: I fall in love a hundred times a night now, and THAT AIN'T BAD (P. S.: I do have a life, extant your film, so "don't cry for me, Ollie Parker." It's just that that life has now and forever been divided into "pre-IMY" and "post-IMY")! So, thanks again (if, in fact, you ever have occasion to read this).
Yours,
David Rives (davidrives@hotmail.com)

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