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Matthew Teague is a journalist who has traveled to far corners of the world for stories. He has covered CIA agents in Pakistan, famine in Somalia, double agents in Northern Ireland. But perhaps his greatest work is the essay he wrote in 2015 for Esquire magazine, titled “The Friend”. Teague devoted some 6,000 words to the two difficult years he spent caring for his wife, Nicole, who learned she had terminal cancer at age 34.
The essay told the story of her deterioration and death through the lens of their friendship with Dane Faucheux, a rudderless soul who came to visit the Teague family for Thanksgiving and ended up staying two years for take care of the couple and their two young daughters. In addition to winning a National Magazine Award, the essay connected Teague with readers in a way that his dramatic reporting on Afghanistan or Sri Lanka never did. They shared their own painful stories with such overwhelming force that he was often “stunned” by the response. To this day, he receives passionate and heartbreaking letters.
Hollywood, too, came quickly to call.
And Teague, now 44, knew the drill. Two of his previous tracks were chosen by various producers, but no film was ever made. He swore things would be different this time around.
What he didn’t consider was how cruel Hollywood can be when a movie comes together, an experience he’s always coming to terms with.
He first tried his hand at writing the script himself. When that didn’t work (“I realized I’m too close to this,” he said) he got engaged as an executive producer and worked in close portraying the realities of dead and celebrate the previous life.
Soon a group of well-known actors (Casey Affleck, Dakota Johnson, Jason Segel) descended on Fairhope, Ala., To portray the Teagues and Faucheux. Gabriela Cowperthwaite directed the actors in scenes shot at the hospital where Nicole was treated and in a house just three doors down from the Teague Residence. (The family still live in the same house. Teague remarried and now also has a 3 month old son named Wilder.)
Toggling between the past and the present, the screenplay jumps head first into the wickedness of cancer and the banalities of married life, presenting the portrait of a family that is both completely recognizable and terribly unique. Young women are not supposed to die of cancer at home while their grandchildren are in the next room.
But fueled by both the deep reaction to his essay and his career as a journalist, Teague was committed to authenticity.
“The bottom line is that I wanted my wife’s legacy and memory to be of immense respect. I didn’t mean to be wrong, ”he says. “And my mission is to tell the truth about this time and all that has come from it.
There are parts of Teague’s original essay that made it right on screen: the doctor’s words when he revealed Nicole’s diagnosis (“It’s all over the place. Like someone dipped a brush in cancer and passed it around his abdomen ”), the friendship between Teague and Faucheux and Nicole’s last wishes (jumping into a fountain in the city center with all his family and friends, becoming the grand marshal of Mardi Gras parade in his town). “What her life lacked in length, she made up for in height,” Teague writes in Esquire.
The more visceral parts that, in part, made the essay so memorable have been omitted: particularly Teague’s role in the grotesque art of the wound and the physical horrors that accompanied it.
“There are things that I can write on paper, and people can honestly absorb and find,” he said. “Yet if you see it on screen, people are going to throw away their popcorn and flee the theater.”
Yet despite his carefully calibrated work, success in Hollywood is never guaranteed.
The 2019 Toronto Film Festival accepted the film and gave it a coveted opening weekend slot.
Sitting inside the Princess of Wales Theater, Teague was a wave of nerves, held together only by the will and help of friend and fellow journalist, Tom Junod, who was also the subject of a film Hollywood, “A Beautiful Day in the Quartier”, about his unlikely relationship with Fred Rogers.
“It surprised me how moved I felt watching him,” recalls Teague. “But what really surprised me was how moved the audience was. There were a lot of people who felt a lot. So I had the impression of having done well by Nicole.
Actress Kristen Stewart was sitting behind him, and hearing him sniffle was just one more assertion that everything was going to be okay. There were audible sobs from the audience, a standing ovation and a trip to the stage, where the cast answered a wave of serious questions. “There was nothing but love from this audience,” Teague said.
But when he returned to his hotel room later that night, the first reviews from trade publications landed like a punch. The Hollywood Reporter called him “out of touch with the very emotions he’s so desperate to arouse.” Variety struggled to turn their ‘devastating essay’ into an ‘inspiring group embrace’. In that review, critic Peter Debruge praised the actors’ performances, but wrote: “A lot of the annoyance was wiped out of the picture, until what remains is precisely the dishonest, sanitized kind of TV movie. without help to anyone. version of death that inspired Teague to set the record straight. “
Today, Teague still bristles at this criticism. Despite years of writing and an understanding of the role of critics, this particular review sounds unfair.
“I had just come from a room full of people who had never read the essay, who didn’t know anything about the essay and who just took the film on its own terms and found it very moving.” , did he declare. “So having my own story used to beat my own story was really painful.”
Cowperthwaite also felt the anger, saying early reviews “just took my breath away.” But the director, who has made four films including the BAFTA-nominated documentary “Blackfish,” has more experience dealing with reviews. “This is just one of the truths behind our industry,” she said. “It never hurts, but I think the more you are in this creative world, the faster you learn to metabolize pain.”
To Teague, the reviews seemed unfair, but more importantly, he worried about the effect they would have on the film’s fate. Movies like “The Friend” hit festivals in hopes of securing a major distribution deal, and the first trade reviews are imported when studios and streamers determine what to buy. Would the film find a home with such a lukewarm initial critical response?
“I was in a panic because I didn’t know what was going to happen to this thing that is so precious to me,” Teague said. “Are we sunk? Will people have the chance to see it? “
Reviews have improved. In Vanity Fair, Katey Rich wrote that the film “finds a more thoughtful way through the kind of story that often feels rote on screen, no matter how devastating it can be in real life.” His Rotten Tomatoes score now hovers around 80% freshness. And producer-financier Teddy Schwarzman said the film left the festival with four offers, though an official deal wasn’t announced until January.
Delayed due to the pandemic, the film, now titled “Our Friend,” will now debut in theaters and on demand on Friday.
Teague uses this experience as an opportunity for growth in his career as a journalist. “The brilliance of public criticism has helped me be more aware of how scary and helpless a story topic can be,” he said in a follow-up email. “It’s easy to forget that, even for a writer who appreciates empathy. Sometimes even a brief story – or a hastily written review – can break someone’s heart for a long, long time.
Still, he didn’t give up on Hollywood either. The writer recently returned to screenwriting and adapted his 2003 GQ article on over-the-top war games in North Carolina into a miniseries called “Pineland” which is now being shopped. .
“It’s not a soft industry,” he says. “But he has nothing on journalism – my first love – for hard knocks.”
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