Cinematic Destinies by Patricia Leavy

Patricia Leavy, PhD is novelist, sociologist, and arts advocate (formerly Associate Professor of Sociology, Founding Director of Gender Studies and Chairperson of Sociology & Criminology at Stonehill College). She is widely considered the world's most visible proponent of arts-based research, which merges the arts and sciences. Patricia has published over 50 books, nonfiction and fiction, and her work has been translated into numerous languages. She has received over 100 book awards. She has also received career awards from the New England Sociological Association, the American Creativity Association, the American Educational Research Association, the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, and the National Art Education Association. In 2016 Mogul, a global women’s empowerment network, named her an “Influencer.” In 2018, she was honored by the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the State University of New York at New Paltz established the “Patricia Leavy Award for Art and Social Justice.” In recent years, her passion has turned to penning romance novels.

Cinematic Destinies closes out a sweeping trilogy. How did your background as a sociologist and academic shape the way you approached writing such deeply layered characters and themes?
To me, the Red Carpet Romance trilogy is about what it means to live a life and to do so well. It’s about the moments that string together ultimately creating the tapestry of our lives and how beauty hides in those seemingly small moments. It’s also very much about love, friendship, family, art, and becoming who we’re meant to be. So there are big themes and yet each book is very character driven. As a sociologist, I’m predisposed to look at both the big picture and the small parts. I think that helped me balance my desire to tell a romantic, sweeping love story and also address the bigger questions of life, hopefully in a poetic way.

You’ve often spoken about the intersection of art and research—how do you see this trilogy in regard to your broader creative exploration?
My goal has always been to create a philosophy of love and a philosophy of art through my nonfiction and fiction books. The big difference to me is that nonfiction is literal and fiction is poetic. This trilogy is very much a part of my larger desire to explore both love and art. All three novels in the series explore what love is, what it means to love, and what love brings to our lives. We often talk about love as something we say or feel, but it’s something we do. Love is a verb. The characters in this series do love well. The arts are also woven throughout the series. The trilogy begins and ends with film shoots. There’s a narrative about life imitating art and art imitating life. There’s also a narrative about the role of art in our lives, what we need from artists to make sense of our own lives, and what it means to create art. So while at the end of the day the Red Carpet Romance series is very much a romantic and whimsical trilogy with beach read vibes, it’s also a deeper exploration of love and art and that’s at the core of all my writing.

Hollywood fairy tales and intellectual life meet in the Forrester family—did you draw on your own experiences balancing scholarship and storytelling when crafting Finn and Ella’s world?
Finn and Ella were very much drawn from my imagination. That said, I’ve always enjoyed talking about art and ideas with my friends and colleagues. That started in earnest when I was in high school and never stopped. I think it’s natural for me to put characters together and have them explore creativity and ideas. The Red Carpet Romance trilogy begins with The Location Shoot. In that novel a group is living together in Sweden for three months while they make a film about the meaning of life. They form deep friendships, with Ella and Finn falling in love. Throughout the book they sit around talking about art, philosophy, and life. So these discussions were a part of the series from the start and it’s a natural extension to see more of that in Cinematic Destinies in which we meet Ella and Finn’s three adult children. I must say, writing the family scenes was great fun. I just love the smart and playful way they all talk with one another. And of course, more of those conversations happen in the film set in Iceland and in all the Forrester kids’ relationships.
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The Forrester children grapple with identity, ambition, and vulnerability in ways that mirror broader social questions. How did you approach their stories?
The beauty of having three characters is that each has a different personality and thus different strengths and struggles. They each grapple with things we all deal with in some way. It’s difficult to figure out who we are and to become who we’re meant to be. Identity, career, love—these things are all challenging. I tried to write each of the Forrester kids authentically. My hope was to create resonant storylines for readers who may see bits of themselves in the characters. Between the Forrester children and the other characters in the novel there were so many different personalities. As a writer, that was great fun and I could identify with each of them in some way.

Georgia’s story of artistry and self-discovery echoes both her mother’s path and, in some ways, your own. Was she the character who felt closest to your heart?
I adore Georgia and in some ways she’s the character I admire the most because of her free spirit and desire to make life a grand adventure. She definitely lives out loud. In truth, I’m very different from Georgia. I’m a planner and I’m shy. I think the character closest to my heart in some ways is the least likely, Jean Mercier, the filmmaker. While we are wildly different in some obvious ways, he has devoted his life to his art and the search for beauty. He tackles tough topics because he believes that artists must sometimes go dark to help others see the light. I relate to all of that.

Albert’s search for identity is particularly poignant. As an academic who has studied human complexity, what do you hope readers take from his journey?
It’s okay to be who we are. We are each enough. The best thing we can do for ourselves, and others is to live authentically. Albert is a comic artist and loves creating superheroes. To become the hero in his own life though, he needs to be free to be himself. That’s very hard to do in a world that is often cruel. I hope Albert’s journey with his parents serves as a model to others for how those hard conversations can be made much easier if we lead with love. Ella and Finn are exceptional parents.

This trilogy explores the nature of love, fame, and legacy. Looking back, what surprised you most as the story unfolded?
I didn’t know it was going to be a trilogy, let alone that it would span over thirty years. I wrote The Location Shoot during the lockdown. Like so many others, I was bored at home, binge watching movies, double fisting potato chips, and filled with existential doom. I wanted to escape to someplace joyful, romantic, and creative. Someplace affectionate where you could hug and kiss people without fear of killing them. Due to the pandemic, I was thinking about the big questions of life, and so I decided to write a novel following a group making a film about the meaning of life and living together in seclusion. Given the topic of the film, Ella was a philosopher. When I finished the book, the vaccine was out and life was returning to something more normal, but I loved the characters so much that I wanted to continue with them. Each book in the trilogy organically inspired the next. The second book, After the Red Carpet, sees Ella and Finn building a life together and starting a family in the shadow of Hollywood. After that, I wanted to explore the lives of those three children when they were grown up. How would the public fascination with their parents’ love story affect them each and their love stories? And whatever happened
to Jean Mercier, the filmmaker who started it all? Those questions became the basis for Cinematic Destinies.

Your work consistently bridges academia and popular fiction. Do you feel your novels are part of a larger movement toward making scholarship accessible through storytelling?
I hope so. At the end of the day, what’s most important to me is that my novels are beautiful works of literature. They are art. Yet there’s nothing that says art can’t also inspire, illuminate, provoke, evoke, and educate. In fact, I think the best art helps us to reflect on our own lives and the larger world in which we live. Literature is accessible to people in a way that traditional scholarship is not. There’s a long line of scholars who espouse their ideas through fiction, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Zora Neal Hurston, each of whom wrote plays, short stories, novellas, and novels as well as their traditional scholarly work. I hope to continue that tradition.

After closing the door on the Forrester family’s saga, where do you see your creative and academic energies moving next?
I have a nonfiction book, part memoir part guidebook, called The Artist Academic coming out in October. It’s the first book I’ve written of this kind, and I’m excited to share it. For years people have asked me how I merged academic and artistic interests and moved from being an academic author to a commercial novelist. This book is my answer. I held nothing back and loaded it with tips in the hope of making it useful to others. My next novel comes out March 24 and it’s called Twinkle of Doubt. It’s the second book in a big series I’ve written called The Celestial Bodies Romances which follows the healing love story of a novelist and federal agent. For people interested in the series, the lead title Shooting Stars Above is available everywhere books are sold. Beyond this, I’m fully immersed in writing fiction and have many romance and women’s fiction novels coming out in upcoming years. Many explore social themes such as identity in the age of social media, violence, and mortality.

What role do you believe contemporary romance can play in not only entertaining readers but also in illuminating the complexities of human experience—something you’ve long studied as an academic?
Romance novels espouse the hopes, dreams, fantasies, and emotional life of their readers and writers. They take seriously women’s feelings, experiences, and sexuality. Regarding sexuality, bear in mind the sex depicted in romance novels is often written from the perspective of women, something we rarely see in the culture. Moreover, romance novels are about love. Without love, there is no compassion, no humanity. It is at the heart of who we are as human beings. So I can think of no better way to make my contribution to culture and explore what it means to be human. Storytelling is very powerful. It can change the way we see and think. The more immersed we are in the stories, the greater the impact, and there’s actually neuroscience to support that. So being swept away in the whimsy and escapism of romance novels is a tool we can use to communicate powerful ideas.

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Purchase the book here: 
https://www.amazon.com/Cinematic-Destinies-Novel-Carpet-Romance-ebook/dp/B0DWNGNM1Z