jersey girl
Jersey Girl was an original screenplay, the first one Jeff ever wrote. Like
everything he writes, he wrote it by hand. Then he bought a book to learn
screenplay format. When he typed it up, it turned out to be 270 pages. A
normal screenplay is less than 120 pages. And this was not an epic... just a
sweet romantic comedy about a young corporate guy who falls in love with a
waitress at the coffee shop near his office. People begged Jeff not to show his
telephone book-sized screenplay to anyone, but he didn't listen.
The first producer he showed it to, Marcia Nasatir, had just produced The Big
Chill, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. She optioned Jersey
Girl, and with her guidance, Jeff cut it to normal screenplay size in a week. It
looked as if it were going to be made, with Mare Winningham in the title role, and
Frank Perry directing. But like so many other movie projects, it didn't make it.
There is no connection to the Ben Affleck movie. When he wrote Jersey Girl, Jeff
had never heard the Tom Waits song that Bruce Springsteen recorded, though
after he heard it, he wanted to use that recording for the closing credits of the
film. Jeff was going to write the other songs in the film, sung by an aspiring
singer who also worked at the coffee shop.