When my husband and I wrote our romantic memoir It Had To Be Us, we decided to use the pen names of Harry and Elizabeth Lawrence. Why? Because the book was very personal and emotional. We didn’t want people knowing we were the real people explaining how they reconciled after being divorced and estranged from each other for almost twenty years. We even changed the names of other characters in the book as well as the locations where everything took place.

Our first surprise was that many readers figured out who Harry and Elizabeth were in real life! Our second surprise involved the number of people who mentioned that the book would make a good movie.

So when It Had To Be Us won First Place in the 2006 Hollywood Book Festival’s E-book category (where judges based their votes on its potential to be transferred to other media such as film or TV), we began to give that idea some consideration. And when we found that filmmaker Misha Zubarev was one of the folks who loved the book and thought it had cinematic potential, we became intrigued. Misha decided to work on a short film with the assistance of V. Ulea, and the movie was completed early this year. The title was changed to Cake: A Love Story in order to enhance the film’s visual appeal. Although deviating from the book, this short film remains true to the spirit of our story about how romantic miracles can happen at any age . The entire cast and crew deserve praise for their wonderful work in bringing our true story to life on screen.   

Cake: A Love Story was submitted to various national and international film festivals. As a longtime movie fan and film critic, I am excited that our filmed story has received the following laurels:

2017 Award of Merit from IndieFEST (for being “a notable artistic and technical production”)

2017 Official Selection at the Toronto Shorts International Film Festival

2017 Short Film Winner at the First Annual NSAEN International Online Film Festival

This Ariella Media production is now available on Amazon Prime. 

(Image by Denise Cassino)