InstagramWe're sure there are plenty of fun tales from those who have dabbled in online dating, but one specific story has deemed itself worthy of a big screen feature—and understandably so!
Variety reports that New Line Cinema is moving forward with the movie adaptation of writer Clara Bensen's "Craziest OKCupid Date Ever" story from Salon.com nearly a year ago, where she documents a spontaneous three-week adventure with a man she met on the popular dating website OKCupid.
"Jeff and I traveled to eight countries in 21 days without changing clothes. It sure beat meeting for coffee," she wrote.
The film will appropriately be titled No Baggage, which is also the title of Bensen's book that will accompany the movie (due next fall).
On the surface, we appeared to be sure candidates for "World's Most Unlikely Pair." He's a wildly energetic university professor who is always on the move. I'm a reclusive writer who spends hours identifying new constellations in the ceiling paint. He can strike an insta-friendship with any human not in a coma. I often pretend I don't recognize people at the grocery store. Somehow our personality differences are offset by the fact that the same mad scientist blood flows through both of our veins. We live for the unexpected, the experimental and the subtly disruptive.
Never one to waste time, Jeff set an experimental trap weeks before he knew my real last name or whether I actually looked like the pictures in my OkCupid account. His third email was coy: "Do you have any ideas for travel experiments? I have a few things I dabble in, and I'm going to push one of these experiments to the nth limit in June."
"Dabbling" referred to his traditional method of travel, which involved booking an outbound flight to one international airport and an inbound flight out of some other port-of-calling a few countries away. Beyond visas and flight details his trips were completely unstructured. No hotels and no itineraries.
Oh yeah, and the newest nth limit twist: no stuff.
Bensen added, "Exactly one month and two weeks after meeting online, Jeff and I nervously booked two luggage-free flights to Istanbul. This was either the best idea ever or the beginning of a brutal, three-week long demise. As Mark Twain so aptly put it, 'There ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.'"
So, Clara let go of the fear that most women who online date have (that the guy is a serial killer) and Jeff didn't let his fear of whether or not Bensen looked like her pictures stop them from creating an epic date for the books big screen.
Adam Brooks (Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, Definitely, Maybe and Practical Magic) will adapt the script. New Line set the project up with Adam Shankman and Jennifer Gibgot at their Offspring Entertainment banner.
(Oh, and judging by Clara's Instagram, she and Jeff are still together. Yay!)