This hugely successful author is no ‘Gone Girl.’ She maintains her Kansas City roots
Twelve years ago, Gillian Flynn was an unemployed journalist roving Chicago with a $2 paper wine bag as a purse and a baby on the way.
Now look at her — an international literary star known for “Gone Girl,” one of the top-selling novels of the 21st century and a blockbuster movie, as well as other successful movie and TV projects.
Admittedly, that setup is a bit dramatic. The wine bag was as much a fashion choice as an economic necessity, and Flynn had written two fairly successful novels before being laid off after a decade at Entertainment Weekly. Plus, she was married to a lawyer.
So a Horatio Alger story it isn’t. But Flynn certainly rocketed to unexpected and impossible heights after “Gone Girl” was released in 2012 — all while remaining true to her roots.
Flynn struck literary gold in Chicago, where she has lived for 17 years, but she still calls Kansas City her hometown.
“I will always consider myself first and foremost a Kansas Citian,” she said in a recent phone interview.
“I was born there. I go back home now 53 years later, and I’m at the same house with my folks. I just have strong memories, deep ties. Some of my best friends in the world are my friends from high school and from college who still live in town. Kansas City still runs through my veins for sure.”
Flynn grew up in the Coleman Highlands neighborhood between Southwest Trafficway and Roanoke Road, and she returns frequently to see family and to support local causes. In fact, she pulled an unprecedented double in 2015 by serving as grand marshal of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in March before flipping the switch for the Plaza holiday lights on Thanksgiving.
“I was deeply, deeply and truly honored to get to do both those things,” said Flynn, who attended Bishop Miege High School and the University of Kansas. “I think — I can’t swear to this — but I think I get to brag about being the lowest-attended Plaza lights ceremony in the history of the lights. It was a very cold night. We’ll blame it on that.”
Her next homecoming will be Thursday, Nov. 21, when she will appear at a Writers for Readers fundraising event at UMKC.
Gillian Flynn to film TV adaptation in Kansas City
Also on the horizon is a return that has been 15 years in the making. Flynn revealed that, probably within the next two years, she will bring a crew to town to film an HBO limited series version of her 2009 novel “Dark Places.”
“It will be fun to fully give people the feel of Kansas City,” she said of filming here. “I’m just so proud of the city.”
Flynn’s three novels all use Missouri and Kansas settings, but this will be the first movie or TV translation filmed in the Kansas City area.
“Gone Girl,” which she wrote while she was pregnant in Chicago and toted that wine bag, is set in the fictional southeastern Missouri town of North Carthage. The 2014 movie was shot in Cape Girardeau.
“Sharp Objects” takes place in the fictional Wind Gap, Missouri, but the 2018 HBO series was filmed in Georgia. The 2015 movie of “Dark Places,” which has scenes in Kansas and Missouri, was shot in Louisiana.
The screen versions of “Gone Girl” and “Sharp Objects” were huge hits. “Dark Places” not so much, even though it starred Charlize Theron.
“I’m really excited about doing my own version of ‘Dark Places,’” Flynn said.
“Dark Places” follows a young woman living in Kansas City who is haunted by the murders of her mother and two older sisters when she was a child. She had testified that her older brother was the killer, but now she has her doubts.
Flynn wasn’t involved with the writing or producing of the movie but now has nearly full control of the HBO series as writer, co-creator and co-showrunner, so she can insist that Kansas City scenes be shot in Kansas City.
“It’s hard to fake a city, and Kansas City is such a unique place with its architecture and settings,” she said. “I want to use the city as a character.”
Flynn is simultaneously working on another high-profile project that seems like a departure for her, although it resembles her previous works in at least one way — it focuses on a female protagonist. A really, really big female protagonist.
She is writing the script for director Tim Burton’s remake of “Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman,” a 1958 movie that became a cult classic (a 1993 version starring Daryl Hannah was a flop).
As a fan of Burton since childhood, Flynn couldn’t resist the chance to work with the strange mind behind “Beetlejuice,” “Edward Scissorhands” and “Batman.” She said their version “doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it’s not a comedy. It has dark marbling.”
“Fifty Foot Woman” won’t use this area as a setting or for filming, however.
“I wish I could have convinced them to do that,” Flynn said. “It seems like my things always take a turn into Missouri and Kansas.”
The next novel
It has been 12 years since the release of “Gone Girl,” which means it has been 12 years since Flynn published a novel.
But she wants it to be known that she hasn’t gone Harper Lee on us.
“First of all, people are like, ‘It’s taking me 10 years to write a book?’” she said. “And, it’s, ‘No, no. I’ve been doing a lot screenwriting and creating shows and movies and that kind of stuff.’ I don’t want people to think I’m completely lazy and decided not to write anymore.”
Flynn has been far from lazy.
After the “Gone Girl” novel changed her life completely, Flynn converted it into the screenplay for the ensuing blockbuster movie. She also wrote the novella “The Grownup,” helped turn “Sharp Objects” into an Emmy-nominated miniseries, wrote the script for the movie “Widows,” was a showrunner (overseeing the writing and producing) on Prime Video’s “Utopia” and created her own publishing imprint.
Oh, and she had two children, whom she home schooled during the pandemic.
In her spare time, she has been working on that fourth novel, and she expects to finish it in the next couple of years.
“I’m still in a really messy first draft,” Flynn said. “I’m not taking any more film or TV projects after I wrap up these next two, so I’m hoping next year will be the year it is finally all wrapped up and off to the publisher.”
Gillian Flynn’s Kansas City event
While juggling the “Dark Places” TV series and the “Fifty Foot Woman” screenplay, Flynn will find time to speak at UMKC on Nov. 21. The Writers for Readers event is presented by the Kansas City Public Library and UMKC’s MFA program in creative writing, with the proceeds funding graduate internships for students.
“It’s important for me to come back and support the libraries and support the schools and anything involving books and journalism,” said Flynn, who earned a bachelor’s degree at KU in journalism and English and a master’s degree in journalism at Northwestern.
“Those are all very dear to my heart and causes that I think are incredibly important, especially right now.”
At a time when some school districts are pulling literary works off library shelves if even one parent objects to them, Flynn’s novels have joined hundreds of other books — including the dictionary — on the chopping block. “Gone Girl” was banned in at least two counties in Florida and one in Tennessee; Orange County, Florida, banned “Dark Places” and “Sharp Objects.”
Flynn is known for her dark and devious female characters, so look for novel No. 4 to tread similar terrain (and based on her first three novels, expect a two-word title). She isn’t giving many specifics about the plot other than that it is set in Missouri and Chicago.
And that it’s been a struggle.
“It’s been a tough book to write, I’ll admit,” Flynn said. “It’s very easy to get into your head and freak yourself out and go, ‘Is it too much like “Gone Girl”? Is it not enough like “Gone Girl”? Oh, what are they going to say about this one? Are they going to like it?’
“Instead of ‘Gone Girl’ having given me more confidence, I think in a certain way it’s almost made me doubt myself a little bit more. … I panic a little bit more than I have in the past. A lot of it is me getting out of my own way and just going ahead and writing a book the same way I’ve always written a book. Which is to make a whole lot of mistakes and then fix them.”
Funny and unfiltered
People are frequently surprised when they meet Flynn.
“It is because of what I write, which can be some very dark topics,” she said. “They think I’m going to come in and try to immediately strangle them or something. It’s obviously one of those things where you go, ‘You know, it is fiction, everyone.’
“It’s funny, I very often hear, ‘Oh, you’re so much nicer,’ or ‘You’re so much more normal than I thought you were going to be.’”
Flynn’s sense of humor especially catches strangers off guard. So does her frankness.
For example, she told a story to The New York Times in 2020 about her then-4-year-old daughter on the set of “Utopia,” which was filming in Chicago. Needing to answer the call of nature, the girl took advantage of a Chicago Transit Authority restroom. Mother joined daughter, who evidently assumed the facility was only for the TV show’s actors.
Flynn recounted her daughter’s reaction: “Um, I don’t mean to be rude, but are you allowed to use this bathroom? You’re not a movie star.”
Here are other samples of the wit and wisdom of Gillian Flynn:
▪ Last year, New York magazine published an extensive interview that mentioned Flynn gave birth to her first child just before the “Gone Girl” movie premiered.
“I did my first interview for it four days after I had her, and I was a wreck. We had to do it close to my house because my boobs were gigantic and I had to nurse. The premiere was in New York, and I was running all over the city pumping. My DNA is all over New York. I can’t commit a murder there — they would find me pretty easily.”
▪ Also from the New York magazine interview:
“I love watching old-school, golden-age-of-Hollywood dancing, so I’ll watch Gene Kelly or Donald O’Connor do a number from ‘Singin’ in the Rain,’ which always makes me so happy. I have a serious crush on Donald O’Connor, but I don’t think it’s going to work out because he’s passed on.”
▪ She talked to a reporter for Glamour in 2020 while roller-skating through her Chicago home.
“It’s become my quarantine specialty. When I was a kid, we’d skate all the time. I’m really good. I might join a roller derby, who knows.”
▪ Finally, about that wine bag for a purse. She confessed in an essay she wrote for Elle in 2013.
“Until last year, I had no purse. I carried a wine bag. I’m not joking. That is my accessory of choice: one of those $2 shiny paper gift bags you buy at the grocery store to stick a bottle of wine in. I have about six of them in rotation at any given time. … You can carry your keys, lipstick and money in a wine bag, and you don’t have to worry about whether it matches your outfit because people assume, you know, it’s a wine bag.”
An Evening with Gillian Flynn
When, where and what?
The Writers for Readers event will take place at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 21, in Room 401 of UMKC’s Student Union, 5100 Cherry St.
The Kansas City native will sit down with fellow author Whitney Terrell, associate professor of English at UMKC, to discuss her life and work. Also, this year’s Maya Angelou Book Award winner for fiction will be announced.
How much does it cost?
Reservations are $75, with sponsorships $500-$10,000.
Where can I get more information?
This story was originally published November 11, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
