Author of "A Cooler Climate"

Showtime presents

August 22, 1999

Zena Collier, author of "A Cooler Climate," chats about her novel and the Showtime movie based on it.

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Showtime: Welcome to our chat with "A Cooler Climate" author Zena Collier If you've been watching SHOWTIME, the premiere of "A Cooler Climate" has just concluded. Please join us to talk with Ms. Collier about her book and the movie. And now, here's Zena!

Zena Collier: Hello! Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to talking to people who have seen the movie and answering their questions. I'm interested in hearing what they thought.

Oxidation: "A Cooler Climate" is a book about relationships. Are these relationships reflective of your own life experiences?

Zena Collier: Well, if you are talking about relationships to do with friendships between women, my friendships with women have always been very, very important to me. I think that's true of most women. If you are talking about divorce, and what happens to a woman in Iris' situation, and I think that particular experience, middle-class, middle-aged woman - being divorced, and finding after many years of being a full time homemaker, she has to support herself.and finding that she just isn't equipped to do it - is a very common experience. I have known of many women, personally, in that situation. And also, although this novel is not autobiographical, my own mother was left in that situation.

Daddy-O: How long did it take to write "A Cooler Climate?"

Zena Collier: I started in the early 1980s. I finished in 1985. It was not sold until 1989. Four years later! And it was not published until 1990. This means that Iris, as I wrote her, would have been married in about the early 1960s when it was very common for married women to stay home full time.

Leisa: At what location did you film the movie?

Zena Collier: The movie was filmed in Vancouver.

Kathy: What gave you the idea for the story? I could really relate to Iris because I got a housekeeper job after my divorce.

Zena Collier: Oh! How interesting! There were about three factors. When I first started writing the book in the early 1980s, just before I started writing the book, I was asked to write an article for a women's magazine about how to get a job. A good job! Without any particular training or a college degree (yes, good luck, unless you are a very exceptional person!). While working on that article, I interviewed many women who had been left in Iris' situation. They'd been home for years, as traditional wives and mothers, dependent on their husbands, then found they suddenly had to earn a living. The other thing is what I mentioned before, that I personally know, and I'm sure many people know, women like Iris, who married at a time when society said the only proper job for a women was marriage and motherhood. Then again, I have to say, I mentioned the fact that my own mother was left in this situation, and this was in another country a very long time ago. And she was middle class, middle aged, and her situation was worse because she had two young children to support because she received no alimony or child support. I'm sure the laws were in place, but her husband (my father), left the country and so nothing could be done to enforce that. And I'm sure that, while that novel is not my mother's story by any means, I think that my memory of the rather grim time that was for us informed the writing of the book.

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