Mary Gaitskill’s short story “Secretary” (previously discussed) was first published in 1988, then was eventually adapted into the 2002 film Secretary. I’ve already discussed the differences between the script by Erin Cressida Wilson and the film directed by Steven Shainberg, so there’s a kind of family tree connecting the story and the movie.
Gaitskill herself has described the film as “the Pretty Woman version of my story.” (Gaitskill, Mary. “Victims and Losers: A Love Story; Thoughts on the Movie Secretary” Somebody With a Little Hammer: Essays, Pantheon Books: New York, 2017) Last year, the New Yorker magazine published (March 27, 2023) Gaitskill’s follow-up story “Minority Report”. It tells the story of Debby and her life after her encounter with “the lawyer,” now given the name of Ned Johnson.
“Minority Report” is less a sequel than a retelling of the same event from Debby’s changed perspective as a woman in her 50s, and her difficulty in understanding and expressing her experience. The title explicitly comes from the Steven Spielberg film of the same name, in which precognitive people experience flashes of future events while kept in a sedated state, and a team of detectives have to interpret these scattered, impressionistic glimpses of possible crimes and decide what to do.
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