Information about The Notebook

The Notebook is a 1996 romantic novel by Nicholas Sparks that was later adapted into a popular romantic film in 2004.

The novel The Notebook is Nicholas Sparks' first published novel, and the third written after The Passing and The Royal Murders, which were never published.

Sparks wrote The Notebook over a period of six months in 1994. Literary agent Theresa Park discovered Sparks after picking the book out of her agency's slush pile, liked it, and offered to represent him. In October of 1995, Park secured a $1 million advance for The Notebook from Time Warner Book Group, and the novel was ultimately published in October 1996.

The Notebook made the New York Times best seller list in its first week of release.

The film

The Notebook
Film poster
Directed by	Nick Cassavetes
Produced by	Lynn Harris Mark Johnson
Written by	Nicholas Sparks (novel) Jan Sardi Jeremy Leven
Starring	Ryan Gosling Rachel McAdams James Garner Gena Rowlands James Marsden Joan Allen Sam Shepard David Thornton
Music by	Aaron Zigman
Cinematography	Robert Fraisse
Editing by	Alan Heim
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date(s)	June 25, 2004
Running time	123 min.
Budget	$30,000,000 (estimated)
|/ IMDb profile

The film adaptation of The Notebook was released on June 25, 2004 in North America. It starred Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Garner, Gena Rowlands, Sam Shepard, Joan Allen and James Marsden. It was directed by Rowlands's real-life son, Nick Cassavetes.

Plot

Set in a modern day nursing home, an elderly man named Noah, but called "Duke" (James Garner), begins to read a love story from his notebook to an elderly woman named Allie (Gena Rowlands). Allie suffered from Alzheimer's, she is Noah's wife. Before her dementia intensified, Allie wrote the love story of her and Noah down in a notebook. She gave it to him with instructions to read it to her on days she couldn't remember, promising that her memory would come back as Noah read her their love story.

The year is 1940. Noah and Allie are at a carnival. Noah (Ryan Gosling), a country boy who is with his friend Finn (Kevin Connolly), first sees Allie (Rachel McAdams), a seventeen-year-old girl from a rich family, who is with her friend Sara (Heather Wahlquist). Noah is immediately smitten with Allie and he continuously asks her out on dates, only to be playfully rejected by her. Noah hangs off the Ferris Wheel and tells Allie that he will let go if she doesn’t accept. Soon, they wind up spending the evening with each other while going to a late night show with Finn and Sara. On a midnight walk through an empty SeaBrook, Noah learns of how tightly scheduled Allie's life was with her daily schedules and activities. Yet he sees a deeper side in her, a side yearning to be free and he likes that. The first featuring of "I'll Be Seeing You" is played as they dance in the street.

Noah and Allie spend an idyllic summer together. Allie lives with her parents, John and Anne Hamilton (David Thornton and Joan Allen), who are staying in Seabrook for only the summer. Allie's father, a Southern Millionaire, appears to be okay with Allie and Noah's relationship, chuckling as Allie returns late home one night, merely laughing "Oh Boy!" as the two regretfully part for the night outside Allie's house. Noah lives only with his father, Frank Calhoun (Sam Shepard). Frank is welcoming to Allie and invites her to the house on regular occasions for dances and pancakes. Allie's mother is not so approving. One night, a week before Allie is to leave, Allie and Noah go up to an abandoned house called "The Windsor Plantation" where Allie and Noah passionately prepare to make love for the first time. A nervous Allie keeps interrupting Noah as he kisses her and when the moment seems finally right, they are interrupted by Finn who tells them Allie's parents have every cop out looking for her. Upon return to the house, Allie's parents ban her from seeing Noah and Allie fights with Noah outside and the two decide to break up. Allie immediately regrets the decision but Noah drives away. The next morning, Allie's mother reveals that they're going home that morning instead of next week. Allie frantically tries to find Noah, but is forced to leave without saying good-bye. The Hamiltons' then sent Allie to New York, where she starts attending school at Sarah Lawrence. Noah, devastated to be separated from Allie, begins to write one letter a day for a year, only to get no reply because Allie's mother kept the letters from her. They have no choice than to move on with their lives, and Allie continues to attend school, while Noah and Finn enlist for the war (it is later seen that Finn dies in the war). For a short time, Allie becomes a nurse for the wounded soldiers. There, she meets Lon Hammond Jr. (James Marsden). Allie spends time with him and the two eventually become engaged, to the joy of Allie's parents as Lon is wealthy.

When Noah comes back from fighting in the war, he finds out that his Dad has sold their house and bought Noah's dream house. Before long, Noah's father passes away. When traveling to the city to get a building permit, Noah sees Allie embracing Lon, and decides to rebuild "The Windsor Plantation" for Allie. He and Allie had visited it in their earlier years and he had promised Allie he would one day rebuild it. Noah works like a madman, believing if he could rebuild the house, Allie would come back to him. Noah engages in a brief affair with a widow named Martha Shaw.

While trying on her wedding dress, Allie reads about Noah completing the house in a newspaper and faints. She decides to visit Noah in Seabrook, and the two spend a bit of time together, talking about what has been happening in their lives. Noah invites Allie to see him again the next day, and they both go for a ride in a rowboat. Not long later, Allie confronts Noah and asks him why she had not heard from him for all those years. Noah tells her he had sent her 365 letters and the two discover that Allie's mother had hidden them from her young daughter. All emotion becomes clear as Allie reveals she never got over losing Noah, crying "It wasn't over for me!". Noah releases all his emotion and pent up grief to dramatically retaliate "It wasn't over.. It still isn't over!" Finally, Noah and Allie kiss passionately and make love, knowing they still have feelings for each other.

After a two-day affair, Allie discovers that Noah fulfilled her every wish as regards to the house, building an entire room facing the creek for her to paint in, a wish she expressed when they visited the house on the night they intended to sleep together as teenagers. Anne Hamilton comes to see her daughter and learns about what has happened. Anne warns Allie that Lon knows something about her activities in Seabrook and is on his way up to talk to her. While going for a drive with her daughter, Anne explains to Allie how she, before marrying John, had fallen in love with a man who was not in her social class. She takes Allie back to the house, tells her daughter she hopes she makes the right choice, and hands her the 365 letters Noah had written seven years ago. Noah and Allie talk and get into a brief argument, where Noah continuously asks her what she wants in life. Allie then leaves the heartbroken Noah and returns to the inn where she tells Lon what happened with Noah.

The film goes back to the elderly couple, and Allie asks Duke who Allie chose. She realizes the answer herself, and the scene, briefly, goes again to years earlier, where Allie goes back to Noah again, and they both embrace in reunion. Allie suddenly remembers her past and she and Noah joyfully spend a brief intimate time together, Allie then suffers a "sundown" (described in a deleted scene when Allie has no recognition of anything or anyone around her) and panics. She has to be sedated by the attending physician. This proves to be difficult for Noah to watch and he breaks down. The next morning, Noah is found unconscious in bed (it is revealed in a deleted scene that he suffered a heart attack after the incident with Allie, the strain proving too much for a man with an already weakened heart) and he is rushed to the hospital, but he is later returned to the nursing home's intensive care ward. He walks in Allie's bedroom that night, and Allie remembers again. They talk, and Allie asks him if he thinks their love could take them away together, to which Noah replies, "I think our love can do anything we want it to." They fall asleep holding on to each other, and the next morning, the nurse finds they have both died in their sleep.

Differences from novel

• Noah had a serious girlfriend after Allie who was very similar to the Martha character.
• In the film, Allie's last name is Hamilton, while in the book it is Nelson.
• In the book, Allie's hair is described as being blonde, while in the film it is red. Rachel McAdams said in a magazine interview that she and director Nick Cassavetes thought her hair should be red, to match her fiery personality.
• Noah's story is continued in the novel The Wedding, in which we learn that only Allie has died.
• The novel is set in the real town of New Bern, North Carolina. The movie takes place in Seabrook Island, South Carolina.
• In the movie it's 7 years later when they see each other again, but in the book it's 14 years later.
• In the novel they end up having 5 children, but in the movie they only have 4.
• In the film, Noah saw Lon and Allie, in a cafe in town, just before their reunion, but in the book Noah did not know about Lon.

Trivia

• Ryan Gosling built the kitchen table featured in the movie in preparation for his role as Noah in the film.
• Rachel McAdams took etiquette lessons in preparation for her role as Allie in the film.
• Ryan Gosling wore brown eye contacts because James Garner has brown eyes, and Gosling's are naturally blue.
• Rachel McAdams beat many people for the role of Allie, including Britney Spears.
• The term "notebooked" has been used by the TV series One Tree Hill. It is used to describe a girl who makes a boy sad and emotional from watching the film. In a sentence this word is used: "I notebooked him." Coincidentally, Paul Johansson (Dan Scott in One Tree Hill) actually had an uncredited role in The Notebook.
• It is the favorite movie of the character Marissa Cooper from The O.C.
• McAdams and Gosling won the "Best Kiss" category in the 2005 MTV Movie Awards for their scene in the film. At the MTV Awards, Gosling and McAdams kissed on stage to prove they were worthy of the award.
• Stephen Dorff was originally set to play Noah Calhoun until he realized the producers were not willing to pay him his asking price.
• The movie portrays the nursing home where Allie and Noah reside as the house he renovated, but this is not the case, as he offered it to his children. One could get confused as it was on the same lake as the nursing home.
• In the film Red Eye, Rachel McAdams' character attends her grandmother's funeral, and explains to another character that she lived to an old age with the help of "a guy named Duke," a possible homage to this film.
• Most images now of Noah and Allie kissing have Noah's beard photo sketched out due to the lack of popularity with the beard.
• In the special features section of the DVD, it is said that Reese Witherspoon tried out for the part of Allie.
• The song that is attributed to the couple throughout the movie is "I'll Be Seeing You".
• The poem that Noah reads out loud for his father when Allie comes to see him is Spontaneous Me, and the poem that Noah reads to Allie when she comes to visit him at the house is So Long. Both by Walt Whitman.
• James Garner, Ryan Gosling, and Gena Rowlands, and Joan Allen have all been nominated for Academy Awards.
• The film is referenced in the sketch Lazy Sunday; Andy Samberg raps that he loves the cupcakes like McAdams loved Gosling.

Sequel

The story is continued in The Wedding, which takes place after Allie's death and revolves around Noah's son-in-law, Wilson, and his wife, Jane. Noah still plays a significant role in the plot.

External links

• James Garner interview for The Notebook