The Girl on the Train doesn’t come out until October. While I didn’t think the book was the best thing ever (people acted like it was the greatest book since Gone Girl), it was a quick read and the ending justified the read. Oddly enough, I’m really looking forward to the movie for some reason. I almost believe that the movie has the potential to enhance and enrich the source material, and I’m curious about Emily Blunt, Justin Theroux and Haley Bennett in these roles. The latest issue of Entertainment Weekly is a preview of the film, complete with a nice little starter-interview with Emily Blunt (you can read that here) and some interviews with the director and screenwriter. While the book was written by an Englishwoman and set in the exurbs of London, the screenplay was adapted by an American woman named Erin Cressida Wilson, and the film is set in America. I found Wilson’s quotes the most interesting, because she talked about the choice she made to set the film in New York and its exurbs/suburbs. Her take? Drinking in bars is sadder in America, and so Rachel’s alcoholism would be seen as even more tragic.
Screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson on the Metro-North Hudson line from New York to Poughkeepsie. “The train itself is totally unsexy. But the river is, and the backyards, and the suburbs – Croton-on-Hudson and Dobbs Ferry, all these places you look at when you’re coming out of the grayness of the city and you think, ‘Oh my God, I could live there.’ There’s a lot of dreams there.”
The American setting, Wilson says, also brought an extra veil of shame to Rachel’s alcoholism. “It’s much more of a drinking culture [in England],” Wilson says. “It’s not as shameful as it is here.” American bars are dark, she says: “In America, [drinking at bars] is all about going into a dark hole where nobody can see you do a bad thing.” You wouldn’t necessarily sit there with a cocktail on the Metro-North train – which is why Rachel chooses to keep her vodka in an unassuming water bottle – but on the English trains, Wilson says, an evening drink may be more acceptable.
Yeah, I’ve never been on an American train where it’s considered acceptable to sit in your seat and drink, although I have been on trains where it’s acceptable to have a beer in the “lounge” car, although few people really do that at this point, right? Especially not daily commuters. I’m not sure if I agree with Wilson about the bar-culture of America versus England though. America does have a decent bar/club culture and it’s not based on sadness and drinking alone, not in cities or suburbs. Americans go to the bar for a drink with friends, college students go to get wasted, people meet in bars for dates, etc. I think Wilson might be saying the English pub-culture might be more accepting of solo people just coming in to sit quietly and get sh-tfaced. Is that what she’s saying?
Photos courtesy of EW, ‘The Girl on the Train’ still.
Bulls**t! I’ve never experienced more wild partying than my time in the U.S. I never knew what a shot was before I moved here. Alcohol consumption is rife in the College system and many take closeted drinking problems into adulthood after graduation. Was Fun though…..lol
Sure college age people aren’t really looked down on in the States for drinking. But after a certain age engaging in that sort of behavior is looked down on here. The character in the book is a woman in her early to mid thirties, which is way older than the traditional college student keg party goer age. So it would be seen as shameful for someone that age getting sloppy drunk or even be seen regularly drinking alone, which is what the character does in the book.
I don’t think she meant binge drinking and partying, I think she was referring to a daily drinking culture, where adults (int he UK) regularly drink at lunch, or going to a pub for a quiet drink with friends instead of the North American version of ‘going for drinks’ which includes dressing up, make up, flirting, etc.
Absolutely this. When I lived in the UK, it was really normal to go out to the pub for lunch with coworkers and have a drink, which is rather frowned upon here in the US. I also felt like it was more acceptable to go to a pub solo and/or not drink there. “Going to the bar” is more of an event here, and the expectation is that you will be drinking. Of course, that’s really regional too. Where I live right now, daydrinking isn’t abnormal. It would depend on your job though.
I have to agree with the Author/Adapter. As an American expat in the UK, I would argue that the binge drinking culture (and especially because I live in Scotland where it is rife) doesn’t stop after you’re learned a lesson or two the hard way while at university. The last time I went out with colleagues for a night out, I spent like 80 pounds! The culture is that you are buying rounds for the group, and if you are part of the group, it is very difficult to extricate yourself from that. I would NEVER spend that much in a bar….am in fact incapable of doing so…but that night I had drinks lined-up in front of me that I had NO intention of drinking. You are always drinking as fast as the fastest drinker when there are rounds at play. Ugh. Never again. I watered a bunch of potted plants with unwanted vodka tonics that night.
Shots were invented by America? Live and learn!
Her point was yours actually- that many take ‘closeted’ drinking problems into adulthood. In the UK the shame is less so it’s not as closeted.
In my experience, the level of shame around alcohol consumption and being drunk (es for women) is much more in the US then in the UK. In the US we drink a ton and have it everywhere but there is also so much shame & not very much compassion when someone (es women again) is drunk or uses to much alcohol. In the UK I saw people pass out in bars & people shrugged “ah- they had a bad day. Let them sleep it off and then Mira will carry her home at the end of the night”. Here in the USA she would have been glared at, kicked out & then blamed if she was raped.
So True!
College isn’t a great reflection of drinking culture in the US. Sixty percent of Americans aged 21 and over consumer half a drink or less a week and the top 10% of drinkers consume the majority of all alcohol sold in the US (over half, somewhere around 60%). Our national average of alcohol consumption is also the lowest in the developed world. Our attitudes toward drinking and also nudity tend to be very conservative especially when compared to Europe. It is thought to be a holdover from our Quaker roots.
I still don’t think it’s that common for women to sit on their own in a bar and drink in the UK, common for men though. You’d end up getting hit on as men would think you’re looking for male company, so it’s not worth the hassle.
I agree with this but even though it’s more acceptable for a man to have a night cap alone at a bar here, it’s still much more rare than in Europe or the UK. The stereotype women who drink alone in public here are bound to is the older woman drinking alone in a hotel bar looking for a date or something. It’s inevitably taken as as an invitation. I also think regular binge drinking and shots quickly lose their acceptability around age 35… It’s simply sad and embarrassing if you’re 35-40 regularly getting hammered. Whether it’s a dance club or a dinner party, you simply don’t see many people over age 30 taking shots or drinking 2 bottles of wine by themselves… Even in the safety of a group, without the added taboo of solo drinking. Pub culture is very different too from American bar culture. There aren’t many bars where you’re encouraged to have a full meal, talk to the bartender about your life at length, watch a three hour soccer game, read a book, or comfortably hang out for hours. The culture is definitely more chug, chug, chug. Or crawl to the next bar. And repeat all night. It does make drinking more sad in the US.
In terms of drinking on trains, in the UK you can buy (or at least you could when I last commuted a real distance) a glass of wine in a plastic ‘glass’ with a foil top. I don’t know if people drink them travelling alone but there must be a market for them.
Last I heard, they were sold by M&S which has fairly high end food.
In the book she drinks gin and tonics (I think) in cans. Our book club (American) was fascinated by those!
But people do drink on commuter trains here in the US/Chicago, it’s allowed. You don’t see it in the morning but in the evening, especially on Fridays, many people are openly imbibing.
You can buy it and take on the train people in the UK do drink more and I work in The city and the amount of times i pass sick at 8a from the night before is on a weekly basis. I know people who fall down drunk black eyes and not embarrassed about it I would be mortified. The problem is people drink and don’t eat so 5 hours of drinking with no food makes for a nasty combination. I know living here I probably drink more than I did in the US but still less than most. Drinking a bottle of wine for some isn’t uncommon😳
The last time I was in London I noticed how much drinking there was that spilled out into the streets and how nobody seemed to mind at all. And yes, in my (sleepier) part of my city, the bars are old, dark and dank, Trad’r Sam and the Tee Off, the type of place you might see Mo from the Simpsons. Oprah wouldn’t say you were living your best life in those joints.
The Chicago Metra train system had bar cars years ago, but they’ve faded away. During my commuting years the train station bars sold drinks to go; I’m not sure if they still do. Probably.
Yes, just posted above, I didn’t see your comment. People still drink on Metra trains. 🙂
Man, as someone who just doesn’t like the taste of alcohol the amount of suspicion I was regarded with by Brits while living there was astounding. Like, why don’t you drink? Is it religion, what is up with that? It got pretty annoying. I like that it is generally considered okay for women to get as drunk as men there though, I found it so sexist when it is okay for men to drink but not women. Ugh.
I think it is more down to the people you get together with and (I dislike the class system in UK but it is what it is!) in which class you and your friends are.
My husband never drank much and I was never shamed for being the same.
True story. My BFF comes from an isolated village in Leicestershire where the men’s working clubs will side eye any woman who drinks more than a half pint at any given time.
They’ve accepted women in the clubs, but there is alot of concern trolling if you order a pint.
Funny thing is that ordering half pints one after another is perfectly fine because drinking itself isn’t a reason to judge on gender lines. You can drink all day everyday and it’s fine as long as you keep ordering half pints.
That’s because women’s elbows are attached differently: designed for carrying babies, not beer. Only Real Men (*insert trademark logo here*) can lift a full pint glass without risk of pulling a muscle.
(That’s about 90% sarcasm and 10% what I think is honestly going through their poor misogynistic heads.)
@Lucrezia- I’m surprised that isn’t an ad somewhere.
I can’t/don’t drink due to a combination of medical quirks and I-don’t-like-its, and in Europe in particular, I’ve found that tends to cause a big “does not compute” reaction in many people.
Drinking is an ingrained part of socializing in so many cultures, but there are a few where it’s really awkward for everyone when you don’t drink. You feel like you’re making a huge faux pas — rejecting someone’s hospitality — even if you have good reasons to not imbibe, and they understand them.
My friend says it’s different in Ireland than in England, in that there are many people there are “Pilgrims”, i.e. they choose not to drink alcohol, and so other people are more understanding of someone who chooses not to imbibe.
I had someone ask me if I was pregnant, because I was 21 and ordered a Coca Cola with my dinner, instead of alcohol…….
To be honest, before moving to UK I would have agreed with the lady. However, after years here, I always thought that the drinking culture was a lot more shamed by locals than previously believed and from what I have heard in the following years being a lot in a pub doesn’t enhance your reputation…
Concerning “single woman in the pub”, once I entered a Scottish pub in the late afternoon (to ask for touristic information!!) and felt like I had entered the place dressed like a pole dancer given the stares I got, it was difficult to stay there more than five minutes…
I live in New York, and it seems pretty common and socially acceptable for women to drink alone in a number of different types of bars. I’d feel perfectly fine getting a drink on my own in a number of places near me. There’s also a fair bit of drinking on trains. When you’re at penn station or grand central, there are loads of stores selling wine to bring on the train. I took the train to the shore for 4th of July weekend, and there were plenty of people very enthusiastically and drunkenly drinking on there (although I’m sure a holiday weekend is an outlier of sorts).
I think drinking is generally treated differently in Europe. In France wine is less expensive than Diet Coke in restaurants. The drinking age in Europe is 18 (in the countries I have been to, at least), in the US it is 21. Prohibition never happened in Europe. I’d never even heard of buying liquor by the drink in a can until I read this book.
I grew up in Oklahoma. You couldn’t buy beer or wine in the grocery store and the beer for sale in gas stations and restaurants was 3.2% alcohol instead of the usual 6.0%. So maybe my perception is off.
In Croatia you can buy alcocholic drinks in cafes. Actually, you can buy them pretty much anywhere. It’s quite common for people to have a liquor with their morning coffee on weekends. And in my part of the country pretty much everyone owns a small vineyard and makes their own wine.
But we need to make a distinction between drinking ocassionally and beig a full blown alocholic.
I think is different for Europe and Latin America. My family is Mexican and drinking socially was something so normal and ordinary, than when I grew up I enjoyed it but didn’t go nuts when I went to college. A lot of people I know grew up in borderline Puritan homes (I live in the South) where drinking alcohol was viewed as “sinful” and it was such taboo, those people went off the deep end as soon as they got a taste of freedom and a small percentage developed alcoholism as a result.
Yup. Agree.
I’ve also seen it happen the other way though, where someone grows up without alcohol being viewed as sinful and ends up being an alcoholic. Some people are just more susceptible than others, and having alcoholic drinks associated with a good time is extremely prevalent whether or not a particular community also considers it immoral (eg: in movies). I see a lot of back-patting from cultures that have made drinking so habitual and normal, but that’s really not all that healthy either. Normalization doesn’t really strike me as the best route, and I don’t think it’s an either or of demonization vs normalization. The health effects put it pretty firmly in the rare treat category imo (health benefits tend to be overhyped by the media I think).
I think she’s referring to woman in her 30s going to a bar alone just to drink.
Emily Blunt is so miscast for this. But I like her, so I’ll probably see it.
The book didn’t grab me like Gone Girl did though. I thought it was a bit The Mortal Instruments to Gone Girl’s Hunger Games if you can understand the analogy.
I just bought the book and am getting ready to start it! I am disappointed when Emily Blunt is cast in anything. I don’t think she is a very good actress…not a fan!
I think a perfect book would be the first half of Girl on The Train with the second half of Gone Girl morphed into it.
@Ji-Yun
I totally agree. The way the book was hyped I thought it was going to be as thrilling as Gone girl. But only the last third was close to Gone Girls fun.
I also agree about Emily Blunt. She doesn’t look nearly as far gone as Rachel is described in the book. I was excepting more of a Reene Z./Bridget jones looking actress.
Plus I think Justin Theroux is all wrong for the ex husband. He comes way to smeary/sneaky from the get go.
Honestly I’m not into any of the casting. but all the actors have solid skills so it should still be good.
True it didn’t quite have the fun or sharp edge of Gone Girl, and it started to sag pretty darn quick.
In terms of casting I would have liked perhaps a rougher edged Alison Tolman (excellent in Fargo) or similar. Some of the other casting is a bit meh too. But we’ll see!
Didn’t read The Mortal Instruments so I’m afraid I don’t get the analogy, sorry. But I agree that the book was nowhere near as engaging as Gone Girl. My whole book group felt pretty let down by it, although it did spark a great discussion about a number of things.
I’ve not read Mortal Instruments either, just a quick browse in the book store, but I meant in the way that the Hunger Games, both movie and book, resulted in a slew of not-quite-as-good mimics and literary/filmic kissing cousins turning up. 🙂
having traveled a bit and lived in different countries in europe to me england and the usa arent that different when it comes to drinking. often binge drinking, you dont see that as much as for example in france or germany. of course the youth picks does that more often but generally i had the feeling in both of those countries it was more about enjoying drinking while england and the usa seemed to be more about “getting trashed”.
in america this whole “you can go to war before you can have a beer” also plays a role.
I like Emily Blunt so I will probably see this. It looks intriguing.
Her character in the book is chubby and looks a mess.She doesn’t look chubby or messy
you are right. I forgot that. Why cant they use that aspect instead of finding an emily blunt…? I did not like the book tho. I liked the beginning one-third of it and then just didnt find it that interesting. But I would be curious about it as a movie… because… trains have a certain mystique. Curious for Justin Theroux in a role like this too (but have never seen him acting in *anything*).
Used to love the bar car …could not believe it existed… not sure why that would go away if it indeed has … (in U.S.)
Emily has had massive amounts of surgery and is reported to be anorexic….a lot of photoshop in that cover pic also. Don’t get her success AT ALL.
OMG! They’re a bunch of drinkers here in the UK! Lol! I’m American and the drinking culture here in the UK is insane! Many towns on a weekend turn into a combination of New Years Eve Times Square and a frat party. Just a wild atmosphere, drunk people (men/women) laying in the streets. They turn into ‘no go’ areas. Every weekend.
They binge drink. They drink because its thursday. They drink after work as a bonding experience. They drink at the pub all day sunday. drink drink drink.
I’m from a very large city in the US, went to a school with frats and I’d never seen anything like it. Love ya, UK. But y’all drank.
😊😂 yes we are.
Yeah. Having traveled around a bit myself I agree that the US has a less tolerant attitude toward excessive drinking, and that’s a good thing. If you act like a frat boy and you’re too old for that shizz, people assume you have a problem…because guess what, you do! Meanwhile, in many parts of Asia you must drink to dangerous excess as a bonding/obedience exercise with your bosses and colleagues, and in Korea they have plastic vomit cubes lining many bar streets just in case you need to use one. In Russia a full quarter of men die by their mid 50s because they drink so heavily. America is the drinking outlier here, and for once, go us!
Gross! Is that true about Korea? Do you like in those trash cans after you accept your Spam gift basket before your boss gets you wasted? Do they try to kill you in Korea after they hire you or what? Jeez.
In Korea the cabbies are so tired of drunk people puking all over their cabs that it now costs you $140 if you do. There’s a lot written on drinking culture in that country if you want to gross yourself out by reading about it. Where I used to live in China, I was once told a tale by a guy who witnessed a lackey dutifully holding his boss’s head up over a toilet while he threw up at a banquet. He equated it to the nouveau riche going to excesses, which in that country I totally believe.
We do. We drink a lot. But the US varies a lot in terms of alcohol consumption. They drink a lot in Boston, New York and the northeast generally. They drink relatively little in the south (and it is strongly gendered there, it’s ok for men to drink to excess but not women, it’s like France or Italy in that way). They drink on the west coast but wine and beer only, and not much. We drink a lot more in the UK. Many people drink, all the time, and there’s little shame in it (no puritans here).
Um, I have lived in the southern US all of my life. I don’t know where you got the impression that there is relatively little drinking in the south. I’m from Savannah, and their unofficial motto is “what are you drinking?” (So the host can make you one). I now live in a university town where it seems like everyone is drunk on football game weekends. And the women are just as drunk as the men.
I’m sorry you visited a part of the south that doesn’t drink! 😉
I’m from Leicester. Everybody in my family drinks. Everybody.
When I married a man from Arkansas who didn’t drink, I was asked by more than one of my family members what was wrong with him. They used to whisper about him drinking his Dr. Pepper at dinner 😳
I think it definitely depends on the region and age group. College, it’s rather expected. In the North, there is less of a baptist stronghold and lots of European/Catholic influences still and drinking isn’t necessarily a social no-no. As a transplant in Georgia, I can tell you, that it is socially unacceptable still. Having wine with dinner is risqué so a woman in her 30s at one of the 5 bars in the state would be considered very sad.
Some counties are still dry, in 2016!
It sucks. I’m a transplant to rural Georgia USA too, and I LOVE to drink. Not shy about it. But if I want a bottle of wine for the weekend, I have to drive to Florida to get it because my county is dry. It’s religion’s influence. And it’s ANNOYING.
Yup, I remember this from a car trip from FL to GA for a week in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains. Alternatively, my friend’s rich roommate once drove into GA to buy her and her boyfriend some 40s after hearing about it in a rap song because they don’t sell that size in FL! True story.
It’s pretty weird! I had a neighbor look through my recycling after our old friends spent the weekend with us! And we were told by well wishers not to drink out of the beer bottle outside. Because nothing is more nefarious than sitting on your own porch with a beer! Even after living here for years, I’m always shocked that parties or dinners don’t involve drinks!
ETA: I don’t know if Americans in the south drink less, but they certainly drink more privately. Drinking in front of your or other people’s children is a big taboo (casually, not binge obviously)
Oh man. I live in OK. No cold beer above 3.2% for sale. No full point beer, wine, or alcohol available in grocery stores or gas stations. No liquor stores open on Sunday. No 3.2% beer sold in gas stations past a certain time of evening. All liquor stores closed by 9pm. My Church of Christ grandmother still shuns members of her small town community who go to the local bar. It is common practice for Baptist and Church of Christ in small towns to do so. It’s pretty ridiculous. So yeah, getting wasted on the regular past age 30-35 here is pretty frowned upon that’s why people get wasted at their houses or go to the lake or casino or whatever. Its weird because independent craft beer and wineries have really taken off here but the laws are far behind the times.
Wow. That’s a huge difference from back when I was young and living just outside of Atlanta! They sold wine and beer in grocery stores then, plus you could actually buy a drink at a bar and get it “to go”. I worked in a bar at the time, and at closing we would pour customers’ unfinished drinks in to plastic cups so they could take them on the road……………it was crazy!
Y’all are living in the wrong places in GA!
Yeah, I can see it. I’m Canadian, and we’re definitely more open and blase about our alcohol consumption. I’ve been to south America and Europe and there just isn’t the same type of stigma surrounding alcohol consumption like there is in the states.
The thing that always gets me as a Canadian is how accessible alcohol is in America – you can purchase it pretty much everywhere. Even in Alberta, land of mass deregulation, you still have to buy it from a liquor store.
The rules vary depending on the province. In Quebec, we can buy beer and wine in convenient stores (aka deps) everywhere, 7 days a week, up to 11pm. Better wine and liquor have to be bought at the liquor store though. And you can drink at the park with a “meal” (a bag of chips is a meal). I’m still surprised when I go to Ontario how difficult getting booze can be there (especially on a holiday). Or that I have to hide my beer in Dufferin Park if cops are walking by.
I don’t know how drink culture really is in the States because most of the time, when I’m south of the border, I’m there for conferences and meet up with Brit and Aussie colleagues, so the drinking can get quite heavy! And we’re in big cities. Having to show an ID despite being past 30 is always strange though. But I feel at home in a London pub.
I’ve been to places in the states where they sold liquor at a drive-through warehouse. You just drove up and told the guy what you wanted, and paid without even leaving your car. That was a long time ago, though! Does anyone know if this still exists, and where?
I think Americans are binge drinkers.
Yup, all of us, every day, all of the time.
I read The Girl on the Train last year and thought it was “meh.” The movie looks like it’s going to be much better than the book, so I will see it in the theater.
As for the drinking in US/Europe comment, I visited London in 2013 and on a walk back through Covent Garden after a night at the theatre, I saw a middle-aged woman passed out drunk in a doorway. I visited Amsterdam in July and my Red Light District tour guide spoke horribly about how piss drunk the English get/act, which surprised me to hear because I always thought Americans to be horrible drunks and tourists.
I am living in Canada right now and the differences in the drinking culture are stark.
Even the fact of nearly everywhere you go to drink in North America has servers and you have to tip. It’s so much less casual. In the UK you can show up to a pub and have friends come and go all day or night and it’s fine. Here they need table numbers and tips and separate alcohol taxes. It’s not the same at all.
Lol people DEFINITELY drink on Metro North…it’s pretty normal to see daily commuters buy a tallboy at Grand Central for the ride back out to CT. And if you get on the direct trip to Yankee Stadium? People drink all the way in from New Haven! Back in my partying college days, I used to train into the city when I was home in CT for breaks…they had trains that left at nearly 3AM on weekends and I would often pass out on the train for 45 minutes only to pop up when I got a stop or two away. The train conductors are mostly really nice and don’t care what you do unless you get belligerent with them.
Wow I am a Brit and JustJJ you have blown my mind. I can’t believe there are places where you can’t get beer over 3.2%! Probably as crazy as getting a can of G&T or a takeaway wine seems to some of the US commenters. from my limited visits to the US outside of NY, you had to drive to get to a bar so maybe that limits people’s drinking/ changes the perceptions around drinking?
I think we probably have a more visible drinking culture here. One of the best ways to judge a town/ street in the UK if you are house hunting is to check out the local pub! .
3.2% beer is absolutely awful! No Brit would have it, I assure you. British beer is the best!
I wasn’t a fan of this book, but I do love the movie Secretary, which Erin (not Eric) Cressida Wilson wrote the screenplay for, so I may go see this . . .
I commuted on Metro North into Grand Central for two years so I thought it was hilarious when the movie production announced the movie would take place on those trains. The ONLY scenic train is the Hudson line because the track goes along the Hudson River. The Harlem line and the New Haven line (my line) are not scenic by any means. And while we do have “newer” trains now I bet they used the old models to make it even more unsexy. They are pretty ugly trains with maroon and dark blue seats.
Also just as recently as 2013 or 2014 the old Metro North trains still had the bar cars in use until they stopped using them altogether. I would often see commuters congregating in the circular booth seats with their drinks. People can still drink on the evening trains by grabbing a beer or what have you at the kiosks right before the train platforms, they just can’t get it on the trains. The rules have always been vague about alcholic consumption on Metro North but week day evenings seem to be okay.
maybe because i’m a pretty girl with a real life and real interests, but i never ever got drunk nor had to do with drunken people. and of course, being italian helps, as drinking here it’s such a not-considered-fun thing- , but wildly only associated with low self esteem.
So, Berlusconi wouldn’t be considered a big drinker – just a fun-loving guy?
Her points probably have little to do with anything reality based, just with atmospheres within existing movie imagery. The English movie pubs look stereotypically cosy and communal, and the US movie bars look stereotypical dark, dank & lonely. Large movies don’t often subvert the norms, even if the norms are incorrect in reality.