Jackie works as a secretary in a law firm. One evening she invites her colleague Michael from work for dinner, a date, she believes. The meeting is tentative. They eat and drink wine, however the atmosphere remains uneasy. Jackie is set on becoming a writer, something she tells Michael about. After dinner she reads from her own macabre story titled: What Happened Was… When she admits to Michael that she was attracted to him because he is a writer, he admits that he may not be whom she believed him to be. This does not put Jackie off her attempts in trying to seduce him.
The evening becomes one of revealed secrets and dreams. In the end they have to find out if their drastically changed impressions of each other makes a future acquaintance possible.
The director Tom Noonan, also in one of the leading parts, received the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1994 as well as The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for his screenplay for What Happened Was…. –Stockholm International Film Festival
Tom Noonan (born April 12, 1951) is an American actor and film writer-director.
Early life
Noonan was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, the son of Rosaleen and Tom Noonan, who worked as a dentist and jazz musician respectively. He has an older brother, John Ford Noonan, a playwright, and two sisters, Rosemary and Caroline.
Career
Noonan started working in theatre (appearing in the original Off-Broadway production Sam Shepard’s play Buried Child), but in the 1980s he began working in film. At 6 feet, 6 inches (198 cm), Noonan’s imposing presence is probably responsible for his tendency to be cast as menacing villains, as in RoboCop 2, Last Action Hero, Manhunter and The Pledge. His height was used for comic effect in “The Moving Finger,” the series finale of the horror anthology Monsters (several episodes of which he also directed and wrote).
In 1986, Noonan played Francis Dolarhyde, a serial killer who kills entire families, in Manhunter, the first movie… read more
This is an excellent, underrated, nearly forgotten film - built solely on an encounter between two well-performed characters.
The Bride Wore Black, Sometimes a Great Notion, What Happened Was… and more.
