Wynne says her mother died when she was 11, and Mr.Īnd who could tell it better than someone who grew up like that?” The real-life story Phipps - her widowed father’s lover, named Mr. Gibbs in the movie - moved in with the family in the mid-1970s when they lived in New Jersey. The family was ostracized there, Wynne says she has since realized, so they moved to Route 6A in Dennis in 1976. Phipps had a shop in the back of the house and separate bedroom, just like in her screenplay, and the men became friendly with many Cape artists, including Richard Howard. Her father helped in the shop in part so he could be home when his daughters came back from school and no one could accuse him of being a negligent parent, Wynne says. “I know that they were thinking about it.” “He was very afraid that my mother’s parents would take us away,” she says.
