Trailer: The Lady in the Van with Maggie Smith

Writer Alan Bennett (“The Madness of King George”) was not sure about the right way to respond when a near-homeless woman in a fragile mental state moved her dilapidated van in front of his house. He did not want her there but he could not bring himself to send her away. What began as a three week stay led to fifteen years, most of it parked in his driveway. It also led to The Lady in the Van, which The Village Voice called “one of the finest bursts of comic writing the twentieth century has produced,” Bennett recounts the strange life of Miss Shepherd, a London eccentric who parked her van (overstuffed with decades’ worth of old clothes, oozing batteries, and kitchen utensils still in their original packaging) in the author’s driveway for more than fifteen years. It is a sympathetic portrait of an outsider with an acquisitive taste and an indomitable spirit, drawn with equal parts fascination and compassion.

And now it is a movie, with Maggie Smith as Miss Shepherd, coming to the US in December 2015.