Living the Romantic Comedy

Spring Break

Living the RomCom is taking a brief hiatus - not to don a speedo and beer-goggles on a sunny beach, but to write. 

You remember writing - it's that thing you're supposed to be doing while you're, like, online?

For those of you involved in either pursuit, here's a hefty link that's been making the writerly rounds for a few weeks now: the so-called 10 Rules For Writing, according to a group of luminaries led by Elmore Leonard.  It's got insights to savor from all ends of the spectrum, from Annie (Proulx) to Zadie (Smith).

Though the rules espoused by these writers focus on fiction, they're applicable to screenwriting, and for that matter, to any form, be it memoir-faking or blog-commenting. 

The rule that comes up most often, besides "Read," is "Write" - so why ignore the experts?  Onward then, with pen in hand, and hopefully I'll have a decent page-count to crow and/or complain about when I'm back here in early April.  May your days be loving and funny-ful in the meantime.

It's Alive!

The novel is dead - at least according to the latest lit-crit screed that's been getting a lot of press this week (here's one review).  The theater is dead.  Weirdly enough, both forms have died many times before, and yet... 

Now, what does this remind me of?

I've often likened the romantic comedy to that little black dress that never goes out of style.  Time to update my metaphor.  The present-day romantic comedy is like the Thing That Wouldn't Die in an old horror movie: pitch-forked, drawn-and-quartered, blown to smithereens, it nevertheless pops up grinning, ready to sing an old '80s tune, get tickled in a montage and go running to the airport in the end.

Everything That's Wrong With Romantic Comedy is such a familiar trope by now, that trashing what's laughably hackneyed in the form is old news.  Doesn't mean it can't be fun, as evidenced by this blog post, How to Write a Hollywood Rom-Com in 10 Easy Steps, that's been making the rounds of late (thanks for the link, Kurt Liska).

Vince, writer of said satire, hasn't done all his homework; his "ten" can be boiled down to half that many steps, and the lack of the defining adjective "Bad" in his title tacitly points up the cheap-shot nature of his diatribe.  But it's funny.  And you won't catch me defending the Typically Awful Hollywood Rom-Com (e.g.  "Hey, that [insert Matthew McConaughey title] was actually pretty great!").

There is such a thing, however, as a good romantic comedy - witness (500) Days of Summer, winner of this year's Spirit Award for Best Screenplay.  Yet the scarcity of good ones suggests how hard it is to get this seemingly-simple form right.  Meanwhile, the vile ones are ubiquitous, and they keep on coming.  So for the sake of fair play and clarity, here's a name for the specific sort of movie that Vince is cheerily deriding: Let's call it the zom-com.

The Zom-Com (Zombie Rom-Com) is a movie that should be, for all intents and purposes, dead - yet lives on, eating the brains of millions (figuratively speaking) as it continues to make millions at the box office.  Not to be confused with an actual zombie romantic comedy (i.e. a genre hybrid presently represented by Shaun of the Dead), the Zom-Com defies all logic in its gruesome hardiness. 

Critics have been trying to kill it for decades (witness the critical nukes aimed at zom-com Valentine's Day). Its form has already descended into self-parody (e.g. Date Movie and the reflexive we're-in-a-rom-com-aren't-we? moments in recent hits like The Proposal), which is usually a surefire sign of any genre's imminent demise.  And yet, the march of the living Zom-Coms continues.  No big studio Zombie Rom-Com has received the fatal shot-to-the-head that would discourage Hollywood from churning out more of them.

The more intriguing and difficult question to answer, when we're not busy making fun of them, is why?  One obvious reason is the business model: Romantic comedies continue to be cheap to make, and thus, so long as people are paying money to see them... who needs quality?  

Lurking behind this is an uncomfortable truth that cineastes and Film-elitists hate to acknowledge: Many moviegoers still go to the movies to see movie stars.  Rom-coms provide two for the price of one, and many moviegoers want little more than to vicariously enjoy the high jinks that ensue between them, in a wish-fulfillment fantasy about sex, love and gender roles that doesn't challenge their traditional, long-held belief systems.  I know: The horror.

What I personally find most troubling about the prevalence of zom-coms is that they spawn copy-cat zombies, and here I must confess: I Walked With (i.e. Worked On) a Zombie Rom-Com!

This past January, Living RomCom regulars may have noticed the conspicuous lack of a Leap Year review.   Truth is, I had to be recused: I was the studio story analyst who did draft notes on this project, throughout its development.  And Leap Year... is a zom-com.

For better (commercial potential) or worse (its template was as formulaic and predictable as a Fox News talking point), the project added nothing new to the genre gene pool, and - despite subsequent revisions from an Oscar-winner - it was always going to be a "programmer": studio parlance for a straight-up genre, generally low-budget movie that'll hopefully slake its target demographic's ever-present hunger for One of Those (This weekend's She's Out of My League is a teen comedy programmer).

Studio notes couldn't turn Leap Year into anything other than It Happened One Night Redux.   And the writers, you felt, were doing what they thought they were supposed to do.  This is how the zombie virus is transmitted: when a zom-com does well, why fault any studio for attempting to hunt with the pack?

Fact is, Those Kind of Movies are still finding their audience.  Yes, the discerning rom-com fan would prefer to see fresh, imaginative, more realistic and left-of-center romantic comedies.  Yet despite dismal reviews and a middling initial box office performance, Leap Year is well on its way to turning a decent profit. 

The take-away I offer from this is a familiar one: We have met the enemy, and it is us.  Decry it, lampoon it, bomb the sucker - but so long as heartlanders and guilty-pleasure urbanites, like walk-ons in some national re-enactment of Dawn of the Dead, keep coming to the mall to greet it, the Zombie Romantic Comedy will keep lurching onward, moldy arms outstretched to wrap you in its ghoulish embrace.

Be afraid.  Look oooout!!!  That zom-com you were laughing at?  It's alive.

American Woman

It is a recognized phenomenon that anywhere from a few months to a year after an Oscars presentation, you can't remember what movie or director won.

This will not be true for 2010.

"There is no other way to describe this. It's the moment of a lifetime. First of all -- this is so extraordinary to be in the company of such powerful -- my fellow nominees -- such powerful film makers who have inspired me and I have admired for -- some of whom -- for decades. Thank you to every member of the Academy. This is again the moment of a lifetime."

It was so immensely satisfying to see Kathryn Bigelow win her award, and realize that history and symbolism notwithstanding, her being a woman was also incidental.  She was being acknowledged for a job well done.  The honor was just.

This year's Academy Awards were unusual as well for being, despite the weak start and the bloated length, such enjoyable cultural comfort food.  At a time when our country rarely does any one thing together - our communally watching a live show in real time has become, outside of sports on TV, an odd, almost retro event - the Oscars fulfilled a kind of American ideal. 

A good guy won, and spent his speech time essentially thanking his mom and dad (The Dude abides); our best actress was as smack-dab-in-the-center American in persona as a gal can be.  Mo'Nique, embodying the American dream sensibility endemic to the event, addressed her husband ("Thank you for showing me that sometimes you have to forego doing what's popular in order to do what's right.  And baby, you were so right.")  Sandra Bullock homaged her mom with a similar bent: "She said... There’s no race, no religion, no class system, no color, nothing, no sexual orientation that makes us better than anyone else. We are all deserving of love."

When Barbra Streisand introduced Kathryn Bigelow's win with, "Well, the time has come," it was hard to be a cynic.  It felt un-conflictedly good, for once, to be us.  The David v. Goliath victory of The Hurt Locker over Avatar - celebrated in the wake of so many unsuccessful movies about a war we didn't want to go to the movies to see - became an embrace of what we Americans like to feel is best in us.  

"... I'd like to dedicate this to the women and men in the military who risk their lives on a daily basis in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world and may they come home safe.  Thank you," Bigelow ended her Best Director speech. 

Ms. Bullock's wind-up was funnier ("I thank you so much for this opportunity that I share with these extraordinary women and my lover Meryl Streep”).  But the close of Bigelow's acceptance for Best Picture drove the theme home:

"Perhaps one more dedication. To men and women all over the world who — sorry to reiterate — but wear a uniform, not just the military — HazMat, emergency, firemen. They are there for us, and we are there for them."

For a couple of minutes there, you felt - and how strange to experience it while peering into the belly of the show biz beast! - that this was true. 

Evidently the Academy, once in a while, can actually get it right.