Living the Romantic Comedy

Rom-Com Truisms # 3

The depth of your audience's emotional investment in the central romance is directly proportionate to the size of the story's stakes.

This arguably way-obvious observation was brought home to me by seeing a current release that isn't a romantic comedy.  The Adjustment Bureau is a romantic drama (sci-fi/thriller), but its featured couple, politician David and ballerina Elise (Matt Damon and Emily Blunt) have great chemistry, both on the screen and on the page (via screenwriter/director George Nolfi) - the kind of palpable, sparks-shooting attraction that a good rom-com couple should possess.

This is due both to the actors' charm and the script's adherence to basic principles (see the two Rom-Com Truisms below); we believe how things go on their "cute meet" because David and Elise are so clearly a great fit.  Yet the reason we grow increasingly more involved in the fate of this couple has to do with what the story supplies as the obstacle to their happiness, the Thing That Threatens Their Union.  It struck me, watching Bureau, that this is where a lot of today's rom-com specs and released movies alike go wrong.

Not wanting to be a Spoiler, I can't be as specific as I'd like to be, so let's just say this - you can buy into Bureau's premise or find it patently absurd, but the movie gets one thing absolutely right: It tells us that if David and Elise stay together, each will be denied the most important thing in the world to them - and the world's fate will be affected, as well.  Now, that there's what we call stakes.

You'll see the same idea operative in the upcoming Arthur remake (unless they've entirely screwed it up): millionaire boy-man Arthur can have true love... or he can have the millions that keep him happily afloat in toys and booze - he can't have both.  This clear and simple dilemma is the high stakes motor that keeps us on the ride.

Conversely, in a recently-bought studio project for which I just did notes, this kind of either/or is what was M.I.A.  We had a guy impersonating someone else in order to win back the girl he loves... but the writer had neglected to provide the OMG-factor in what the guy stood to lose, if he failed.  So the protagonist's wildly elaborate ploy, albeit comedic, didn't feel justified.  Last year's Going the Distance had a similar flaw;  Justin Long's character refused to relocate for his long-distance romance with Drew Barrymore's, but the movie never gave us a strong enough reason for why he couldn't move.

So why should we care?  With casual sex a cultural norm, and marriage losing the statistical battle in America, whether one's protagonists roll into or out of bed together is hardly a matter of life and death.  All the more reason why the contemporary rom-com screenwriter needs to design a better mousetrap for a movie's lovers to trip.  Now more than ever, big screen love needs a truly big counterweight to hang in the balance.

I humbly suggest that romantic comedy writers follow The Adjustment Bureau's paradigm.  Make both of your protagonists face such a choice: I can have the love of my life... or I can have the thing I've been wanting to have all my life.  Put that kind of lose/get at stake, and you're loaded for rom-com bear.

And hey, while you're at it - get Emily Blunt to star in the thing, will you?  If I've ever seen a romantic comedy heroine waiting to happen, it's her.

Rom-Com Truisms # 2

A star can open a romantic comedy, but a protagonist who doesn’t make sense will piss off the movie’s audience forever.

 

 

These days, her single mom martyrdom due to a mendacious politician's badmouthing is the topic, but during the first two months of 2011, you heard two things about Natalie Portman: one, she was a shoo-in to win the Oscar for Black Swan, and two, what was up with her in that Ashton Kutcher movie?

 

Everyone I know or read who’s seen it has pretty much the same take on Portman's lead character: by the picture’s midpoint, you find yourself wondering, What’s her problem?  Why doesn't she just give it up and go with the guy? 

 

It's the case of the missing character logic: Somewhere amidst the mysterious development process that turned a sharp-edged, LOL-funny spec script called Fuckbuddies into the gummy, congenial mess that is No Strings Attached, the essence of its leading player got lost. 

 

Let us pause to praise screenwriter Elizabeth Meriwether’s first pass.  Fuckbuddies, darkly true to its deliberately provocative title, was a refreshingly subversive, witty piece of work, with giddy flights of lustily scatalogical dialogue.  You can still see and hear bits and pieces of it floating, unmoored, in the fear-based dodge of a script that makes No Strings Attached about half of a decent romantic comedy. 

 

The original script did in fact supply a solid back story for Portman's role, the “Sex only, please” heroine Emma, establishing that while she's "not into affection," Emma is also mourning the death of her father - an idea nicely tweaked by news that Dad wasn't such a great guy, that Emma even feels her mother should have left him.  What you understand about Emma is: Heroine is afraid of commitment because she fears more loss and pain - and doesn't trust such commitments to begin with.  This is the simple but strong rationale for Emma that got thrown away en route to the screen.

 

 

Rom-com writers, check it out: No Strings Attached did pretty well, largely due to star-power and what was left of Meriwether's humor, but people actively dislike its heroine.  Because Emma seems weirdly obstinate in her insistence that she's no good in romantic relationships (which wasn't really the problem, originally), and gives us no significant clue re: what's to keep her from falling for cute, nice guy Kutcher, we get fed up with her, halfway in.  We grow so distanced from Emma that although we take satisfaction in her eventually realizing she's screwed up, and we enjoy her suffering and redemption, we never entirely forgive the movie for bewildering us.  And if it wasn't Natalie playing Emma, we'd probably really hate her.

 

Protagonists don't need to be sympathetic, or even likable - you screenwriters know that (see: every well-loved anti-hero from Scarlett O'Hara to Tony Soprano).  They need to be empathetic, as in understandable.  We identify with a rom-com heroine because she makes sense to us - whether she's as seemingly loony as Annie Hall or as supposedly uptight as Sandra Bullock's taskmaster boss in The Proposal (which includes, incidentally, one of the most effective "This is why I am the way I am" speeches for such a heroine in recent memory).  Whether you liked or disliked the recent Love and Other Drugs, I'll bet you had no problem getting on the right page with Anne Hathaway's character, a woman whose big bad illness made her push even the rightest Mr. Right away.

 

Romantic comedies, built on the audience's rooting for the lead characters to become a couple, are particularly demanding on this front: we have to accept and understand a heroine's emotional logic when it comes to love.  You don't have to (nor should you) hit us over the head with it, but you do have to deliver a sense of why she's ready to love, and/or what within the character is getting in the way of her passion.  Otherwise, we don't believe the love and passion when it ultimately emerges.

 

Emma in Fuckbuddies was empathetic enough to help sell a sneakily subversive spec script - and get an actress like Portman on board.  Emma in No Strings Attached is leaving audiences annoyed.  The heroine who's got her most significant blanks filled in is the one I'd rather write.