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We are forever telling the world the same two stories about ourselves. One is about the person we want to believe we are–wise, compassionate, upstanding. The other is about the person we know ourselves to be – petty, cruel, sexually destructive. The best of our literary art arises from the collision of these two stories.
-- Steve Almond
Is it really an anniversery when one of us wasn't entirely here?
Living the RomCom went on hiatus on June 27, 2010 and was in fact dormant until last December. But in January I began posting occasionally, and while I don't know if this is only a temporary form of madness and procrastination, we're back up to speed, for now.
Said hiatus was launched with the intention of getting a second novel underway. Said novel is underway, but temporarily on hiatus itself, as I'm currently working on a non-fiction... thing... of a hard-to-define nature. Suffice to say that it has a lot to do with romance and comedy, and also: living. So lately it's been fun to post again with impunity.
Recently I've been experimenting with briefer, punchier shots of Funny Love, initiating the new Rom-Com Truisms and Great Moments in Romantic Comedy series. This enables me to post at whim, as opposed to the old long-form weekly format (At last! My Sunday nights are free again!).
Due to its hiatus-diminished length, newcomers, fans and stumble-upons can find nearly the entire June-to-June 2010-11 blog season for scrolling perusal below. Some may find my non-review of Bridesmaids to be of interest; for the seriously interested, here's a link to the 5th Blogoversary post, which contains extensive linkage to the first five years of this blog, including, of course, the annual Asta Awards.
Do comment, should the feeling move you, re: what you're finding to like, or not, in our current incarnation. Apparently, for the moment, Living the Romantic Comedy lives on.
As a longtime lover of this auteur's work - and unhappy defender of the Allen oeuvre during his near-indefensible periods (the nadir is a string of duds in the early 2000s) - I have to admit to some "I told you so" schadenfreude (aimed at those who had written him off) and greater unconflicted joy at news that with Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen has his biggest hit in 25 years: $23 mil and still going strong, on track to surpass Hannah and become his biggest hit, period.
Allen is unique in his career path, with 41 features directed in 45 years; only perhaps the Coen Brothers approach Allen's record as the hardest-working American writer-director in post-WWII history. And as I've often been at pains to point out, his number of tankers, as opposed to hits, is thus accordingly high. But consider this: How many artists do you know of, in the modern era, who are poised to out-perform their own career peak performances at an age when most of his peers are already out to pasture (or pushing up daisies)?
Nay-sayers may still neigh, but as I always say, "Writing well is the best revenge," and Midnight looks like 2011's first shoo-in for a screenwriting Oscar nom. Woody's next film, The Bop Decameron, will be shot in Rome with Alec Baldwin, Penélope Cruz, Judy Davis, Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig, Ellen Page, plus a host of Italian stars led by Roberto Benigni. That's a pretty good gig the Woodman's got.
And unlike so many of his Hollywood counterparts (Rome-Shmome, Allen will always be a congenital New Yorker), this success isn't likely to go to his head. What I find particularly interesting about the commentary in this entertaining article, Woody Allen Looks Back at 12 of His Films, is his refreshing lack of pretension and self-importance. Here's Allen on Manhattan:
I was so disappointed when I saw my final cut, I thought, If this is as good as I can do at this point, I shouldn't be making films. I went to United Artists and said, ''Look, don't put this out. I'll make another film, no charge.'' They thought I was nuts. And it was a very, very big hit. Audiences don't have the same criteria I do. They say, Okay, you had some grandiose idea and maybe you failed, but we like this film. So once again, I shut up and just felt I got away with it. I got off with my life.
Indeed he did. And long may he live.
I miss my dad. But although I wrote a little piece about him when he died, less than two years ago, I doubt I'll ever be able to create the kind of transcendent tribute to my father that Mike Mills has given his, in his wonderful film, Beginners.
Beginners is all kinds of love stories: the love between a son and his dad, dad and his wife, dad and his male lover, dad and his dog, between the dog and the dad's boyfriend and his son and the new lover that the son finds, in the midst of his mourning. It's all very complicated and not at all, simultaneously - in other words, much like life as we actually live it.
By media or word-of-mouth, you may have gathered the gist of the main plot, which is about a son learning that his dad is gay, shortly before they both discover that Dad has cancer. That the movie is as funny as it is sad, given such a premise, is no inconsiderable achievement.
The romantic comedy story line that runs through it may strike some as a little precious, but since I was watching Melanie Laurent doing the Manic Pixie Dream Girl thing (most American moviegoers first saw her, draped in incandescent red, in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds), I didn't mind; in another life I'd like to come back as Melanie Laurent's bathrobe.
The movie is blessed with perfect casting. Christopher Plummer ought to get his Oscar for this. Goran Visnjic (most American TV-watchers will remember him from his ER stint) really knows how to work a bad haircut. Ewan McGregor (most American film lovers have forgiven him for playing young Obi-Wan Kenobi in the useless Star Wars prequels) is exactly right here: too stunned to understand his own feelings even as they seep and leap out of him in every scene.
And let's not forget the dog, Cosmo, who's arguably the most memorable canine trouper to appear on screen since the incomparable Asta (aka Skippy).
Mike Mills (many humans may be familiar with his graphic art, as seen in videos and album packages) based the movie on stuff that really happened to him, and stuff that did not, yet all of it rings true, and it resonates with the best kind of feelings and insights. What more does one want from an artist? Well, one can ask for more, but then one is just being greedy.
My dad could be a tough critic, but he was a great appreciator, and when he experienced a movie, or book, or painting that really got to him, he'd bequeath upon it his highest praise: "That's one of the good ones." I'm sure he'd say that about Beginners, because it is.
BARRY
I'm looking at your face and I just wanna smash it, I just wanna fuckin' smash it with a sledghammer and squeeze it... you're so pretty.
LENA
I know... I just wanna chew your face and scoop out your eyes and eat 'em and chew 'em and suck on 'em.
BARRY
Okay... This is funny.
LENA
Yes.
BARRY
This is nice.
most exciting sex
in an explosive decade
his hand on her foot
Formulaic approaches to this genre have become so self-parodying that a fresh and imaginative take on your story is mandatory.
I've been arguing this basic idea for as long as I've been writing about and teaching romantic comedy, and here's a really good and funny trailer for an upcoming movie that makes the case more eloquently than more verbiage on the subject would:
When the basic elements in a formulaic rom-com (or zom-com, i.e. zombie romantic comedy) are so self-evident that they can be used for a trailer where the audience is on the joke, a priori...
Put your imagination cap on when you sit down at that keyboard, will you? Please? Thank you.
CHERISHED: 21 Writers on Animals They Have Loved and Lost
Judith Lewis Mernit and I both contributed essays to this book, along with Jane Smiley, Thomas McGuane, Anne Lamott and a bunch of other famous and non-famous writers. Edited by Barbara Abercrombie, it's available on Amazon for a mere 10 bucks and change, and all proceeds go to an animal rescue charity.
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