Does Your Character Need a Job?

This past Sunday's NY Times profile on screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna catches the screenwriter saying what writers who haven't tried writing rom-coms won't cop to:

McKenna came to realize that writing a straight romantic comedy — or at least writing an interesting straight romantic comedy — is very, very hard. “Thin people who want to be in love and their concerns about their love life — that’s not a very dynamic want,” McKenna said over lunch near her Hollywood office. “There’s that, and then there’s the nuclear briefcase. There’s a spectrum of urgency, and wanting to find someone is a not-very-directed goal. Whereas, ‘I need to get through this year and then get promoted,’ or ‘If we don’t get the ratings up the show will close down’ — there’s an urgency.”

That urgency - particularly, the stakes and jeopardy that come alive when a given script hones in on its protagonist's professional life (as opposed to her romantic difficulties) - is the big asset that comes with what McKenna has carved out as her own niche turf:

What feels modern about McKenna’s version of the romantic comedy is that, as she explains it, “the women have goals that are not strictly speaking romantic.” When a young news producer in McKenna’s “Morning Glory” is transformed by a stunning dress, it is for a job interview, not a date. “The Devil Wears Prada” concludes with a reconciliation between the heroine and her boyfriend, but it is almost besides the point: the happy ending is delivered by a better job.

“I Don’t Know How She Does It,” which comes out in September, could be considered the third in a trilogy of McKenna work-love movies — a grouping that McKenna refers to as “the BlackBerry 3” because the women in them are forever clutching their phones or chucking them or eyeing them longingly or putting them in the freezer (the relationship maybe be put on ice, but only temporarily).

McKenna can also do straight relationship-centric stuff well, as her effective 27 Dresses of a few years back has proven (while kicking off what's become a full-fledged Katherine Heigl backlash).  Meanwhile, what resonates for me in her success story is a question it poses for romantic comedy scribes: Does your protagonist have a job that really matters?  And is your movie really about a woman and her work (or a man and his) in a way that reflects the importance of a livelihood in real life?

As the McKenna profile points out, female protagonists still seem to be stuck in the sterotype of "job versus romance" - the trope of a woman who can only have a successful career if she's sacrificed her romantic ideals on the altar of commerce.  Meanwhile, given that we're living in a particularly precarious job market moment (one that isn't likely to end anytime soon), the whole question of character employment for either gender has more resonance now than ever.

Nonetheless, I can't tell you how many rom-com specs I read on a weekly basis where "job" is code for "obligatory subplot." All too often the "what the character does for a living" in a given romantic comedy serves as filler - it's something thrown in to open up the movie a bit, to add a little extra action and conflict.  What's missing is that urgency that McKenna has honed in on as her ostensible subject: the idea that the gig defines the character, and that the stakes in one's livelihood are actually the most important stakes in the story.

In real life, how you feel about the work that you do is a hugely significant indicator of your level of personal happiness.  Our work does define us - even if it's in our thinking that what we do every day is nothing but a way to pay the rent. 

Character-driven rom-coms that put their protagonist's livelihoods front-and-center (even broad farces like The Proposal) are grounded in worlds that audiences find relatable and credible.  And rom-com screenplays that place their characters in an intriguing but believable workplace (see the McKenna oeuvre) benefit from the kind of real-life intensity that can connect an audience to that most primal of moviegoing experiences: the sense that those dream people up on the screen are actually up against the kind of quotidian concerns that occupy our own every waking hour.

Does your character have a real job?  How much does it matter to your story?  The more it does, the more your movie is likely to matter to us.

Comments

[J]

Women, men...we ALL want to fall in love, but anyone who thinks about it all day long is not only unattractive in the real world - they're a little weird.

Show me a woman who loves what she does and can't run through NYC in 5-inch heels, and I'm right there with her.

[Teddy]

I really liked both 'Prada' and Morning Glory. I highly recommend the commentary track on the Morning Glory Blu-Ray by Ms. McKenna and director Roger Michell for some great insight into the story development.

Billy, would you classify either of these two films as a romantic comedy? There was a great dynamic between Rachel McAdams and Harrison Ford's characters and that relationship played like a romance even though it was only work related. The dramatic question that a traditional rom-com would ask "will these two be together" doesn't apply to 'Prada' and in Morning Glory it sort of applies but not in a romantic way.

It seems to me that neither of these films would fall under the rom-com genre. I can understand that they would be marketed that way but from a story perspective it doesn't really fit.

[mernitman]

J: The fun's in the challenge, evidently - I'm with her, too, as the striving for BALANCE is such a universal want...

Teddy: I would look at both films as hybrids - they're career/coming of age chick flicks cross-bred with rom-coms, but if you want to get academic-technical about it, I suppose I'd grudgingly concede that both PRADA and GLORY are career stories w/a rom-com subplot.
Still! The romance of it all is the through-line; girl meets gig, girl loses gig, girl gets gig...

[Teddy]

Girl meets gig... I love it!

I like the hybrid angle. I've struggled a bit with the script I'm working on because I want it to be a rom-com but it doesn't really fit the mold, so to speak. It's more of a coming-of-age story with romantic elements. Good to know there are other films out there with a similar mix of genres.

[Judith Duncan]

Hey Billy,
It's important to be reminded of the facts about what's 'real' for the characters in a rom com as it makes the romance real as well. The idea that 'thin people who want to be in love' isn't very interesting is so true. It made me think of two films that highlighted the woman's career as her driving force and love came from that.'Working Girl' which shows that wonderful transformation of Melanie Griffith's character from Staten Island working class to Manhatten business woman and she also clinches Harrison Ford as part of the deal and Holly Hunter in
'Broadcast News' as the wonderfully neurotic news producer who wasn't quite so lucky with love.Their need for careers that fulfilled them was crucial to the story,their characters and the romance whether it worked or not.

[mernitman]

Teddy: It's the "not that there's anything wrong with that" principle. There's no reason why a movie has to be a romantic comedy, why not be a movie that has a romantic and funny romance in it?

Judith, both of those movies are exemplary examples of what McKenna's trying to do, nowadays (though in truth, Brooks trumps her in his depth and breadth).

[S Wesley Steam]

What is a person without a job? Can a jobless, career-less, lackadaisical person be an interesting main character with whom we identify?

At least in genre fiction, I would emphatically state "No."