Less Dogs, More Lolitas

   

I just read a screenplay by an aspiring romantic comedy writer that was essentially the same script I've been reading, with mind-numbing regularity, for the past dozen years: the boiler-plate rom-com, with the standard moves we're all too familiar with, from contrived cute meet to race-to-the-airport climax.  My job as a consultant was to dig out of the material some spark of originality or interest that could resuscitate what was, in this draft, a dead shark.

One of this movie's big problems was a passive, somewhat repressed heroine.  So I got the writer, let's-call-her-Jane to talk about what was personal in the story, what had got her on it in the first place.  Maybe the heroine could have more of Jane's own personality, pushed to extremes.  Here Jane balked.  "I don't want her to be like me," she laughed, looking spooked.  "She's supposed to be better than me."

Today I did a consult on a dramedy that had a central romantic comedy storyline that wasn't convincing for a quarter page, for a line.  The big problem here was that the writer, call-him-John, never articulated in his narrative, or in the dialogue, what both the man and the woman in the equation were feeling.  Both leads played their feelings so close to their chests that whatever hearts were supposed to be beating in there got totally obscured.

I suggested to John that he show us, in as vivid and cinematic language as possible, the specific emotional reactions the two were having as they encountered each other.  John was genuinely perplexed.  "But isn't that like, directing the actors?  I thought I wasn't allowed to do that!" he said.

It occurred to me that what I had in John was a writer who was scared of emotions, just as in Jane I'd been talking to a writer who was scared of herself.  And I was reminded again of how much I love Lolita.

Last week Lolita turned 50, and by pure coincidence I had just read the book for the third time, because my book club had decided to read it.  I burned through it in one sitting, on a 13-hour flight back from Europe, and I can tell you that Vladimir's black, bleakly comedic little ugly beauty hasn't aged a bit.  It's still just as much of an appalling, spiritually embarrassing pleasure as ever -- so much more subversive than pornography, in that it puts you in the conflicted position of enjoying the company of a heinous, child-molesting madman.  You can hate yourself for laughing, given the truly sordid, often horrifying parameters of Humbert and Lolita's coupling (not a romantic comedy relationship),  but you can't deny that you're having brilliant, liberatingly illicit fun.

I'm not here to defend Nabokov, as history's taken care of that -- and for fans of the book, or thems that may become them, here is an expert's appraisal of How Lolita's Doing, and a neat NPR broadcast celebrating her, with a cast of literary stars.  But because the poor, sweet nymphette's been lately in my mind, I ask this of aspiring romantic comedy screenwriters:

Consider Lolita.  Consider the case of a writer who, far from being scared of his own demons, or of expressing the full depth and range of his emotions, cracked open a cultural taboo and dove right into the dark heart of it.  This is the kind of courage that's lacking in our genre, and the lack of such risk-taking is what's sending 99% of the rom-com scripts I see and "pass" on every week, to the dogs.

40 Year Old Virgin and Wedding Crashers are surfing on an overdue wave that's made up in part of pieces of truth -- takes on the romantic comedy paradigm that are hitting us where we live because -- within admittedly farcical, fantastical contexts -- they're finally exposing some of the more true-life details that usually get left out of  such idealized Hollywood concoctions.  The first laugh of Virgin is sex-deprived Steve Carrell waking up with a major stiffie. 

Getting real is one way to go, but what I'm also talking about when I envision Lolita-like transgressions against the same-old status quo, is the kind of leap Charlie Kaufman made in last year's most original romantic comedy-drama, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Here is a movie that bends and even breaks conventions to build something genuinely new under the genre sun -- it's still funny, still achingly romantic, but it jumps down the rabbit hole of Inner Demon-ville and never entirely climbs out, yielding a quietly devastating resolution that is, for me, one of the most brutally honest (and thus sadly satisfying) joyous-defeat unhappy happy endings ever filmed.

We can't all be Kaufman (and allow yourself a sigh of relief), nor do we all need to, um, whip it out in a romantic comedy to get a laugh.  But digging deeper, confronting fears... getting personal is the sort of risk-taking that Hollywood readers, at least, really respect.  As Scott the Reader's most excellent site recently pointed out (thank you, Blake McCallister), we are sick of rom-com dishonesty, cliche and disinterest, as, increasingly, is today's mainstream audience (compare Must Love Dogs' paltry figures to Crashers' $200 million plus).  So I think now, more than ever, writing The Thing I'm Not Supposed To Write looks like the way to go.

And Happy Birthday, Lo.

Comments

[Julia]

Thanx. I needed that.

[Dean]

Very helpful post, Billy.

Your commentary on the scripts you've read is useful for me as a writer. Maybe, I should try a romcom. I don't know.

[Clair Lamb]

I second the applause. I staggered out of "Must Love Dogs" with a good friend, half-laughing, half crying -- because, as I said to my friend, "I'd have been better off spending the last two hours doing crack." That movie was SUPPOSED to be for me, as a 39-year-old single woman -- and I felt like I'd spent two hours in one of the Ministry rooms from 1984.

A romantic comedy about a 39-year-old crack whore, now -- THAT has possibilities.

[mernitman]

Julia, Dean -- glad to be of service.

And Clair: Please! Write the Great American Crack Whore Rom-com!
(Didja know that the original "Pretty Woman" script had a black protagonist who didn't get the guy in the end?)

[Andel]

Lovely, lovely post.

[Jennica]

Hi Billy... I'm finally de-lurking, to say thank you for the site (and for your book). As a student of the rom-com, I owe you.

I couldn't agree more re: Eternal Sunshine. Innovative concept and structure aside, what I liked most about it was its ambiguous ending. Lately, I'm clinging to stories that have any remotely human moments in them, or some complexity in the choices to be made. Did you see 13 Going on 30? I actually liked the "I'm sorry, I made my choice, I'm marrying her" moment from Mark Ruffalo. Like I said, I'm clinging...

Also, I posted an entry on my blog in August about Wedding Crashers-- with a nod to Lolita. Must be something in the air!

Thanks again--

[mernitman]

Thanks, Andel.

And Jennica, you're so welcome. I liked that Ruffalo moment from 30, too -- in that it was a rare "ohmygod this isn't working out like a movie!" moment... before, of course, it worked out like a movie.