Living the Romantic Comedy

2nd Blogoversary

Threat or menace?  Quintessential embodiment of 2000s narcissism?  You be the judge, yet strange but true: it's now two years since I started this blog, and I'm still blogging.

Oh, they've tried to stop me.  Fate has thrown all kinds of obstacles at me -- gaining a girlfriend, selling my first novel -- yet despite these horrific life crises, I'm still at it. 

And such is my blog dedication (and amazing egotism) that, in the grand tradition of my first Blogoversary (2005-2006), I offer you -- helpfully categorized -- 50 posts from 2006-2007, representing the best bits from my past year's blather.

The Writing Life:

Billy Wilder Writing Rules

Vonnegut's Writing Rules

Writing Down Your Now

The Five Stages of Draft-Finishing

Sven Nykvist (Cinematic Storytelling)

Cinematic Storytelling 2

Music to Write To

Grammar: It's v. Its

Screenplay Mind & Novel Mind

The Little Hat

Romantic Comedy:

Great American Rom-Com Screenplays

Top 10 Romantic Comedies

2nd Annual Asta Awards

Writing Groundhog Day

The Heart of the Matter

Calling Cary Grant

The Industry:

Agents

Movies For Women

Myth v. Dream

Notes on Notes 1

Notes on Notes 2

Mythbusting: The Good Writer v. The Bad Execs

Culture:

Being an Early Adopter

Why "Live" Will Never Die

Romantic Terror Alert

The Book of Love

Philistines

Heartbreak and Creativity

Romance Deal-Breakers

Film Reviews:

Knocked Up

Once

I Think I Love My Wife

Stranger Than Fiction

Catch and Release

Borat

The Holiday

My Super Ex-Girlfriend

How To Eat Fried Worms

Music Reviews:

Dylan's Modern Times

Lambchop/Simone White/Tomasz Stanko

Arcade Fire's Neon Bible

Selected Personal Stuff:

Clouds in My Coffee #12 (Garry Shandling)

Clouds in My Coffee #11 (Arnold Schwarzenegger)

In Memoriam: Peter Trias

Dick and Dee-Ann Mernit

Sold My Novel!

"Name That Novel" Winner

Leigh Anne Williams Meets Leigh Anne Williams

Posting the Pet

The Awful Truth

And finally, something new for fun: my honey just sent me a wonderful video of three young buskers doing a Buggles cover that's romantic and comedic in spirit and suggests that there is hope yet for the future of our great but beleaguered nation.

This also feels like the appropriate moment to solicit your critiques and requests.  What do you think has been working best on this site?  What do you like least?  What would you like to see more of?  Living RomCom wants to know.

Favorite Fathers

Thankfully, I've been blessed with a dad who's a paradigm of good parenting -- the kind of guy who sometimes causes those who meet him to ask me if there's any chance he might adopt them.   I don't want to pitch Richard Mernit to you as a saint -- we had our struggles when I was growing up, and he wasn't always the sanguine, happy mensch he's become in what hardly seems like his old age (Dad is one of those perenially young souls who to this day seems a kid at heart).  I'll just say that if you were looking for a great dad, you couldn't do better than mine, and we'll leave it at that.

In fact the beauty part of celebrating this Father's Day with my father (via phone) is that neither of us had to go on about how much we love each other and all that crap -- because we know it already.  And because I've already celebrated both my dad and my mom on this site, I won't bore you by going on about him and her.  I'd rather talk about Harold Ramis.

Ramis, in case you're one of the unfortunate souls who's yet to see Knocked Up, plays Seth Rogen's dad in that movie.  And what makes the role so delicious has to do with its canny defeat of audience expectations.  You know the scene -- you've seen it so many movies -- where the hero or heroine is having a Dark Moment in the midst of crisis (generally this beat can be found shortly after the second act turning point), and he or she goes to Dad for advice?  And Dad delivers the thing that needs to be said, usually in the form of some memorably wise and witty homily?  And our hero or heroine gets the message, and feels a little better, and the audience maybe tears up a bit?

Here's a moment from Knocked Up's version of this obligatory scene: Ben, in the midst of relationship crisis, comes to his dad, desperate for advice. “Just tell me what to do,” Rogen entreats Ramis, who can only shrug and smile.  “I’ve been divorced three times," he reminds his son. "Why are you asking me?”

Ramis is a joy to watch as this benevolent, friendly, sorry-but-I'm-just-as-clueless-as-you-are father, and I've been chuckling over his small but memorable part in Apatow's hit ever since I saw it.  In his cruel-to-be-kind honesty, Ramis's portrayal of Ben's Dad is perfect (leading one to fantasize that he might simply be playing himself), and his character currently tops my list of great movie fathers -- call them Dads We'd Like To Have.

He joins an illustrious group.  Who can forget, among cinematic dads, John Mahoney as Mr. Court, the lovable (albeit larcenous) dad created by Cameron Crowe for Say Anything?  Or -- pecursor to DeNiro's Dad From Hell in Meet the Parents, Eddie Albert as a dad any daughter would love (and any suitor would fear and hate), in Neil Simon's The Heartbreak Kid (soon to be seen as remade by the Farrellys)?

But watching Harold Ramis do Dad has a lot more to it in terms of resonance.  The casting's no accident; as this absorbing profile of Apatow from the Times notes, Apatow actively sought Ramis for the part, the director/actor long having been one of his heroes.  There's a tacit sense of torch-passing in the subtext here, or a blessing from an Elder.  Because really, if you ever want to go to school on contemporary comedy, the guy who made Ghostbusters (among so many, many others) is your man.

I mean, don't even get me started on Groundhog Day.

Thinking about Ramis and his huge (sadly, often taken for granted) contribution to comedy as we currently know it got me thinking about the notion of celebrating Cinematic Fathers.  By this I don't just mean dads portrayed on screen -- I'm thinking more of mentors, role models, men who've inspired us screenwriters and filmmakers over the years.

Apatow cites Garry Shandling, among others, as a surrogate dad in his career.  When I stopped to think about it, I realized that I've got a number of them -- Big Guys who'd already proven to be way influential in this medium, and who've hovered over my shoulder throughout the many years I've sat with pen or keyboard in hand.  For comedy screenwriting, Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges come immediately to mind.  But actually the one father figure in this medium who really influenced me more than anyone wasn't even a screenwriter: Howard Hawks.

He didn't write his scripts but he was a quintessential auteur -- such is the sheer force of Hawks's personality that pretty much every film he made bears his indelible, distinctive signature, and for romantic comedy, the holy screwball trinity of 20th Century, Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday has never been topped (only Sturges and Wilder have longer hit-lists, but theirs are generally comedies, not rom-coms).

What I got from Hawks was a certain sensibility -- a pace, a rhythm, and a straight-faced, tough approach to physical and verbal gags.  It's been so engrained in me from so early on that I don't usually even think about it as the meta-genetic inheritance that it is, but this Father's Day, I'm thinking about him and my other fatherly Cinematic Inspirers, so I throw it open to you.

For writers: Who do you think of as your Screenwriting Father Figures?  Who figuratively raised you, showed you how things are done, gave you a model to imitate... and perhaps struggle to outgrow?

For non-writers: Who are your favorite Cinematic Dads in the comedy and romantic comedy field?  I've cited a couple of notables, but I'm sure there's many more worth noting.  Have you got a beloved Dad We'd Like To Have who's only existed on screen?

Living Rom-Com wants to know.

Clouds in My Coffee #12: Garry's World

[Originally posted June 10, 2007] Time was when the comedian Garry Shandling stood smack dab in the center of our cultural zeitgeist.  Then his series The Larry Sanders Show ended its run, and aside from one feature film misfire, Garry seemed to disappear from the scene, inhabiting some semi-reclusive netherworld from which he surfaced for occasional stand-up/host appearances. His influence, however, has been more palpable than ever, and after the release of  his Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show DVD, Shandling has been ubiquitous.  

On TV, he faced off with Jon Stewart, David Letterman and most memorably, Bill Maher and killed, reducing each of these current Big Guy comedians to helpless hysteria.  (On Maher's show, he followed an impassioned political diatribe by the very serious Sean Penn with the observation that what he didn't like about America was "those computer pop-up ads."  After the panel fell apart, "I'm going to let Sean handle the serious stuff tonight," Shandling continued, "because he's got the second home in Iran.") On the occasion of his welcome re-emergence out among us all, I offer:

[Another installment in the ongoing true life adventures of Periphery Man, who has had myriad peculiar encounters with celebrities, while not being a celebrity himself.]

Some years ago in the midst of my Los Angeles single life, I was dating a woman named Liz, and we discovered that one thing we had in common was a love of the acidic comedic creation of Garry Shandling that was then still in its first run on HBO.  In The Larry Sanders Show, comedian Garry played comedian Larry, a latenight talk show host who seemed to be not unlike himself -- or at least, who presented a delightfully distorted version of the worst aspects of his actual personality.

One of the show's conceits was that in Larry/Garry's world, everything -- from the most private intimate relationships to the most trivial public encounters -- was ultimately about show biz.  When you live in L.A., where any meeting between two human beings tends to have a business subtext, the pained laughter Larry Sanders elicited was the laugh of recognition.  Both Liz and I confessed to having "Larry moments" on a fairly regular basis.

She had missed a few episodes of the previous year's Sanders.  Happy fanatic me had the entire season on tape.  So one Sunday night we got together at Liz's place to watch some Larry.  The episodes are short (under half an hour) and one leads to another, so we must have socked away three or four doses of Shandling's peculiarly sunny cynicism before we realized that dinner had gotten away from us.  We weren't quite sated on Larry, but our stomachs were talking as loud as the TV, so we reluctantly stopped the tape and hit the street.

Liz lived in Santa Monica and there was a decent upscale Italian restaurant within walking distance.  As we approached the entrance of this clean, well-lighted trattoria on Montana, we could see that the place was full and humming.  Once inside the front door I paused for a moment to assess table availability, and Garry Shandling emerged from the dining room proper, heading our way.

To make the sight all the more surreally confusing, his date, following close behind, was Linda Doucett, the actress who had played the role of his former girlfriend Darlene on the show.  I was trying to get my mind around this (wait -- Garry's still seeing Darlene? I mean, Larry's with Linda?) as Garry caught sight of Liz and I and addressed me with the friendly directness of an old acquaintance.  "You'll love it," he said, indicating the restaurant, and as he drew closer, added in passing, like one comedian giving another the lowdown on a prospective audience: "Great crowd."

As it happens, I've been told that Garry and I have some passing facial resemblance, so maybe in subliminal recognition of my altar ego-like appearance, he assumed I was someone he did, could, or might as well know.  Or maybe he was just being "on," and not really seeing me at all.  But at any rate, I instinctively smiled a thanks.  Garry and his date swept past us.  And I was left blinking at Liz in wordless incomprehension of how we'd left one TV set, only to walk onto another.

What are the chances?

Well, in Garry's world, it was evidently just another night.

Knocked Out

Something funny I've noticed about this genre over the years: every time there's a couple of articles in the media announcing the death of the romantic comedy (translation: some high profile but formulaic rom-com has just tanked), it's pretty much a sure-fire sign that a new (and often left-of-center) romantic comedy is about to hit it out of the park .

True to form, in the wake of recent disappointing box office performances by such snoozer rom-com pap as The Holiday and the underwhelming Music and Lyrics, we now have Judd Apatow's Knocked Up, which -- in case you were out of town this weekend and didn't hear the unexpected sound of big-time laughter and cash register ka-ching blasting out of America's multiplexes -- is clearly the best romantic comedy (and comedy) of the year thus far.  Add the romantic dramedy instant classic Once, currently topping the indie end of the spectrum, and our genre's doing just fine, thanks.  How's yours?

4o Year-Old Virgin had already admirably demonstrated Apatow's prowess as a contemporary romantic comedy creator to reckon with; Knocked cements his rep as the most significant auteur in our genre to come down the pike since Richard Curtis.  He's the indisputable master of what I call the Macho Chick Flick: male POV-driven comedies which, while embracing the masculine ethic, nonetheless deliver the warm-and-fuzzy goods that have been the hallmark of female-friendly romantic comedies since back in the day when women had the genre reins firmly in hand.

('Cause that is what's happened in the 2000s: the guys have taken over.  As Virgin and Wedding Crashers suggested and Knocked Up confirms, today's date movie is more likely to score when it's piloted by a male comedy star -- see Hitch and 50 First Dates, two of the decade's biggest moneymakers to date, for further evidence of the trend.) 

What Apatow brings to the Macho Chick Flick party is a delicious flavor -- call it Raunchy Sweet -- that transforms what could be blatantly offensive material into something slyly accessible.  He does it, oddly enough, by appealing to his audience's intelligence.  His characters -- fundamentally decent at heart -- talk the way adults talk these days, expletives included, and their concerns are the concerns that conscious grown-ups have.  Knocked Up's most memorable sex scene is one featuring a father-to-be's concern, mid-poke, over poking his yet-to-be-born baby in the face with his, um, poker.

Maybe 2007 will be remembered in cinematic circles as the year that reality finally trumped romance at the movies.  For the laughs you hear (with surprising consistency) throughout Knocked Up are laughs of shocked recognition; it's the sound of an audience hearing and seeing -- did they really just say that?! -- themselves on the screen.  Ironically, it's when Knocked is at its most romantic (i.e. giving into a more traditional level of romantic fantasy) that it's on its weakest footing, but to discuss this I have to give away some plot, so if you haven't seen the movie yet, meet me after the following:

***SPOILER SECTION***

There is one big fat whopping contrivance at the core of Knocked Up, but it's not so egregious a flaw that it ruins the movie, which is too entertaining, in its wonderfully smart and good-hearted way, to let a little black hole credibility gap blow the whole show.

Fat curly-haired shlub-nerd Ben is so fatally geeky and clueless (let alone dirt-broke) that the picture's very pairing (Katherine Heigl's Alison is beautiful, sophisticated and great-gigged) telegraphs the central conflict: how the hell is she supposed to end up with... that?  And yet -- after a brief "shopping as parents for the first time" montage that's one of the movie's few formulaically conventional sequences -- we are asked to buy the idea that Alison falls in love with Ben.

Of course we love the guy (he's so well-written and enacted, by instantly bankable Rogen) but Apatow doesn't really show us where the falling-in-love happened, or how.  When Heigl told Rogen "I love you," round the first act turning point, I was surprised (not having seen it happen), and it took me a moment to mentally forgive the story its lapse before I could get back in for the ride.  My viewing companions later cited the same bump.

It's a shame, as a kind of story hiccup, since in fact, the use of this plot development as a first act break is kind of brilliant.  It abruptly reverses a formulaic convention, since having seen the trailer, which essentially pitches The Movie You'd Expect To See (she's a this and he's a that and how could it end up love?), we're pleasantly tweaked.  Oh, okay, they love each other -- so that's not going to be the real issue for the movie.

***END OF SPOILER SECTION***

Knocked Up, while motored by the primal rom-com question (will these two people become a couple?) also asks: will this boy-man become an adult?  And watching Ben try to grow up is actually the story's central order of business.  It's what gives the movie its loopy, sometimes meandering charm.  While Alison's pregnancy provides a rock-solid clock for the basic arc of the story, Apatow is free, via Ben and his band of whacked slackers, to run comedic riffs on fatherhood, husband-ness, fascistic nightclub doormen and Steely Dan, among other cultural touchstones.

Don't wanna go into the gags if you've yet to see it, and maybe we should make a date to talk about this guffaw-feast of geek freakery after people have started going back for second helpings.  I'll just note that Knocked Up proves what should be the present-day romantic comedy screenwriter's maxim: don't write a "Romantic Comedy."

No, write a story about two fascinating, funny people who irrevocably change each other's lives, and leave all that Same Old Shit (e.g. the Bad Date Montage, et al) out of the picture.   Apatow's dumb/perfect premise (i.e. a rom-com where the woman being preggers is the obstacle to the romance) sidesteps the by now tired Mate-Hunting rom-com format.  It seems to make up its own story as it goes along, stumbling onto some priceless comedic reversals en route to a transcendantly X-rated (but sweet!) finale.

Minor flaws and all, Knocked Up looks like a Top 10 best-of-the-decade contender to me, and with happily re-viewable Virgin behind it, I'm just looking forward to a trilogy.