Living the Romantic Comedy

Fragile

Tater, my friend Gilbert and I were out at Joe's, eating at the bar, deciding to have that second drink and settle into a fun Saturday night, when Tater got a call on her cell.  Familiar number but an odd time to hear from this friend, so she stepped outside to call him back and see what was up.  Moments later, when I looked through the front window to check on her, I instantly saw that something was terribly wrong.  I hurried outside to join my wife.  She blurted it out as she cried in my arms: Lily was dead - the teenaged daughter of our friends Debbie and Greg had been abducted and murdered.

There is nothing worse we can imagine, no pain more terrible for a parent to bear than this kind of tragedy.  Seventeen years old and gone.  The light of their lives - lives now forever altered.  Whatever tears we shed and shock we suffered could only be one-millionth of the horror Deb and Greg are going through.  But you do feel it - this sense of an infinite wrong having been done to all of us.  These things aren't supposed to happen.  And when they do, the very fabric of our lives seems to have been defiled.  The foundations of everything shift.

A friend of Lily's posted on her Facebook status update: I hate this world.  And what can you say in response?

There's no silver lining in this, no spin to put on it.  And certainly no blame - Lily was a mature young woman who'd earned her independence, and the awful luck that befell her was just that: she was in town running a routine errand, and there is nothing anyone could ever write in any manual of parenting that would forestall such happenstance; as Tater put it, the chances were about equal to those of a meteor colliding with the earth.

This morning I went to the newstand to get the Sunday paper.  "How's it going?" I asked the woman behind the counter.  "Good!" she said, "I'm alive." I looked at her and nodded dumbly.  Right.  At least this was something she knew and appreciated.  Which is the only takeaway I can think of: a notion that if there's anyone you want to know better, anyone you want to let know how much you care about them, do it now.  Right now.  We're here for an instant, and so much gets in the way.

Tater's been haunted by the last encounter she had with this magnificent girl, someone who embodied that old cliché: she lit up a room.  She was talking to Lily about how grown up she was, how she'd become as easy to talk to as any adult.  And Lily had said something witty and true about the things people talk about.  What's driving Tater crazy is that she can't remember exactly what it was that Lily said.  "Why didn't I pay more attention?" she asks me.  "I thought she was someone who'd be there, someone I could talk to later!"

But we never know, do we, and we get as distracted as anybody does, in the day-to-day.  Short of becoming Zen monks or ingesting psychedelics on a daily basis, can any of us really learn how to be here now?  Maybe all you can do is try to pay a little more attention, to actually believe that this moment - pfft, gone - is the only one we've got.

Here's what Lily's parents said in the statement they released to the press: “Lily was looking forward to going to college, to being a writer, to what was ahead.  She had a really bright future and it was cut short. If there is anything that people can take away from this horrible tragedy, it’s that life is fragile and that they should live every minute of it fully.”

 

Answered Prayers

One thing that's galling about being a lover of romantic comedy, given how bad they've generally been of late, is that you always feel defensive about recommending one.  But here's the great exception we've been waiting for: (500) Days of Summer is a romantic comedy that doesn't require any apologies.

Perfect?  No.  Instant classic?  Debatable.  An enjoyable entertainment that's got enough substance to more than hold its own with any other movie released this year?  Absolutely. 

Don't want to over-hype a movie that's already creating a healthy buzz (since low expectations are the best expectations, I should just say "it's awful, but go see it"), yet I can't help adding my voice to Summer's well-deserved chorus of praise.  I also can't help venting a personal "I told you so" re: why the movie is as good as it is, since its appealing attributes speak to issues I've been going on about, here and elsewhere, for years.

In Entertainment Weekly's current issue, the film's leading man Joseph Gordon Levitt nails one of them succinctly: "The relationship between the two characters in our movie felt like something that would happen in the world we live in, as opposed to some propaganda fantasy of Hollywood's to sell tickets."  Exactly.  And the unusually savvy screenplay by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber is a testament to the power of utilizing the most crucial factor in this character-driven genre:

It's the characters, stupid.

The problem with your average studio-developed romantic comedy project is that it comes up with what's perceived as a hook-y comedic/dramatic situation... and then the studio tries to write characters into it.

Summer, like many a memorable character-named rom-com before it (Annie Hall, Tootsie, Arthur) takes the opposite tack: it starts with two credible characters - an idealistic romantic named Tom and a somewhat cynical free spirit, Summer (the incandescent Zooey Deschanel), who work at the same greeting card company - and shows how, because they are who they are, their not-quite-a-love-story is doomed to fail.

This is no spoiler - the romance's end is announced within the opening minutes of the movie and is implicit in the title.  My point is that the collision between Tom's issue (he's perhaps more in love with the idea that there is a perfect One for him, than he ultimately is in love) and Summer's issue (she hasn't yet experienced the kind of romantic love that convinces her such a thing really exists) is what drives the story. 

There's only a story here because of the unique people who pilot it.  This is not, say, a wild-and-wacky mistaken identity farce, but a rom-com where the very real and distinct identities of its protagonists are the actual subject and dramatic fulcrum of the plot.  Sure, plenty of funny high jinks ensue, but the movie's focus is on its lovers' inner lives, which illustrates another of my oft-blathered principles:

The good ones are about something.

You know what When Harry Met Sally... is about.  Groundhog Day makes its theme abundantly clear.  What's equally refreshing about Summer is that in a delightfully un-dogmatic way, it examines our contemporary culture's point of view on what love might be, and what commitment is or isn't.  In that same EW article (sorry, the link's unavailable), director Marc Webb speaks to theme:

"Growing up in the post-divorce-boom era, we're more skeptical of marriage.  Most romantic comedies sacrifice honesty for the sake of wish-fulfillment.  The theme of (500) Days is that happiness lies within, not in the big blue eyes in the cubicle down the hall."

This subtext, termiting its way below the frothy, funny surface of the film, is what makes the whole thing meaningful.  And meanwhile, Webb's directorial contribution should be acknowledged, as it illustrates another of my ever-pushed buttons about this genre:

Romantic comedies can be films, too.

One constant criticism I've made about even the better romantic comedies of the past few years is how bereft of visual style and distinctive cinematic storytelling they are (Judd Apatow, network television called: it wants its pedestrian camerawork back).  Webb, a graduate of music videos, has finally given us a contemporary rom-com that snaps, crackles and pops with innovative and inherently filmic visual ideas.

He's done his homework, obviously - the film unabashedly borrows from both the French New Wave of the late '60s and its American imitators (e.g. The Graduate and the Woodman's oeuvre).  But the film's energetic invention represents a compendium of the best contemporary techniques that videos (and cinema) have to offer, and they aren't arbitrarily applied.

They're evident in the movie's one musical number, two minutes of exuberant enchantment.  Another gem, late in the film, is a neat split-screen sequence where on the left side, we see "Expectations" of a scene enacted, as on the right, "Reality" plays.  It's an ideal marriage of technique and intent: we viscerally experience the contrast between hapless Tom's hopes and dreams and the way his real life unfolds.

Such stylishness enlivens the material in ways that only good filmmaking can, and finally, the collaboration between Webb and his writers illustrates how observing one more principle separates the garden-variety rom-com from the great:

Tweaking execution is the smart way to go.

Like a number of successful device-driven rom-coms before it, such as Bridget Jones's Diary (device: the diary) and Four Weddings and a Funeral (device: see title), Summer demands that its audience consciously participate in a game.  There are 500 days to be dealt with, as an on-screen graphic consistently reminds us, and a good deal of the fun in the viewing stems from our seeing where we are in this near year-and-a-half period, as we hopscotch back and forth in time.

One of my favorite moments comes from inspired use of the device.  At the end of that blissful musical sequence celebrating his seduction of Summer - which has been introduced by a low two-digit number - Tom bounds into his office elevator, looking radiantly happy.  The doors close, and we flip to a three-digit number from the back end of our 500 days.  The doors open, and there's Tom: infinitely miserable as he gets off the elevator to face a Summer-less office workday.

Here, in a matter of seconds, is a brilliant encapsulation of one of the movie's central themes: the ephemerality of romance - how everything that one loves about being in love can be everything one hates about it.  And the moment comes out of having a concept about how the story's being told.

I'm going to stop my told-you-so-ing right here, since it's in danger of overloading with academic pomposity what's actually just a really fun ride.  There's things to carp about in (500) Days of Summer (for one thing, Summer's character seems to take an uncharacteristic turn in Act 3), but far be it for me to snipe at the first non-guilty-pleasure romantic comedy to come down the pike in a while.  I've been asking and asking for somebody in Hollywood to please make a non-formulaic, deeply felt, Real Thing rom-com that would transcend all the Old School hackwork, and this little movie amounts to answered prayers.

A Tale of Two Producers

I relate this true story, with only the names changed to protect the guilty, to illustrate that the current status of the screenwriter in America is like the state of race relations: we like to think we've entered a new era, and then someone kicks us out of the country club swimming pool.

Back story: In 2005, a pair of independent producers - let's name them Mick and Nick, collectively known as the Power Couple - optioned an old screenplay of mine, a blackly comedic horror-thriller we'll call Funny Slasher.  The idea was to get it made cheap, and given that the Power Couple had no money, I optioned it to them for a dollar, with the understanding that I intended to direct it myself.

A number of rewrites ensued, written on spec.  The idea of me directing went the way of all winged pigs, given the difficulties of getting a left-of-center genre pic set up these days with a newbie at the helm.  The option was renewed, with me now receiving co-producer credit.  As casting and financing possibilities came and went, more rewrites ensued, the ostensible final draft receiving only the highest praise from the Power Couple, with the glowing accolades of their colleagues duly reported to me.

This past February, good news: I received a casting breakdown from Mick and Nick, with talk of setting up a table read for a casting director and some interested actors.  Readers of this blog may remember that I had a personal 9/11 on the 11th of that month, with both parents hospitalized after a car crash.  I informed the Power Couple that I was in family crisis mode and that they should proceed without me.

Some six weeks ago, crisis dealt with, I got back in touch via e-mail, eager to learn how the production was shaping up.  Oddly, it took them three weeks to reply.  Warning Sign #1: In this biz, good news travels fast and bad news sometimes has to be chased down and cornered; a three-week gap most likely meant that Something Was Up.  The reply, a phone message from Mick, contained Warning Sign #2: The Power Couple was eager to get together and talk, because "the script has been getting bad responses."

Perhaps you're familiar with the old cliché that it's a poor workman who blames his tools.  Why, one wonders, after my having done multiple rewrites under the Couple's own supervision, working in seeming accord with them for four years, would we now be hearing that there was a problem with the screenplay?

Thus, when the three of us sat down together last week "to talk about ideas," I opened the discussion with a query.  "I'm curious to hear," I told Mick and Nick, "how we got from casting breakdowns and a table read to 'bad responses to the script.'  I feel like I've missed a beat.  Can you connect those dots?"

What followed was a hefty dose of revisionist history (Warning Sign #3).  Apparently the whole process had been a steep uphill climb for the Power Couple, with the script getting bad responses all the way along.  Some people actively "hated it."  This was news to the writer (who had been wholly dependent on the Power Couple for such reportage), but being a game writer - who critiques scripts for a living - I asked, "So what's the specific obstacle here that we need to address?"

The problem, according to Mick and Nick, was the mix of genres.  Comedy people didn't like the horror, horror people didn't get the humor.  I noted (a little defensive?), that it was precisely this mix that had attracted the Couple to the project, and that comedy/horror was not without precedent, citing a little franchise-starter called Scream.  But okay, okay: Let's hear the notes.

Nick told me that they'd done something they thought would help me.  They'd shown my draft of Funny Slasher to another writer they'd been working with (call him Jack), wanting his feedback.  And Jack had done a set of revisions.  And they very much liked the new direction he'd taken, though they felt he'd gone off the rails in the third act.  So, here was Jack's draft (along with, thoughtfully, a CD-Rom of the Final Draft document for me to work with), and given that they liked what Jack had done but thought perhaps I could do better...

Reader, please forgive me, as I've tried to forgive myself, for my own bad behavior.  Though I try to be Mr. Cool, Calm & Collected in all business endeavors, due to the fact that my head was exploding, I lost it.  I remember drawing a big circle with a slash through it in the air, as I explained (a little emphatically?) that one simply doesn't deal with writers like this, let alone one who was supposedly a partner (on legal paper, a co-producer) who had been writing for them on spec for four years.

Mick got contrite ("I'm a lousy producer," is what he actually said) and Nick got compassionate.  "Billy, I understand," he told me, "because I've been in your position before.  I've been rewritten, and - "

I think we can stop the tape right here, can't we?  I don't have to explain to you, as I did to Nick, that in my job doing project notes for a studio, I'm often the one crying "fire this writer!" and dealing with drafts of major features that are cluster-sucks involving 17 writers, that perhaps their having gone behind my back and given the project to another writer while I was at the hospital awaiting my father's surgery just might give me pause, that being rewritten was not the issue. 

"You did it wrong," is what I told them, and this is what got reiterated in our final conversation a few days later, a conference call in which Nick was at their office and Mick was in his car, about to drive through Monument Valley.  

Since the Power Couple had already decided to renew the last year of their option and I had no out clause (I know, I know) and I had read half of the awful, incoherent, piss-on-it-to-make-it-mine draft by Jack the Hack, I informed them that I was out of there, merely demanding that they insert a "Revisions by..." on subsequent title pages and that they let me know if there was ever a check to cash.

Things got a little heated again when they asked if they could show me the drafts to come, to get my feedback.  Somewhere toward the end of my there'll-be-a-cold-day-in-hell diatribe, Nick and I suddenly heard a "The number you have reached is currently out of service; if you would like to leave a message - "
recording, and Nick said, "I think we've lost Mick."

Indeed.  Though I feel bad for Nick, who was left holding the bag and had to endure, after his sincere apology, hearing me channel a bad genre movie and snapping, "Well, actions have consequences, dude, so deal with it!" - a line I'd never delivered before and assuredly will never repeat - it's Mick that I keep thinking about.

I picture him behind the wheel of his car, coasting down the long, beautiful straightaway into Monument Valley, that technicolor desert vista of a thousand Westerns, home to cowboys and Indians and gunslinging varmints of every kind and creed.  The sky is blue, the clouds are splendid, the giant buttes are casting their majestic purple shadows in the distance... and there's an angry screenwriter rasping in his ear, going on about how he can't support Mick's version of this movie and how this inept draft isn't going to solve Mick and Nick's problems, and -

I see him cut the phone call off with a jab of his finger as he drives into the late afternoon sun, shaking his head.  "Fucking writers," he says to himself.  "They spoil everything."

The Future of the Written Word?

I'm still on writing retreat hiatus, but so as not to leave your Living RomCom appetite entirely unslaked, I offer you this news item from Japan that is its own comment, in an amusingly perverse fashion, on the contemporary state of writing and publishing. 

Momentary oddity or wave of the future?  You decide. 

Happy Post-Independence Day!