Rom-Com Truisms # 2

A star can open a romantic comedy, but a protagonist who doesn’t make sense will piss off the movie’s audience forever.

 

 

These days, her single mom martyrdom due to a mendacious politician's badmouthing is the topic, but during the first two months of 2011, you heard two things about Natalie Portman: one, she was a shoo-in to win the Oscar for Black Swan, and two, what was up with her in that Ashton Kutcher movie?

 

Everyone I know or read who’s seen it has pretty much the same take on Portman's lead character: by the picture’s midpoint, you find yourself wondering, What’s her problem?  Why doesn't she just give it up and go with the guy? 

 

It's the case of the missing character logic: Somewhere amidst the mysterious development process that turned a sharp-edged, LOL-funny spec script called Fuckbuddies into the gummy, congenial mess that is No Strings Attached, the essence of its leading player got lost. 

 

Let us pause to praise screenwriter Elizabeth Meriwether’s first pass.  Fuckbuddies, darkly true to its deliberately provocative title, was a refreshingly subversive, witty piece of work, with giddy flights of lustily scatalogical dialogue.  You can still see and hear bits and pieces of it floating, unmoored, in the fear-based dodge of a script that makes No Strings Attached about half of a decent romantic comedy. 

 

The original script did in fact supply a solid back story for Portman's role, the “Sex only, please” heroine Emma, establishing that while she's "not into affection," Emma is also mourning the death of her father - an idea nicely tweaked by news that Dad wasn't such a great guy, that Emma even feels her mother should have left him.  What you understand about Emma is: Heroine is afraid of commitment because she fears more loss and pain - and doesn't trust such commitments to begin with.  This is the simple but strong rationale for Emma that got thrown away en route to the screen.

 

 

Rom-com writers, check it out: No Strings Attached did pretty well, largely due to star-power and what was left of Meriwether's humor, but people actively dislike its heroine.  Because Emma seems weirdly obstinate in her insistence that she's no good in romantic relationships (which wasn't really the problem, originally), and gives us no significant clue re: what's to keep her from falling for cute, nice guy Kutcher, we get fed up with her, halfway in.  We grow so distanced from Emma that although we take satisfaction in her eventually realizing she's screwed up, and we enjoy her suffering and redemption, we never entirely forgive the movie for bewildering us.  And if it wasn't Natalie playing Emma, we'd probably really hate her.

 

Protagonists don't need to be sympathetic, or even likable - you screenwriters know that (see: every well-loved anti-hero from Scarlett O'Hara to Tony Soprano).  They need to be empathetic, as in understandable.  We identify with a rom-com heroine because she makes sense to us - whether she's as seemingly loony as Annie Hall or as supposedly uptight as Sandra Bullock's taskmaster boss in The Proposal (which includes, incidentally, one of the most effective "This is why I am the way I am" speeches for such a heroine in recent memory).  Whether you liked or disliked the recent Love and Other Drugs, I'll bet you had no problem getting on the right page with Anne Hathaway's character, a woman whose big bad illness made her push even the rightest Mr. Right away.

 

Romantic comedies, built on the audience's rooting for the lead characters to become a couple, are particularly demanding on this front: we have to accept and understand a heroine's emotional logic when it comes to love.  You don't have to (nor should you) hit us over the head with it, but you do have to deliver a sense of why she's ready to love, and/or what within the character is getting in the way of her passion.  Otherwise, we don't believe the love and passion when it ultimately emerges.

 

Emma in Fuckbuddies was empathetic enough to help sell a sneakily subversive spec script - and get an actress like Portman on board.  Emma in No Strings Attached is leaving audiences annoyed.  The heroine who's got her most significant blanks filled in is the one I'd rather write.

 

Comments

[J]

This is my nightmare.

Do all smart, funny spec scripts get turned into mildewy pieces of cliche?

...Because it sure seems like this happens 89 percent of the time. And I can't...quite...understand it.

[mernitman]

J, this is one those "don't get me started" topics. One simple thing I can report to you about Development is that the sheer number of different people (and their different agendas) involved with a given project exerts its own exhaustive energy.

But no, not all good goes to crap, and the System actually does work the other way. I need to do a post highlighting an instance of the studio helping/saving a movie, which happens more often than you hear about.

[Tom]

Huge fan of your blog billy. Your post/interview with shane black is what gave me the balls to actually give man-birth to my first screenplay. It sucks, but hey, even hemingway's first drafts were all shit (at least that's what he said).

Were could one get a copy of the fuckbuddies script? I did google it, but most of what came up was porn. (not that im complaining)

[E.C. Henry]

Great job getting to the core of what doesn't work in "No Strings Attached." Haven't seen it, don't plan too. BUT I always love reading when you're breaking a movie down, Billy.

HUGE fan of Natalie Portman AFTER seeing her portray of Nina Sayers in "Black Swan." Now THAT was some acting. Best acting I've seen since Daniel Day Lewis in "There Will Be Blood."

Making the ballet world interesting to a mass audience is a herculian task, yet Darren Arronofsky, screenwriters: Andres Heins, Mark Heyman, and John McLaughlin, and actress Natalie Portman pulled it off beautifully.

What I loved the most about "Black Swan" was this is a cautionary tale; an artist's persuit of perfection needs to be ballanced. And that's a post topic the merrits further investigation. (hint-hint) I think it's very easy for people with a bend on working their ass-off to achieve greatness in the arts to get off-kilter, and actually do themselves harm. Which is what the audience watches unfold in heroin, Nina Sayers' life in "Black Swan."

Sorry about going on about "Black Swan" when your post was about "No Strings Attached," Billy. But I think you'd agree that "Black Swan" is an infinately more interesting movie than "No Strings Attached." Can't wait to see what Natalie Portman does next!

- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA

[mernitman]

Tom: Glad the Shane Black post activated your mojo. And the F-Buds SP may be available on-line, specifically if you look for Black List entries from 2008 or 2009, I think it was...

EC: Interesting thoughts. I agree that BLACK SWAN was a hoot and a half.

[Rob in L.A.]

Just dropped by to say something off topic: I’m really getting tired of all these movie websites beating up on “Shakespeare in Love” — which had an absolutely terrific script and played hilariously with the historical record — in order to proclaim that “Saving Private Ryan” should have won Best Picture for 1998. Wasn’t Spielberg’s directing Oscar good enough? Grumble ... grumble ...

[No Strings Attached online]

I enjoyed reading your insights... but maybe there is a need to see the movie as self-reflecting. The irrationality of the protagonist may be explained as an exception, out of the genre conventions, which makes it a sort of a hybrid-mixed up movie, and not just a romantic comedy. just something to think about...