The one cliche that has nearly driven a stake through the heart of our undead genre is the race to the airport. Beneath this horror lies a more acceptable, however uncomfortable truth.
Love must be won. We believe this, because we know it: real love don't (except in certain bad movies and exceptional lives) come easy.
Because of this truism, nothing is more galling to fan or foe of the rom-com genre than the ridiculous third act Run to Keep Her or Him From Leaving, precisely due to its inert inevitability: this routine gives a lie to the very ethos that motors romantic comedy - a celebration of the beautiful exception that's worth sacrificing everything in the end - if After All That (i.e the movie you just sat through), all a rom-com protagonist has to do is is run to him/her and blurt out an "I love you." The modern day zombie rom-com, by ending with this codified (fossilized) gesture, reduces its story to being just Another One of Those.
For these reasons, despite how unhip a Billy Crystal movie might seem in 2011, the climax of When Harry Met Sally... is the exception that has set the standard of the romantic comedy climax since its 1989 premiere. Today's screenwriters are still "homaging" (ripping off) its particular approach to handling this moment. I see it in spec scripts every other week. Here's the original:
Having realized that Sally is the answer to him being an asshole, Harry the Screw-Up does his Run of Shamed Desperation not to the airport, but across town to a New Year's Eve party. He arrives in time to deliver the obligatory "I love you," but for once, our heroine is unmoved.
"You can't just show up here," she says, "Tell me you love me, and expect to make everything all right. It doesn't work that way."
I love that him saying "I love you" doesn't cut it! Harry is forced to dig deeper.
"How about this way?" he offers. "I love how you get cold when it's seventy-one degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle right there when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you're the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night.
"And it's not because I'm lonely. And it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."
Sally, still not entirely happy: "This is just like you, Harry. You say things like that, and you make it impossible for me to hate you, and I hate you, Harry. I really hate you. I hate you..."
Harry puts his arms around her. They kiss.
Ryan is spectacular in this scene, by the way, and Crystal is given a nice help by having to shout his (otherwise too sentimental) lines over the New Year's Festivities. If you got a couple minutes, you can take a look:
This Great Moment's influence - essentially, the triumph of genuine, selflessly-directed love over the narcissistic impulse - continues to this day. Within the expected Run To... scene, the contemporary romantic comedy writer now generally intuits or contrives a resolution that has its hero or heroine acknowledge the lovability of the Other. Love means letting it be about them, not you, and the stronger the specificity, the better.
Nora Ephron's scene in When Harry... is the paradigm.
Thanks, Billy! This is *so* what I needed to hear today!
Posted by: annaliterally | May 11, 2011 at 06:09 AM
Dude, can't be sayin' "the race to the airport" don't work -- cuz' I got a rom-com that has that scene in it!!! It's called "Cupid's Helpers" and in my scene, the female romantic interest is going home to L.A. after seeing her romantic interest's hometown, after watching his infaction with an old high school dream girl of his play out after a high school reunion party...
Billy, My spec. script aside, I've notice a couple rom-com movies with "race to the airport scenes" and they never bothered me at all. But Billy, you can always say WHATEVER you want and we'll all love you; you've got a lot of street cred.
LOVE the line, "... I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." Now THAT is romantic. Nora Ephron should feel especially proud of that line. And if it takes a "race to the airport" to get there... Well then MAYBE, in this case, it's worth it.
- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA
Posted by: E.C. Henry | May 11, 2011 at 06:51 AM
I'm pretty certain I could never write a Race to the Airport scene of my own free will - unless it was to show how SLOW that actually would be.
Because I am often be late to important things, I have, many times, raced to the airport - not to catch a lover but to catch my flight before it takes off without me. And let me tell you, whenever you're in a hurry to get to your gate - everything else takes its sweet time; the traffic, the ticketing people, the security line, the guy in front of you who forgot he had a Coke Zero in his backpack...and then, to top it all off, your gate is inevitably across the damn airport.
So - if I WAS ever racing to tell the man I love not to leave on that plane, I would probably miss him by an hour.
Posted by: Just Me | May 11, 2011 at 09:06 AM
Annaliterally: Synchronicity is a beautiful thing.
EC: I'm always up for seeing a successful exception to the rule, and I bet your spec's "race" will be unique.
JustMe: And see, if your wrote THAT scene into a rom-com , it could be hi-larious.
Posted by: mernitman | May 11, 2011 at 09:35 AM
Yaaayyy. a new blog. Finally.
Is the problem with these contrived 3rd act races to the airport the result of a poor setup in the second act, where the writer suddenly feels like they have to put shock treatment on the 3rd act? But, Billy, aren't these contrived cliched rom coms still being bought? scripts like Leap Year, etc where they pretty much just recycle every rom com cliche...
Also, I did notice that Love Actually had a ton of cliches, but got away with it because the writing was so good. What alternatives are there besides that race to (insert location)?...It seems like almos every derivative has been done... just like the lone hero against a mob of highly trained bad guys in the action genre.
Posted by: E | May 11, 2011 at 09:10 PM
E: Of course the obligatory BEAT of this climax is a genre staple. I'm simply saying that the airport trope itself, specifically, is shot; it's a self-parodying corpse: so overdone as to require an exceptional tweak for justification.
Thus you'll note that Richard Curtis goes for tongued-cheeked fantasy with his over-the-top version (i.e. everyone in the movie shows up at the airport, as if for a rom-com theme party).
Ultimately, execution is everything. Rom-coms may require the "run" (i.e. the dash to catch the Other) as part of their expected climax, but plugging in the tired Stopping Her From Flying to Paris routine slaps a neon "you can't take this movie seriously" stamp on any romantic comedy written in the current decade. So the burden falls upon the likes of you and me to come up with something fresher.
Posted by: mernitman | May 12, 2011 at 09:15 PM
I always love how you remind us that in a rom-com or any romantic comedy, love must be won.
Also, DETAILS. The more specific characters are about life, each other and love, the more we "get" them and love them, and relate to them, and cheer for them.
Keep blogging!
Rachel
Posted by: Rachel Hauck | May 31, 2011 at 07:20 AM
Oops, I meant to say in any rom-com or romantic story... I can type, I CAN type... :)
Posted by: Rachel Hauck | May 31, 2011 at 07:21 AM
Rachel: Thanks, Rachel. Specificity is one of my favorite words.
Posted by: mernitman | May 31, 2011 at 06:33 PM
The rom com run is definitely overused, but as with the Harry Sally example, it's always important to keep in mind that good writing trumps everything.
Morning Glory, which is a sort of rom com between an employer and irascible employee, shows a well handled double rom com run. First, an imaginary "run" when he makes the omelet on air in a desperate bid to show her he's willing to change, and then her run back from the other network to show him--I get it. And they can't use cell phones, cause it's live. It's got an exciting pace to it, and it's touching.
Notting Hill, on the other hill, puts the com back into the rom com run. Richard Curtis proves how much comedy can be wrung from from it, as well as the Last Minute Declaration of Love.
I say, tie a girl to the railroad tracks if you want--just set it up right, and find a way to make it FUNNY.
Posted by: Miss Mabel | July 17, 2011 at 01:45 PM
Miss Mabel: Point well taken (I'm a fan of HILL's climax and other imaginative runs well-played)). I will continue to revile and decry, however, the Run to the Airport, now in its acknowledged self-parodic overkill era, since the specificity of its contrivance (Stop that plane!) simply can no longer transcend self-consciousness; it ejects one from the movie's reality and into meta-land. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Posted by: mernitman | July 18, 2011 at 10:08 PM
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/06/26/155808227/nora-ephron-filmmaker-author-dies
Posted by: Rob in L.A. | June 26, 2012 at 07:07 PM