Living the Romantic Comedy

Happy Diane Keaton's Birthday Day

Olden New

There've been so few genuinely romantic and funny moments on screen in 2019, either in romantic comedies or other films, that Greta Gerwig's delivery of a perfect rom-com moment in her new adaptation of Little Women stands out as a quiet triumph.

The clip above (full screen viewing recommended) unfortunately ends too soon, but below, a NY Times clip that features Gerwig's commentary on the sequence lets it play out. And of course any fan of romance, comedy, drama, and... women will want to see the entire film, clearly one of the best of the year.

A Happy 2020 to lovers of funny love stories from Living the Rom-Com!

 

Year-End Rom-Com Pod-Fun

It's that time of the year, so Billy and Tess, absurdly overdue for another podcast, gift each other with some favorite rom-com moments, make romantic comedy resolutions, and wax poetic about where we are and where we'd like to be.

Here is the link to Episode 9 (A Fine Romance). Warning: contains movie quotes, meet cutes, and swearing.

Bertolucci's Lovers

Two shots apiece from: The Conformist (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1972), The Sheltering Sky (1992), Stealing Beauty (1996), The Dreamers (2003).

Begin Again

That's me in my home office with Tabitha, one of our family of dogs. If you were here, she'd be tail-wagging and wiggling a welcome.

I've been off this blog for about a year, and was neglecting it for a few before that - largely because Facebook and Twitter took over my social media attention, and because the romantic comedy genre itself was in the doldrums. But as of this week, I may be leaving Facebook, for reasons that should be clear to anyone paying attention, while the romantic comedy - in the wake of Crazy Rich Asians and 80 million Netflix subscribers embracing a new crop of funny love stories like To All the Boys I've Loved Before - is back in force.

I like being where I can share interesting stuff and just sound off about whatever, while engaging friends and strangers in conversation about it. It does say "other topics apropos" above, under Living the Romantic Comedy, so I'll be here appreciating the world and analyzing the likes of anything from The Kissing Booth to Karl Ove Knausgaard and beyond.

Happy to have you aboard, first time visitors and returning readers alike. I'm currently working on the revised and expanded 20th Anniversary edition of Writing the Romantic Comedy, which Harper/Collins will publish in early 2020, so as I wrestle with putting the genre's last 20 years in perspective, all input welcomed! Please do comment, and I promise to reply. 

Good News

The great work begins: Harper/Collins will release the updated, expanded & revised 20th Anniversary Edition of "Writing the Romantic Comedy" in 2020.

 

In Praise of Women

The latest episode on the podcast I do with good friend and great romantic comedy screenwriter Tess Morris (Man Up) is a positive counterpoint to the truly awful Hollywood news of late: We talk about A Dozen Great Female Characters (in comedy, romantic comedy, and black comedy, 1970s-Present, and A Dozen Great Screenplays Written by Women. Cheer yourself up with this tribute to Film Women Who Rock: You Had Us At Hello.

Man Up!

Would you like to see a movie that’s genuinely smart-witty funny, as opposed to dumbed-down farcical? A romantic comedy that’s contemporary-romantic, instead of sentimental and same-old, one that needs no apologies as a guilty pleasure but is simply pleasure-full, period? Maybe a movie that’s like “one of those great British rom-coms,” from the ‘90s or 2000s?

Hey, I’ve got it right here.

And if you’re a fan of Simon Pegg – even if you just know him as that funny British guy from the Mission Impossible movies – and if perhaps you like Lake Bell (leading lady/writer/director of In a World), then all the better, because they’re the ones who star in this movie, and they’re both at their best.

I’d like to tell you more about why you should go see Man Up this weekend, if you’re in Los Angeles or New York City (it’s soon expanding across the country to more theaters and then opening On Demand and digital everywhere), but I can’t. First of all because I hate being hyped about things, so I've already said too much - I think the best way to see a movie is if you know very little about it and/or you’ve been told that it sucks (the Law of Diminished Expectations).

And secondly, re: this particular movie opening, I’m an unreliable witness.

That’s because Tess Morris, the woman who wrote the movie, says “I read Billy Mernit’s book, my writing life changed, and I wrote Man Up.”  Yeah, no, really: She says it right in this interview, among other nice things. And that’s not the worst of why I can’t “review” her movie, much as I’d like to. It’s because since she took Writing the Romantic Comedy to heart and wrote the movie and got it made, Tess Morris has become a friend of mine. Which is good for me – Tess is one fine and funny human being – but terrible for my credibility in this regard. If I go on about her most excellent work, you’ll just think I’m being completely subjective and prejudiced.

Rats.

So maybe I’d be best off letting Tess speak for herself. Here’s what Ms. Morris says about the origin of her story:

The inspiration for Man Up came not long after I’d had my heart broken. A man came up to me at Waterloo Station thinking I was the blind date he was meant to be meeting, and I said I wasn’t… but as he walked away, I thought: “What if I had said I was? And isn’t that a great premise for a movie?” I wanted to write something about two people who had no idea about each other before they met. Internet dating means that you learn about, and reject, people before you meet them. How many people are we dismissing who might have some potential? You see a photo and say “No.” The Tinder swipe is the death knell of romance.

That’s from a piece she wrote in the Guardian. When Tess and I were discussing what makes good rom-coms good, she said:

If you're writing one, make sure you’ve got something to say about life, or love. Why do you want to write a rom-com? Figure that out. What’s going to make it interesting, funny, and new? Find the truth of what you want to write about.

And apropos, here’s what Tess has to say about the title of the film and what it all means:

I had a load of other alternative titles… I think the worst one was ‘Boy Doesn’t Meet Girl’ ha, and then one day, when I was struggling with writing the script, I remember thinking what is this film ABOUT, Tess, and then I laughed out loud, because I realized it was about me manning up, in life and love in general, and then I thought, Man Up… THAT’S IT. Because both [leads] Nancy and Jack have to man up, you know? And some of the other characters, in their own little ways, too. It’s a film about taking chances, and getting outside your comfort zone. And also, I wanted to reclaim that phrase a bit, from the traditional male and macho kind of thing, because I just like it as a phrase, and we should all be able to use it.

And that’s from an, um, exclusive (i.e. a recent e-mail). Meanwhile, if you're a screenwriter and you'd like to join Tess and me in geeking out about what the big beats of a romantic comedy are meant to be, here's a nifty BAFTA clip in which Tess explains it all for you.

So is your interest properly piqued? I hope so, because Man Up is not a big studio movie, and would benefit from your support. And also (take my word for it or don’t – here’s an enthusiastic review from the L.A. Times) because it’ll make you laugh, and could even make you tear up a bit. And that’s what all of us want from a romantic comedy, if you ask me. Not that I know anything about such stuff.

Go see for yourself.

 

A Million Views

There was a fine white mist at the foot of the Santa Monica mountains as I biked up the path early this morning - my last bike ride on the beach as a resident of Venice: Tater and I are moving to the suburban wilds of North Hollywood tomorrow. It'll be quite a change, as I've lived in Venice for 23 years, but as we're trading a small two bedroom apartment in the over-traversed epicenter of West Side hipsterism for a three-bedroom house with yard and garage, etc. in a charming, quiet neighborhood... Well, I bought a bike rack for the car. I'll happily trek out here once a week.

Seems perfectly synchronistic that Living the Romantic Comedy is celebrating its tenth anniversary this weekend - end of an era, and all that - though not end, I hasten to clarify: I intend to keep blogging, for as long as it's still fun. But the blogger's landscape has certainly changed since I first moved into this neighborhood, ten years ago.

In June, 2005, Facebook wasn't yet as ubiquitous and Twitter didn't exist, let alone all the other platforms. And though I was late to a party that was still going strong - at the time, you could tell someone you had a blog without getting an eye-roll in response - it was a heady, stimulating community to join, especially in screenwriting site circles. These days, to have an active blog makes you feel a little... quaint. It's a bit like writing in longhand and sending an actual letter.

The most exciting aspect of it, inarguably, was and still is getting a response. These days we're all used to being liked, shared, favorited, and retweeted, but back then it was a more novel experience to blather on about something online, and suddenly get agreement, or disagreement about it from a total stranger. By the time Living RomCom was going strong, it wasn't uncommon for me to get 25-35 comments on a given post. That's astonishing, then and now.

The essential experience - reflected for me in the title of the blog - has been of growing up in public (I like to think I'm still growing), and when I looked back, digging up things to re-post this month, I saw all manner of momentous events annotated here: In my very first post, I was wondering how to write a dating site profile, and over the course of a decade, after seeking romance in all the wrong and nearly-right places, I found true love in my third and final wife; America elected its first president of color; my first novel sold to a major publishing house; and my beloved father passed away.

What I hadn't quite foreseen was a major sea change in my genre of choice. No, the romantic comedy is not dead, as I've exhaustively discussed in these pages, but in the past few years, a certain kind of formulaic chick flick (I call it the Career Girl Gets Alpha Guy movie) has finally lost its audience. I myself had dutifully supported the so-called formula of the traditional romantic comedy, but I lobbied fiercely here for more progressive fare.

One of the things that keeps me blogging about the genre, in fact, is that the rom-com seems to be morphing into something newly relatable, as such hits as Silver Linings Playbook and Her have demonstrated. I'll go out on a very short limb now to declare that when Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer's Trainwreck (which I did notes on for Universal) comes out in a few weeks and makes millions, you're suddenly going to hear - from the same people who danced on the rom-com's grave last year - that "romantic comedy is back!"

Such is the ever-cyclical nature of the industry. Meanwhile, what truly makes the blogging practice worthwhile continues to be the people I come in contact with by doing it, from my first-ever commenter Caroline Ferguson to the blog's most stalwart fan E.C. Henry. I'm amazed and gratified to talk with not just friends, but folks from all over the world on a weekly basis.

Probably the most humbling of such encounters occurred when a former consult client living in Eastern Europe informed me that having read a certain Living Rom-Com post had helped her to make a major life decision about when and how to have a baby. Her child is over a year old now, and the idea that something I wrote on this blog could turn me into a sort of cyber-godfather fills me with awe.

That's the thing, I guess: What I've mostly learned here is that when you write something and offer it to the world at large, you can never know what effect it may have, even on people you don't and may never know. And this is the best endorsement for facing one's fears and continuing to write that I can think of.

Thank you all, at any rate, for keeping me company thus far. And please comment to let me know what you'd like to see more (or less of) on this blog. Largely due to the efforts of blog colleague Scott Myers, whose promotion of a recent post currently has my total page view numbers at 999,690 and rising, I'm within 300+ hits of reaching one million by the day's end. You, my friend, may even be my millionth viewer!

May your days be filled with love and laughter.

(Illustrations by Adrian Tomine) 

It's a Girl, It's an Icon, It's...

There's good buzz on the extended trailer for the CBS Fall series Supergirl, and for good reason: The vibe around this Daily Planet office is sort of "The Whedon Wears Prada," as the show features the usual superhero fireball pyrotechnics plus Calista Flockhart gone full Streep and what looks to be neat casting all around (the camera likes Melissa Benoist). It's especially appealing as a sort of synchronistic response to the recent SNL "Ultron as Rom-Com" parody (see post below), suggesting that a girl in a caped costume doesn't have to sit on her couch eating a tub of ice cream or singing into a hairbrush while she pines for a super-Mr. Right. 

"We can’t name her that! Shouldn’t she be called Superwoman?" asks Kara-in-secret-identity of her boss, who responds: “What do you think is so bad about ‘girl’? I’m a girl, and your boss, and powerful, and rich, and hot, and smart. So if you perceive Supergirl as anything less than excellent, isn’t the real problem you?” To which Living RomCom can only say: You go, major network! We'll tune in.