Romantic Comedy (2019) - full transcript
Musician and writer Elizabeth Sankey investigates the past, present and future of romantic comedies, assisted by a chorus of critics, actors and filmmakers.
When I was younger,
this is how
I pictured my wedding.
I'm standing at the altar
with my fiance,
I have no idea that
my best friend, Tom,
the man I truly love,
is galloping towards the church
on a huge black stallion,
racing to stop me from making the biggest mistake of my life.
Just as I'm about
to say, "I do,"
Tom flies through the doors
of the church, and...
My heart skips a beat.
Back then, I'd picture
what it would feel like
to have
my heart broken.
Maybe I'd be working
in advertising
and I'd fall in love
with an inventor
of mysterious confectionary
while on a work trip
with him.
But then, I'd discover
his true identity.
He's my arch nemesis
from a rival company.
Understandably, I'm horrified.
Or, I'd imagine
how I'd meet
the love of my life.
My new Gucci shoe.
Come on.
Or where I'd be working when I met my husband.
- Hello, Natalie.
- Hello, David.
I mean, sir.
Shit. I can't believe
I've just said that.
And now I've gone
and said "shit."
It's fine, it's fine.
You could have said "fuck"
and then we'd have been
in real trouble.
Thank you, sir.
I did have
an awful premonition
I was gonna fuck up
on my first day.
Or what it would be like
when I met my fiance's
parents for the first time.
Good night, Mr. Banks.
Oh, you can call him
George. Or Dad!
George will be fine.
And don't forget
to fasten your condom.
Dad!
Seat belt! I meant...
I meant seat belt.
And I'd often
dream of being a chef
with magical powers,
which I could use to woo
the man of my dreams.
And my best friend...
...would be a crab.
This is how dominant romantic comedies have been in my life.
As a young woman,
they became
an obsession so powerful,
that they're now
a part of my identity.
Maybe it'd be better
if we start at the beginning.
And at most mythologized
and beguiling of all places,
the suburban teenage
girl's bedroom.
Mine looked a lot like this.
And it was here among the training bras,
hair mascara,
and intense boredom
that my obsession with
romantic comedies began.
They ease my fear
of being alone forever
as they promised me
that one day,
I, too, could have
a fulfilling romantic life.
Just as long
as I followed the rules.
A woman must always be laid back, easy-going and fun.
If you think
you hate someone,
that might actually mean
they're perfect for you.
And true relationship
success is achieved
by one thing,
and one thing only,
a big white wedding.
Which is wat happened to me,
I got married.
Well, this isn't my wedding,
but does it really matter?
Aren't all weddings
basically the same?
Before I got married,
my relationship to
romantic comedies
was pure and uncomplicated.
They reflected my experiences as a young woman
and dominated my outlook
on love and relationships.
But because most
romantic comedies
end with a marriage,
after my wedding,
I felt like
they'd abandoned me.
The connection was broken,
and suddenly,
I began to see
all the other ways
in which they were imperfect.
And I wasn't the only person
who felt this way.
I like
that I don't have to think
when I watch
romantic comedies.
I basically can just curl up
and not really worry.
But I will say,
the more...
The older I get, the more
they do make me anxious.
Liar!
They're really heteronormative,
and they're really white,
and they're really schmaltzy.
I saw Cameron
Diaz get poked in the face
by a penis in a glory hole.
And yet,
I was still obsessed.
But now when
the credits rolled,
I didn't feel elated,
I felt guilty.
Not that that stopped me.
I carried on watching them
over and over again.
♪ Beyond this
♪ There must be something
beyond this
♪ I've seen the sunset
and I feel it leads somewhere
♪ Between us
♪ Is there nothing between us?
♪ We've loved much more
They say for sure, once
♪ It all rises
♪ It all falls
♪ You can be pushed along
for as long as you want
♪ But sooner or later
♪ You might have to
get up and run
♪ How fast can you run?
♪ I've seen you all fall apart
♪ I've seen you all wasted
♪ I've seen them all fall apart
♪ I've seen them all wasted
♪ So come on and run
♪ So come on and run
♪ So come on and run
Of all genres, romantic comedies are the films
that are most
heavily targeted
towards a conventional
female audience.
And so, they have
the power to influence us.
Well, some of us.
We can see this
in the way women respond
to one of the most
successful rom-com heroines
of all time, Bridget Jones.
Some feel positive.
Everybody
kinda likes Bridget Jones,
like, you have to love her
because she's completely
who she is.
She never expresses
that she feels complete
when she's with a guy.
She got happy
and content by herself.
That's why Bridget Jones
is just like the HBC.
The Head Bitch in Charge.
But if staying here means
working within ten yards of you,
frankly, I'd rather have a job
wiping Saddam Hussein's ass.
Others are not so positive.
You know
what her weight is
and she's claiming
to be very overweight.
And she weighs about
nine stone or something.
Resolution number one,
obviously will lose 20 pounds.
I do remember
seeing that film
when it first came out,
and thinking,
"I weigh what
this woman weighs.
"She's worried that
she's really overweight,
"so I must be
really overweight."
My own feelings on Bridget are also conflicted.
In the films, we're told she's
a successful career woman.
Yet, I think this truth
is undermined
by her many pratfalls at work.
Bridget wasn't the only clumsy career
woman I saw in romantic comedies.
Rom-coms have
painted career women
as these pathetic, clumsy,
bumbling idiots,
because the idea of a woman
having her shit together
is very frightening.
She's doing
all this, like, nine to five,
but then, like,
she's kind of a klutz.
Like, "I'll save her."
They always think
that women need to be saved.
...must remember
the way to a man's heart
is not through beauty,
sex, or love,
but merely the ability
to fall arse over tit
in the mud.
People wouldn't
respond very well
to a portrayal
of a successful woman
who wasn't somehow undermining her success at every turn.
There has to be something
that takes away
from her own self-confidence
because I think people still
don't particularly like
to see that on screen.
In order
to better understand
how career women
and women in general
are presented in the films,
we need to look
at how they've been portrayed
in romantic comedies
throughout history.
In the 1930s,
Hollywood wasn't taken
seriously as a business.
Which meant people who normally existed on the margins,
namely, immigrants and women,
were able to thrive.
There were far more roles
for women than for men,
and female actors commanded
bigger paychecks.
The romantic heroines
of this era,
the screwball queens,
reflected this female power.
They were strong,
intelligent women
who excelled at exchanging pithy one-liners
with their male love interests.
This is my car.
- You mean this is your car?
- Of course.
Your golf ball, your car.
Is there anything in the world
that doesn't belong to you?
Yes, thank heaven, you.
- Now, don't lose your temper.
- Well, I...
My dear young lady,
I'm not losing my temper,
I'm merely trying
to play some golf.
Well, you choose
the funniest places.
This is a parking lot.
Will you get out of my car?
Will you get off
my running board?
This is my running board!
All right, honey.
- Stay there then.
- Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Unlike modern rom-coms,
the female protagonists
of the '30s were often
brilliant career women.
For example,
Hildy fromHis Girl Friday.
It always thrills me that instead of picking the man
who offers her security, motherhood,
and suburban lawns...
Oh, you're gonna live
with your mother?
Well, just
for the first year.
...Hildy
returns to Walter
who loves and values her
for her mind
and her journalistic talent.
He treats her as his equal.
They'll be naming streets
after you. Hildy Johnson Street.
There'll be statues
of you in the park,
The movies will be after you,
the radio.
By tomorrow morning,
I'll bet you there's a Hildy Johnson cigar.
I can see the billboards now.
Says, "Light up with Hildy Johnson."
- Oh, Walter, will stop that acting?
- Huh?
- We got a lot to do.
- Oh, yeah, talking?
But this equality
didn't last.
World War II killed
the screwball
as it encouraged both genders
back into conformity.
Men out fighting.
Women at home keeping
the house in order.
Hollywood transformed into the patriarchal institution we know today.
If career women were
shown onscreen...
I happen to be paying
your salary, Ryan.
You can play games
on your own time.
Now, get down.
Tip that light down
a little, will you,
the one near his right shoulder?
They were always
eventually tamed by the man.
Goodbye, Henry.
Oh! Oh, Ryan! Ryan...
In general, we see chaste innocent virgins
waiting for their man
to come home and marry them.
But then in the 1950s,
everything changed again.
Hi.
Well, hello.
Marilyn Monroe's
charisma and talent
was unlike anything anyone
had ever seen.
Whilst rarely shown
as a career woman,
her innate natural sexuality
elevated her.
Her male counterparts would be reduced to bumbling idiots,
cowed by her immense
female power.
I'd like to stay here
with you tonight.
Mmm?
I'd like to sleep here.
Are you sure?
That is, if you don't mind.
Marilyn died in 1962.
I often wonder what the world
of romantic comedies
would have looked like
if she'd lived.
Her last film,
Something's Got to Give,
was never finished.
It was remade a year later
asMove Over, Darling
with another beautiful
blonde, Doris Day.
But unlike Marilyn,
Doris' romantic heroines
were not sexually confident.
Bedroom problems?
In fact,
they were incredibly chaste,
protecting their virtue
even when they were stranded
on a desert island
for five years.
There was a man
on that island with me.
How marvelous.
No wonder you look so well.
But you silly girl,
why did you tell Nick?
I didn't tell him!
He just found out.
Oh. Well, tell me then.
I wanna know everything.
There's nothing to tell.
And whilst these women
often did have careers,
they were very happy
to relinquish them
in the name of marriage
and motherhood.
In general,
it feels like the genre
hasn't really progressed much
since Doris Day
and her pastel twin sets.
In The Devil Wears Prada,
when he's pissed
that she missed his birthday
or something...
Yeah, she should miss
your birthday.
She has a really important job.
You got a cupcake,
why are you mad?
Nate, I'm so sorry.
I kept trying to leave,
but there's a lot
going on and...
You know I didn't have a choice.
Don't worry about it.
Romantic comedies
don't have a responsibility
to represent reality.
Way to go, Tess.
- Yay.
- Beauty.
However, I can say
that as a teenager,
dreaming of the relationships I one day hoped to experience,
I turned to them for guidance.
What I saw influenced,
or even defined,
my future romantic behavior.
When I fell in love
with romantic comedies,
Julia Roberts
was the reigning queen.
Holy shit.
During that period, there was a surge of the films,
which were hugely successful
at the box office.
And I watched all of them.
As the demand grew,
the genre began
to cannibalize itself
and spiraled out of control.
I now realize
it was presenting me
with increasingly more dubious narratives as romantic ideals.
I think that many
of the premises of rom-coms
are deeply suspect
and a bit twisted.
While You Were Sleeping...
I mean, that's quite a good
horror movie title already.
Does she have
a cat or not,
even, like, just
pictures of a cat?
And she's just
always in that little booth
in the train station
not really talking to anyone.
She pretends
to be with a guy
who's been in an accident,
he's in a coma.
She's obsessed with him,
but she's never,
ever talked to him.
And she goes to the hospital,
and they won't let her in to see him.
Completely justified.
Whoa, whoa,
you can't go in there.
- No, no, no, you don't understand.
- No, are you family?
- No.
- Family only.
No, you don't understand.
- I was...
- You wait there.
But she lies and
says that she's his fiancee.
Is that the woman
that saved his life?
Yeah.
Whoa.
It gets even better than that.
She's his fiancee.
And then,
his family show up.
And she feels it's normal
to lie to them as well,
and just insinuates herself
into his life.
I've fallen
in love with men
who are in emotional comas,
for sure.
Maybe
not physical ones.
I feel like there's
some sort of deformity
that he has on his testicles
that she gets a look at
so that she can say
to his mother, like,
"No, I really am his fiancee
"because I've seen his, like,
watermelon-sized testicle."
Peter has one testicle.
- No way.
- Way.
About a month ago,
there was an accident,
and he was playing basketball,
and his friend had a pencil
in his back pocket.
Ew.
She's not even
interested in him in the end,
and she falls in love
with Bill Pullman.
She falls in love
with his brother
and ends up with the brother.
I think the prospect
that you could fall in love
with somebody who's in a coma,
tell his family
that you're his fiancee
and then,
fall in love with his brother is psychopathic behavior
that should probably see you
ending up in a courtroom.
The film
that first made me realize
that the genre had lost its way wasFailure to Launch.
It's about a guy
who is too old to be living
with his parents,
but he's still living
with his parents.
Unhappy
with this domestic situation,
they employ Paula,
who is an expert
in making adult children
fly the nest.
Based on the initial
personality assessment,
I think that I can have your son
moved out of this house
and living on his own
by June 15th.
Ah!
Hallelujah.
The most dubious part
of the film, for me,
is that,
while Paula is still in the the employ of Tripp's parents,
she has sex with him.
Paula?
Wow. Early risers.
Hey, listen, FYI, workwise,
we're definitely on track.
Things are good. Tripp is good.
Well, actually, he's fantastic.
Of course,
I don't need to tell you that.
You're his parents.
I'm just, uh...
Just trying to say
you should be very proud of him.
Well...
You've got a lovely home.
She betrays him.
And yet,
they still end up together.
Idealizing any relationship that starts with one person
having immense power
and control over the other,
that's not a good place
to start from.
Fundamentally,
one person has been paid
to spend time with the other
and has had
a particular motive,
and it can't help
but be curdled by that.
I never found Failure to Launch romantic or aspirational.
But one part of it
did stay with me,
the way Paula changed
who she was
in order to secure her man.
How do you make sure that
he'll fall in love with you?
You look nice,
you find out what they like,
and then you pretend
to like it too.
That is pretty much
how it works.
This idea
that a woman is appealing
to a man if her behavior
resembles his...
Yeah.
Is common to many of the romantic comedies that influenced me.
And consequently, I spent much of my 20s trying to conform
to what I now recognize
were unachievable ideals.
She somehow can still
have a magically perfect body
despite eating
whatever she wants
like Sandra Bullock
inMiss Congeniality.
Sandra Bullock did a lot
of overeating on film.
Not even overeating,
just eating,
and not talking
about her diets.
But it isn't
just food.
The Generation X
rom-com heroine
loves everything
that a man loves.
InThere's Something
About Mary,
Mary is the beer-swigging,
sports-loving,
physical embodiment
of the ultimate cool girl.
When a guy can play 36 holes
and still have enough energy
to take me and Warren to
a ball game, and eat hotdogs.
I'm talking sausage
hotdogs, beer.
Not light beer, but beer.
That's my ad. Print it up.
Watching this,
I saw how attractive Mary was
to every man she met
to the extent that she has
to take legal action.
Woogie, you know you're not supposed to be within 400 yards of me.
Let's not forget here.
You put me through
a lot of bullshit, okay?
I had to change my name.
I had to go to court. I moved.
I mean,
you stole all of my shoes.
She sounds like an embodiment of a writer's desire
'cause all of that
is about how she's seen
rather than anything that's coming, like, internally
from her own desire.
Women just conform to certain forms of male behavior,
and they are "chill"
and they're willing
to sublimate themselves
and adopt male characteristics
in order to get along
better with men.
It's this thing of, like,
women having to be effortless.
It's like how women
always wake up
with, like, perfect
makeup in films.
How come you always look
so great in the morning?
Do I?
They started making jokes about it now,
but even then,
you're like, "Yeah,
but you do actually look a bit too nice."
Oh, I was having a nightmare.
I was so scared.
Oh.
You look beautiful.
Oh, no,
I'm sure I look terrible.
I just woke up. Are you kidding?
I'm sure I'm a mess.
As a young woman,
one of my favorite rom-com
heroines was journalist Andy
inHow to Lose
a Guy in 10 Days.
She's naturally cool.
She loves sports,
fast food,
and, of course, beer.
But for a magazine article, she has to drive her man away.
So she forces herself
to become the type of woman
she knows men hate.
Consequently, I saw how unappealing men find women
who are not "cool."
I did something kind of wacky.
- Huh?
- Yes.
I used Photoshop at work today
to composite our faces together
to see what our kids
would look like.
"Our Family Album!"
She's emotionally needy.
You don't wanna see
our children?
She asks him
to share her interests.
And she takes care of him
in front of his friends.
Blow.
Nobody likes a Mr. Sniffles.
I hate Mr. Sniffles.
Ultimately though,
Andy's natural coolness shines through,
and is what lands her her man.
So I thought that if I could be more easy-going and uncomplicated,
then I'd have
more success with men.
Women are
often taught growing up
that you're there to, like,
ease social situations
and to make people
feel comfortable
and not to make a fuss.
But it's actually not just coolness that makes a woman attractive.
It's her willingness
to play the part of the muse.
They're there
to inspire and facilitate
the greatness of
their male counterparts
rather than to have that
within themselves.
For example,
Sam inGarden State.
The scene
where she's like,
"Sometimes, I like
to make a noise
"that no one's ever
made before."
And then they make these kind of squeaky, kooky noises.
Like, this is supposed to be the character trait
that makes you think that she's this really extraordinary person.
She's got no agency,
or desire, or humanity
beyond being a mirror
to reflect him
and to allow him
to find himself.
Even500 Days
of Summer,
which was marketed as
a subversion of the genre
because of its unusual
storytelling devices.
And the scene in which
the leading man performs
a post-coital dance routine,
still presents its female lead, Summer, in a troubling way.
We're introduced
to her riding on a bike.
And are told
her height, weight,
and her uncontrollable
effect on men.
In 1998,
Summer quoted a song
by the Scottish band,
Belle and Sebastian,
in her high school yearbook.
The spike in Michigan sales of their album,
The Boy with the Arab Strap,
continues to puzzle
industry analysts.
Summer's employment at The Daily Freeze during her sophomore year
coincided with an inexplicable 212 % increase in revenue.
And her round-trip
commute to work
averaged 18.4 double-takes
per day.
Looking back,
I didn't realize that someone
was being objectified
because she's shown
through a lens of indieness.
"I am being different because I'm this, like,
skinny white dude."
But really, it's like,
"Well, you're still
treating them the same way."
Even though they're
not in a bikini,
you're still using the same, basically,
misogynistic tropes.
Why is it pretty girls think
they can treat people like crap
and get away with it?
Centuries of reinforcement.
I rewatched
500 Days of Summer recently
and was struck by the title card that opens the film.
On the whole, romantic comedies of this era led me to believe
that my main priority
was to find a man
and make him happy.
Women aren't
supposed to be hungry
for anything except love.
Overeating, sleeping around,
or overworking
are all ways to fill a void
that's been left
by not having a relationship.
Which, of course, is...
We all know is true, right?
Tell me, when is the last time
that you went on
a real live date?
I'm concentrating
on my career right now.
Do you own
any colored underwear,
stripes or anything?
There are still
these very archaic rules
about who's allowed what.
If you want sex, that means you don't get love.
I don't think
I've ever watched a rom-com
and related
to the main character
and been like,
"Oh, but you know,
"we totally share
the same views about sex."
You think of, like, Ashley Judd inSomeone Like You,
blowing the dust
off her diaphragm.
Why was it stored somewhere
that it was getting so dusty?
Like, where has it been?
And also, are you...
You're not gonna wash that off?
Like, are we not
gonna talk about that?
Women are very
rarely sexy in sex scenes.
There's always,
like, a guy on top,
and they're, like, trying
to coax something out of him.
For films that are effectively about the ultimate goal
being romantic satisfaction
and happiness,
it's never about
sexual satisfaction.
Because if someone's
sexually satisfied,
it means that they're a slut.
That selfish whore.
We're sluts, Emma.
We're dirty, dirty sluts.
Barfing, fucking, screwing,
the great days of nobody's fool.
Why don't you start taking cash
for your services?
It would be more honest.
That girl is a slut.
She completely trapped that guy.
InWhat's Your Number?,
a woman who's slept with 19 men
reads an article that tells her that women who have slept
with more than 20 men
won't get married.
I see it in my practice
all the time.
When you're too
sexually available,
it messes with your self-esteem.
Next thing you know, you're 45,
no self-respect, no husband,
and no muscle tone
in your pelvic floor.
She treats
this as gospel
and decides to marry
the next man she sleeps with.
The next guy who vacations
at Casa Esperanza
is going to be my husband.
It means that
you're damaged goods,
that you're this object
that someone wants,
and your premium is much higher if you're untainted.
A man is supposed
to be attracted to a woman
who can be fully owned by him. It's really gross.
The romantic comedies
I watched didn't expect me
to be concerned
with my own sexual desire.
In them,
women are there to make their partner feel good about himself
and his prowess.
The Sweetest Thing,
written by Nancy Pimental,
attempts to skewer
this ridiculous trope.
What do we always tell them
no matter what?
Oh.
"Oh, my God. Your penis
is so... Big."
Good girl.
They sing
this weird goofy song
that I'm just gonna call,
"The Penis Song."
You're too big to fit in here.
Too big to fit in here. Ow!
Too big to fit in here.
♪ You're too big
to fit in here
♪ Too big to fit in here
♪ Too big to fit in here
- Oh, my God.
- Oh, my God, it's fame.
Everyone in the restaurant is, like,
immediately on board.
No one's like,
"Who are these annoying women ruining our lunch?"
Then there's this old woman that's completely stealing the scene.
Scene stealer!
♪ Your penis is a Cadillac
♪ A giant Coupe de Ville
♪ Your penis packs a wallop
♪ Your penis brings a load
♪ And when it makes delivery
♪ It needs its own zip code
Okay, it's pulling
me round now.
♪ You're too big to fit in here
♪ Too big to fit in here
♪ Too big to fit in here
♪ Your penis is so strong
It's my feeling that the films influence me and my behavior.
But for every rom-com queen
there must be a king.
So, how do the men
in the films behave?
♪ It's oozy and it's green
Ew!
People don't
really talk about the men
in romantic comedies too much.
When I watch
these films now,
I'm always taken aback
at how aggressive
the men are in the way
that they pursue women.
- I said no.
- No?
- No.
- Why not?
Because I don't wanna go
have a drink with you.
I wanna go home.
Is that so hard to understand?
Hey. Hey. Hey.
What's going on?
Are you mad or something?
Go on, say it. You know what,
no matter what it is,
we're gonna work it out.
Hal, I'm not attracted to you.
So what?
InThe Last Kiss,
Zach Braff plays a man living with his pregnant girlfriend.
Finding himself
unable to commit,
he begins an affair
with a college student.
You make me feel
ten years younger.
Ten years?
Then I'm seducing a younger man.
Excellent.
You're trying to make me
lose my mind, aren't you?
I've already lost mine.
When his girlfriend
finds out, she's devastated,
and kicks him out of the house.
Who is she?
- What are you talking about?
- I want to know who she is.
Who were you with, Michael?
This girl I met. It was nothing.
It was nothing.
Oh, God! You make me sick!
But it didn't mean
anything, baby.
She made me realize I want to spend the rest of my life with you.
- I know that now.
- I'm three months pregnant
and you're already out
trying to fuck other women!
- Jenna.
- Get out right now.
I'll tell you when you
can come back and get your shit.
- Maybe Kimmy can help you pack.
- Jenna, we're having a baby.
Get out of here!
Go back to fucking Kim!
What, are you gonna
fucking stab me, Jenna?
- Get out!
- Are you out of your fucking mind?
- Get the fuck out of here!
- Are you out of your fucking mind?
- Get the fuck out!
- Fuck you! Fuck you!
He asks
her father for advice,
who tells him that he should try and win back the daughter.
I will do anything in the world
to get your daughter back.
Well, it's very simple.
Just do whatever it takes.
So he camps out
on her porch for days,
waiting for her to forgive him.
I really worry about where he was going to the toilet,
for the three days that he was lying,
not moving, on the porch.
It's horrible.
Can you imagine if your partner was lying outside
shitting themselves
for three days
bullying you into
you taking them back.
In real life, I hope
that this kind of behavior
wouldn't end in reconciliation.
But in the film,
it's successful.
And there are
many more examples
of men exhibiting aggressive
and controlling behavior
in romantic comedies.
The tenacious man is an incredibly harmful portrayal of men to watch.
It goes against
every idea of consent,
and that you should respect
women's boundaries.
It says, "If you just do
this inappropriate thing,
"or stalk her a little bit more or catfish her,
"then one day
she might fall for you."
People talk about
romantic comedies
giving women a lot of unrealistic expectations about relationships,
but I think they give men, perhaps,
some even more damaging ones.
Rob?
Laura, I just want
to say something.
I think you're running.
And... And he doesn't love you.
And he doesn't understand you, not the way I will.
And I will even more so
in the future.
I like you, Tom,
I just don't want a relation...
Well, you're not the only one
that gets a say in this!
I do, too. And I say
we're a couple, God damn it!
I don't love you anymore.
No, I...
I refuse to accept that.
Izzy, go home!
♪ You always got to walk away
♪ You never gave
those girls a chance
♪ I've been where they are now
♪ I've done the little things
♪ Some might think
It's easy to see
♪ Your love will change
Into lies
♪ But you're so good
at playing the nice guy
♪ And you tell them
That you're a nice guy
♪ How do you sleep?
♪ Is there thunder
Over your bed?
♪ Does it go round
And round your head?
♪ What you did
♪ How do you sleep?
♪ Do you wait up for a call?
♪ To say it didn't
Matter at all
♪ But it did
♪ And you know what you did
♪ And they know what you did
♪ And we're gonna know
♪ What you did
While I might claim
that romantic comedies negatively influenced my behavior,
at least I saw elements
of myself reflected in them.
This isn't the case
for everyone.
In the majority of
mainstream romantic comedies,
there's a disturbing
lack of any characters
who aren't white, heterosexual,
or middle-class.
It's insane
that there isn't, like,
a really popular, funny rom-com
about an interracial couple.
Isn't that crazy?
The only interracial
couple I can think of is,
and he doesn't even speak,
I don't think, hardly,
inLove Actually,
Keira Knightley's husband is black.
But then all the focus
is on her white stalker.
It's kind of
interesting to think about
romantic comedies
as a brown woman,
because so many of
the mainstream Hollywood ones
that I watched
were about white women.
It can feel jarring
or distancing
because you can see
a tiny element of yourself.
But it's also not you.
It's not your world.
And it can be quite
a weird experience to watch.
Studio
executives assume
that white audiences won't "relate" to films that have got black leads in,
which is obviously
a racist assumption.
And what about the women watching mainstream romantic comedies
who don't resemble the very specific Hollywood ideal?
The only images I see
of someone who looks like me
in films are "Before" pictures,
and then a woman goes on
to, like, hate herself
or lose weight
and then be happy.
- You look fabulous.
- Thank you.
Look at you. What did you do?
Is it your hair? What is it?
It's my hair,
and I have a little sun.
- It's...
- She lost 60 pounds.
And... And I lost
a little weight.
- I see that. Yeah.
- Yeah?
- You look terrific.
- Thank you.
- Sixty pounds?
- Yeah.
- That's a Backstreet Boy.
- Right?
Or I see
the sassy best friend
who never has any kind
of romantic potential.
I'm doing the Dr. Riverbed fast.
- Oh, yeah!
- Yeah!
What is that?
Water, peach resin,
apple pectin, shark extract,
and Lawry's seasoning salt.
What about food?
Look, I'm going to look
amazing in that dress,
I'm going to meet
a Scottish man...
And I'm
gonna be happy!
It's kind of
this moral imperative
for women to be thin.
Because thinness
is linked to success,
and is linked to fuck-ableness,
and is linked to whether or not that person is lovable
and worthy to care about.
Being loved means
caring about being thin.
What are you doing?
You're hurting her.
I'm helping her.
I did it to myself for years.
She can take it.
There it is.
Good job.
Good job.
Why would you ever
do that to yourself?
I wanted to be beautiful.
We don't see anything but exactly what has been taught
is, "normal and digestible."
And anything that, probably,
our parents were told to subscribe to
and our grandparents were told to subscribe to, etc. Etc.
When I sawIn & Out,
it was really affirming.
- You know what you need?
- I need a wedding!
Again, looking back
on it, all the stereotypes...
- You're an English teacher.
- Exactly.
I mean, all this poetry,
and odes, and bonnets...
Sonnets?
And you're kind of prissy.
Prissy?
All the weird tropes...
- Uncut.
- Funny Girl!
...that now as an
adult gay man, like,
I'm not that into.
If you see gay men,
they have only one purpose,
and that is to make
the main character
look like they have dimension.
Which is the whole purpose of Rupert
Everett in My Best Friend's Wedding.
♪ While combing my hair now
♪ While wondering
What dress to wear now
♪ I say a little prayer
for you ♪
She calls him when he's in the middle of important stuff.
And it's not about
her being selfish,
it's about
he's at her beck and call.
George,
answer this, damn it!
I'm in a meltdown here.
She double-crossed me!
The little twerp
double-crossed me.
I'm running out of time.
I'm completely out
of sneaky ideas.
I've come to the end
of my rapidly fraying rope.
George, you have got
to think of something!
Even when
romantic comedies
do show gay characters
in fulfilling relationships,
it's always within
a heteronormative framing.
And it's often tinged
with tragedy,
as we see inFour Weddings
and a Funeral.
Gareth used to prefer
funerals to weddings.
He said it was easier
to get enthusiastic
about a ceremony
one had an outside chance
of eventually being involved in.
As ever, the problem
with these things
is that these bits
of representation
are being driven by people
with no real experience
or familiarity
with the thing
they're trying to represent.
I'm sure plenty
of people in Hollywood
have a gay acquaintance
that they might see in this
sort of stereotypical way,
because they don't see the full magnitude of their personhood.
They only see a very specific
version of the person.
- What the hell was that?
- I'm showing you the magic.
No, I said come 90
and then I come ten.
My mouth was open, Albert!
You overeager son of a...
Blecch!
- Oh, excuse me.
- Yeah.
Are you running
this whole thing?
Oh, sure.
Walk up to
the first homo you see
and assume he's the wedding coordinator.
Right? Nice.
No, no, I didn't mean that.
Nice stereotype, buddy. Nice.
Did I hear someone say,
"Wedding coordinator?"
That would be moi.
So, how can I help you?
- These aren't my clothes.
- Well, where are your clothes?
I've lost my clothes.
Well, why are you
wearing these clothes?
Because I just went gay,
all of a sudden.
Why don't you just go
to a gay bar?
At this point,
it would be wonderful to talk about the portrayal
of gay women
and bisexuals in the films,
and of trans people.
But I can't.
Because they almost never appear in mainstream Hollywood rom-coms.
And the films also rarely show people with disabilities,
or people from
lower-income backgrounds.
Nobody is a drop out.
Everyone has post-secondary
education.
Everybody lives in neighborhoods that are "good."
You have these characters
who have, like, dead-end jobs,
but seem to live
very, very stable lives.
Even if their job is, like,
getting fired from being
a waiter in the first act.
But then again, you know,
it was the '90s.
I'm never gonna find
another part-time job,
and then I'm not gonna be
able to pay my rent,
and I'm gonna have to move.
To Brooklyn!
Ah, the joy of rent control.
Six rooms, $450 a month.
Perhaps the reason for this skewed or narrow representation
is because of the demographics of the people
in power behind the camera.
It's that, overwhelmingly,
there's a certain type of person whose perspective we hear,
like people coming from
a certain background
or certain experience.
There isn't a space
for enough challenge,
coming from different writers
and different directors.
Men are the people
that are in power,
like you always have
male producers
or male heads of studios,
and usually male directors.
For all
the Hollywood liberalism,
all the guys that are making
these decisions,
are the same 60-year-old
white dudes.
It could be Wall Street.
You're not here to love anybody.
You're here to promote a movie.
That's it. Period.
I've worked in film
and I've seen how it works
behind the scenes.
It's about money,
and it's about what the industry thinks people want to see,
which is never what people
actually want to see.
Gay people, black people, women,
are all capable of making good movies.
So what's the hang-up?
And I don't have anything
against straight white guys,
but to say that it isn't disproportionately in their favor is ludicrous.
Now, as an adult,
in a happy,
balanced relationship,
I can clearly see
the negative aspects
of so many romantic comedies
I once loved.
And yet, I still find myself
watching these films.
And I'm moved by them,
despite their flaws.
It's wonderful
watching people fall in love.
Like, it's very uplifting.
It's a thrill,
it's a fantasy,
it's like something
that you're experiencing
for a cinematic emotion.
And not because you
necessarily condone or agree
with everything that's
happening on the screen.
Disneyland
of the heart or something.
You wouldn't want
to go there all the time,
it's not something
you would want for yourself,
but it's not an unpleasant
fantasy to entertain.
You're given all the little tiny,
bubbly feelings
of what it would be like
to be in love.
But it's never treacherous.
They resonate because,
even if the circumstances in them are completely ludicrous,
there are moments of real humanity written into them.
It's the watching someone ride off into the sunset,
isn't it?
You only imagine something beautiful is going to happen,
but you don't know
what it is.
Romantic comedies tap
into universal human desire.
We all want to be loved.
Maybe we want that
for a lifetime.
But maybe we only want that
for one night.
Either way, the desire for that connection is always there.
The films have a very simple way of showing this.
They present the love interests as two parts of one whole.
Plato tells us we began
as circles.
And when we strived
to be like the gods,
we were punished by a thunderbolt that struck us,
and cut us right down,
dead-center, in half.
And we scattered
to the ends of the earth,
searching and searching
for our other half.
Or to put it
another way...
You...
Complete me.
For me, the pinnacle
of romantic comedies
is Nora Ephron's
When Harry Met Sally.
And this masterpiece
wholeheartedly embraces
the idea that the two lovers
should be opposites,
who unite and complete
each other.
Harry is doomy
and full of cynicism,
which is in stark contrast
to Sally's upbeat,
positive persona.
- Yes, basically I'm a happy person.
- So am I.
And I don't see that there's
anything wrong with that.
Of course not.
You're too busy being happy.
Do you ever think about death?
- Yes.
- Sure you do.
A fleeting thought that's just in and out of the transom of your mind.
I spend hours. I spend days.
And you think this makes you
a better person?
Well, when the shit comes down,
I'm gonna be prepared
and you're not,
- that's all I'm saying.
- In the meantime,
you're gonna ruin
your whole life waiting for it.
At first,
their differences drive them apart.
But then, as they grow older
and move through the world,
they're faced with challenges.
You're not with Joe anymore?
We just broke up.
Aww.
I'm sorry. That's too bad.
Yeah. Well, you know...
Yeah.
So...
- What about you?
- I'm fine.
How's married life?
Not so good.
I am getting a divorce.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm really sorry.
Yeah, well,
what're you gonna do?
Gradually,
through sharing
their contrasting worldviews
with each other,
they begin to make sense
of themselves,
and their lives.
Harry, you're gonna
have to try and find a way
of not expressing
every feeling that you have,
every moment that you have them.
Oh, really?
Yes.
There are times and places
for things.
Well, the next time you're giving a lecture series on social graces,
would you let me know?
'Cause I'll sign up.
Hey.
You don't have to take
your anger out on me.
Oh, I think I'm entitled to throw a little anger your way.
Especially when I'm being
told how to live my life
by Miss Hospital Corners.
What's that supposed to mean?
I mean, nothing bothers you.
You never get upset
about anything.
Don't be ridiculous.
What?
You never get upset about Joe.
I never see that back up on you.
How is that possible?
Don't you experience
any feelings of loss?
I don't have to take
this crap from you.
If you're so over Joe,
why aren't you seeing anyone?
I see people.
See people. Have you slept
with one person
since you broke up with Joe?
What the hell does that
have to do with anything?
That will prove I'm over Joe,
because I fuck somebody?
Harry, you're gonna have
to move back to New Jersey
because you've slept
with everybody in New York,
and I don't see that
turning Helen
into a faint memory for you.
Besides, I will make love to somebody when it is making love.
Not the way you do it,
like you're out for revenge or something.
Are you finished now?
Yes.
Can I say something?
Yes.
I'm sorry.
Ultimately,
it's their differences
which make them an ideal fit.
This is a pattern
we see repeatedly.
Sometimes, it's mundane.
InStranger Than Fiction,
an uptight IRS man
falls in love
with the rebellious,
tattooed pastry chef,
he's supposed to be auditing.
Mr. Crick.
Yes, what is it?
You're staring at my tits.
Uh, I what?
I don't think I was.
I don't think I would do that.
If I was, I can assure you,
it was only as a representative
of the United States government.
But sometimes,
it's more metaphorical.
InSplash, a man
afraid of the sea...
Then you wouldn't
want me to do this.
Stop! God, no. Please.
Falls in love
with a mermaid.
This way of seeing romantic connection is incredibly satisfying,
and emotionally overwhelming.
In fact, so powerful is
this way of portraying lovers
as two opposites attracting
to complete each other,
that it's existed since
at least the 17th century.
Shakespeare used it
inMuch Ado About Nothing.
I wonder that you will still
be talking, SignorBenedick.
- Nobody marks you.
- What?
My dear Lady Disdain!
Are you yet living?
Is it possible disdain
should die
while she hath such meet food
to feed it as SignorBenedick?
I do love nothing in the world
so well as you.
Is not that strange?
As strange as the thing
I know not.
It were as possible
for me to say
I love nothing so well as you.
We also see this in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice,
where the relaxed and unconventional Elizabeth Bennet
is the perfect match for the highly reserved Mr.
Darcy.
I wonder who first discovered
the power of poetry
in driving away love.
I thought that poetry
was the food of love.
Of a fine stout love, it may.
But if it is only
a vague inclination,
I'm convinced one poor sonnet
will kill it stone dead.
So, what do you recommend
to encourage affection?
Dancing.
Even if one's partner
is barely tolerable.
His anguished declaration of love is so successful
in eliciting an emotional
response in audiences,
that it's become a trope,
used over and over again
in romantic comedies.
I've fought against
my better judgement,
my family's expectation,
the inferiority of your birth,
my rank and circumstance...
All these things that I am
willing to put them aside
and ask you to end my agony.
- I don't understand.
- I love you.
Most ardently.
Please do me the honor
of accepting my hand.
It's always one
of the most human
and relatable moments
in the films.
People convey those
kinds of thoughts piecemeal
over the course
of a relationship.
I don't mind
the cinematic license
of presenting them
in aggregate.
You become more wordy
in moments of crisis.
Of course,
I've performed speeches of love for guys,
I'm an actress. Everything
is a movie to me.
Someone has formed
a declaration of love for me,
but they didn't say
any of the things
that I needed them to say.
It was awful.
I've done them in airports, in a supermarket.
Like, you just say it to each other in a mundane setting.
You can hear yourself.
And it's like, "Wow.
"If anybody else hears me right now,
can they actually just kill me?"
Because I would wanna
kill myself.
He said stuff like, "If we had met on a dating app,
"we would have matched."
And that we had
sparkling banter.
They must have been,
"Yo, like she's insane."
They must've done!
They must have just been like, "Why does she think
"that she's in
a Disney film right now?"
They must have done!
Do you wanna know the real
reason why I came here tonight?
I closed my world off.
I put myself in a little box.
It was all my fault. I mean...
I'm the bastard here.
I'm immature, I'm unthoughtful,
I'm a friggin' idiot.
I'm a liar and a phoney.
A saxophone player.
But something's happened to me
since I've...
Met you and...
I'm happiest
when I'm being myself.
And I'm myself
when I'm with you.
So...
I thought that I would come here
and tell you something.
I like you.
I like you.
I want you.
I love you.
I love you.
I'm totally, completely
in love with you,
and I don't care
if you think it's too late,
I'm telling you anyway.
I'm crazy about you.
I think about you all the time.
And I want to spend the rest
of my life with you.
'Cause like you said,
"This is it."
"This is life."
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.
And don't forget,
I'm also just a girl
standing in front of a boy,
asking him to love her.
♪ There's always been
Something about her
♪ But tonight's the night
You see her clearly
♪ As she pours you a glass
♪ Everything you thought
You knew is shifting
♪ And you're so scared
It shows
♪ And this woman's in love
♪ This woman's in love
This woman's in love
♪ With you
♪ Yeah, this woman's in love
♪ This woman's in love
This woman's in love
♪ With you
♪ And all the time you waited
♪ She was waiting too
♪ You can't believe
You found her
♪ And you can't believe
♪ That she's in love
She's in love
♪ She's in love with you
♪ In love with you
♪ She's in love with you
♪ She's in love
♪ She's in love
Recently,
I've noticed a spate of films
that, while not marked
as romantic comedies,
will exploit, enlist,
or twist the structures and tropes of the rom-com
to their own ends.
They employ many of
the same time-honored tricks
as the traditional rom-com,
and fall into some
of the same traps.
I need a taxi. I got to get
to the airport right now.
I gotta stop someone
from getting married.
Flight leaves in... Oh.
I got like four hours.
The Break-Up attempts to subvert the rom-com narrative
by, as the title might suggest,
refusing to give its protagonists a happy ending.
You think that I nag you?
That's all you do!
All you do is nag me.
"The bathroom's a mess.
"Your belt doesn't match.
"Hey, Gary, you should
probably go work out."
Nothing I ever do
is ever good enough.
I just want to be left
the hell alone!
- Is that what you want?
- Yeah.
- That's what you want?
- Yeah.
Fine. Great. Do whatever
the hell you want.
You leave your socks
all over this house.
Dress like a pig.
Play your stupid ass video game,
I don't care. I'm done.
- What?
- I am done.
I don't deserve this.
I really do not deserve this.
I deserve somebody
who gives a shit.
I'm not spending
one more second of this life
with some inconsiderate prick.
You're a prick!
A far more
interesting twist
comes from 2012'sRuby Sparks,
written by Zoe Kazan.
This rom-com plays
with the genre's conventions.
And directly confronts the insidious "cool girl" trope
and the power of the male writers who indulge it.
A novelist describes his ideal woman in his new book
and is stunned when one day she appears in his house.
I missed you in bed last night.
Did you get some
good writing done?
He falls
in love with her.
And resolves not to write
about her again,
as he wants her
to be her own person.
However, when she begins to seek a life outside their relationship,
he feels insecure.
- I'm so lonely.
- No.
Don't say that. Please.
I think I should start spending some nights at my apartment again.
He starts
writing about her again,
so he can control
her behavior.
First, he makes her
completely obsessed with him.
And crushes her desire
for independence.
Then he makes her
unrelentingly happy.
Eventually, we are
shown how disturbing it is
to have a female character whose every thought and action
is driven solely
by the male creator.
If this is how
you think about people,
then you are in for a long,
lonely, fucked-up life.
Do you hear me?
Calvin.
Less radical than Kazan's offering isI Love You, Man,
a film which is a rom-com
in every aspect but one.
Our soulmates are platonic
friends instead of lovers.
Sydney, I'm really sorry
for all the stuff that I said.
Pete, you called me
on a lot of my issues.
I appreciate it.
I'm really glad
you're here, Sydney.
Me, too.
I love you, man.
I love you too, bud.
- I love you, dude.
- I love you, Bro Montana.
I love you, homes.
I love you, Broseph Goebbels.
- I love you, muchacha.
- I love you, Tycho Brohe.
Okay.
In 2013, The Heat
did something similar.
It's a rom-com dressed up
as a buddy movie.
This time between
two female cops.
The uptight loner Ashburn,
played by Sandra Bullock,
and Melissa McCarthy's
loose cannon, Mullins.
- Ashburn.
- Hey, it's me.
Hey.
So, uh, did you get
that package I sent over?
Oh, God, I haven't even
opened it yet. I'm sorry.
I signed it. On the front.
Okay, I see it.
That's very funny.
I know.
I'm just kidding.
Just look at the...
Look at the back.
Well...
Don't make it weird.
Later, nerd.
Takes a nerd to know a nerd.
The success
of these bromances
and womances,
proves that the power
of the rom-com
is strong enough to survive
being transplanted
into buddy movies.
Yes!
Other film-makers
employ the same structure
as traditional rom-coms,
but disguise it.
There's a number of reasons
they might want to do this.
Foremost among them,
the sad fact that marketing a film as a romantic comedy
is a quick route
to critical disdain.
Perhaps, because
so many of the people
who are reviewing
these films are men.
A film-maker hoping to be
awarded accolades and acclaim
would do better if they presented their romantic comedy
as something else.
David O. Russell used
some romantic comedy tropes
inSilver Linings Playbook.
The screwball dialogue.
So how's your thing going?
The dancing thing?
It's good. How's your
restraining order?
The declaration of love.
I love you.
I knew it
the minute I met you.
I'm sorry it took so long
for me to catch up.
I just got stuck.
And the happy ending.
But the film avoided the cloud of critical distain
that surrounds the genre
because it's tonally
much darker
than the romantic comedies
I grew up watching.
Instead of being clumsy,
its characters dealt
with real problems
like suicide and depression.
Silver Linings Playbook
was billed as a comedy drama,
not a romantic comedy,
and was Oscar-nominated
across the board.
Other secret rom-coms might be even more critically acclaimed.
2016'sLa La Land employs all the beats of a romantic comedy.
But likeThe Break-Up,
it skips the happy ending.
It's important to note
that although these films use
the structure of romantic
comedies to great effect,
eliciting powerful emotions,
they yet again only show us straight, white,
middle-class relationships.
Earlier, I said that there was a lack of romantic comedies
with people of color
as the leads,
or mixed-race couples,
or queer relationships.
But this isn't strictly true.
Many examples
of those films do exist.
It's just that as
a white, straight woman
who is heavily catered for by mainstream romantic comedies,
I never went looking for them.
And because of that,
I missed out on this moment
from 2001's
Kissing Jessica Stein.
I didn't see a blond Zack Braff
and Justin Theroux
in the queer rom-com,
The Broken Hearts Club.
Or the sweet perfection
of 2010'sJust Wright.
I'd never seen Stella
getting her groove back.
And I'd also never watched
Alice Wu'sSaving Face
about a Chinese-American
surgeon
who falls madly in love
with a ballet dancer.
Despite not being represented
in terms of race or sexuality
by these films,
I love them just as much as I love
While You Were Sleeping,
orWhen Harry Met Sally.
Because romantic comedies aren't about race or gender or sexuality,
they're about human connection.
I realize now why I'm obsessed with romantic comedies,
it's so simple.
They show people
falling in love
and when anyone watches
any two people fall in love,
we see nothing
but their humanity.
My favorite film
of recent times
is 2017's critically-lauded
God's Own Country.
The love story is structurally a romantic comedy,
but instead of watching a straight middle-class couple
falling over each other
in a New York office,
we have a struggling
Yorkshire farmer
falling for a Romanian
migrant worker.
They call you Georgie
or summat?
- Gheorghe.
- Whatever. Get in.
It's got all the beats
of a Nora Ephron classic.
Two young people meet
and find themselves clashing
over their differences.
I'm from Romania.
Gypsy.
Please don't call me that.
However, they're forced
to share experiences
and in doing so,
they're drawn together.
Fuck.
If you leave it, it will
get infected with disease.
Eventually, they realized
they complete each other.
I was thinking.
I can stay a little longer.
After circumstances
force them apart,
there's no option but to make an anguished declaration of love.
I'm trying to do this.
Don't you see, I'm...
I'm trying to sort it out.
And I've come
all this way up here,
on a coach and everything.
And I want you to come back...
With me.
And I want us to be together.
I don't want to be
a fuck-up anymore.
No, leave me. I'm fine.
I want to be with you,
and that's what I needed to say.
And the rom-com
closes in the traditional way
giving the audience the ultimate satisfying ending,
a kiss between the two lovers.
God's Own country isn't
considered a romantic comedy,
which, while understandable,
is perhaps a shame
because it left me with all of the uplifting feelings of elation and romance
that I get from re-watching
Sleepless in Seattle
for the 35th time.
Another film I loved from the same year asGod's Own Country
isThe Big Sick,
which is based on
a real-life relationship
between writers Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani.
What were you
like in high school?
They called me chashmullee.
What is that?
It roughly translates
to "dweeb."
I'll show you a picture.
Of you in high school?
Oh, my God.
- Boom.
- No.
And I'm thinking,
"I'm killing it right now."
What inspired this haircut?
Hugh Grant.
- No.
- Yeah.
The film was
critically acclaimed,
Oscar-nominated,
and most importantly,
a romantic comedy
that sticked
to the traditional formula.
But unlike the films
that I grew up watching,
its characters are complex
and fleshed out.
I was going to tell you
about that.
These are women in Pakistan
who wanna marry you?
They're not in Pakistan.
You've met these women?
Just with my parents and stuff,
we haven't like...
But you're not serious
about this, are you?
It's my mom's thing,
I just go along with it.
So what does your mom think
about you and me then?
She doesn't know
about me, does she?
No.
They're not from
high-income backgrounds.
So are you ever gonna
let me sit in the front seat?
No, I'm a professional,
and you're paying for this ride.
I don't wanna pay for this ride,
it's surging right now.
And they deal
with real problems.
In the future, I hope
film-makers will continue
to use the power of rom-coms
to put different types
of relationships
in front of the camera.
I hope studios will realize
that there's a hunger
for these films.
And that they'll reach a mainstream Hollywood audience.
Because love
doesn't only happen
to white, straight,
middle-class people.
And it doesn't have
to end with a wedding.
And it doesn't always
last forever.
Are you breaking up with me?
But it is
wonderful to watch.
♪ There were never
Any fireworks
♪ You never fell in love
At first sight
♪ I never wanted
♪ Never wanted a normal life
♪ I wasn't waiting for you
♪ And I know you weren't
Waiting for me
♪ If we'd never met
It wouldn't bother
♪ Wouldn't bother me
♪ But it feels
♪ All right
♪ I don't like you
All the time
♪ None of my friends thought
This would work
♪ And if you walked away now
Walked away now
♪ It wouldn't hurt
♪ Who knows where
We'll be next year
♪ You never want
To make plans
♪ But if I'm honest
Yeah, I'm honest
♪ I want you around
♪ 'Cause it feels
♪ All right
♪ I wasn't made for you
♪ You weren't made for me
♪ But when I wake up
When I wake up
♪ You're next to me
♪ And it feels
♪ All right
♪ And yes it feels
♪ All right
♪ Yes, it feels
♪ All right
♪ Because it feels
♪ All right
♪ Feels all right
♪ Feels all right
♪ Feels all right
♪ Feels all right
♪ Feels all right
♪ Feels all right
♪ Feels all right
♪ I still remember
♪ When you called my name
♪ These feelings I had
♪ When you felt the same
♪ I still remember
♪ There was light in my day
♪ I fell into love
♪ Now it all falls away
♪ If you are
The love of my life
♪ How can I breathe, how can I?
♪ How can I live, how can I?
♪ How can I go on without you?
♪ If you are
The love of my life
♪ How do I dream, how do I?
♪ How do I plan, how do I?
♪ How do I laugh without you?
♪ I always wondered
♪ How it could have been
♪ If those days that we spent
♪ Weren't just memories
♪ I always wondered
♪ If there was more to say
♪ I had it so good
♪ But I let it slip away
♪ If you are
The love of my life
♪ If you are
The love of my life
♪ How can I breathe, how can I?
♪ How can I live, how can I?
♪ How can I go on without you?
♪ If you are
The love of my life
♪ How do I dream, how do I?
♪ How do I plan, how do I?
♪ How do I laugh without you?
♪ I knew deep down
I'd only get one shot
♪ Our story only ever
Had one plot
♪ You'd better learn
To treasure what you've got
♪ Take it, take it from me
♪ Take it, take it from me
♪ It goes away
And it was never enough
♪ Get so used to it
And then then it stops
♪ So lock your heart away
In a little box
♪ Take it, take it from me
♪ Take it, take it from me
♪ How can I breathe, how can I?
♪ How can I live, how can I?
♪ How can I go on without you?
♪ How do I dream, how do I?
♪ How do I plan, how do I?
♪ How do I laugh without you?
♪ If you are
The love of my life
♪ If you are
The love of my life
♪ If you are
The love of my life
♪ If you are
The love of my life
♪ How do I laugh without you?
this is how
I pictured my wedding.
I'm standing at the altar
with my fiance,
I have no idea that
my best friend, Tom,
the man I truly love,
is galloping towards the church
on a huge black stallion,
racing to stop me from making the biggest mistake of my life.
Just as I'm about
to say, "I do,"
Tom flies through the doors
of the church, and...
My heart skips a beat.
Back then, I'd picture
what it would feel like
to have
my heart broken.
Maybe I'd be working
in advertising
and I'd fall in love
with an inventor
of mysterious confectionary
while on a work trip
with him.
But then, I'd discover
his true identity.
He's my arch nemesis
from a rival company.
Understandably, I'm horrified.
Or, I'd imagine
how I'd meet
the love of my life.
My new Gucci shoe.
Come on.
Or where I'd be working when I met my husband.
- Hello, Natalie.
- Hello, David.
I mean, sir.
Shit. I can't believe
I've just said that.
And now I've gone
and said "shit."
It's fine, it's fine.
You could have said "fuck"
and then we'd have been
in real trouble.
Thank you, sir.
I did have
an awful premonition
I was gonna fuck up
on my first day.
Or what it would be like
when I met my fiance's
parents for the first time.
Good night, Mr. Banks.
Oh, you can call him
George. Or Dad!
George will be fine.
And don't forget
to fasten your condom.
Dad!
Seat belt! I meant...
I meant seat belt.
And I'd often
dream of being a chef
with magical powers,
which I could use to woo
the man of my dreams.
And my best friend...
...would be a crab.
This is how dominant romantic comedies have been in my life.
As a young woman,
they became
an obsession so powerful,
that they're now
a part of my identity.
Maybe it'd be better
if we start at the beginning.
And at most mythologized
and beguiling of all places,
the suburban teenage
girl's bedroom.
Mine looked a lot like this.
And it was here among the training bras,
hair mascara,
and intense boredom
that my obsession with
romantic comedies began.
They ease my fear
of being alone forever
as they promised me
that one day,
I, too, could have
a fulfilling romantic life.
Just as long
as I followed the rules.
A woman must always be laid back, easy-going and fun.
If you think
you hate someone,
that might actually mean
they're perfect for you.
And true relationship
success is achieved
by one thing,
and one thing only,
a big white wedding.
Which is wat happened to me,
I got married.
Well, this isn't my wedding,
but does it really matter?
Aren't all weddings
basically the same?
Before I got married,
my relationship to
romantic comedies
was pure and uncomplicated.
They reflected my experiences as a young woman
and dominated my outlook
on love and relationships.
But because most
romantic comedies
end with a marriage,
after my wedding,
I felt like
they'd abandoned me.
The connection was broken,
and suddenly,
I began to see
all the other ways
in which they were imperfect.
And I wasn't the only person
who felt this way.
I like
that I don't have to think
when I watch
romantic comedies.
I basically can just curl up
and not really worry.
But I will say,
the more...
The older I get, the more
they do make me anxious.
Liar!
They're really heteronormative,
and they're really white,
and they're really schmaltzy.
I saw Cameron
Diaz get poked in the face
by a penis in a glory hole.
And yet,
I was still obsessed.
But now when
the credits rolled,
I didn't feel elated,
I felt guilty.
Not that that stopped me.
I carried on watching them
over and over again.
♪ Beyond this
♪ There must be something
beyond this
♪ I've seen the sunset
and I feel it leads somewhere
♪ Between us
♪ Is there nothing between us?
♪ We've loved much more
They say for sure, once
♪ It all rises
♪ It all falls
♪ You can be pushed along
for as long as you want
♪ But sooner or later
♪ You might have to
get up and run
♪ How fast can you run?
♪ I've seen you all fall apart
♪ I've seen you all wasted
♪ I've seen them all fall apart
♪ I've seen them all wasted
♪ So come on and run
♪ So come on and run
♪ So come on and run
Of all genres, romantic comedies are the films
that are most
heavily targeted
towards a conventional
female audience.
And so, they have
the power to influence us.
Well, some of us.
We can see this
in the way women respond
to one of the most
successful rom-com heroines
of all time, Bridget Jones.
Some feel positive.
Everybody
kinda likes Bridget Jones,
like, you have to love her
because she's completely
who she is.
She never expresses
that she feels complete
when she's with a guy.
She got happy
and content by herself.
That's why Bridget Jones
is just like the HBC.
The Head Bitch in Charge.
But if staying here means
working within ten yards of you,
frankly, I'd rather have a job
wiping Saddam Hussein's ass.
Others are not so positive.
You know
what her weight is
and she's claiming
to be very overweight.
And she weighs about
nine stone or something.
Resolution number one,
obviously will lose 20 pounds.
I do remember
seeing that film
when it first came out,
and thinking,
"I weigh what
this woman weighs.
"She's worried that
she's really overweight,
"so I must be
really overweight."
My own feelings on Bridget are also conflicted.
In the films, we're told she's
a successful career woman.
Yet, I think this truth
is undermined
by her many pratfalls at work.
Bridget wasn't the only clumsy career
woman I saw in romantic comedies.
Rom-coms have
painted career women
as these pathetic, clumsy,
bumbling idiots,
because the idea of a woman
having her shit together
is very frightening.
She's doing
all this, like, nine to five,
but then, like,
she's kind of a klutz.
Like, "I'll save her."
They always think
that women need to be saved.
...must remember
the way to a man's heart
is not through beauty,
sex, or love,
but merely the ability
to fall arse over tit
in the mud.
People wouldn't
respond very well
to a portrayal
of a successful woman
who wasn't somehow undermining her success at every turn.
There has to be something
that takes away
from her own self-confidence
because I think people still
don't particularly like
to see that on screen.
In order
to better understand
how career women
and women in general
are presented in the films,
we need to look
at how they've been portrayed
in romantic comedies
throughout history.
In the 1930s,
Hollywood wasn't taken
seriously as a business.
Which meant people who normally existed on the margins,
namely, immigrants and women,
were able to thrive.
There were far more roles
for women than for men,
and female actors commanded
bigger paychecks.
The romantic heroines
of this era,
the screwball queens,
reflected this female power.
They were strong,
intelligent women
who excelled at exchanging pithy one-liners
with their male love interests.
This is my car.
- You mean this is your car?
- Of course.
Your golf ball, your car.
Is there anything in the world
that doesn't belong to you?
Yes, thank heaven, you.
- Now, don't lose your temper.
- Well, I...
My dear young lady,
I'm not losing my temper,
I'm merely trying
to play some golf.
Well, you choose
the funniest places.
This is a parking lot.
Will you get out of my car?
Will you get off
my running board?
This is my running board!
All right, honey.
- Stay there then.
- Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Unlike modern rom-coms,
the female protagonists
of the '30s were often
brilliant career women.
For example,
Hildy fromHis Girl Friday.
It always thrills me that instead of picking the man
who offers her security, motherhood,
and suburban lawns...
Oh, you're gonna live
with your mother?
Well, just
for the first year.
...Hildy
returns to Walter
who loves and values her
for her mind
and her journalistic talent.
He treats her as his equal.
They'll be naming streets
after you. Hildy Johnson Street.
There'll be statues
of you in the park,
The movies will be after you,
the radio.
By tomorrow morning,
I'll bet you there's a Hildy Johnson cigar.
I can see the billboards now.
Says, "Light up with Hildy Johnson."
- Oh, Walter, will stop that acting?
- Huh?
- We got a lot to do.
- Oh, yeah, talking?
But this equality
didn't last.
World War II killed
the screwball
as it encouraged both genders
back into conformity.
Men out fighting.
Women at home keeping
the house in order.
Hollywood transformed into the patriarchal institution we know today.
If career women were
shown onscreen...
I happen to be paying
your salary, Ryan.
You can play games
on your own time.
Now, get down.
Tip that light down
a little, will you,
the one near his right shoulder?
They were always
eventually tamed by the man.
Goodbye, Henry.
Oh! Oh, Ryan! Ryan...
In general, we see chaste innocent virgins
waiting for their man
to come home and marry them.
But then in the 1950s,
everything changed again.
Hi.
Well, hello.
Marilyn Monroe's
charisma and talent
was unlike anything anyone
had ever seen.
Whilst rarely shown
as a career woman,
her innate natural sexuality
elevated her.
Her male counterparts would be reduced to bumbling idiots,
cowed by her immense
female power.
I'd like to stay here
with you tonight.
Mmm?
I'd like to sleep here.
Are you sure?
That is, if you don't mind.
Marilyn died in 1962.
I often wonder what the world
of romantic comedies
would have looked like
if she'd lived.
Her last film,
Something's Got to Give,
was never finished.
It was remade a year later
asMove Over, Darling
with another beautiful
blonde, Doris Day.
But unlike Marilyn,
Doris' romantic heroines
were not sexually confident.
Bedroom problems?
In fact,
they were incredibly chaste,
protecting their virtue
even when they were stranded
on a desert island
for five years.
There was a man
on that island with me.
How marvelous.
No wonder you look so well.
But you silly girl,
why did you tell Nick?
I didn't tell him!
He just found out.
Oh. Well, tell me then.
I wanna know everything.
There's nothing to tell.
And whilst these women
often did have careers,
they were very happy
to relinquish them
in the name of marriage
and motherhood.
In general,
it feels like the genre
hasn't really progressed much
since Doris Day
and her pastel twin sets.
In The Devil Wears Prada,
when he's pissed
that she missed his birthday
or something...
Yeah, she should miss
your birthday.
She has a really important job.
You got a cupcake,
why are you mad?
Nate, I'm so sorry.
I kept trying to leave,
but there's a lot
going on and...
You know I didn't have a choice.
Don't worry about it.
Romantic comedies
don't have a responsibility
to represent reality.
Way to go, Tess.
- Yay.
- Beauty.
However, I can say
that as a teenager,
dreaming of the relationships I one day hoped to experience,
I turned to them for guidance.
What I saw influenced,
or even defined,
my future romantic behavior.
When I fell in love
with romantic comedies,
Julia Roberts
was the reigning queen.
Holy shit.
During that period, there was a surge of the films,
which were hugely successful
at the box office.
And I watched all of them.
As the demand grew,
the genre began
to cannibalize itself
and spiraled out of control.
I now realize
it was presenting me
with increasingly more dubious narratives as romantic ideals.
I think that many
of the premises of rom-coms
are deeply suspect
and a bit twisted.
While You Were Sleeping...
I mean, that's quite a good
horror movie title already.
Does she have
a cat or not,
even, like, just
pictures of a cat?
And she's just
always in that little booth
in the train station
not really talking to anyone.
She pretends
to be with a guy
who's been in an accident,
he's in a coma.
She's obsessed with him,
but she's never,
ever talked to him.
And she goes to the hospital,
and they won't let her in to see him.
Completely justified.
Whoa, whoa,
you can't go in there.
- No, no, no, you don't understand.
- No, are you family?
- No.
- Family only.
No, you don't understand.
- I was...
- You wait there.
But she lies and
says that she's his fiancee.
Is that the woman
that saved his life?
Yeah.
Whoa.
It gets even better than that.
She's his fiancee.
And then,
his family show up.
And she feels it's normal
to lie to them as well,
and just insinuates herself
into his life.
I've fallen
in love with men
who are in emotional comas,
for sure.
Maybe
not physical ones.
I feel like there's
some sort of deformity
that he has on his testicles
that she gets a look at
so that she can say
to his mother, like,
"No, I really am his fiancee
"because I've seen his, like,
watermelon-sized testicle."
Peter has one testicle.
- No way.
- Way.
About a month ago,
there was an accident,
and he was playing basketball,
and his friend had a pencil
in his back pocket.
Ew.
She's not even
interested in him in the end,
and she falls in love
with Bill Pullman.
She falls in love
with his brother
and ends up with the brother.
I think the prospect
that you could fall in love
with somebody who's in a coma,
tell his family
that you're his fiancee
and then,
fall in love with his brother is psychopathic behavior
that should probably see you
ending up in a courtroom.
The film
that first made me realize
that the genre had lost its way wasFailure to Launch.
It's about a guy
who is too old to be living
with his parents,
but he's still living
with his parents.
Unhappy
with this domestic situation,
they employ Paula,
who is an expert
in making adult children
fly the nest.
Based on the initial
personality assessment,
I think that I can have your son
moved out of this house
and living on his own
by June 15th.
Ah!
Hallelujah.
The most dubious part
of the film, for me,
is that,
while Paula is still in the the employ of Tripp's parents,
she has sex with him.
Paula?
Wow. Early risers.
Hey, listen, FYI, workwise,
we're definitely on track.
Things are good. Tripp is good.
Well, actually, he's fantastic.
Of course,
I don't need to tell you that.
You're his parents.
I'm just, uh...
Just trying to say
you should be very proud of him.
Well...
You've got a lovely home.
She betrays him.
And yet,
they still end up together.
Idealizing any relationship that starts with one person
having immense power
and control over the other,
that's not a good place
to start from.
Fundamentally,
one person has been paid
to spend time with the other
and has had
a particular motive,
and it can't help
but be curdled by that.
I never found Failure to Launch romantic or aspirational.
But one part of it
did stay with me,
the way Paula changed
who she was
in order to secure her man.
How do you make sure that
he'll fall in love with you?
You look nice,
you find out what they like,
and then you pretend
to like it too.
That is pretty much
how it works.
This idea
that a woman is appealing
to a man if her behavior
resembles his...
Yeah.
Is common to many of the romantic comedies that influenced me.
And consequently, I spent much of my 20s trying to conform
to what I now recognize
were unachievable ideals.
She somehow can still
have a magically perfect body
despite eating
whatever she wants
like Sandra Bullock
inMiss Congeniality.
Sandra Bullock did a lot
of overeating on film.
Not even overeating,
just eating,
and not talking
about her diets.
But it isn't
just food.
The Generation X
rom-com heroine
loves everything
that a man loves.
InThere's Something
About Mary,
Mary is the beer-swigging,
sports-loving,
physical embodiment
of the ultimate cool girl.
When a guy can play 36 holes
and still have enough energy
to take me and Warren to
a ball game, and eat hotdogs.
I'm talking sausage
hotdogs, beer.
Not light beer, but beer.
That's my ad. Print it up.
Watching this,
I saw how attractive Mary was
to every man she met
to the extent that she has
to take legal action.
Woogie, you know you're not supposed to be within 400 yards of me.
Let's not forget here.
You put me through
a lot of bullshit, okay?
I had to change my name.
I had to go to court. I moved.
I mean,
you stole all of my shoes.
She sounds like an embodiment of a writer's desire
'cause all of that
is about how she's seen
rather than anything that's coming, like, internally
from her own desire.
Women just conform to certain forms of male behavior,
and they are "chill"
and they're willing
to sublimate themselves
and adopt male characteristics
in order to get along
better with men.
It's this thing of, like,
women having to be effortless.
It's like how women
always wake up
with, like, perfect
makeup in films.
How come you always look
so great in the morning?
Do I?
They started making jokes about it now,
but even then,
you're like, "Yeah,
but you do actually look a bit too nice."
Oh, I was having a nightmare.
I was so scared.
Oh.
You look beautiful.
Oh, no,
I'm sure I look terrible.
I just woke up. Are you kidding?
I'm sure I'm a mess.
As a young woman,
one of my favorite rom-com
heroines was journalist Andy
inHow to Lose
a Guy in 10 Days.
She's naturally cool.
She loves sports,
fast food,
and, of course, beer.
But for a magazine article, she has to drive her man away.
So she forces herself
to become the type of woman
she knows men hate.
Consequently, I saw how unappealing men find women
who are not "cool."
I did something kind of wacky.
- Huh?
- Yes.
I used Photoshop at work today
to composite our faces together
to see what our kids
would look like.
"Our Family Album!"
She's emotionally needy.
You don't wanna see
our children?
She asks him
to share her interests.
And she takes care of him
in front of his friends.
Blow.
Nobody likes a Mr. Sniffles.
I hate Mr. Sniffles.
Ultimately though,
Andy's natural coolness shines through,
and is what lands her her man.
So I thought that if I could be more easy-going and uncomplicated,
then I'd have
more success with men.
Women are
often taught growing up
that you're there to, like,
ease social situations
and to make people
feel comfortable
and not to make a fuss.
But it's actually not just coolness that makes a woman attractive.
It's her willingness
to play the part of the muse.
They're there
to inspire and facilitate
the greatness of
their male counterparts
rather than to have that
within themselves.
For example,
Sam inGarden State.
The scene
where she's like,
"Sometimes, I like
to make a noise
"that no one's ever
made before."
And then they make these kind of squeaky, kooky noises.
Like, this is supposed to be the character trait
that makes you think that she's this really extraordinary person.
She's got no agency,
or desire, or humanity
beyond being a mirror
to reflect him
and to allow him
to find himself.
Even500 Days
of Summer,
which was marketed as
a subversion of the genre
because of its unusual
storytelling devices.
And the scene in which
the leading man performs
a post-coital dance routine,
still presents its female lead, Summer, in a troubling way.
We're introduced
to her riding on a bike.
And are told
her height, weight,
and her uncontrollable
effect on men.
In 1998,
Summer quoted a song
by the Scottish band,
Belle and Sebastian,
in her high school yearbook.
The spike in Michigan sales of their album,
The Boy with the Arab Strap,
continues to puzzle
industry analysts.
Summer's employment at The Daily Freeze during her sophomore year
coincided with an inexplicable 212 % increase in revenue.
And her round-trip
commute to work
averaged 18.4 double-takes
per day.
Looking back,
I didn't realize that someone
was being objectified
because she's shown
through a lens of indieness.
"I am being different because I'm this, like,
skinny white dude."
But really, it's like,
"Well, you're still
treating them the same way."
Even though they're
not in a bikini,
you're still using the same, basically,
misogynistic tropes.
Why is it pretty girls think
they can treat people like crap
and get away with it?
Centuries of reinforcement.
I rewatched
500 Days of Summer recently
and was struck by the title card that opens the film.
On the whole, romantic comedies of this era led me to believe
that my main priority
was to find a man
and make him happy.
Women aren't
supposed to be hungry
for anything except love.
Overeating, sleeping around,
or overworking
are all ways to fill a void
that's been left
by not having a relationship.
Which, of course, is...
We all know is true, right?
Tell me, when is the last time
that you went on
a real live date?
I'm concentrating
on my career right now.
Do you own
any colored underwear,
stripes or anything?
There are still
these very archaic rules
about who's allowed what.
If you want sex, that means you don't get love.
I don't think
I've ever watched a rom-com
and related
to the main character
and been like,
"Oh, but you know,
"we totally share
the same views about sex."
You think of, like, Ashley Judd inSomeone Like You,
blowing the dust
off her diaphragm.
Why was it stored somewhere
that it was getting so dusty?
Like, where has it been?
And also, are you...
You're not gonna wash that off?
Like, are we not
gonna talk about that?
Women are very
rarely sexy in sex scenes.
There's always,
like, a guy on top,
and they're, like, trying
to coax something out of him.
For films that are effectively about the ultimate goal
being romantic satisfaction
and happiness,
it's never about
sexual satisfaction.
Because if someone's
sexually satisfied,
it means that they're a slut.
That selfish whore.
We're sluts, Emma.
We're dirty, dirty sluts.
Barfing, fucking, screwing,
the great days of nobody's fool.
Why don't you start taking cash
for your services?
It would be more honest.
That girl is a slut.
She completely trapped that guy.
InWhat's Your Number?,
a woman who's slept with 19 men
reads an article that tells her that women who have slept
with more than 20 men
won't get married.
I see it in my practice
all the time.
When you're too
sexually available,
it messes with your self-esteem.
Next thing you know, you're 45,
no self-respect, no husband,
and no muscle tone
in your pelvic floor.
She treats
this as gospel
and decides to marry
the next man she sleeps with.
The next guy who vacations
at Casa Esperanza
is going to be my husband.
It means that
you're damaged goods,
that you're this object
that someone wants,
and your premium is much higher if you're untainted.
A man is supposed
to be attracted to a woman
who can be fully owned by him. It's really gross.
The romantic comedies
I watched didn't expect me
to be concerned
with my own sexual desire.
In them,
women are there to make their partner feel good about himself
and his prowess.
The Sweetest Thing,
written by Nancy Pimental,
attempts to skewer
this ridiculous trope.
What do we always tell them
no matter what?
Oh.
"Oh, my God. Your penis
is so... Big."
Good girl.
They sing
this weird goofy song
that I'm just gonna call,
"The Penis Song."
You're too big to fit in here.
Too big to fit in here. Ow!
Too big to fit in here.
♪ You're too big
to fit in here
♪ Too big to fit in here
♪ Too big to fit in here
- Oh, my God.
- Oh, my God, it's fame.
Everyone in the restaurant is, like,
immediately on board.
No one's like,
"Who are these annoying women ruining our lunch?"
Then there's this old woman that's completely stealing the scene.
Scene stealer!
♪ Your penis is a Cadillac
♪ A giant Coupe de Ville
♪ Your penis packs a wallop
♪ Your penis brings a load
♪ And when it makes delivery
♪ It needs its own zip code
Okay, it's pulling
me round now.
♪ You're too big to fit in here
♪ Too big to fit in here
♪ Too big to fit in here
♪ Your penis is so strong
It's my feeling that the films influence me and my behavior.
But for every rom-com queen
there must be a king.
So, how do the men
in the films behave?
♪ It's oozy and it's green
Ew!
People don't
really talk about the men
in romantic comedies too much.
When I watch
these films now,
I'm always taken aback
at how aggressive
the men are in the way
that they pursue women.
- I said no.
- No?
- No.
- Why not?
Because I don't wanna go
have a drink with you.
I wanna go home.
Is that so hard to understand?
Hey. Hey. Hey.
What's going on?
Are you mad or something?
Go on, say it. You know what,
no matter what it is,
we're gonna work it out.
Hal, I'm not attracted to you.
So what?
InThe Last Kiss,
Zach Braff plays a man living with his pregnant girlfriend.
Finding himself
unable to commit,
he begins an affair
with a college student.
You make me feel
ten years younger.
Ten years?
Then I'm seducing a younger man.
Excellent.
You're trying to make me
lose my mind, aren't you?
I've already lost mine.
When his girlfriend
finds out, she's devastated,
and kicks him out of the house.
Who is she?
- What are you talking about?
- I want to know who she is.
Who were you with, Michael?
This girl I met. It was nothing.
It was nothing.
Oh, God! You make me sick!
But it didn't mean
anything, baby.
She made me realize I want to spend the rest of my life with you.
- I know that now.
- I'm three months pregnant
and you're already out
trying to fuck other women!
- Jenna.
- Get out right now.
I'll tell you when you
can come back and get your shit.
- Maybe Kimmy can help you pack.
- Jenna, we're having a baby.
Get out of here!
Go back to fucking Kim!
What, are you gonna
fucking stab me, Jenna?
- Get out!
- Are you out of your fucking mind?
- Get the fuck out of here!
- Are you out of your fucking mind?
- Get the fuck out!
- Fuck you! Fuck you!
He asks
her father for advice,
who tells him that he should try and win back the daughter.
I will do anything in the world
to get your daughter back.
Well, it's very simple.
Just do whatever it takes.
So he camps out
on her porch for days,
waiting for her to forgive him.
I really worry about where he was going to the toilet,
for the three days that he was lying,
not moving, on the porch.
It's horrible.
Can you imagine if your partner was lying outside
shitting themselves
for three days
bullying you into
you taking them back.
In real life, I hope
that this kind of behavior
wouldn't end in reconciliation.
But in the film,
it's successful.
And there are
many more examples
of men exhibiting aggressive
and controlling behavior
in romantic comedies.
The tenacious man is an incredibly harmful portrayal of men to watch.
It goes against
every idea of consent,
and that you should respect
women's boundaries.
It says, "If you just do
this inappropriate thing,
"or stalk her a little bit more or catfish her,
"then one day
she might fall for you."
People talk about
romantic comedies
giving women a lot of unrealistic expectations about relationships,
but I think they give men, perhaps,
some even more damaging ones.
Rob?
Laura, I just want
to say something.
I think you're running.
And... And he doesn't love you.
And he doesn't understand you, not the way I will.
And I will even more so
in the future.
I like you, Tom,
I just don't want a relation...
Well, you're not the only one
that gets a say in this!
I do, too. And I say
we're a couple, God damn it!
I don't love you anymore.
No, I...
I refuse to accept that.
Izzy, go home!
♪ You always got to walk away
♪ You never gave
those girls a chance
♪ I've been where they are now
♪ I've done the little things
♪ Some might think
It's easy to see
♪ Your love will change
Into lies
♪ But you're so good
at playing the nice guy
♪ And you tell them
That you're a nice guy
♪ How do you sleep?
♪ Is there thunder
Over your bed?
♪ Does it go round
And round your head?
♪ What you did
♪ How do you sleep?
♪ Do you wait up for a call?
♪ To say it didn't
Matter at all
♪ But it did
♪ And you know what you did
♪ And they know what you did
♪ And we're gonna know
♪ What you did
While I might claim
that romantic comedies negatively influenced my behavior,
at least I saw elements
of myself reflected in them.
This isn't the case
for everyone.
In the majority of
mainstream romantic comedies,
there's a disturbing
lack of any characters
who aren't white, heterosexual,
or middle-class.
It's insane
that there isn't, like,
a really popular, funny rom-com
about an interracial couple.
Isn't that crazy?
The only interracial
couple I can think of is,
and he doesn't even speak,
I don't think, hardly,
inLove Actually,
Keira Knightley's husband is black.
But then all the focus
is on her white stalker.
It's kind of
interesting to think about
romantic comedies
as a brown woman,
because so many of
the mainstream Hollywood ones
that I watched
were about white women.
It can feel jarring
or distancing
because you can see
a tiny element of yourself.
But it's also not you.
It's not your world.
And it can be quite
a weird experience to watch.
Studio
executives assume
that white audiences won't "relate" to films that have got black leads in,
which is obviously
a racist assumption.
And what about the women watching mainstream romantic comedies
who don't resemble the very specific Hollywood ideal?
The only images I see
of someone who looks like me
in films are "Before" pictures,
and then a woman goes on
to, like, hate herself
or lose weight
and then be happy.
- You look fabulous.
- Thank you.
Look at you. What did you do?
Is it your hair? What is it?
It's my hair,
and I have a little sun.
- It's...
- She lost 60 pounds.
And... And I lost
a little weight.
- I see that. Yeah.
- Yeah?
- You look terrific.
- Thank you.
- Sixty pounds?
- Yeah.
- That's a Backstreet Boy.
- Right?
Or I see
the sassy best friend
who never has any kind
of romantic potential.
I'm doing the Dr. Riverbed fast.
- Oh, yeah!
- Yeah!
What is that?
Water, peach resin,
apple pectin, shark extract,
and Lawry's seasoning salt.
What about food?
Look, I'm going to look
amazing in that dress,
I'm going to meet
a Scottish man...
And I'm
gonna be happy!
It's kind of
this moral imperative
for women to be thin.
Because thinness
is linked to success,
and is linked to fuck-ableness,
and is linked to whether or not that person is lovable
and worthy to care about.
Being loved means
caring about being thin.
What are you doing?
You're hurting her.
I'm helping her.
I did it to myself for years.
She can take it.
There it is.
Good job.
Good job.
Why would you ever
do that to yourself?
I wanted to be beautiful.
We don't see anything but exactly what has been taught
is, "normal and digestible."
And anything that, probably,
our parents were told to subscribe to
and our grandparents were told to subscribe to, etc. Etc.
When I sawIn & Out,
it was really affirming.
- You know what you need?
- I need a wedding!
Again, looking back
on it, all the stereotypes...
- You're an English teacher.
- Exactly.
I mean, all this poetry,
and odes, and bonnets...
Sonnets?
And you're kind of prissy.
Prissy?
All the weird tropes...
- Uncut.
- Funny Girl!
...that now as an
adult gay man, like,
I'm not that into.
If you see gay men,
they have only one purpose,
and that is to make
the main character
look like they have dimension.
Which is the whole purpose of Rupert
Everett in My Best Friend's Wedding.
♪ While combing my hair now
♪ While wondering
What dress to wear now
♪ I say a little prayer
for you ♪
She calls him when he's in the middle of important stuff.
And it's not about
her being selfish,
it's about
he's at her beck and call.
George,
answer this, damn it!
I'm in a meltdown here.
She double-crossed me!
The little twerp
double-crossed me.
I'm running out of time.
I'm completely out
of sneaky ideas.
I've come to the end
of my rapidly fraying rope.
George, you have got
to think of something!
Even when
romantic comedies
do show gay characters
in fulfilling relationships,
it's always within
a heteronormative framing.
And it's often tinged
with tragedy,
as we see inFour Weddings
and a Funeral.
Gareth used to prefer
funerals to weddings.
He said it was easier
to get enthusiastic
about a ceremony
one had an outside chance
of eventually being involved in.
As ever, the problem
with these things
is that these bits
of representation
are being driven by people
with no real experience
or familiarity
with the thing
they're trying to represent.
I'm sure plenty
of people in Hollywood
have a gay acquaintance
that they might see in this
sort of stereotypical way,
because they don't see the full magnitude of their personhood.
They only see a very specific
version of the person.
- What the hell was that?
- I'm showing you the magic.
No, I said come 90
and then I come ten.
My mouth was open, Albert!
You overeager son of a...
Blecch!
- Oh, excuse me.
- Yeah.
Are you running
this whole thing?
Oh, sure.
Walk up to
the first homo you see
and assume he's the wedding coordinator.
Right? Nice.
No, no, I didn't mean that.
Nice stereotype, buddy. Nice.
Did I hear someone say,
"Wedding coordinator?"
That would be moi.
So, how can I help you?
- These aren't my clothes.
- Well, where are your clothes?
I've lost my clothes.
Well, why are you
wearing these clothes?
Because I just went gay,
all of a sudden.
Why don't you just go
to a gay bar?
At this point,
it would be wonderful to talk about the portrayal
of gay women
and bisexuals in the films,
and of trans people.
But I can't.
Because they almost never appear in mainstream Hollywood rom-coms.
And the films also rarely show people with disabilities,
or people from
lower-income backgrounds.
Nobody is a drop out.
Everyone has post-secondary
education.
Everybody lives in neighborhoods that are "good."
You have these characters
who have, like, dead-end jobs,
but seem to live
very, very stable lives.
Even if their job is, like,
getting fired from being
a waiter in the first act.
But then again, you know,
it was the '90s.
I'm never gonna find
another part-time job,
and then I'm not gonna be
able to pay my rent,
and I'm gonna have to move.
To Brooklyn!
Ah, the joy of rent control.
Six rooms, $450 a month.
Perhaps the reason for this skewed or narrow representation
is because of the demographics of the people
in power behind the camera.
It's that, overwhelmingly,
there's a certain type of person whose perspective we hear,
like people coming from
a certain background
or certain experience.
There isn't a space
for enough challenge,
coming from different writers
and different directors.
Men are the people
that are in power,
like you always have
male producers
or male heads of studios,
and usually male directors.
For all
the Hollywood liberalism,
all the guys that are making
these decisions,
are the same 60-year-old
white dudes.
It could be Wall Street.
You're not here to love anybody.
You're here to promote a movie.
That's it. Period.
I've worked in film
and I've seen how it works
behind the scenes.
It's about money,
and it's about what the industry thinks people want to see,
which is never what people
actually want to see.
Gay people, black people, women,
are all capable of making good movies.
So what's the hang-up?
And I don't have anything
against straight white guys,
but to say that it isn't disproportionately in their favor is ludicrous.
Now, as an adult,
in a happy,
balanced relationship,
I can clearly see
the negative aspects
of so many romantic comedies
I once loved.
And yet, I still find myself
watching these films.
And I'm moved by them,
despite their flaws.
It's wonderful
watching people fall in love.
Like, it's very uplifting.
It's a thrill,
it's a fantasy,
it's like something
that you're experiencing
for a cinematic emotion.
And not because you
necessarily condone or agree
with everything that's
happening on the screen.
Disneyland
of the heart or something.
You wouldn't want
to go there all the time,
it's not something
you would want for yourself,
but it's not an unpleasant
fantasy to entertain.
You're given all the little tiny,
bubbly feelings
of what it would be like
to be in love.
But it's never treacherous.
They resonate because,
even if the circumstances in them are completely ludicrous,
there are moments of real humanity written into them.
It's the watching someone ride off into the sunset,
isn't it?
You only imagine something beautiful is going to happen,
but you don't know
what it is.
Romantic comedies tap
into universal human desire.
We all want to be loved.
Maybe we want that
for a lifetime.
But maybe we only want that
for one night.
Either way, the desire for that connection is always there.
The films have a very simple way of showing this.
They present the love interests as two parts of one whole.
Plato tells us we began
as circles.
And when we strived
to be like the gods,
we were punished by a thunderbolt that struck us,
and cut us right down,
dead-center, in half.
And we scattered
to the ends of the earth,
searching and searching
for our other half.
Or to put it
another way...
You...
Complete me.
For me, the pinnacle
of romantic comedies
is Nora Ephron's
When Harry Met Sally.
And this masterpiece
wholeheartedly embraces
the idea that the two lovers
should be opposites,
who unite and complete
each other.
Harry is doomy
and full of cynicism,
which is in stark contrast
to Sally's upbeat,
positive persona.
- Yes, basically I'm a happy person.
- So am I.
And I don't see that there's
anything wrong with that.
Of course not.
You're too busy being happy.
Do you ever think about death?
- Yes.
- Sure you do.
A fleeting thought that's just in and out of the transom of your mind.
I spend hours. I spend days.
And you think this makes you
a better person?
Well, when the shit comes down,
I'm gonna be prepared
and you're not,
- that's all I'm saying.
- In the meantime,
you're gonna ruin
your whole life waiting for it.
At first,
their differences drive them apart.
But then, as they grow older
and move through the world,
they're faced with challenges.
You're not with Joe anymore?
We just broke up.
Aww.
I'm sorry. That's too bad.
Yeah. Well, you know...
Yeah.
So...
- What about you?
- I'm fine.
How's married life?
Not so good.
I am getting a divorce.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm really sorry.
Yeah, well,
what're you gonna do?
Gradually,
through sharing
their contrasting worldviews
with each other,
they begin to make sense
of themselves,
and their lives.
Harry, you're gonna
have to try and find a way
of not expressing
every feeling that you have,
every moment that you have them.
Oh, really?
Yes.
There are times and places
for things.
Well, the next time you're giving a lecture series on social graces,
would you let me know?
'Cause I'll sign up.
Hey.
You don't have to take
your anger out on me.
Oh, I think I'm entitled to throw a little anger your way.
Especially when I'm being
told how to live my life
by Miss Hospital Corners.
What's that supposed to mean?
I mean, nothing bothers you.
You never get upset
about anything.
Don't be ridiculous.
What?
You never get upset about Joe.
I never see that back up on you.
How is that possible?
Don't you experience
any feelings of loss?
I don't have to take
this crap from you.
If you're so over Joe,
why aren't you seeing anyone?
I see people.
See people. Have you slept
with one person
since you broke up with Joe?
What the hell does that
have to do with anything?
That will prove I'm over Joe,
because I fuck somebody?
Harry, you're gonna have
to move back to New Jersey
because you've slept
with everybody in New York,
and I don't see that
turning Helen
into a faint memory for you.
Besides, I will make love to somebody when it is making love.
Not the way you do it,
like you're out for revenge or something.
Are you finished now?
Yes.
Can I say something?
Yes.
I'm sorry.
Ultimately,
it's their differences
which make them an ideal fit.
This is a pattern
we see repeatedly.
Sometimes, it's mundane.
InStranger Than Fiction,
an uptight IRS man
falls in love
with the rebellious,
tattooed pastry chef,
he's supposed to be auditing.
Mr. Crick.
Yes, what is it?
You're staring at my tits.
Uh, I what?
I don't think I was.
I don't think I would do that.
If I was, I can assure you,
it was only as a representative
of the United States government.
But sometimes,
it's more metaphorical.
InSplash, a man
afraid of the sea...
Then you wouldn't
want me to do this.
Stop! God, no. Please.
Falls in love
with a mermaid.
This way of seeing romantic connection is incredibly satisfying,
and emotionally overwhelming.
In fact, so powerful is
this way of portraying lovers
as two opposites attracting
to complete each other,
that it's existed since
at least the 17th century.
Shakespeare used it
inMuch Ado About Nothing.
I wonder that you will still
be talking, SignorBenedick.
- Nobody marks you.
- What?
My dear Lady Disdain!
Are you yet living?
Is it possible disdain
should die
while she hath such meet food
to feed it as SignorBenedick?
I do love nothing in the world
so well as you.
Is not that strange?
As strange as the thing
I know not.
It were as possible
for me to say
I love nothing so well as you.
We also see this in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice,
where the relaxed and unconventional Elizabeth Bennet
is the perfect match for the highly reserved Mr.
Darcy.
I wonder who first discovered
the power of poetry
in driving away love.
I thought that poetry
was the food of love.
Of a fine stout love, it may.
But if it is only
a vague inclination,
I'm convinced one poor sonnet
will kill it stone dead.
So, what do you recommend
to encourage affection?
Dancing.
Even if one's partner
is barely tolerable.
His anguished declaration of love is so successful
in eliciting an emotional
response in audiences,
that it's become a trope,
used over and over again
in romantic comedies.
I've fought against
my better judgement,
my family's expectation,
the inferiority of your birth,
my rank and circumstance...
All these things that I am
willing to put them aside
and ask you to end my agony.
- I don't understand.
- I love you.
Most ardently.
Please do me the honor
of accepting my hand.
It's always one
of the most human
and relatable moments
in the films.
People convey those
kinds of thoughts piecemeal
over the course
of a relationship.
I don't mind
the cinematic license
of presenting them
in aggregate.
You become more wordy
in moments of crisis.
Of course,
I've performed speeches of love for guys,
I'm an actress. Everything
is a movie to me.
Someone has formed
a declaration of love for me,
but they didn't say
any of the things
that I needed them to say.
It was awful.
I've done them in airports, in a supermarket.
Like, you just say it to each other in a mundane setting.
You can hear yourself.
And it's like, "Wow.
"If anybody else hears me right now,
can they actually just kill me?"
Because I would wanna
kill myself.
He said stuff like, "If we had met on a dating app,
"we would have matched."
And that we had
sparkling banter.
They must have been,
"Yo, like she's insane."
They must've done!
They must have just been like, "Why does she think
"that she's in
a Disney film right now?"
They must have done!
Do you wanna know the real
reason why I came here tonight?
I closed my world off.
I put myself in a little box.
It was all my fault. I mean...
I'm the bastard here.
I'm immature, I'm unthoughtful,
I'm a friggin' idiot.
I'm a liar and a phoney.
A saxophone player.
But something's happened to me
since I've...
Met you and...
I'm happiest
when I'm being myself.
And I'm myself
when I'm with you.
So...
I thought that I would come here
and tell you something.
I like you.
I like you.
I want you.
I love you.
I love you.
I'm totally, completely
in love with you,
and I don't care
if you think it's too late,
I'm telling you anyway.
I'm crazy about you.
I think about you all the time.
And I want to spend the rest
of my life with you.
'Cause like you said,
"This is it."
"This is life."
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.
And don't forget,
I'm also just a girl
standing in front of a boy,
asking him to love her.
♪ There's always been
Something about her
♪ But tonight's the night
You see her clearly
♪ As she pours you a glass
♪ Everything you thought
You knew is shifting
♪ And you're so scared
It shows
♪ And this woman's in love
♪ This woman's in love
This woman's in love
♪ With you
♪ Yeah, this woman's in love
♪ This woman's in love
This woman's in love
♪ With you
♪ And all the time you waited
♪ She was waiting too
♪ You can't believe
You found her
♪ And you can't believe
♪ That she's in love
She's in love
♪ She's in love with you
♪ In love with you
♪ She's in love with you
♪ She's in love
♪ She's in love
Recently,
I've noticed a spate of films
that, while not marked
as romantic comedies,
will exploit, enlist,
or twist the structures and tropes of the rom-com
to their own ends.
They employ many of
the same time-honored tricks
as the traditional rom-com,
and fall into some
of the same traps.
I need a taxi. I got to get
to the airport right now.
I gotta stop someone
from getting married.
Flight leaves in... Oh.
I got like four hours.
The Break-Up attempts to subvert the rom-com narrative
by, as the title might suggest,
refusing to give its protagonists a happy ending.
You think that I nag you?
That's all you do!
All you do is nag me.
"The bathroom's a mess.
"Your belt doesn't match.
"Hey, Gary, you should
probably go work out."
Nothing I ever do
is ever good enough.
I just want to be left
the hell alone!
- Is that what you want?
- Yeah.
- That's what you want?
- Yeah.
Fine. Great. Do whatever
the hell you want.
You leave your socks
all over this house.
Dress like a pig.
Play your stupid ass video game,
I don't care. I'm done.
- What?
- I am done.
I don't deserve this.
I really do not deserve this.
I deserve somebody
who gives a shit.
I'm not spending
one more second of this life
with some inconsiderate prick.
You're a prick!
A far more
interesting twist
comes from 2012'sRuby Sparks,
written by Zoe Kazan.
This rom-com plays
with the genre's conventions.
And directly confronts the insidious "cool girl" trope
and the power of the male writers who indulge it.
A novelist describes his ideal woman in his new book
and is stunned when one day she appears in his house.
I missed you in bed last night.
Did you get some
good writing done?
He falls
in love with her.
And resolves not to write
about her again,
as he wants her
to be her own person.
However, when she begins to seek a life outside their relationship,
he feels insecure.
- I'm so lonely.
- No.
Don't say that. Please.
I think I should start spending some nights at my apartment again.
He starts
writing about her again,
so he can control
her behavior.
First, he makes her
completely obsessed with him.
And crushes her desire
for independence.
Then he makes her
unrelentingly happy.
Eventually, we are
shown how disturbing it is
to have a female character whose every thought and action
is driven solely
by the male creator.
If this is how
you think about people,
then you are in for a long,
lonely, fucked-up life.
Do you hear me?
Calvin.
Less radical than Kazan's offering isI Love You, Man,
a film which is a rom-com
in every aspect but one.
Our soulmates are platonic
friends instead of lovers.
Sydney, I'm really sorry
for all the stuff that I said.
Pete, you called me
on a lot of my issues.
I appreciate it.
I'm really glad
you're here, Sydney.
Me, too.
I love you, man.
I love you too, bud.
- I love you, dude.
- I love you, Bro Montana.
I love you, homes.
I love you, Broseph Goebbels.
- I love you, muchacha.
- I love you, Tycho Brohe.
Okay.
In 2013, The Heat
did something similar.
It's a rom-com dressed up
as a buddy movie.
This time between
two female cops.
The uptight loner Ashburn,
played by Sandra Bullock,
and Melissa McCarthy's
loose cannon, Mullins.
- Ashburn.
- Hey, it's me.
Hey.
So, uh, did you get
that package I sent over?
Oh, God, I haven't even
opened it yet. I'm sorry.
I signed it. On the front.
Okay, I see it.
That's very funny.
I know.
I'm just kidding.
Just look at the...
Look at the back.
Well...
Don't make it weird.
Later, nerd.
Takes a nerd to know a nerd.
The success
of these bromances
and womances,
proves that the power
of the rom-com
is strong enough to survive
being transplanted
into buddy movies.
Yes!
Other film-makers
employ the same structure
as traditional rom-coms,
but disguise it.
There's a number of reasons
they might want to do this.
Foremost among them,
the sad fact that marketing a film as a romantic comedy
is a quick route
to critical disdain.
Perhaps, because
so many of the people
who are reviewing
these films are men.
A film-maker hoping to be
awarded accolades and acclaim
would do better if they presented their romantic comedy
as something else.
David O. Russell used
some romantic comedy tropes
inSilver Linings Playbook.
The screwball dialogue.
So how's your thing going?
The dancing thing?
It's good. How's your
restraining order?
The declaration of love.
I love you.
I knew it
the minute I met you.
I'm sorry it took so long
for me to catch up.
I just got stuck.
And the happy ending.
But the film avoided the cloud of critical distain
that surrounds the genre
because it's tonally
much darker
than the romantic comedies
I grew up watching.
Instead of being clumsy,
its characters dealt
with real problems
like suicide and depression.
Silver Linings Playbook
was billed as a comedy drama,
not a romantic comedy,
and was Oscar-nominated
across the board.
Other secret rom-coms might be even more critically acclaimed.
2016'sLa La Land employs all the beats of a romantic comedy.
But likeThe Break-Up,
it skips the happy ending.
It's important to note
that although these films use
the structure of romantic
comedies to great effect,
eliciting powerful emotions,
they yet again only show us straight, white,
middle-class relationships.
Earlier, I said that there was a lack of romantic comedies
with people of color
as the leads,
or mixed-race couples,
or queer relationships.
But this isn't strictly true.
Many examples
of those films do exist.
It's just that as
a white, straight woman
who is heavily catered for by mainstream romantic comedies,
I never went looking for them.
And because of that,
I missed out on this moment
from 2001's
Kissing Jessica Stein.
I didn't see a blond Zack Braff
and Justin Theroux
in the queer rom-com,
The Broken Hearts Club.
Or the sweet perfection
of 2010'sJust Wright.
I'd never seen Stella
getting her groove back.
And I'd also never watched
Alice Wu'sSaving Face
about a Chinese-American
surgeon
who falls madly in love
with a ballet dancer.
Despite not being represented
in terms of race or sexuality
by these films,
I love them just as much as I love
While You Were Sleeping,
orWhen Harry Met Sally.
Because romantic comedies aren't about race or gender or sexuality,
they're about human connection.
I realize now why I'm obsessed with romantic comedies,
it's so simple.
They show people
falling in love
and when anyone watches
any two people fall in love,
we see nothing
but their humanity.
My favorite film
of recent times
is 2017's critically-lauded
God's Own Country.
The love story is structurally a romantic comedy,
but instead of watching a straight middle-class couple
falling over each other
in a New York office,
we have a struggling
Yorkshire farmer
falling for a Romanian
migrant worker.
They call you Georgie
or summat?
- Gheorghe.
- Whatever. Get in.
It's got all the beats
of a Nora Ephron classic.
Two young people meet
and find themselves clashing
over their differences.
I'm from Romania.
Gypsy.
Please don't call me that.
However, they're forced
to share experiences
and in doing so,
they're drawn together.
Fuck.
If you leave it, it will
get infected with disease.
Eventually, they realized
they complete each other.
I was thinking.
I can stay a little longer.
After circumstances
force them apart,
there's no option but to make an anguished declaration of love.
I'm trying to do this.
Don't you see, I'm...
I'm trying to sort it out.
And I've come
all this way up here,
on a coach and everything.
And I want you to come back...
With me.
And I want us to be together.
I don't want to be
a fuck-up anymore.
No, leave me. I'm fine.
I want to be with you,
and that's what I needed to say.
And the rom-com
closes in the traditional way
giving the audience the ultimate satisfying ending,
a kiss between the two lovers.
God's Own country isn't
considered a romantic comedy,
which, while understandable,
is perhaps a shame
because it left me with all of the uplifting feelings of elation and romance
that I get from re-watching
Sleepless in Seattle
for the 35th time.
Another film I loved from the same year asGod's Own Country
isThe Big Sick,
which is based on
a real-life relationship
between writers Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani.
What were you
like in high school?
They called me chashmullee.
What is that?
It roughly translates
to "dweeb."
I'll show you a picture.
Of you in high school?
Oh, my God.
- Boom.
- No.
And I'm thinking,
"I'm killing it right now."
What inspired this haircut?
Hugh Grant.
- No.
- Yeah.
The film was
critically acclaimed,
Oscar-nominated,
and most importantly,
a romantic comedy
that sticked
to the traditional formula.
But unlike the films
that I grew up watching,
its characters are complex
and fleshed out.
I was going to tell you
about that.
These are women in Pakistan
who wanna marry you?
They're not in Pakistan.
You've met these women?
Just with my parents and stuff,
we haven't like...
But you're not serious
about this, are you?
It's my mom's thing,
I just go along with it.
So what does your mom think
about you and me then?
She doesn't know
about me, does she?
No.
They're not from
high-income backgrounds.
So are you ever gonna
let me sit in the front seat?
No, I'm a professional,
and you're paying for this ride.
I don't wanna pay for this ride,
it's surging right now.
And they deal
with real problems.
In the future, I hope
film-makers will continue
to use the power of rom-coms
to put different types
of relationships
in front of the camera.
I hope studios will realize
that there's a hunger
for these films.
And that they'll reach a mainstream Hollywood audience.
Because love
doesn't only happen
to white, straight,
middle-class people.
And it doesn't have
to end with a wedding.
And it doesn't always
last forever.
Are you breaking up with me?
But it is
wonderful to watch.
♪ There were never
Any fireworks
♪ You never fell in love
At first sight
♪ I never wanted
♪ Never wanted a normal life
♪ I wasn't waiting for you
♪ And I know you weren't
Waiting for me
♪ If we'd never met
It wouldn't bother
♪ Wouldn't bother me
♪ But it feels
♪ All right
♪ I don't like you
All the time
♪ None of my friends thought
This would work
♪ And if you walked away now
Walked away now
♪ It wouldn't hurt
♪ Who knows where
We'll be next year
♪ You never want
To make plans
♪ But if I'm honest
Yeah, I'm honest
♪ I want you around
♪ 'Cause it feels
♪ All right
♪ I wasn't made for you
♪ You weren't made for me
♪ But when I wake up
When I wake up
♪ You're next to me
♪ And it feels
♪ All right
♪ And yes it feels
♪ All right
♪ Yes, it feels
♪ All right
♪ Because it feels
♪ All right
♪ Feels all right
♪ Feels all right
♪ Feels all right
♪ Feels all right
♪ Feels all right
♪ Feels all right
♪ Feels all right
♪ I still remember
♪ When you called my name
♪ These feelings I had
♪ When you felt the same
♪ I still remember
♪ There was light in my day
♪ I fell into love
♪ Now it all falls away
♪ If you are
The love of my life
♪ How can I breathe, how can I?
♪ How can I live, how can I?
♪ How can I go on without you?
♪ If you are
The love of my life
♪ How do I dream, how do I?
♪ How do I plan, how do I?
♪ How do I laugh without you?
♪ I always wondered
♪ How it could have been
♪ If those days that we spent
♪ Weren't just memories
♪ I always wondered
♪ If there was more to say
♪ I had it so good
♪ But I let it slip away
♪ If you are
The love of my life
♪ If you are
The love of my life
♪ How can I breathe, how can I?
♪ How can I live, how can I?
♪ How can I go on without you?
♪ If you are
The love of my life
♪ How do I dream, how do I?
♪ How do I plan, how do I?
♪ How do I laugh without you?
♪ I knew deep down
I'd only get one shot
♪ Our story only ever
Had one plot
♪ You'd better learn
To treasure what you've got
♪ Take it, take it from me
♪ Take it, take it from me
♪ It goes away
And it was never enough
♪ Get so used to it
And then then it stops
♪ So lock your heart away
In a little box
♪ Take it, take it from me
♪ Take it, take it from me
♪ How can I breathe, how can I?
♪ How can I live, how can I?
♪ How can I go on without you?
♪ How do I dream, how do I?
♪ How do I plan, how do I?
♪ How do I laugh without you?
♪ If you are
The love of my life
♪ If you are
The love of my life
♪ If you are
The love of my life
♪ If you are
The love of my life
♪ How do I laugh without you?