Courting and Cavorting

THE BIBLE OF ROMANCE

Okay, I've looked around and found what looks like Michael Hauge's talking points for his lectures on romantic comedies. All usefully compiled in one web page for you.

Gotta say, though, I take issue with his last point, "romantic comedies always involve deception." Not true. And actually, shouldn't be true. It's kind of nasty when a supposedly solid love affair is built on lies. And, it's kind of a hoary old device, don't you think?

I'm off on the road for a few days. There may or may not be more blogging to be had on this subject. I'll see how I feel,

DUNNO THE ANSWER TO THIS ONE


Just read a new column in Britain's The Guardian newspaper by Molly Haskell, a feminist film critic.

(If her link doesn't work, cutting and pasting this URL will. Another of life's mysteries: http://www.english.ohiou.edu/litfest/haskell.html\)

Back to my blog. Haskell offers a couple of interesting observations about the trouble with romantic comedies:

In an age of singles bars and sanctioned promiscuity, we have trouble accepting the conventions of romantic comedy, those obstacles to blissful union which were once anchored in real-life social structures and taboos now as remote as corsets and crinolines. Parental disapproval, a "shadowy" past, class differences, all provided a kind of realistic backdrop to the tensions displayed and the distance between desire and consummation ...

...and...

Marriage was not a try-out, a revocable agreement, but a one-time thing, with a no- returns policy. It was the great life decision and more was at stake, particularly for women. Beneath the gallantry and bravado of couples like Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart in The Shop Around the Corner, or Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby, we felt desperation lurking, an abyss of loneliness that gave a poignancy and depth to the quarrels and misunderstandings.

Which got me to thinking about what real and high-stakes obstacles do give modern romance its tension.

In place of parental disapproval, now there's the disapproval of children from your first marriage, peer disapproval if you cavort with someone who doesn't fit your social circle's mores (a teacher dating her student, for instance). In place of a shadowy past, I suppose someone who holds appalling habits could be taboo (a polygamist, a liar) and for class differences one could substitute ignorant bigots.

But really, these kinds of stories aren't all that common. Which makes it that much harder to write a universally appealing romance. Finding the believable obstacles is tough.

And yet, people's marriages blow up everyday, perfectly nice people walk around unable to find a good fit in a partner. What are those obstacles that are keeping love from getting a toe-hold? I can see I'm going to be eavesdropping on a lot of my single friends' lives.

OLD LOVERS

Yeah, well, it's all in your definition of old. But here's an intriguing fact, culled from a January column in Britain's Daily Telegraph on the subject of unsexy leading men.

Tracy and Hepburn are universally regarded as the royal couple of romantic comedy, but he was 42 and she was 35 when they made their debut in Woman of the Year. Both were in their forties when they made Adam's Rib, and it's a running joke that Tracy keeps dragging her off-screen for hanky-panky; these characters couldn't keep their hands off each other.

Interesting. I've been thinking that maybe I'm not captivated by many modern romance scenes because they take place between really green kids who've only just barely learned to kiss. Although, my thesis collapses when I admit that I liked crazy/beautiful and 10 Things I Hate About You which were lovely and fun romps by actors barely out of their teens.

But then again, the characters in both those movies were wise beyond their years. So, it seems that in addition to wanting suprise and believability and all the other things I've discussed in this here blog, I crave maturity. One more thing to muse about while writing those scenes.

MORE ON STEPHANIE'S VIEW


No time to sift the research and develop my own analysis on the subject of writing sexy and romantic movies, today. So, in lieu, I bring you a link to a thoughtful batch of letters written in response to Stephanie Zacharek's thorough 1999 essay on romantic comedies, which I posted July 19.

Salon has a habit of not letting surfers in to certain of its archives without paying for it, so if the link above doesn't work, here's the cut and past version:
http://archive.salon.com/letters/1999/06/15/chick_flicks/

LOVE AND PAIN

Just finished reading the script to Bull Durham, since I've been referring to it so often. Most enjoyable hour I've spent in ages. I laughed till I had to stand up.

But here's the real point of today's post: a web article by Michael Hauge in which he says "most romantic comedies are built on great pain. The situation the character is in at the beginning is rarely funny."

Which brings me right back to Bull Durham, and all the other romantic comedies I find memorable. Kevin Costner's Crash Davis in Bull Durham is in pain. He's a burned out baseball player in the minor leagues whose contract was bought out so he can babysit a spoiled wild kid with a wicked pitching arm.

Meg Ryan's bookseller is in pain in You've Got Mail. Her business is being eliminated by a mega chain store mogul. Jerry McGuire has just been screwed out of all his clients. In Shrek, the monster is an object of fun. Etcetera. Which plays into Hauge's other point -- every romantic comedy needs two main goals. Falling in love isn't enough.

Which is why, to take Hauge's other excellent points a little further, the audience can fall in love with the main character his/herself. We feel their pain. And not just their "can't find a mate" pain.

THIS IS NOT SEXY

You're in for a rant. You've been warned.

Here's my number one peeve about what's not sexy or romantic to write into a sexy and romantic movie scene: smoking.

It's not even sexy in real life -- and hasn't been since I first got a whiff of it on the tongue of some eighth-grade BMOC. And I'm tired of clueless directors, lazy screenwriters and addicted actors making excuses that it's somehow a crimp on their creativity to ignore the fact the people smoke. Know what? Real people pick their noses and do a lot of other gross things that speak to their character flaws, but we don't include them in every second movie scene.

Pay attention to all the instances of film and TV characters smoking that you see in the coming months. Most are entirely incidental and the scene would have improved substantially if the writer had done some more thinking about how better to illustrate the character's nervousness, swagger etc. Smoking is the most cliched solution known to writers. Dump it.

Here's a fact or two you can confirm at the award-winning University of California website Smoke Free Movies: kids are favorably disposed to smoking when they see it in the movies -- even if it's the villain doing it. Smoking in the movies has increased instead of decreased over the last decade. It's info culled from a study published in the respected medical journal The Lancet.

Now, back to thinking about what really makes people sexy.

THE INNOCENT BYSTANDER AND OTHERS

You'd figure that by combining a reasonably attractive couple, universal yearning for attachment -- or lust -- you'd have the recipe for sinfully delectable dialogue and direction in a movie scene. But more often, the sin is simply that so much human effort was expended on a flaccid interaction that makes the viewer squirm with embarrassment.

In Love Hurts, New York writer Lisa Levy lists five of the most egregious sins of romantic comedies -- nincompoop characters, the hero's/heroines' lack of a believable life, repulsive male characters, corny coincidences and, the subject of today's blog, cardboard supporting characters.

I can't imagine a real life romance in which a supporting character didn't play a significant role as a catalyst, an observer, an adviser, an obstacle, an innocent bystander, comic relief or all of the above. Yet the movies persist in making the secondary characters stock figures -- best friends, siblings, parents, coworkers -- whose role is no deeper than that initial label.

And, as Levy says, since when do people have just one friend? Make the most of those supporting characters and the romantic scenes they influence suddenly burst the restraints of stereotype, too. Would Bull Durham have been such a multilayered romance without the character of Nuke LaLoosh and the other quirky baseball players? Would Audrey Hepburn's happy discovery in the third act of Charade been as believable if not for the nicely rounded character of her young, stamp-collecting nephew?

So we all know that heroes and heroines destined to fall in love in the movies are supposed to have "cute" meets, right? Well I'm of the school that says the more messy the meet is, the better the subsequent conflict.

One of my favourites is from Don Roos' much-maligned script -- Bounce. The premise is admittedly clunky (man falls in love with widow of guy who died in a plane crash after hero gave him his freebie ticket). But the meeting is fraught with life's little mistakes in most endearing ways.

Our hero tries to meet heroine while she's babysitting a real estate property with her Rottweiler. Her dog has his the same name as the hero -- "Buddy" -- so, embarrassed, she pretends the dog is called Fred. When she becomes suspicious of the hero's motives and sics the dog on him, he tries yelling the fake name, irritates the dog, gets his suit torn to shreds, and the status in the scene shifts quickly and sharply.

She pays for his suit repairs at a nearby dry cleaners and is therefore forced to engage in civil conversation with him, but makes up a story about being divorced. Her pain, his guilt, her backstory, his cynical sense of humor, it all comes out organically, all because the meet was original and sturdy enough to support conflict.

HERE'S WHY SHE HATED NOTTING HILL AND I DID, TOO

In a 1999 article titled Is This as Good As it Gets? Stephanie Zacharek, one of my favourite Salon writers, says almost everything I believe about the dire state of romantic comedies, and says it far better than I have to date.

Which isn't to say, I won't comment on its specifics in later posts.

The link to the Salon archive is dead, but if you type in this URL, the piece appears on your screen. Don't ask me why.

Here's the URL: http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/1999/06/09/romantic/

PIRATES

I've been thinking about Pirates of the Caribbean since I saw it Tuesday. Not about the special effects or Johnny Depp's inspired scene-stealing, mind you, but about why the movie has such cotton candy substance. Among the reasons -- split protagonist and lack of commitment to a central character's goal, to cite just two -- I've realized something germane to this blog. The shenanigans also feel shallow because the love story is about as deep as the villain's wimpy resolve.

Which confirms something I've long held as theory: it's not just a movie-business crutch to demand a love interest in most films. Love and romance are central to living full lives. It's crucial to include that level of a character's emotions because otherwise the people walking around inside your plot will be emotionally stunted. And when screenwriters simply slap the love story on like an added-value sticker, it's worse than forgetting it altogether. It devalues the characters on all levels when they're so ridiculously bereft of something so vital.

So, today's food for thought: if you're gonna give them romantic lives, spend at least as much time thinking about it as you do what kind of food they eat, car they drive, jokes they tell.

NOT GOOD SEX

I've been perusing The Joy of Writing Sex by Elizabeth Benedict, which I mentioned in my June 21, 2003 post. She says, "A good sex scene does not have to be about good sex."

I'd go further. In films, it's rare when a good sex scene is about good sex. The best-written, most memorable ones are about something else entirely. I'm thinking about Jeff Goldblum having sex with, I think, Emma Thompson in The Tall Guy and having the entire bedroom fall apart. It's one of Richard Curtis's funniest scenes ever. Going back a lot further, how about Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night? They're not having sex, but having a heck of a good time talking about not doing it.

I love Steve Soderbergh's editing in Out of Sight, in which the future sex scene is intercut with the participants toying with the idea of it happening. Yes, it appears there is a lot of heat in the George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez coupling. But in truth, the magic of that scene isn't really the great romp in the sack. The scene is really about the anticipation of great sex. And it's all the better for it.

THE TOP TEXT

I opened our front door this morning, to greet the young actor from the U.S. who is courting my roommate via email from his current gig in eastern Canada. He's visiting Vancouver for a week, and the two of them can scarcely believe that their mutual attraction and admiration online is surviving an extended face-to-face visit.

But what struck me was the palpable electricity in the air as my roomie came down the stairs and simply said "Good morning, how are you?" and he replied, "I'm great."

I swear, I felt an actual tingle on my skin. It sent me smiling down the hall and out of range of what was clearly a very intimate moment. Yet I don't know how I'd describe it in a screenplay action line. I think it had something to do with how they both looked fully and frankly into each other's faces, actually searching to see something, as opposed to the careless brushing by one's general vicinity that a better acquainted couple calls a hello. Corny as it sounds, I suddenly felt invisible (as I discovered as I tried to edge around past them.)

Something similar happened on the weekend, as I was waiting in line at a coffee shop in the atrium of the Vancouver central library. Through the glass front window, I saw a 30ish Caucasian man and a late 20ish Asian woman sitting across from one another at a cafe table, a children's picture book open before them. He was interpreting English words for her, and I think she, too, was teaching him the Japanese equivalents.

But that's not what yanked my head around. What was being hollered through the glass that separated me and them, was his intense interest in her and her playful reply. It wasn't lustful, or smarmy. It was more. He was totally locked onto her face, coaxing a smile, or some acknowledgement of his interest in her. She, on the other hand, was shyly and politely toying with him, betraying a subtle interest but not giving away too much. As far as they were concerned, there was nobody within miles. Not a flinch betrayed that they realized I was observing them.

Those are moments that make me tear up in real life. Guaranteed, I'd feel the same way if I saw them played out on screen. Yet how to create them?

Thinking about these two moments, I see how very crucial the "top text" is to the subtext. A writer absolutely must give characters something big and tangible to act around. In the case of my roomie, a third person in the hallway, trying to manouevre around them. In the case of the couple, a storybook and a cafe table.

As writers of drama, we hear tonnes about subtext. But it's just as important to choose an overt action equal in intensity to the subtext, for a strong romantic scene.

WHICH OF THESE IS NOT LIKE THE OTHERS?

This blog isn't meant to be dedicated to romantic comedies, but rather to the better crafting of romantic scenes in all breeds of movies. So I'm going to get back on topic -- in a day or two.

But first, here's an observation. I've looked over the AFI list of great romances, and of a couple of critics' lists of things that were left off the AFI list. And you know what? The list of romantic comedies I can stand seeing more than once is fairly short.

I liked: Shakespeare in Love, Bull Durham, Jerry McGuire, Grosse Pointe Blank, Bounce, Out of Sight, When Harry Met Sally, You've Got Mail, The Sure Thing. I've seen them all more than once and could see them again. But that's about it, really. And I'm a fan of the genre. What's with that?

What's the common denominator? What makes me rebuff a romance?

1) Silly, whiny women, for one.
2) Flawless men. As if.
3) Declarations of deep love based on glimpsing the other person twice. Hugh Grant, are you listening?
4) Listless conversations
5) Lack of formidable obstacles. Which is naturally, the most important

As I look over the above list, I see that each of the films I like has a relatively sturdy obstacle standing in the way of smooth courtship. Either it's a worthy significant other, a nasty job, a hellish personality or a lot of geographical/emotional distance. So, now, why is that so hard to remember?

IT NEVER GOES AS PLANNED

Thursday night, I attended a reading of Ken Hegan and John Meadows' new screwball romantic comedy screenplay, Fast Girls and Easy Boys, at the Cold Reading Series in Vancouver's Anza Club. Ever since, I've been mulling over what qualities made the script successful -- apart from its astonishing count of five or six jokes per page.

And it seems to me, the key lies in the abundance of reversals the hapless romantics encounter as they bumble from speed dating to the real thing.

First dates never go smoothly. Opening lines rarely do either. if you're lucky enough to be doing a half-assed job of displaying your sparkling personality to the OOYD (Object of Your Desire), chances are excellent that in the next instance you'll drop a glob of strawberry soy gelato on your T-shirt or walk into a mailbox or something. Trust me, I can verify this.

So my point is: every charming romantic comedy scene must include the unexpected, loop-throwing event that makes it memorable.

I mean, does anyone really tell stories decades later about the perfection and seamless timing of their first important meeting as a potential couple? Of course not. It's the screwups and dumbo date moments that make the story worth telling. The stuff that goes not at all like planned.

Which reminds me of something Billy Mernit mentions in his book Writing the Romantic Comedy, about the scene in Jerry McGuire where the heroine's spaghetti strap breaks and the hero begins helping to dress her, when he really wants to undress her.

It's a fresh take on a completely cliched moment. And it succeeds because it's a reversal.

BE FUNNY NOT JUST CUTE

Kate Hudson, who at the tender age of 23 has already made a clutch of successful romantic comedies, has hit on one of the key pitfalls of the genre: ''A lot of time when you read romantic comedy [scripts], they are cute but they're not funny,'' says Hudson.

Cute but not funny. I think that's why so many romantic comedies make men gag. They're too darn cutesy-pie sweet (Bridget Jones' Diary) instead of genuinely, humanly funny (Grosse Pointe Blank). It's harder to do, natch. But the films that are genuinely funny last a lot longer.

Of course, when it's genuinely funny, it has to have a genuine bit of plot to be funny about. It can't rely on good looking stars (America's Sweethearts) to carry the day.

Be more than cute. Be funny.

WHO'S IN THE BUSINESS OF ROMANCE?

It's easier finding your one true love than finding resources to help write better romantic scenes for movies. My solution? Dig a little deeper and connect some dots myself.

So who else might know about this stuff, I wonder? Romance novelists have got this thing down to a fine and highly lucrative art. methinks. And even though I've never read a Harlequin romance, I'm prepared to believe the authors can teach me a thing or two. A sexy bit of web surfing later, and here's a useful notion I learned from 20 Steps to Writing Great Love Scenes by romance novelist Karen Weisner:
"Exaggerated awareness."

Essentially, it means that there has to be a super-charged electricity between the two halves of the couple who are destined to come together. Says Weisner, "every single look, touch, sense is made larger than life between them ... When the hero touches the heroine, even accidentally, sparks ignite between them."

I've been there. People attracted to one another know what the other person is doing across a crowded room, even when they're engaged in another conversation, or an otherwise absorbing task. I dunno how it's so, but it is. You can hear what the object of your desire is saying above all others, their laughter cuts across room noise, their clothing is suddenly the most vibrant colour in the space.

Naturally, a pulpy romance writer can simply state, "he felt her every move," or something equally sappy.

But what fun the screenwriter can have, devising actions that suggest every move is being monitored. And how much more fun it can be when the subsequent dialogue reflects that each person feels that "exaggerated awareness" but isn't acknowledging it.

Also -- and this point should not be given short shrift -- "exaggerated awareness" is a nice tidy phrase that sits easily on the top of the computer monitor when writing, to keep the scene on track. "Exaggerated awareness. " I like it.

WHY DO THEY?

Roving the web I found a quote culled by an attendee at one of screenwriting guru Michael Hauge's lectures that said, in essence: "A good reason for the hero and heroine to stay together is one of the main things missing from many romantic screenplays."

No kidding. I've run ranting from well-received films the likes of Notting Hill thinking, "Good grief, they'll be in divorce cout before I drive home from the theatre."

A good solid reason, usually attached to a good solid character flaw that's resolved, can make even the silliest film's romance subplot believable. Exhibit A: Bull Durham, in which Susan Sarandon 's character needs to grow up as much as Kevin Costner's character does, and thus they both need each other to hoist one another to the next level of their lives as grownups. He needs someone who can see through his bluster and visa versa.

Now let's look at a film I loathe: Pretty Woman. Why exactly does she need big ole moneybags Richard Gere to make her life complete? No reason that I can figure. She's already decided she wants to be more than a whore. So what's he add to that revelation besides...oh yeah... money, making her a whore once again. Grrrr.

Give me a romance in which both people need each other equally and that's a real-life connection I'll buy.

IT'S GONE AND I NEED IT BACK

No, this is not a reference to a certain comedy sketch by a certain Grant Hagman (or see permalinks -- and celebrate with me, the fact that I have wrestled the man/woman/HTML boondoggle to ground, save for the extra-spaces-in-the-middle thingee).

I speak of romance in flicks. I saw The Italian Job yesterday, and marvelled not only at how lame was the plot, but how lame was the so-called romance. No tension, no attraction, barely any scenes together, until the culminating voice over (yech!!) in which our pasty-faced, dumb-as-a-beast-in-the-field hero reveals that he's living happily ever after with the marginally more emotive heroine.

I blame reality TV. If celluloid romance in the year 2003 is defined as women prostituting themselves on Cupid, Paradise Hotel, et al (and no, I'm not giving you links to that crapola; you're on your own, dumpster-divers) then what evidence is there that film audiences really want a finely-tuned flirtation on the wide screen?

And yet, and yet... I'm an audience. And I enjoy seeing real people enjoying each other on-screen. Even in a mindless summer crash-em-up movie, like say, The Bourne Identity, which managed to satisfy both the car chase quotient and the sweetness levels.

But I digress. Here's my fearless prediction. The first movie this summer that manages to wedge some honest-to-goodness reality romance into its plot will be a huge success. If my choice is to see the dumb-but-pretty Matrix Reloaded, the dumb but pretty Hulk, the dumb but pretty Terminator 3, or a decent plot with a few snappy zingers flying between men and women, I'll choose the latter. And so will millions of other women, who are, after all, one half of each couple who goes to the movies.

ARRRRRGHHHH!!!!

Let's get one thing clear before you start kvetching and tut-tutting that I haven't blogged in over a week. It's NOT FOR LACK OF TRYING!

There, that felt better. What with downed servers, fires, floods, and. for the last hour, the trauma of incomplete linking, I'm ready to once again start discussing the scenes of romance that work in a comedy film. And here's one I've never seen: the conversation in which a man shows a woman how to a) flip a Frisbee, b) replace a headlight bulb, or, c) write HTML code.

The scene should go something like this:

HE: Here let me show you how it's done.
SHE: I can read directions. I'm sure I can figure it out.
HE: Go ahead, then.
SHE: I'm doing it right, why isn't working?????
HE: Let me do it.
SHE: Nooooooo! I can do it.
HE: Fine.
SHE: I've found the directions. I've printed them out. I'm following them, but they must left out a step, because it's NOT WORKING!
HE: Well yeah, you have to do this.
SHE: Why didn't they say so?
HE: Everybody knows that.
SHE: Fuck off and die.
HE: So, I guess sex is out of the question, huh?

Not romantic? Au contraire. Everyone knows that right after boy meets girl comes boy loses girl. Followed closely by girl loses her mind.