Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay “We've all been in the trenches of love, we've all gone through the highs and lows, so Scott [Neustadter] and I felt that the only way to tell this story [(500) Days of Summer] was to come at it from a completely real place” – Michael H. Weber This time two years ago, I began to explore why romantic comedy films can be so hard to nail. Specifically, I picked apart the best (and worst) parts of some classic, old-school “rom coms” from Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town to Woody Allen’s Annie Hall in an effort to better understand what makes this genre of moviemaking both timeless and susceptible to its time. But, I’m not sure I fully satisfied my curiosity with just one blog. Thus, in honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d revisit this investigation which will hopefully produce a more complete grasp on what makes the romantic comedy such a ripe foundation for filmmakers through the ages to dive into.
So, without further ado…LET’S GET STARTED!! [NOTE: This blog contains spoilers for several movies. You have been warned.] When Harry Met Sally… (1989) Over the course of several meetings with filmmaker Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail), director Rob Reiner (Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, Misery) pitched her ideas for a new film project but she was uninterested. Around this time in his life, Reiner found himself struggling with dating again after being divorced from fellow director Penny Marshall (Big, A League of Their Own) for some time. While commiserating with frequent collaborator and fellow bachelor Andrew Scheinman, Reiner admitted to his desire to make a movie about two friends who agree to keep their relationship platonic to avoid complicating things. After pitching the idea to Ephron (who liked it), she started work on several drafts of the screenplay. To write the film, Ephron interviewed both Reiner and Scheinman (who collectively became the basis for the lead male character) while drawing on her and her friends’ own lives and experience to craft the leading woman. In addition, she interviewed people from Castle Rock Entertainment (which became the inspiration for interlude scenes of young couples being interviewed about how they met). To structure the film using dialogue, Ephron drew on Reiner’s real-life friendship with Billy Crystal (City Slickers, Analyze This, Monsters, Inc.)—notably the split-screen scene of Harry and Sally talking on the phone while watching TV together. When initially drafting the film’s conclusion, both Ephron and Reiner agreed to have the eponymous lead characters remain friends because they felt it was more realistic. However, they ultimately realized that having them get together in the end was more appropriate for the story. A mix of big-name actors and rising stars at the time, such as Tom Hanks (Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan) and Richard Dreyfuss (American Graffiti, Jaws, Mr. Holland’s Opus), were offered the role of Harry but they declined it. Meanwhile, Billy Crystal “vicariously” experienced the director’s return to single life and thus was unconsciously doing character research for the part. Ultimately, he was chosen to play the lead while Meg Ryan (Top Gun, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail) was hired in the female lead of Sally. Released on July 14, 1989, When Harry Met Sally… ended up grossing over 92 million dollars at the North American box office on a sixteen-million-dollar budget. It was also near-universally praised by critics, who singled out Ephron’s screenplay, Reiner’s direction, and Crystal and Ryan’s performances (with Ephron being nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, but losing to Dead Poets Society). In years since, the film was ranked in the Top 25 of the American Film Institute’s list of the top comedy films in American history. Most recently, in 2022, the movie was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for its cultural, historic, and aesthetic significance. In the minds of many film critics and historians, the movie remains foundational to the romantic-comedy genre of cinema. During my viewing of When Harry Met Sally…, I couldn’t believe how good the movie was. I knew it had been an important aspect of popular culture around the time it came out & retained a presence among cinephiles ever since. My expectation going into watching the movie, however, was that it could in no way be as good as people said it was. Fortunately, it wasn’t; it was even BETTER. 😊 Like any great rom-com, this film either soars or flops on the strength of the chemistry shared between its two leads. Without question, the believably slow-burn nature of the relationship between Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) works beyond just the concept. In their different types of interactions over the twelve years that the film takes place, both Crystal and Ryan display an exceptional command of the dialogue & material which ensures the audience feels the genuine evolution of their love for one another. Undoubtedly, Harry and Sally remain the “quintessential couple” of this “quintessential romantic comedy” due, in large part, to how well they pull off this dynamic. Of course, like any good movie, the actors in When Harry Met Sally… can’t deliver great performances if the writing isn’t great. Fortunately, Nora Ephron’s screenplay more than deserved the Oscar that it won. As the screenwriter, Ephron has an uncanny ability to balance grounded comedic moments with emotional drama & romance that never feels cheesy or forced. Rather, she demonstrates a mastery of paralleling character arcs that culminate in this iconic fictional relationship while avoiding the countless pitfalls of tackling such a story. Admittedly, I’m not the biggest of Ephron’s rom-coms that she directed (namely, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail). Thus, her screenplay for this movie remains (in my humble opinion) her magnum opus. As a whole package, When Harry Met Sally… remains the standard by which many rom-coms to this day are measured. Not only is it one of my favorite Rob Reiner films, but it’s easily one of the best romantic comedies ever made. That being said, I look forward to the day when I see a film & say: “That’s a better rom-com than When Harry Met Sally…” because it’ll mean that another movie comes close to its greatness. The Wedding Banquet (1993) In 1986, Taiwanese screenwriter and activist Neil Peng revealed to director Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain, Life of Pi) that one of their mutual friends had moved to America and had entered a same-sex relationship without his parents’ knowledge. Two years later, Lee and Peng started writing a screenplay based on this occurrence and were joined by Detroit native James Schamus (The Ice Storm, Lust, Caution) early on in the process. While the first draft was written in Chinese before being translated into English, the screenplay was re-written several times in both Chinese and English. For the lead role, Lee had to persuade Winston Chao (Eat Drink Man Woman, The Meg)—who was working as a flight attendant when they met—to accept the part. Chao was reluctant, but ultimately agreed when Lee ensured that he would hire an acting coach of Chao’s choosing to work with him. While shooting on location in New York City, Chao spent three or four hours each day before filming to rehearse and prepare. Due to the film’s low budget, Lee relied on shooting in free or public locations (notably JFK International Airport) or even the private homes of cast and crew members. However, the titular banquet scene was shot in the ballroom of a Sheraton Hotel close to LaGuardia Airport. Made on a shoestring budget of one million dollars, The Wedding Banquet was released in Taiwan in March of 1993 before getting a North American release in August that same year. Earning a global box office gross of 23.6 million dollars, the film became the most financially profitable movie of the year. It also received mostly positive reviews from critics, earning an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film (losing to Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba’s Bella Époque). Later analyses have highlighted the cultural and artistic significance of Lee’s creative decision to use a combination of English and Mandarin subtitles to “reach a peaceful coexistence between apparently irreconcilable cultures.”[i] While I don’t love all of Ang Lee’s movies, The Wedding Banquet is certainly one of his good ones. It certainly isn’t as action-packed as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, as groundbreaking as Brokeback Mountain, or as epic as Life of Pi, but it’s mature & nuanced exploration of intersections of identity, family, resistance to tradition, & cultural assimilation allow the film to transcend the sometimes-confining trappings of traditional rom-coms. In a very real sense, it feels like Lee sought to progress beyond basic love stories narratively while also make a statement about the importance of moving past restrictive sociocultural expectations in real life. Simply put, The Wedding Banquet is a pretty forward-thinking film considering that it came out over three decades ago. The most obvious reason for this is how the film shines a spotlight on same-sex love. Given when it was made, the movie could’ve easily made its central romance between two men into a gimmick whose primary purpose was to make the audience laugh at their relationship. Fortunately, Lee’s sensitive approach to his characters (already evident in his directorial debut Pushing Hands and would continue to be integral in his filmmaking) is on full display here. The main character, Gao Wai-Tung (Winston Chao), has an overall healthy & loving relationship with his partner Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein) in Manhattan. From there, much of the comedy & “bits” stem from the culture clash that results from the lengths he goes to conceal his true identity from his traditional Taiwanese parents (Lung Sihung and Gua Ah-leh). Consequently, the audience laughs at the situations that Gao gets himself into as a flawed human being rather than the simple fact that he’s gay. I get that someone born in the 21st century reading this might be thinking: “Isn’t that how it should be anyways?” Well, as a fellow millennial, I agree with you. However, as a cinephile, I can appreciate how progressive Lee’s approach to this kind of story truly is while also acknowledge that it was only an early step towards queer cinema becoming mainstream in Hollywood with films like Gus van Sant’s Milk, Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, and the Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once. If anything, I lament the fact that The Wedding Banquet is not spoken often in equal regard with Ang Lee’s other great movies (like the ones aforementioned). In my humble opinion, it unquestionably deserves that amount of praise. Not only for being a barrier-breaking film that helped Western audiences acclimate to viewing identity & self-acceptance through a (somewhat) foreign cultural lens, but also for being just a very good movie with plenty of laughs & feels from start to finish. Given that it’s lesser known than When Harry Met Sally… or some other classic rom-coms, I strongly encourage you to seek this out if you haven’t seen it. (500) Days of Summer (2009) In 2002, screenwriter and New Jersey native Scott Neustadter (The Fault in Our Stars, The Disaster Artist) was a student at the London School of Economics where he fell “crazily, madly, hopelessly in love” with a girl coming off of a bad breakup. However, after the relationship ended “painfully and unforgettably awful,” Neustadter was inspired to co-write a screenplay based on his experience with frequent collaborator Michael H. Weber. Due to Weber being in a long-term relationship at the time of writing, he felt that the “tension” fostered between his opposite perspective from Neustadter fostered some of the key comedy in the film. In agreeing to direct the film, Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man, Gifted) wanted to make an “unsentimental” and “uncynical” movie that was less of a romantic comedy and more of a “coming-of-age” story. Specifically, Webb aimed to portray the emotional experience of heartbreak as critical to the human experience as “war or poverty.” Along a similar line, the film’s star Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception, Looper, Snowden) greatly related to the protagonist because of how “extreme” his own past experience with heartbreak felt at the time. In particular, Gordon-Levitt appreciated the film’s “honest” examination of the “often profoundly funny” nature of romance. After premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, (500) Days of Summer was released in the United States in August of 2009 and grossed over 60 million dollars worldwide on a seven-and-a-half-million-dollar budget (thus becoming a “sleeper hit” that summer). The film received very positive reviews from critics, with several of them referring to it as one of the best movies of the year (it appeared on several publications’ top-ten lists for 2009). In assessing the film’s cultural impact ten years after its release, Gordon-Levitt’s co-star Zooey Deschanel (All the Real Girls, Elf) addressed the common misconception of Summer being a villain. In agreement with her, Gordon-Levitt warned viewers against sympathizing with his character’s “mildly delusional obsession” with Deschanel’s character since he was falling in love with “the idea of a person” as opposed to a real human being. While I’m a sucker for a classic rom-com ending where the two people in love end up together happily ever after, I also really appreciate the (sadly) less-common choice to have the film’s central relationship not work out. Maybe feeling this way is sacrosanct, but such a subversion of the genre’s trope can be quite refreshing when done right in films like Damien Chazelle’s La La Land (which surely deserves its own blog someday 😊). One of these kinds of rom-coms that I found myself really liking is Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer. In many respects, this movie is more dramatic than comedic (although the ennui of the main character can be rather funny in a cringy kind of way). Its writers, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, set out to offer up a no-holds-barred critique of a common trope in many romantic comedies centered on the straight male’s experience of love: a destructive fixation on trying to create a fantastical version of his “dream girl” to fall for rather than actually loving a person for who they are. While the source of some iconic rom-coms of the past, this trope (which remains undeniably true to many young men’s struggles with young love) can do so much damage to how inexperienced adolescents and young adults conceptualize romance. I understand that some people watch (500) Days of Summer and come away thinking that the movie has, in fact, endorsed that lens through which to view love. Respectfully, I disagree. And I think the two lead actors’ portrayal of the central relationship favors my interpretation of the screenwriters’ and director’s artistic intentions. Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the aforementioned fantasy-driven young male, goes on a painfully relatable (albeit cringe-inducing) journey of self-discovery as he realizes over the course of a year-plus of his life that Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel), the girl he pines for, is not who he’s in love with. Rather, it’s his delusional conception of who (or, rather, what) Summer represents that he’s pursuing which takes him most of the story to come to terms with. While this role could’ve felt consistently more repelling than sympathetic, Gordon-Levitt brings enough relatability to just how pathetic he is to make him likeable enough for the story to work. Deschanel’s character, on the other hand, could’ve easily been written (and thus portrayed) as a stereotypically unlikeable woman who unempathetically rejects the advances of the “nice guy” without remorse or reservation. Instead, Deschanel brings a much-needed level of humanity to Summer by playing well off of Gordon-Levitt’s attempts at making their relationship permanent with a believable degree of making him see reality without being needlessly cruel. With its empathetic central performances & exceptionally relatable screenplay, (500) Days of Summer is (in my humble opinion) a solid example of a great modern romantic comedy. Namely, because of how it fully embraces its bittersweet ending. By allowing the audience to feel Tom’s pain for losing Summer while also conveying that such a flawed relationship was not good for him (or Summer, for that matter), we are allowed to appreciate him moving on and meeting someone new who he can get to know for who they genuinely are & continue to grow as a person. Without shoving its morality into the audience’s faces, the movie expertly leaves us believing that we can be & do better without fully giving up on the tantalizing promise of “true love” being out there for all of us to find. Always Be My Maybe (2019) While at a fried-rice cooking competition hosted by a mutual friend, comedian Ali Wong and actor Randall Park (The Interview, Ant-Man and the Wasp) met and became close friends who supported each other’s projects ever since. Since meeting, Wong and Park spent those years intermittently developing “our version of When Harry Met Sally…” Once Wong made this idea public in 2016, the idea picked up steam and was picked up by Netflix in August of 2017 with Wong and Park attached as co-writers alongside Michael Golamco (Please Stand By). The rap persona of Park’s character was based on his amateur music career as part of the Bay Area hip-hop group III Again from the 1990s. In naming his character’s band Hello Peril, Park took inspiration from the term “yellow peril”—the derogatory term alleging a cultural threat that East Asians pose to Western society. Park co-wrote several rap songs for the movie with hip-hop producer and San Francisco native Dan the Automator. In conceiving of Wong’s character’s celebrity love interest, Wong and Park always had Keanu Reeves (Speed, The Matrix, John Wick) in mind but were unsure if he would be both available and willing. Reeves, a fan of Wong’s stand-up comedy, enthusiastically agreed to shoot his scenes. To do so, he worked around his schedule for John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum in order to fly to San Francisco. He spent two days shooting in the summer of 2018 before flying back to New York. He even contributed ideas to the screenplay (such as him wearing glasses with no lenses during the dinner scene). As a tribute to Reeves’ contributions to the movie, Park wrote the film’s end credits song “I Punched Keanu Reeves.” After sending an e-mail to get his permission to use his name in the song, Reeves gave some suggestions for the lyrics. Following a limited release on May 29, 2019, Always Be My Maybe was released onto Netflix two days later and was watched by 32 million households within four weeks. The film was widely praised by critics, who lauded Park and Wong’s chemistry and the film’s portrayal of Asian love. It has become an increasingly common part of film discourse these days (particularly on social media) to parrot Quentin Tarantino’s[ii] belief that direct-to-streaming films lack the same cultural resonance as theatrical releases. In my humble opinion, this is an unfalsifiable hypothesis for the time being. Mainly because streaming companies like Netflix and Apple TV+ have only just started becoming viable competitors to the major movie studios in the last few years (the increasing presence of streaming films in the Oscars race is testament to this). That being said, I do think that streaming originals (the really good ones, at least) will cement their due place among peoples’ top movies lists over the next few decades. When it comes to the best modern romantic comedies, I hope one of them is Always Be My Maybe. As the directorial debut of relative newcomer and Iranian-American filmmaker Nahnatchka Khan (Totally Killer), this movie—like most rom-coms—succeeds almost wholly on the chemistry of its leads. Fortunately, the seemingly close-knit friendship between Ali Wong and Randall Park did them wonders in portraying high school flames that have grown apart in adulthood. Both the aimless wannabe rapper Marcus (Park) and successful yet emotionally distant celebrity chef Sasha (Wong) come off as very relatable people who have similar struggles despite being rather different people on the surface. They live complicated lives and end up needing the other’s presence to help them figure things out. A familiar rom-com narrative device? Sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less effective here. In fact, this is one of the better examples of it that I’ve seen. On top of their solid performances in front of the camera, their collaboration on the screenplay (along with Michael Golamco) serves up a healthy mix of drama, romance, and comedy that fully delivers on all you want from this kind of movie while having a little more to say than many other films within the genre. With the interweaving of Marcus and Sasha’s journeys of self-improvement & self-discovery, they ensure to make the characters’ mutual coming together and recognizing their love for each other feel organic and deserved. Furthermore, thanks to Wong and Park’s expert comedic timing as actors, almost all of the jokes & bits land incredibly well (most notably the multi-scene satire of a fictionalized Keanu Reeves as Sasha’s celebrity boyfriend). In a sense, Always Be My Maybe combines the multi-decade love story of Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally… with the mature exploration of Asian-American family & identity from Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet. Yet its injection of modern comedic sensibilities & pacing as the “secret ingredient” makes this movie a criminally underrated romantic comedy that (in my humble opinion) deserves much more attention & praise than it’s received in the five years since its release. If nothing else, though, we’ll get even more great movies like this one in the future. 😊 Which of these modern rom-com classics (or soon-to-be classics) is your favorite (or least favorite)? What other more recent entries in this love-filled genre do you think people should check out? What opinions of mine do you find absolutely ridiculous? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, this has been… Yours Truly, Amateur Analyst [i] https://archive.ph/20131116072525/http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/viewArticle/360/806 [ii] https://deadline.com/2023/05/quentin-tarantino-retirement-james-bond-tv-cannes-1235379761/
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Austin McManusI have no academic or professional background in film production or criticism; I simply love watching and talking about movies. Archives
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