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Every Shade of Jet_ A Massive Megapack of Gay Bladall Eisenhorn & Delmar Wilson & Curtis Kingsmith
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3秒自动关闭窗口Living the Romantic Comedy
The delights and torments of romance (funny or not) as portrayed in the movies and experienced in so-called real life, foibles of the writing craft, and other topics apropos.
Kumail Nanjiani & Emily V. Gordon
All written content (c)
Billy Mernit, all rights reserved.
My good friend the great romantic comedy screenwriter (Man Up) and I have been doing a podcast on all things rom-com for a while now - we've got three episodes up - and the latest one is about , the AFI Diane Keaton tribute, and other topics that include the dangers of crying (or not crying) on first dates. So by all means, come and have a listen to
[Scott Myers over at
is doing a great week-long study of rom-com &meet-cutes& - do check it out - and he asked me for my two cents on the topic...]
The variety of meet-cutes (or cute meets) in romantic comedy is as vast as the multitude of ways in which any human being can first encounter a prospective mate. This essential beat can be as mundane as the common “Whoops!” moment (e.g. a street corner collision w/spilled beverage, technically the second meet-cute in Notting Hill) and as fantastical as “He was an item on my scavenger hunt list” (My Man Godfrey). Asked to come up with a short list of favorites, I find myself, as always, trying to make order out of chaos. Do these meets come in categories?
Well, yuh-huh: I do see one kind of underlying organization here, and inventing terms on the fly, I’ll posit that the basic division could be seen as Conscious and Unconscious. There are meets which, if not actually strategized and planned, are in some key way intended by at least one of the two characters involved, and those that are unforeseen by either character.
The Unconscious Meet is guided by fate alone. A classic of this kind is found in Bringing Up Baby, wherein confusion over a golf ball (Cary Grant claims it’s his, and Katherine Hepburn just knows it’s hers) collides two perfectly mismatched well-to-do folks . The glory of this meet arises from its absurd escalation – it moves from Hepburn claiming ownership of the golf ball to ownership of Grant’s car – and our swift realization that poor Cary (“I’ll be with you in a minute, Mr. Peabody!”) has met his match and, under protest, already been undone by her.
Unconscious Meets are fairly common. When they’re good, they encapsulate, or at least offer us a glimpse of, the essential dynamic of the relationship-to-be, e.g. Grant’s stubborn, increasingly crazed attempts to make a stand for rationality in the face of Hepburn, who transcends (or simply avoids) any kind of rationality known to man. When such meets are bad, they’re just lazy screenwriting.
The Conscious Meet, in the hands of a canny writer, can be a tour de farce. A later pinnacle of the screwball genre, Sturges’ The Lady Eve, delineates how a skilled hustler played by Barbara Stanwyck uses her hand-mirror to size up her prey, temporarily at large in their cruise liner’s dining room. Stanwyck watches the unwitting-bordering-on-dim-witted millionaire played by Henry Fonda try to ignore the fact that nearly every woman in the place is throwing herself at him, and then, just as the hapless Henry is escaping, trips the poor sap – so that he not only ends up apologizing to her but is swiftly coerced into leaving with this triumphant con-woman on his arm, as the other outsmarted women look on in alarm.
The original Arthur (1981) provides us with a reversal: The millionaire played by Dudley Moore notices working-class Liza Minnelli shoplift a tie from an upscale department store, enjoys the spectacle of her trying to brazen her way out of it when she’s caught, and then gallantly swoops in to her rescue, pretending to the flummoxed security guy that he’s Liza’s boyfriend, who expected him to pay for it. Since both characters are in on the gag (as opposed to in Baby’s Unconscious Meet), much fun arises here from our realizing – as Minnelli’s character instantly goes along with Moore’s charade – that Arthur has truly met his ma we’re going to spend the rest of the movie reveling in the ability of each like sensibility-attuned character to give as good as they get.
More recently screenwriter Tess Morris presented us with a kind of Unconscious-Conscious Meet Cute Combo Platter, in her Man Up: Here, the leading lady played by Lake Bell has picked up the book left behind by the woman she was chatting with on their train, hoping to find her in the station and return it – and is thus standing, unwittingly, beneath the clock where said train companion was due to meet blind date Simon Pegg, with the very book that was meant to be their “how you’ll recognize me” signal clutched to her chest. So , and Lake – in a moment of inspired “Why not?” goes along with his mistake.
This clever Unconscious, then Conscious meet-cute points up a general principle for either and all categories: The more organic your meet, the better, and the best of these can seed an entire plot. In other words, Man Up’s meet isn’t simply an arbitrary, random bit of funny business that makes its characters’ meeting memorable. It’s the linchpin of the entire story: because these two met in this unique fashion, what happened there (i.e. Lake pretending to be someone else) determines pretty much every high jink that ensues between them.
The “chance or not so chance encounter that leads to romance” of it all is particularly fun when what’s conscious yields complications that even the most conscious person involved can’t foresee. In Spike Jonze’s Her, the very with-it tech-savvy character played by Joaquin Phoenix consciously brings OS One, the world’s first artificially intelligent operating system into his living room, and we (if not he) realize in their first conversation who’s ultimately going to have the upper hand, when the OS One tells Phoenix that her name is Samantha. “Really? Where did you get that name?” he asks. “I gave it to myself,” she informs him, and there, in a line, is the movie.
Some of the most intriguing cute meets come ingeniously disguised (see, for a quintessential example, Sleepless in Seattle’s “I met him on the radio”), but that’s an exploration for another day. For now, I’ll leave you rom-com screenwriters with this challenge: How cute can your meeting be, depending on who knows – or doesn’t – that they’re meant to be meeting?
It's that time of the year again. Everyone who's got a beating heart knows that as soon as February rolls around, there's a major holiday to be reckoned with, one that's come to symbolize the meaning of love and romance for America, if not the world.
I'm speaking, of course, about Groundhog Day.
Granted, there was a time, long ago (i.e. before 1993), when this holiday lacked the romantic associations since bestowed on it, due to the efforts of Danny Rubin, the late  and Bill Murray. But ever since the writer, director and star, respectively of Groundhog Day created what's now generally acknowledged as one of the great American movies of all time, February 2nd has become synonymous with romance and comedy.  In fact, when people ask me to name a couple of my favorite romantic comedies, this one invariably comes to mind.
What, you've never thought of this cinematic classic as a romantic comedy?  For shame.  I have it on unassailable authority that the film qualifies. For starters, it says so right on the DVD box's cover (&A romantic comedy fantasy that is Bill Murray's best screen performance& --  Gene Shalit). But look up the definition of romantic comedy in the
on same, and you'll find (p.12) that &a romantic comedy is a comedy whose central plot is embodied in a romantic relationship& and that (p.13) &the central question posed by a romantic comedy is: 'Will these two individuals become a couple?'&
As you well know, when TV weatherman Phil Connors (Murray) gets inexplicably trapped in the same repeating February 2nd, his sole recourse to getting out of it becomes the object of his affections, producer Rita (Andie MacDowell); his salvation lies in the answer to their coupling question. (Screenwriting theorist sticklers may point out that the story's central question is really, Will Phil ever get out of February 2nd? To this I say, also true, because the movie is a rom-com hybrid -- -- a romantic comedy/high concept fantasy, and thus the couple/escape conflicts are intertwined. But let's stop boring our civilian readers, shall we? Thanks.)
Strange but true, there still exist deprived people who have not seen the movie Groundhog Day. If you are one of those poor souls, what better opportunity to improve the quality of your life, than to view it on the official Day itself? And even if you're one of the many enriched individuals who's seen it,  is a movie that you can watch over and over, and over, and over...
If you're a major Groundhog Day fan, you might even consider journeying to the scene of the crime: the town of , and it promises to be quite a hoot. Such a trip was actually enjoyed byDay's writer and star before the movie was made, and therein lies a tale that speaks, I believe, to the true spirit of romance, or as we might say, what love's got to do with it.
 recounts the following in his illuminating interview accompanying an early draft of the screenplay in Scenario(Spring '95 issue, regrettably out of print). He talks of having been hired, fired and re-hired to work on the script, and when he, his wife Louise and kids were preparing to move from Los Angeles to New Mexico, getting a call from Bill Murray:
He says, &Do you realize that the day after tomorrow is Groundhog Day?&--&Yep.&--&And do you realize that between the director, the producer, the star and the writer of this film, nobody has been to the festival at Punxsutawney?  Doesn't that seem wrong to you?&  And I said, &Absolutely.  And I think you should go, I think that will be a great thing.&  And he said, &I think we should go.&  And I said, &Bill, that's a really nice offer, sounds like fun, but I'm moving, I'm moving my family, we're up to our necks in boxes, I can't just abandon them and go off to Punxsutawney.&  And he said, &Well, think about it and call me back.  Here's my number.&  When I got off the phone, Louise asked who it was.  &Bill Murray,& I said.  &He wants me to go to Punxsutawney tomorrow.&  And she said, &Cool.&  And I said I'd told him I couldn't do it.  She said, &Are you nuts?&  So I talked to [the studio] and they said, &We'll pay for the move, we'll get someone to help pack, we'll fly out a friend of your wife's to help her move in so you don't have to be there.&
This level of support was very nice, and I embarked on the most surreal adventure of my professional life.  All of a sudden I'm flying in a private plane from the middle of nowhere to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night with Bill Murray and we're talking about the script.  We landed somewhere near Punxsutawney at 2:00 in the morning.  And there were fans out there waiting for him--it was supposed to be a secret...
Rubin goes on to say that he used a lot of what he saw there in the script. He'd originally spoken to the town's Chamber of Commerce and looked at their literature, but:
After we actually saw it, there was a whole different feel to it than we had imagined.  It was delightful, really delightful--a wonderful civic event.  We incorporated a lot of that into the movie...  Everyone there knew it was a goofy ritual--it was almost sophisticated in its hickyness.  What was so much fun about the festival is, it's the middle of the night, zero degrees, they've got bonfires going--and they're playing Beach Boys music.
Sometimes I read this excerpt to a screenwriting class when I'm talking about the inestimable value of research, to illustrate how really being there can make all the difference in writing a given project. But I quote it now in this pre-Valentine's Day context to highlight my favorite moment in Rubin's story, which is when Louise says, &Are you nuts?&
I just love that! Gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling every time, because it seems to me that Danny Rubin's wife is the hidden heroine of the Groundhog Day saga. Love doesn't mean never having to say you're sorry.  It means having someone be able to say &Are you nuts?!& to you at a crucial moment. Love is sometimes about selflessness and saving loved ones from themselves -- which come to think of it, is kind of at the core of what the movie ended up being about, don't you think? 
Go watch it again, again, and see if you agree.
Spending my days believing in impossible things and chasing them towards an inner truth, now that's a pretty good gig.
--Danny Rubin
(photograph at post's top by )
Even as a young man,
was old. Listen to him on his first album singing the instantly memorable first line of Suzanne, and you hear a world-weariness, the sigh of an elder sage, that would seem unbecoming in a young singer-songwriter were it not for the level of insight evidenced in his lyrics. 
It's not just the deep bass register he adopted as time went by, but the entirety of his persona: the sober, rabbinical pose at the altar of keyboard or guitar, the spare and simple folk-timeless chord patterns, his incantatory phrasing cushioned by the sweet young voices of female background singers. You felt, listening to Cohen even in his middle age, that you were hearing the testimony of a man who had been to the mountain and back, an aged soul whose eyes were focused on the higher truths that transcended the superficial ditherings of what preoccupied contemporary culture. 
You know his music, you may know his poetry. But it was his lesser known novel  that changed my adolescent mind. At age 16 I was just starting to think I might be a writer, and I was awed by its weird, surreal eroticism. To this day I can't forget the moment when, after a benignly monstrous vibrator has had its way with the lover-protagonists, it makes an exit worthy of a creature from some '50s sci-fi horror pic:
The Danish Vibrator slipped off her face, uncovering a bruised soft smile. &Stay,& she whispered. It climbed onto the window sill, purring deeply, revved up to a sharp moan, and launched itself through the glass, which broke and fell over its exit like a fancy stage curtain... When it reached the ground it crossed the parking lot and soon achieved the beach...  How soft the night seemed, like the last verse of a lullaby... We watched the descent of the apparatus into the huge rolling sea, which closed over its luminous cups like the end of a civilization.
Years later I was introduced to Mr. Cohen briefly backstage on the night I attended one of his by now-legendary I'm Your Man tour concerts. Nothing memorable to note there, just a polite head nod - otherwise I stood around eavesdropping as he talked to my more celebrated companions (see Periphery Man photo captioned: Leonard Cohen, Laurie Anderson, Unidentified Man, etc.). And then...
About a decade ago I went for lunch at the French cafe on Abbot Kinney with my friend Peter Trias, and shortly after we got settled into our table, I noticed an elderly man come in, accompanied by a beautiful young Asian woman. As they sat down at a table across the little patio, I gave the man a curious glance, because there was something familiar about his face.
A bit further into our lunch, I put it together: the older man with the haunting, luminous eyes, the younger woman so attentive to him. &I think that's Leonard Cohen,& I told my friend. I chanced another look at their table.
And here's the odd thing: when I did so, the man was already looking at me. There was an air of expectancy in his gaze, as if he'd known before I did that there was reason for me to look, as if, in fact, he had recognized me. He returned my feigned casual glance with a gaze of open curiosity.
My second look had confirmed, at any rate, my suspicion that there was indeed an icon of my generation having tea in the French cafe.  But the a few times during the course of our meal, I had the distinct feeling of being watched, and when I snuck another look Cohen-ward, once again I found his waiting eyes anticipating mine.
It could have been any number of things, but Cohen's behavior strikes me as extremely Zen. If idolized, idolize the idolator. He was acting as a psychic mirror -  either that, or mistaking me for the guy who did his dry cleaning. There's also the possibility that he unabashedly enjoyed being recognized, and/or was having the kind of day where his ego welcomed the attention... which come to think of it, is antithetical to being a Zen monk.  There you go - his familiar dichotomy theme: the struggle between the spiritual and the material.
By the time Cohen and his companion were paying their check, I couldn't contain myself. &I'm sorry if this embarrasses you,& I told Peter, &but I've got to talk to the guy.& There was something I felt compelled to impart to Mr. Cohen, coincidentally having listened to I'm Your Man in the course of a writing session only a few nights previous, and so when he and the young woman came down our aisle, I stood up and briefly blocked his exit.  Again, he seemed to anticipate and expect this, as if it were an inevitable ritual.
&Excuse me, but are you Leonard Cohen?& I asked.
He smiled. &Yes, I am,& he admitted, looking happy about it.
I introduced myself and shook his hand. &I was listening to your Tower of Song the other night,& I said, &and it occurred to me that I first read Beautiful Losers as a teenager. I'm a writer, and I just want you to know that you've been in my life, giving me great pleasure and inspiration for quite a long span of time, so thank you for that.&
&You're very kind,& he said, and we nodded at each other, I stepped aside, and he and the Asian woman (who seemed relieved that I'd been wielding neither an autograph hound's pen or a .45 magnum) went on their way. But I don't think I was wrong in feeling that Mr. Cohen had been genuinely pleased by my little tribute, and I guess this is the point of my anecdote.
Too often the greats don't get their props until they pass away. There are but a handful of songwriter-artists who have continued to produce a sustained body of meaningful work over a damned impressive number of years - Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon come to mind. Let us celebrate them now, I say, while they're still among us.
For it's one thing to make a big splash and then fall by the wayside while times and taste shift, and another thing entirely to transcend the vagaries of fashion and be, in a very real sense, eternally young, eternally old... ever alive to what's eternal. It's a formidable challenge, one addressed in these lines from Leonard's Book of Longing's poem, The Faith:
The sea so deep and blind
The sun, the wild regret
The club, the wheel, the mind
O love, aren't you tired yet?
Christine of
in a pause between blowing out the rafters of the Ace Hotel last night, got confessional with us. She recalled once seeing people laughing and pointing at a homeless &freak,& and admitted, &I'm a coward. I did nothing. But in this odd little job I've got,& she said, &I get to make it up to him,& thus introducing the song she'd written for him, St. Claude:
Christine (Heloise Letissier) has a physicality that drives her show, a string of tightly choreographed assaults of musical joy. Self-identified as pansexual, voice and moves inseparable, she is an instrument: she seems to play and be played through by her powerfully minimalist band as she dances out each song, whether she's in pounding four-on-the-floor disco mode, or in subtler stuff like this this cover of Beyonce's Sorry:
A galvanizing force in her native country's LGBT club scene, Christine charmed the Ace crowd with her Gallic sense of wryly distancing humor. &I'm coming out to you, Los Angeles,& she announced. &I'm French.& She seems poised to take over America, and if her next release contains anything as good as Tilted, my personal heavy rotation list-topper and the one that had the entire audience singing along, I bet she will. 
&Don’t think about it as a romantic comedy. Don’t look at the tried and true and what the movie needs to be. Look at these people. Look at what makes them unique and perfect for each other. Think about your views on love and courtship and what you think is funny about falling in love right now, and what do you think really makes a relationship? And go at it with a consciously thematic and socially conscious point of view. “What do I have here that will really speak to my peers about love and romance?”
magazine asked me some questions about the genre that I could not help but try to answer. As a general update on what's up with rom-coms these days, you may find
of interest.
Rom-commers (writers especially), a reminder: As you know, the real romantic comedy action is presently on the small screen (see everything from Catastrophe to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and that's just the C's). So if you haven't yet started on Lena Dunham's
of Girls yet, hie thee to it. With Louie scheduled to start streaming again on 3/5, that's two of our top, most forward-looking comedy/rom-com auteurs available for your perusal at the peak of their powers.
It's that time of the year again. Everyone who's got a beating heart knows that as soon as February rolls around, there's a major holiday to be reckoned with, one that's come to symbolize the meaning of love and romance for America, if not the world.
I'm speaking, of course, about Groundhog Day.
Granted, there was a time, long ago (i.e. before 1993), when this holiday lacked the romantic associations since bestowed on it, due to the efforts of Danny Rubin, the late  and Bill Murray. But ever since the writer, director and star, respectively of Groundhog Day created what's now generally acknowledged as one of the great American movies of all time, February 2nd has become synonymous with romance and comedy.  In fact, when people ask me to name a couple of my favorite romantic comedies, this one invariably comes to mind.
What, you've never thought of this cinematic classic as a romantic comedy?  For shame.  I have it on unassailable authority that the film qualifies. For starters, it says so right on the DVD box's cover (&A romantic comedy fantasy that is Bill Murray's best screen performance& --  Gene Shalit). But look up the definition of romantic comedy in the  on same, and you'll find (p.12) that &a romantic comedy is a comedy whose central plot is embodied in a romantic relationship& and that (p.13) &the central question posed by a romantic comedy is: 'Will these two individuals become a couple?'&
As you well know, when TV weatherman Phil Connors (Murray) gets inexplicably trapped in the same repeating February 2nd, his sole recourse to getting out of it becomes the object of his affections, producer Rita (Andie MacDowell); his salvation lies in the answer to their coupling question. (Screenwriting theorist sticklers may point out that the story's central question is really, Will Phil ever get out of February 2nd? To this I say, also true, because the movie is a rom-com hybrid -- -- a romantic comedy/high concept fantasy, and thus the couple/escape conflicts are intertwined. But let's stop boring our civilian readers, shall we? Thanks.)
Strange but true, there still exist deprived people who have not seen the movie Groundhog Day. If you are one of those poor souls, what better opportunity to improve the quality of your life, than to view it on the official Day itself? And even if you're one of the many enriched individuals who's seen it,  is a movie that you can watch over and over, and over, and over...
If you're a major Groundhog Day fan, you might even consider journeying to the scene of the crime: the town of , and it promises to be quite a hoot. Such a trip was actually enjoyed byDay's writer and star before the movie was made, and therein lies a tale that speaks, I believe, to the true spirit of romance, or as we might say, what love's got to do with it.
 recounts the following in his illuminating interview accompanying an early draft of the screenplay in Scenario(Spring '95 issue, regrettably out of print). He talks of having been hired, fired and re-hired to work on the script, and when he, his wife Louise and kids were preparing to move from Los Angeles to New Mexico, getting a call from Bill Murray:
He says, &Do you realize that the day after tomorrow is Groundhog Day?&--&Yep.&--&And do you realize that between the director, the producer, the star and the writer of this film, nobody has been to the festival at Punxsutawney?  Doesn't that seem wrong to you?&  And I said, &Absolutely.  And I think you should go, I think that will be a great thing.&  And he said, &I think we should go.&  And I said, &Bill, that's a really nice offer, sounds like fun, but I'm moving, I'm moving my family, we're up to our necks in boxes, I can't just abandon them and go off to Punxsutawney.&  And he said, &Well, think about it and call me back.  Here's my number.&  When I got off the phone, Louise asked who it was.  &Bill Murray,& I said.  &He wants me to go to Punxsutawney tomorrow.&  And she said, &Cool.&  And I said I'd told him I couldn't do it.  She said, &Are you nuts?&  So I talked to [the studio] and they said, &We'll pay for the move, we'll get someone to help pack, we'll fly out a friend of your wife's to help her move in so you don't have to be there.&
This level of support was very nice, and I embarked on the most surreal adventure of my professional life.  All of a sudden I'm flying in a private plane from the middle of nowhere to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night with Bill Murray and we're talking about the script.  We landed somewhere near Punxsutawney at 2:00 in the morning.  And there were fans out there waiting for him--it was supposed to be a secret...
Rubin goes on to say that he used a lot of what he saw there in the script. He'd originally spoken to the town's Chamber of Commerce and looked at their literature, but:
After we actually saw it, there was a whole different feel to it than we had imagined.  It was delightful, really delightful--a wonderful civic event.  We incorporated a lot of that into the movie...  Everyone there knew it was a goofy ritual--it was almost sophisticated in its hickyness.  What was so much fun about the festival is, it's the middle of the night, zero degrees, they've got bonfires going--and they're playing Beach Boys music.
Sometimes I read this excerpt to a screenwriting class when I'm talking about the inestimable value of research, to illustrate how really being there can make all the difference in writing a given project. But I quote it now in this pre-Valentine's Day context to highlight my favorite moment in Rubin's story, which is when Louise says, &Are you nuts?&
I just love that! Gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling every time, because it seems to me that Danny Rubin's wife is the hidden heroine of the Groundhog Day saga. Love doesn't mean never having to say you're sorry.  It means having someone be able to say &Are you nuts?!& to you at a crucial moment. Love is sometimes about selflessness and saving loved ones from themselves -- which come to think of it, is kind of at the core of what the movie ended up being about, don't you think? 
Go watch it again, again, and see if you agree.
Spending my days believing in impossible things and chasing them towards an inner truth, now that's a pretty good gig.
--Danny Rubin
(photograph at post's top by )
Would you like to see a movie that’s genuinely smart-witty funny, as opposed to dumbed-down farcical? A romantic comedy that’s contemporary-romantic, instead of sentimental and same-old, one that needs no apologies as a guilty pleasure but is simply pleasure-full, period? Maybe a movie that’s like “one of those great British rom-coms,” from the ‘90s or 2000s?
Hey, I’ve got it right here.
And if you’re a fan of Simon Pegg – even if you just know him as that funny British guy from the Mission Impossible movies – and if perhaps you like Lake Bell (leading lady/writer/director of In a World), then all the better, because they’re the ones who star in this movie, and they’re both at their best.
I’d like to tell you more about why you should go see Man Up this weekend, if you’re in Los Angeles or New York City (it’s soon expanding across the country to more theaters and then opening On Demand and digital everywhere), but I can’t. First of all because I hate being hyped about things, so I've already said too much - I think the best way to see a movie is if you know very little about it and/or you’ve been told that it sucks (the Law of Diminished Expectations).
And secondly, re: this particular movie opening, I’m an unreliable witness.
That’s because Tess Morris, the woman who wrote the movie, says “I read Billy Mernit’s book, my writing life changed, and I wrote Man Up.”  Yeah, no, really: She says it right , among other nice things. And that’s not the worst of why I can’t “review” her movie, much as I’d like to. It’s because since she took Writing the Romantic Comedy to heart and wrote the movie and got it made, Tess Morris has become a friend of mine. Which is good for me – Tess is one fine and funny human being – but terrible for my credibility in this regard. If I go on about her most excellent work, you’ll just think I’m being completely subjective and prejudiced.
So maybe I’d be best off letting Tess speak for herself. Here’s what Ms. Morris says about the origin of her story:
The inspiration for Man Up came not long after I’d had my heart broken. A man came up to me at Waterloo Station thinking I was the blind date he was meant to be meeting, and I said I wasn’t… but as he walked away, I thought: “What if I had said I was? And isn’t that a great premise for a movie?” I wanted to write something about two people who had no idea about each other before they met. Internet dating means that you learn about, and reject, people before you meet them. How many people are we dismissing who might have some potential? You see a photo and say “No.” The Tinder swipe is the death knell of romance.
That’s from a piece she wrote . When Tess and I were discussing what makes good rom-coms good, she said:
If you're writing one, make sure you’ve got something to say about life, or love. Why do you want to write a rom-com? Figure that out. What’s going to make it interesting, funny, and new? Find the truth of what you want to write about.
And apropos, here’s what Tess has to say about the title of the film and what it all means:
I had a load of other alternative titles… I think the worst one was ‘Boy Doesn’t Meet Girl’ ha, and then one day, when I was struggling with writing the script, I remember thinking what is this film ABOUT, Tess, and then I laughed out loud, because I realized it was about me manning up, in life and love in general, and then I thought, Man Up… THAT’S IT. Because both [leads] Nancy and Jack have to man up, you know? And some of the other characters, in their own little ways, too. It’s a film about taking chances, and getting outside your comfort zone. And also, I wanted to reclaim that phrase a bit, from the traditional male and macho kind of thing, because I just like it as a phrase, and we should all be able to use it.
And that’s from an, um, exclusive (i.e. a recent e-mail). Meanwhile, if you're a screenwriter and you'd like to join Tess and me in geeking out about what the big beats of a romantic comedy are meant to be, here's
in which Tess explains it all for you.
So is your interest properly piqued? I hope so, because Man Up is not a big studio movie, and would benefit from your support. And also (take my word for it or don’t – here’s an enthusiastic ) because it’ll make you laugh, and could even make you tear up a bit. And that’s what all of us want from a romantic comedy, if you ask me. Not that I know anything about such stuff.
Go see for yourself.
If you're a screenwriter, or any kind of writer, your talent didn't entirely spring from your fingers full-blown, as if from the head of Zeus. Chances are good someone gave you a little help along the way.
Yesterday was World Teachers' Day, and a graphic from [a company that has since requested that their link be removed] inspired in me was a brief reverie on inspiration. I realized that I couldn't pick one favorite teacher, because so many great teachers had inspired me - had literally changed the course of my thinking, my craft, and my life, over the years.
Geraldine Peterson, Don Dunn, and Edith Gropper at George W. Hewlett High School encouraged me to pursue my creative aspirations. At Indian Hill, in the summer of '68, James Waring helped me find my singing voice and introduced me to both Eastern philosophy and the poetry of Wallace Stevens, while Bob Edelstein opened my eyes to the language of film. The legendary Haig Manoogian (Scorsese's mentor) at NYU Film School showed me how movies were made. Skip Kennon and Maury Yeston at the Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop made me a better songwriter. And my ongoing writing mentor Deena Metzger helped me birth my first novel, and keeps deepening my writing in every form.
I thought about all this without even remembering - I take it for granted by now - that I'm a teacher, myself (though at the UCLA Extension Writers' Program, we're called &instructors&). So I guess what also should be acknowledged here is that all of these teachers - especially Deena - taught me how to teach. It's a livelihood that has immeasurably bettered my life, as it's one of the few things I do that makes me feel I can be an actual constructive force in the world.
I'm especially inclined to take notice of World Teachers' Day and the question posed by [the company that was promoting it], given the amount of abuse teachers and teachers' unions have had to suffer in our current politically charged environment. As a counterpoint to all that, I encourage you to take a moment to think about the teacher or teachers who've inspired you. Who changed your life?
Full disclosure: I can’t “review” Trainwreck because I worked on it. In my capacity as story analyst at Universal, I did notes on each draft of the project, so I can’t be objective about the movie, though I’m delighted to hear that you think it’s good - $30.2 million for a female-driven romantic comedy’s opening weekend is not too shabby, all the usual Marvel juggernauts aside. 
More than a hit, Trainwreck feels like a coronation, and not at all an undeserved one. Queen Amy is the comedy zeitgeist right now. Even her relentless promotion for the movie has been fun and funny, its inarguable peak this past week’s GQ magazine spread in which she appears in bed, literally smoking hot, after an apparent threesome with R2-D2 and C3-PO (Disney, in a wonderful We’re Part of the Gag But We Don’t Know It topper, has huffily announced that it never approved the shoot).
But when I first laid eyes on Trainwreck, in terms of the Four Stages of Being an Actor (1: Who’s Amy Schumer? 2: Get me Amy Schumer! 3: Get me a young Amy Schumer! 4: Who’s Amy Schumer?), Ms. Schumer was still in Stage 1. As an early Schumer adopter, I was then enjoying the first season of her Comedy Central show, so I was merely happy that her first studio-submitted draft came in very good – an unfortunately rare phenomenon in my neck of the industry woods.
Trainwreck is based on a simple but effective rom-com reversal: The girl plays what’s traditionally been The Guy Who Can’t Commit’s role. One impressive aspect of the movie, then and now, is that Schumer eschewed the quick-sketch fantasy gags of her series for something more personal and substantial, and managed to sustain interest all the way. With Judd Apatow attached to direct, this sly, raunchy-with-heart script didn’t really need much work, so my professional concern was meta: Could Schumer, while she excelled at stand-up and in sketch comedy, carry a movie? Could she hold the big screen?
Silly Mernit-man. Apparently the camera likes her (really likes her!) and for good, intriguing reason: Schumer joins Melissa McCarthy and other un-stereotypically appealing actresses like Kristin Wiig who’ve found favor with the contemporary audience precisely because, formidable comedic chops aside, she doesn’t look or act like a Beautiful Movie Star. She is, instead, the epitome of “relatable” – she’s someone most of us might know, or could be. 
Except, of course, for her outsized talent. What with the video clips from Inside Amy Schumer gone viral and her other media appearances, Schumer is being talked about as the one most likely to unseat Louis C.K. as our current King of Comedy (Hey, can’t we all just like, get along?), and Trainwreck is now the official grounds for her planting the scepter.
Since you’ve probably already heard all you need to hear about the movie, I’ll do a quick recap of the memes: Wait, that was Tilda Swinton?!; good dic LeBron James is a scene-stealer, Bill Hader a
Apatow currently proving to be more adept with other’s material than his own (though for all his great skill with comedic actors, I’ll interject, Apatow is still prone to moments of inexplicably dead air); what’s up with all the SNL cameos?; it’s a comedy that m and… “it’s subversive.” 
This last one – “subversive” being the mandatory adjective featured in every piece I’ve ever seen on Schumer’s movie – leads me to a related romantic comedy, the British TV series Catastrophe, which aired in Britain this past January and is now available for streaming on Amazon. In its own low-key, unassuming fashion, it’s perhaps more genuinely subversive than Trainwreck (How “subversive,” after all, is a movie that, unswervingly true to mainstream rom-com tradition, ultimately posits monogamy and parenthood as the cure-all for an unconventional – and tacitly unhappy – single life?).
Catastrophe is the witty cross-cultural brainchild of Twitter-infamous comedian Rob Delany and Sharon Horgan, an Irish actress you may know from the British series Pulling. Aside from its first-rate characterization work and LOL dialogue, the thing that makes it unusually enjoyable, as well as outside the normal rom-com box, is that it’s about 40-somethings.
I know: Perish the thought, right? But these oldsters are not only sexy (on the raunch-meter, Catastrophe can go one-on-one with Trainwreck any time), they’re uncommonly sharp. The series derives a good deal of its charm from the fact that both Rob and Sharon (conveniently, these are their characters’ names) have been around the block more than a few times – but this doesn’t keep them from making the kind of spectacular mistakes real humans make, regardless. 
Some of the catastrophes that befall this instant couple (she gets pregnant from their one night – no, make that six nights – stand, and he decides to be a real dad to the kid) are pure fate, which only adds to the comedy, and provides moments of genuine drama and pathos. That parenthetical log line, by the way, is no spoiler: The series’ premise is set in motion within the first ten minutes of the first six-episode season.
Catastrophe, to its worthy credit, eats clichés for a living. What’s bracing about each episode is how fast the usual formulaic beats pop up and get swatted down, with panache. These two barely know each other – a running gag that keeps on giving – as they’re thrust into the kind of high-stakes situations that usually preoccupy a full-length feature. What gives the show its subversive edge is the depiction of two likable, smart and savvy people who, unlike stereotypically jaded “older couples,” could really make a go of it – if their bizarre situation doesn’t turn them into mortal enemies first. 
All by way of saying that with a fresh new rom-com hit at the multiplexes and a brash new rom-com series now available on smaller screens, the genre that’s been universally declared dead is evidently alive and kicking. That’s something that Living the Romantic Comedy would never, ever (insert sarcasm emoticon here) have predicted.
There was a fine white mist at the foot of the Santa Monica mountains as I biked up the path early this morning - my last bike ride on the beach as a resident of Venice: Tater and I are moving to the suburban wilds of North Hollywood tomorrow. It'll be quite a change, as I've lived in Venice for 23 years, but as we're trading a small two bedroom apartment in the over-traversed epicenter of West Side hipsterism for a three-bedroom house with yard and garage, etc. in a charming, quiet neighborhood... Well, I bought a bike rack for the car. I'll happily trek out here once a week.
Seems perfectly synchronistic that Living the Romantic Comedy is celebrating its tenth anniversary this weekend - end of an era, and all that - though not end, I hasten to clarify: I intend to keep blogging, for as long as it's still fun. But the blogger's landscape has certainly changed since I first moved into this neighborhood, ten years ago.
In June, 2005, Facebook wasn't yet as ubiquitous and Twitter didn't exist, let alone all the other platforms. And though I was late to a party that was still going strong - at the time, you could tell someone you had a blog without getting an eye-roll in response - it was a heady, stimulating community to join, especially in screenwriting site circles. These days, to have an active blog makes you feel a little... quaint. It's a bit like writing in longhand and sending an actual letter.
The most exciting aspect of it, inarguably, was and still is getting a response. These days we're all used to being liked, shared, favorited, and retweeted, but back then it was a more novel experience to blather on about something online, and suddenly get agreement, or disagreement about it from a total stranger. By the time Living RomCom was going strong, it wasn't uncommon for me to get 25-35 comments on a given post. That's astonishing, then and now.
The essential experience - reflected for me in the title of the blog - has been of growing up in public (I like to think I'm still growing), and when I looked back, digging up things to re-post this month, I saw all manner of momentous events annotated here: In my very , I was wondering how to write a dating site profile, and over the course of a decade, after seeking romance in all the wrong and , I found
A my to a ma and my passed away.
What I hadn't quite foreseen was a major sea change in my genre of choice. No, the romantic comedy is not dead, as I've exhaustively , but in the past few years, a certain kind of formulaic chick flick (I call it the Career Girl Gets Alpha Guy movie) has finally lost its audience. I myself had
the so-called formula of the traditional romantic comedy, but I lobbied fiercely here for
One of the things that keeps me blogging about the genre, in fact, is that the rom-com seems to be morphing into something newly relatable, as such hits as Silver Linings Playbook and Her have demonstrated. I'll go out on a very short limb now to declare that when Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer's (which I did notes on for Universal) comes out in a few weeks and makes millions, you're suddenly going to hear - from the same people who danced on the rom-com's grave last year - that &romantic comedy is back!&
Such is the ever-cyclical nature of the industry. Meanwhile, what truly makes the blogging practice worthwhile continues to be the people I come in contact with by doing it, from my first-ever commenter Caroline Ferguson to the blog's most stalwart fan E.C. Henry. I'm amazed and gratified to talk with not just friends, but folks from all over the world on a weekly basis.
Probably the most humbling of such encounters occurred when a former consult client living in Eastern Europe informed me that having read a certain
had helped her to make a major life decision about when and how to have a baby. Her child is over a year old now, and the idea that something I wrote on this blog could turn me into a sort of fills me with awe.
That's the thing, I guess: What I've mostly learned here is that when you write something and offer it to the world at large, you can never know what effect it may have, even on people you don't and may never know. And this is the best endorsement for facing one's fears and continuing to write that I can think of.
Thank you all, at any rate, for keeping me company thus far. And please comment to let me know what you'd like to see more (or less of) on this blog. Largely due to the efforts of blog colleague Scott Myers, whose promotion of a
currently has my total page view numbers at 999,690 and rising, I'm within 300+ hits of reaching one million by the day's end. You, my friend, may even be my millionth viewer!
May your days be filled with love and laughter.
(Illustrations by Adrian Tomine) 
&No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were... 
&As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage.  
&Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves.  
&Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. 
&They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. 
&The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed. It is so ordered.&
We are the mirror as well as the face in it. We are tasting the taste this minute of eternity. We are pain and what cures pain, both. We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.
(photos from NY Times/Simone White, NY Times, O-lan Jones, Richard Kelly Jang, NY Times, eonline, goosepimplyallover, Sean Rockoff, White House)
A Tenth Anniversary Re-Post: November, 2009
I had the great good fortune to have screenwriter/director Shane Black visit my Writing the Character-Driven Screenplay class as guest speaker this past week. Creator of the Lethal Weapon franchise, he  wrote The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and the beloved cult fave Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
Revered by those of us who know how hard it is to write good, character-driven action fare, he also became infamous, back in the day, for having committed the crime of being one of the most highly paid scribes in Hollywood history. 
Shane turned out to be an uncommonly generous, vulnerable, honest mensch of a guy. I got to play James Lipton and ask the questions, and Shane gave us over an hour and half's worth of enlightening answers re: creating memorable characters and crafting effective big screen stories. A few times in our conversation we talked about digging into one's dark places and dealing with one's fears in the writing process. The last question of the night came from a student who wanted to know how Shane dealt with such fears - where the fear came from and what it was about.
&For most people, fear is daring to wish for something so bad that it matters to you, and then having that taken away. Fear is, I'm not going to get the things I want, and I'm gonna lose the things I have already. That's what fear is, to me. The idea of getting your hopes up? [When I was starting out] I would get my hopes up, and someone would say, What if they just smash you? And then you'll feel worse than ever! And I'd go: Oh, well, I know. I'd rather get my hopes up.
&Here's what the fear does: it's something called 'The Jack Story.' Jack Story's about a guy who's driving and boom, his tire blows out in a rain storm.  By the side of the road, flat. He sees a farmhouse in the distance with a light on, and he thinks, I don't have a jack, I can't change this tire - but maybe the farmer has one.  So he starts walking through the rain and the mud and after a couple of feet he thinks, Well, wait a minute, what if I get to the farmhouse and the guy doesn't have a jack? Then I gotta walk all the way back and I'm getting rained on and it's murder. And he goes, Calm down, it hasn't happened, see what happens, play it by ear, okay?
&So he keeps walking and he thinks, Hmm, what if the farmer has a jack, he does, but I bring it back and it's the wrong kind. And then I've made this whole trip and the expectations, and it gets ruined, and then I have to go back and I can't even drive - Ohmygod, it's even worse. He goes: Relax. It hasn't happened, just relax... Three quarters of the way there, he thinks: What if the farmer has a jack, and it's the right kind, but what if he just doesn't want to give it to me, and he says, I don't know you, fuck you, go out in the rain!
&So the point of the story is, by the time he gets to the farmhouse it's like -- & Shane knocks his fist on the desk. &The farmer goes, Hello? And the guy goes: You know what, take your jack and shove it up your ass!&
&Because you have in your head, already scripted, the conversation based on fear, and you've let fear just run rampant... And I have to remind myself, Stop having conversations that don't exist. I'll feel like I've talked to someone for an hour, but it's the future - the conversation I would be having, and inventing the things I would say, or I'm going to say. And then I never have that conversation. It's just wasted fear time, spent on all the bad things that could happen, instead of the really interesting things that might.
&Writing and getting away from your fear, is to me... You know, you might not sell a script. You might not be good. You might not this and you might not that. What's the point in going down that path? There is none. I know it's tough to say, 'Don't be afraid,' or 'Think positive,' but... There really is just no other way to go. You're up against a wall, you've decided you want to do something, you're having some adversity - you can either play out your hand or quit. And I suggest that... My career came down to one moment like that.
&I was working on a script called Shadow Company in 1984, and I was on page one, and I showed it to my brother - he hated it. I sat down and I thought, &I can't do this.  I sat down to write a screenplay - I don't know screenplays, what am I doing, this is so stupid...  And I thought: I don't want to write! I don't want to do this, I can't.
&I'm a one-finger typist. And I said - Just do it.& Shane holds his one typing forefinger in the air, and jabs it an invisible keyboard. &I went, 'The... rain... lashes... Ground... Bla-bla-blah. I started typing - I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this - and all of a sudden, I'm: Huh, okay that's a good line. What would he say there? Okay, he says this... And three pages later, I had a scene, and it became a script - and it sold, optioned - and it got me Lethal Weapon.&
&It came down to this. I had a piece of paper in a typewriter and my finger poised to hit one key and I couldn't do it, I didn't want to do it all. All I wanted to do was stop. And I hit the key. And now I have a career. So that's the leap of faith.
&I walked through the fear. You can walk through anything. That's the fabulous truth that I've discovered, is that fear never goes away. But it doesn't stop you from putting one foot in front of the other. And, the most important realization of all, it can't stop you from being creative. It can impede you, but it will not stop you from having great ideas. Fear will do everything except shut you down, mentally. It can't do that.&
[Classroom photos: Erik Cooper]
A Tenth Anniversary Re-Post: June, 2010
An unhappy truth about living in this world is that not everyone will agree with you. It's why &Best& lists drive me nuts.
Passions run hot when we assess the value of movies. I've seen supposedly rational people battle over the merits of disparate film directors with an intensity that puts any Democratic-Republican conflict to shame. That we take it so personally - the art and entertainment that we love or hate - speaks to the heart of the &Top Ten& conundrum. All such lists are an attempt to objectify what finally must be subjective assessments. Because really, when we talk about best, we're talking about many things, and often what gets confused is the difference between most popular, most artful (i.e. aesthetically impressive, thematically substantive), and... my favorites.
In film criticism, most generally accepted arbiters (e.g. the American Film Institute) go the democratic route, polling a wide group of aficionados. But even here judgment calls shift with the sands of critical time. Up until AFI's anniversary revamp in 2007, D.W. Griffith's racist polemic Birth of a Nation was on the Top 100 now the substituted Griffith entry is Intolerance - a movie that, despite its historical significance and awesome production values, is in large part unwatchable (Have you sat through it recently?  Would you, again?).
It's for these reasons that when I had to assemble a &top 100& for the index of my Writing the Romantic Comedy, I took pains to avoid &Best.& As Hugh Grant tells Andie MacDowell in Four Weddings, after his hilariously incoherent declaration of love (&... in the words of David Cassidy, in fact, while he was still with the Partridge family...&), I thought it over a lot, I wanted to get it just right. So I ended up with &100 Noteworthy Films of the Romantic Comedy Genre and Beyond.& Noteworthy, as in worthy of earning the rom-com screenwriter's familiarity, and &beyond,& to acknowledge that whole thorny issue of hybrids (see ).
Meanwhile, some romantic comedy titles that end up on such lists aren't even proper romantic comedies. I believe that a romantic comedy is a comedy motored by the primary question, Will these two individuals become a couple? By this standard, My Big Fat Greek Wedding doesn't cut it.
Romantic comedies are courtship comedies (even when they involve courtship between the formerly married), and we go to them to vicariously enjoy the joys and pain their primary focus is gender relations: a good rom-com has fun with women being women and men being men (or men being women, as in Some Like It Hot) while they're being coupled up.
The question posed by Big Fat, as my commenters E.C. and Christina astutely pointed out, is &Can two people's love survive the bride's family?& or &How can the bride keep both a husband and her family?& While some of the best laughs in Big Fat do involve courtship (e.g. Nia Vardolos's physical slapstick in the office as she spies on John Corbett), it's really a hybrid - a family comedy in rom-com drag. And because there really is no conflict between Nia and John (who's made a career out of being Mr. &I'm Okay With That&), and such conflicts are, to me, the meat and potatoes of the genre, this is not the movie that will ever truly satisfy my rom-com jones.
What My Big Fat Greek Wedding is, undeniably, is one of the most successful or popular (so-called) romantic comedies of all time. That's not necessarily the same as best.
The need for such distinctions was brought home to me by a recent online list. Writer/blogger Jennifer Crusie has compiled a definitive list of , and for anyone interested in the genre, all of her posts on the subject make good reading. Ms. Crusie, an engaging and successful writer with a hearty following, wisely left &Best& out of the title of her list, though it seems the tacit agenda. I agree with most of her selections. But one exclusion and one inclusion helped crystallize my thoughts on this list issue: Crusie and her readers put in Desk Set, while they left out Annie Hall.
You can hate Woody A you can wish that as filmmaker he'd packed it you may simply not respond to his brand of humor. But a definitive American Romantic Comedies list that leaves out Annie Hall is like a Greatest Rock'n'Roll Albums list that leaves out Sgt. Pepper. 
Setting aside Hall's historical Oscar sweep, it's been the singularly biggest influence on its genre for over 30 years. Without Annie Hall, you wouldn't even have beloved classics like When Harry Met Sally... (since that entire movie, from its opening white-on-black-screen credits with a tinkly jazz soundtrack to its lovers' strolls in artfully filmed Central Park to Harry's &dark& persona is clearly, um, homage); Hall's sensibility created last year's indie darling (500) Days of Summer, and is still apparent in rom-com spec scripts I presently read on a weekly basis. 
The Desk Set inclusion perplexes because while it wouldn't be the last Tracy-Hepburn movie a lover of same would take to a desert island (the abysmal  gets my vote), most fans would go with Adam's Rib or the quirky Pat and Mike. Desk Set isn't generally a rom-com devotees' pick. Crusie justifies the choice as a personal favorite... and ah: there we are.
It's her prerogative, of course (and she's not invoking &Best&), while I'm admittedly as guilty as the next list-er in this regard (see my ): I've been as myopic as anyone in my own choices (fans have decried the thoughtless exclusion of any Harold and Maude mention in my rom-com book). What I'm lobbying for now, in the general critical discourse, is something more specific and useful in our list designations. 
How about &Favorite Romantic Comedies& (supply your idiosyncratic selections)? Or &Best Guilty Pleasure Rom-Coms& (I'll never be able to defend watching Pretty Woman or My Super Ex-Girlfriend, but nonetheless...)? Or...
&Most Original Romantic Comedies& (Eternal Sunshine, Groundhog Day, What Women Want, etc.)
&Best Female-Driven Rom-Coms& (Bridget Jones's Diary, While You Were Sleeping, Moonstruck, etc.)
&Best Male POV Rom-Coms& (Tootsie, 50 First Dates, 40 Year-Old Virgin, etc.)
&Best Mixed-Genre Rom-Coms& (Romancing the Stone, Prizzi's Honor, Jerry Maguire, etc.).
As for &Best,& who knows? Best by what standard? Harold and Maude (the one I forgot) is on . I suppose that all I'm saying is: the next time you find yourself debating with someone what &the best romantic comedies& are, take a moment to define your terms. One woman's Best (say, The Holiday) may be another man's Woa, That Really Is a Chick Flick. Apparently one of the only things both sexes can agree on is that Clueless rocks. 
And so our daily romantic comedy lives on.
A Tenth Anniversary Re-Post: May, 2006
I don't so much think of  as a person as I think of him as a force of nature, an unlikely phenomenon, like those little balls of blue lightning that sometimes roll through swamp on a fog-thickened night. 
This filmmaker who, in telling the tale of a madman who carried his cargo from one Amazonian river to another by pushing a steamship over a mountain, decided to film the event by literally pushing a steamship over a mountain, has become a kind of mythic Flying Dutchman himself.  When actor Joaquin Phoenix flipped his car on a Laurel Canyon road, he heard a knocking on his window and a German voice telling him to relax. &That's Werner Herzog!& thought Phoenix. He got out of his car, said &thank you,& and Herzog was gone.
In a recent New Yorker profile Herzog was characterized by his disgruntled on-jungle-location crew as a man who despite having made over 50 movies, didn't seem to know basic things about making a movie, thus provoking disaster at every turn by doing things determinedly &wrong.& 
Perhaps Herzog, ever the self-educating man at 63, keeps his art alive and alert by using the indispensable tool of imagination. It was certainly at work in this larger-than-life auteur's brief encounter with Periphery Man.
[Another installment in the ongoing true life adventures of Periphery Man, who has had myriad peculiar encounters with celebrities, while not being a celebrity himself.]
I was working for a publicist -- which means it must have been a time of extreme poverty, some period where my time why else would I have been willing to sit in the closet-sized back room of an office for an entire day folding a press-release page into hundreds of envelopes? 
The only thing I remember about the job itself, which was mercifully brief (think I lasted two weeks), was that after spending a day doing one particular mass mailing, I had to do it all over again, because there'd been some crucial mistake made in the copy. Not my mistake, thank God, but still, an unnecessary refresher course in existentialism. That the publicist's apology for the mix-up was cursory, even snarkily amused made it like being in a Grimm's: the troll's all-night task you're forced to do, found undone in the morning. 
The next day when I was sitting behind my desk, licking envelopes -- that's how long ago this was, pre-dating self-adhesive stamps (and yes, I had one of those little sponge thingers in a dish of water to wet the glue of the envelopes, but I'd occasionally lapse into old-fashioned licking, thinking to myself, it's come to this, I am a Licker, a human tool hired to moisten the flaps of loftier, more important humans' announcements of Significant Activity) -- the publicist brought in a client.
The publicist was an officious man, always busy-busy-busy, with an air of self-importance (he had, after all, his own Licker), clearly much taken with the celebrities he was hired to publicize and the rarified air he was able to share with them. On this occasion, though the office was so small that one could hear any activity or conversation clearly from one or the other of the two rooms, and the most natural thing would have been to at least introduce me to his guest... the publicist stayed with him in the other room.
I kept on with my envelopes, not really paying much attention to what was being talked about mere yards away on the other side of the wall, and then, subliminally aware of a lull in the dialogue, looked up to see a face p}