The New York Times posted an email exchange between Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Maureen Dowd and Sam Wasson, the author of Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M., a book concerning the making of Breakfast of Tiffany's, a classic film of consumerism and casual racism that teaches a valuable lesson. The more beautiful you are the easier your life will be. Which is just true, so you really can't criticise the film for noticing how society is unfair. In their conversation they discuss the nature of modern Romance Comedies, the Hollywood film genre, while wallowing in nostalgia, not to mention managing to offend Jennifer Aniston and Katherine Heigl (Not Katherine Heigl! But she's so awful!). Meanwhile, Wasson offers a neat description of every film you will have seen recently. 'I can’t remember the last time I saw two people really falling in love in a movie,' he writes. 'Now all we get is the meet cute, a montage, a kiss, then acoustic song into fade out. Nothing experiential, only movies manufactured from movies.'
Ignoring the suggestion that acoustic songs are part of the problem, and that actors such as Aniston, Jennifer Garner and Heigl have any power or choice over the films they make, Dowd and Wasson's impression of modern romantic comedies is flawed in the simplest sense. Even now when watching a Howard Hawks film, a teary-eyed old codger who nobody invited (Seriously, who is he here with?) will say, 'They don't make 'em like that anymore!' and everyone will agree. He is right, of course, and probably lonely, yet once you've ushered him off with some change and an empty promise you'll call the realisation will hit that of course they don't make them like that anymore. It's an illogical statement. It's about as illogical as comparing Two for the Road with The Bounty Hunter. Now, Bewildered Heart watched The Bounty Hunter, for the sake of this blog (the things the internet goes through for you), and we noticed, during one of the car chases, that it really isn't a romantic comedy, lacking both a convincing, sweet-natured love story and anything approaching humour. It works along similar lines to a Mills & Boon, despite its own probable protestations. An abandoned relationship is rekindled over the course of a series of unlikely circumstances, as a couple hate one another at first, but then slowly realise this is as good as it is going to get for them. Happy Ending! Pop music! Credits!
The girl, portrayed casually by Jennifer Aniston's face, is a journalist, while the male, played by Gerard Butler's shirt, is a charming chauvinist. Furthermore, as with all Mills & Boon books, no one of discerning taste could possibly enjoy the experience. In terms of true romantic comedy nothing modern stands out as impressive, or worth watching, even when they do follow the trusted formula Wasson was criticising moments ago. Even the films he glorifies, those of Hawks and Lubitsch, begin with a meet cute and end with a kiss. So what's the difference between now and the Golden Age? If Wasson knows he ain't telling. He blames a lazy attitude toward assembly line film-making, with no attention paid to the craft of showing a couple genuinely falling in love onscreen. Gone has the charm, gone has the patter, gone has the wit. The question isn't that romantic comedies aren't good anymore. They aren't. Films aren't as good as they once were. Nothing is. The whole world is rubbish. Therefore, the question is, what happened? The most likely bet appears to be regression.
Yet, would audiences flock to see Trouble in Paradise or Bringing Up Baby if they were made today? Who knows? We have nothing in whatever decade this is that has the glorious old-fashioned feeling to demonstrate the public hunger for quality. Isn't the greatest love story ever committed to celluloid City Lights? Yes, it is and anyone who disagrees obviously has never seen it. We might blame capitalism, but Hollywood has always been profit-orientated. Wasson refutes the old adage that, 'teenage boys and girls drive the marketplace. But I say they only drive the marketplace because there’s nothing out there for grown-ups to see.' It is wonderful for older, more intelligent people to wash their hands of modern times, but it is a poor argument, simply because it absolves the statement from requiring proof.
Once you've seen every film made prior to the advent of colour is there any reason going on? Is the lack of romance and comedy in this new age of romantic comedies indicative of wider social troubles? Surely not! Tell us you're only joking, Sam Wasson. 'I am not joking when I say that because there is nothing to see my girlfriend and I have had to stay home and in some cases fight. If there were better movies out there, I am sure so many relationship disasters may have been averted. Also, romantic comedies, the good ones, taught me how to love, or at least instructed me on how to try. If I were falling in love now for the first time and going to see this garbage thinking this was real, I would be in deep (shit).' Perhaps, but anyone basing their business plan on corporate thrillers would be in more trouble, and anyone planning to renovate a summer camp and get laid this summer would be best served watching a couple of movies about that stuff first.
Inevitably, this is a matter of causality. Life imitates art, on occasion, but art is clearly based on life. Films reflect the times we live in, and the stale, bland, manufactured state of romantic comedies is not the cause of our societal troubles, and it is not the reason we fight. What Wasson means, we can assume, is that Hollywood pictures set the tone for our lives. If there is romance in the movies, then there will be romance in the world. Sure, there lacks a basic comprehension of romance nowadays, but those lightweight, fluffy ninety-minute escapist romps that made the world such a wonderful, peaceful place in the 1930s and 40s are behind us. Today we have soulless corporations churning out examples of how a stupid man can win the orifices of a stupid women, with the whole idiotic disaster sold only with a promise of Jessica Alba's, Biel's, Josh Duhamel's briefly glimpsed bare flesh. In conclusion it is all very sad, and, as Wasson notes with disappointment, there will be no backlash until the current formula fails financially, or a new, lucrative market in decency opens up. Neither looks set on happening presently, and so we silently despair, as good people are supposed to do.
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