BEFORE: Kicking off the second half of the romance chain, but I find myself counting the days until I can watch an action-packed sci-fi or comic book movie again. Now I'm regretting making this chain so damn long, but I go where the linking tells me - I suppose I could have saved some of these romance films for next year, but part of me wants to just clear the category as best as I can, because more films will come in to fill up the empty spaces. However, I have no idea if those new films will help form a coherent chain for next year, it's way too early to know that. Thankfully I don't second guess myself by looking back on which films I could have NOT watched the year before that could have helped me with my linking during the current year, I think I'd rather not know.
Rob Riggle carries over from ""How to Be a Latin Lover"
Tomorrow on Turner Classic Movies, Mel Ferrer links from "Knights of the Round Table" to the day's first film, can you fill in the other links? Answers below.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 24)
6:15 am "Lili" (1953) with _____________ linking to:
7:45 am "The Story of Three Loves" (1953) with _____________ linking to:
10:00 am "The Red Shoes" (1948) with _____________ linking to:
12:15 pm "La Ronde" (1950) with _____________ linking to:
2:00 pm "The Young Girls of Rochefort" (1967) with _____________ linking to:
4:15 pm "Le Plaisir" (1954) with _____________ linking to:
6:00 pm "That Man from Rio" (1964) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "Two Women" (1960) with _____________ linking to:
10:00 pm "A Special Day" (1977) with _____________ linking to:
12:00 am "8 1/2" (1953) with _____________ linking to:
2:30 am "The Professionals" (1966) with _____________ linking to:
4:45 am "The Naked Spur" (1953)
0 for 12 today puts me back at 92 seen out of 278, or 33.1%.
THE PLOT: A romantic comedy centered on a guy and gal who try to keep their love alive as they shuttle back and forth between New York and San Francisco to see one another.
AFTER: According to my completely unscientific study of what happens to someone who forces himself to watch 20 (or so) Hollywood romantic comedies in a row - I'm allowing that one or two of the films I've watched in February either don't qualify as comedies, or were made outside the Hollywood system - the results are, well, troubling. Perhaps it was this film specifically, or perhaps it was just one too many and this one was like the straw that broke the camel's back, but I had nothing but long, complicated stress dreams last night. Now, they weren't specifically about romance, I was doing things like looking for my boss's car in a giant parking lot because I needed to give John Leguizamo a ride uptown so he could sign a contract to be in an animated commercial, and I couldn't even remember what color car I was looking for. Bear in mind, I haven't driven a car in at least 10 years, so that alone would cause me stress, and while I've never met John Leguizamo, my other boss did do some animation for him, and I think he was probably a stand-in for Justin Long (same initials, I just realized) who I did meet back in 2003 when I cast him in an animated film.
The rest was probably my brain trying to deal with the stressful situations presented in this film, as two people try to make a bi-coastal relationship work. Since I've never had to do that, my sleeping brain probably substituted some stresses that I WAS familiar with - driving, looking for something, trying to make a deadline - and took off from there. Let's just say that February, for all its positives, is also a tough month for me to deal with mentally, as they tend to pepper these romance films with a lot of conflict - a film can appear to have higher highs when it also has lower lows. There's the high of two people meeting each other, forming a connection over an arcade game here, then spending time together and both feeling like they've made a match, somehow cracked the relationship code - only she's headed to the West Coast in 6 weeks to finish her degree at Stanford. It turns out she was only interning at this NYC newspaper, and didn't mean to fall into a long-term relationship.
They have a terrible goodbye at the airport, only to have him rush inside to find her at the ticket window, and neither one wants to end the relationship, so they agree to keep it going by phone and text, and planning to visit each other when they can. Halloween's out, but maybe Thanksgiving, that sort of thing. Hey, relationships can be a struggle even when they're going well, and now they're going to pile on long periods of separation, the agony of missed calls, cryptic texts, the possibility that each will be attracted to other people that they spend time with, etc. etc. It's a wonder that anybody manages to make this work. Some people do the bi-coastal thing together, 6 months here and then 6 months there, and then you've got people who travel a lot, like sales reps, musicians and actors. I don't know how any acting types keep a relationship going when they're always on the move, bouncing between Broadway shows, filming on location, and then there's press junkets that can have them touring all over the country. (I sent my boss out once on a 13-city tour so he could appear at theaters playing his animated feature, it was a nightmare to organize but so worth it when I didn't see him for over 2 weeks.)
So of course we want things to work out for our lead couple here, only they didn't in real life - Justin Long and Drew Barrymore dated for a while, made this film together, got back together as a couple, and then broke up again. Whether this was due to the usual problems inherent in relationships between actors (spending time apart, making out with other people as part of the job) or other factors were in play, I have no idea. But that does add a dose of reality to this story, however it also highlights the implausibility of these characters being able to make things work out, when the actors playing them couldn't. Still, we can't look at every past relationship as a failure per se, maybe we have to view every relationship that ended as one that was successful, but only for a limited time. Everything ends, so perhaps we should just celebrate the fact that these things existed in the first place. Right?
It's also worth noting that a successful relationship involves compromise - this is just perhaps the ultimate expression of that notion, where if they're ever going to live under the same roof, either she has to give up her new job at the San Francisco Chronicle, or he has to give up his job at the NYC record label. They certainly can't afford to maintain apartments in both cities, after all. She'd already put her life on hold for a man years before and has regretted the need to play "catch up" in her career ever since, so thankfully they found a way to compromise where she didn't have to do that again.
Also starring Drew Barrymore (last seen in "Everybody's Fine"), Justin Long (last seen in "Movie 43"), Jason Sudeikis (ditto), Charlie Day (last seen in "I Love You, Daddy"), Christina Applegate (last seen in "Wonderland"), Ron Livingston (last seen in "Tully"), Oliver Jackson-Cohen (last seen in "What's Your Number?"), Jim Gaffigan (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation"), Natalie Morales (last heard in "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"), Kelli Garner (last seen in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters"), June Diane Raphael (last seen in "Long Shot"), Sarah Burns (last seen in "Enough Said"), Matt Servitto (last seen in "Vox Lux"), Leighton Meester (last seen in "The Judge"), Kristen Schaal (last seen in "The Boss"), Terry Beaver, Mike Birbiglia (last seen in "Adult Beginners"), Meredith Hagner (last seen in "Irrational Man"), Happy Anderson (last seen in "Bird Box"), Sondra James (also last seen in "What's Your Number?"), Maria Di Angelis (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Mick Hazen, Ron Bottitta (last heard in "Overboard").
RATING: 5 out of 10 high scores on "Centipede"
ANSWERS: The missing TCM "360 Degrees of Oscar" links are Zsa Zsa Gabor, Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Danielle Darrieux, Henri Cremieux, Jean Servais, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Robert Ryan
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