the groundhog day project

Clearly, Toy Story is built around the whole "buddy picture" sort of structure, but that's close enough to the romance genre, specifically romantic comedy, that I figured it's time to share this: For the record, I did not draw that. It was drawn by a deviantart user who seems to be named May Pong, lives in Brunei. And, if seeing Buzz and Woody kissing like that bothers you, you really shouldn't read the rather brilliantly titled "And Beyond" by Kass , a fanfic in which Woody realizes he has fallen in love with Buzz and Buzz overhears him breaking up with Bo Peep and one thing leads to another until eventually, Buzz plays with Woody's pull string and Woody pushes Buzz's buttons. Seriously though, I think there's more to it than some playful imagining or adolescent fantasy. (And, I'm not suggesting that Toy Story is feeding into homosexual references like, say, Planes, Trains & Automobiles , even though Woody is clearly jealous b...

Planes, Trains & Automobiles is a romantic comedy. I mean, structurally. Tripping over the trunk, accidentally stealing the cab, ending up next to each other on the flight—this is the meet-cute for Neal and Del. In Hinnant’s (2006) terms, this would be the courtship model that begins with “an atmosphere of bitter animosity. It involves the initial antagonism of an improbable pair of lovers who will only slowly come to appreciate in one another the sterling moral characteristics prized in the courtship novel” (p. 297). Now, for Neal and Del, it’s a little more one-sided than that. Del is the friendly one in this pair, Neal the standoffish one. Del just asked Neal, “You want to take a shower?” Neal misunderstood and thought Del wanted them to shower together. Or did he misunderstand? Seriously, just imagine Steve Martin’s Neal as a woman, like the Sally to Del’s Harry. They share a bed their first night together. And, Neal has to sleep in the wet spot. Dowd and Pallotta (200...

Cinderella ‘s kind of a horrible story, too. The idea that love can be found in one dance, that the prince can rescue the girl from a bad situation... except, love can feel like a rescue, I suppose. And, it’s loss can feel like... whatever the opposite is. I saw The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them today and it’s a sad story that invokes the shadow left when love (and romance) are gone. It’s an awesome film, a tragic film with the vaguest sense of hope in the end. Comparatively, Pretty Woman is a slight little thing, hardly worth another thousand negative words... Instead, I offer this. There’s a simple reason that we buy into the “romance” on display in Pretty Woman . Money and the things it can buy are important to us in this country, in the whole of the Western World, to be sure. Where other romantic comedies focus in on the other items on Dowd and Pallotta’s (2000) “norms,” Pretty Woman recognizes that all love is a transaction. Recall my discussion of social penetration ...

Now, let’s get out of New York. And, be a little less light and happy. The kind of movie that starts with two prostitutes buying some crack on the streets of Hollywood... unless Disney gets their hands on the script and twists it around and around until not only does the lead female—still a prostitute, mind you—no longer has a drug problem and the rich guy picking her up is just asking for directions, not prowling for a replacement girlfriend for the week. What used to be a rather despicable guy picking up a hooker who lists her likes as “hot baths and white rocks,” becomes a meet-cute instead. It’s a little sad. You’d know the movie as Pretty Woman . The original script by Jonathan Lawton was called $3,000 . $3,000 has a fairly straightforward plot, making a serious effort toward a critique of 1980s American capitalism. Pretty Woman drains so much of the darker... I would say realism, but $3,000 is just slight enough that it’s hard to suggest it has real depth. But, whatever...

If Americans can be divorced for ‘incompatibility of temper’, I cannot conceive why they are not all divorced. I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible. – G. K. Chesterton In his review of The Mirror Has Two Faces , Roger Ebert writes, “It's rare to find a film that deals intelligently with issues of sex and love, instead of just assuming that everyone on the screen and in the audience shares the same popular culture assumptions.” While he may be correct on the first point, I think he’s wrong on the second. I think The Mirror Has Two Faces operates on the very same assumptions that most any romantic comedy does: that we all want romance, that men and women are supposed to couple and copulate and consummate marriage. Plus, remember (as I’ve already referenced them a couple times) Dowd and Pallott...

It isn’t that Greg wants something that’s impossible. I mean, plenty of people spend their lives without sex, without physical intimacy. Of course, plenty of people probably live without companionship as well. We just can’t all have all the good things in life. Regular companionship would be nice, even if there weren’t sex. Not that I would go for Greg’s notion of excluding it outright. A personal anecdote—you know, because that’s so rare for me: being married doesn’t guarantee either of those things, sex or companionship. Long before we separated, my wife and I had our moments of one or the other, or neither. Unlike Groundhog Day ’s Phil Connors (pre- and early-loop anyway), I never really wanted casual sex. But, unlike The Mirror Has Two Faces ’ Greg Larkin, I also don’t want companionship without. I broke down the successful relationship yesterday into four parts: sexual, intellectual, spiritual and emotional. Those last two are so close together the way I see it, I’m not sure why...

Roger Ebert’s (2003) review and summary. Rita Kempley’s (1988) review for the Washington Post . Louis Virtel’s (2013) 10 reasons why Moonstruck might be the best movie ever. pop u list ‘s paragraph-long bit about Moonstruck in a series on memorable movie breakfast scenes. William Day’s (2003) essay “ Moonstruck , or How to Ruin Everything.” Jean Paul Russo’s (1995) essay on “Italian American Filmmakers.” Thomas A. Shaffer’s (2005/2006) essay, “The Democratic Virtues, Our Common Life and the Common School: Trust in Democracy: Anabaptists, Italian Americans, and Solidarity.” Anthony Giardina’s (2009) essay “Wild Dreams and Italianness.” Richard Hornby’s (1994) essay “Albee and Pinter” (which connects to Moonstruck in some way or another I cannot remember even though I found it less than a week ago. These are pieces I found, printed and have in my 7th Groundhog Day Project binder. These are pieces I have neglected all this week when I should have read them days ago. These are piece...

Today, some complaints. Or nitpicks, I suppose. One is simply an issue with the time (in terms of setting) of the film, the other deals with character motivations. Both relate to time. The La Boheme performance is Monday, November 15. The poster we see being put up at the start of the film says as much. The problem is this: November 15 was not a Monday. Moonstruck was filmed in December 1986 and released in December 1987. November 15 in ‘86 was a Saturday, ‘87 was a Sunday. 1988 was a leap year, so November 15 was a Tuesday. Thing is, because of that leap year, the last time November 15 was a Monday was in 1982 and the next would be 1993. It’s a minor detail but you’d think someone in the prop department would check when the film was set. This only bugged me because I was thinking about the timing of the film. Johnny proposes to Loretta on Saturday night, then she drives him to the airport, stops at the store for champagne—where the husband and wife running the place seem about t...