Build Your Own Romantic Comedy
It's Valentine's Day, and the Friday Newsletter is all about chemistry. (Plus: food, drink, music, books, movies and more!)
It’s not cool to love romantic comedies.
They’re often dismissed as fluff, as lowbrow filmmaking, as insubstantial, frivolous, corny. As being formulaic.
But you know what?
That’s why I love them.
We’re surrounded by bad news right now, and the last thing I need from my entertainment is more negativity. You keep your tense thrillers about papal elections and sprawling dramas about brutalist architects; I’m gonna be over here watching two attractive people fall for each other in a coffee shop. I know it’s a formula. I know they’re going to bristle at each other at first, but then find out they have common ground and start to fall for each other until something goes wrong and they break up but then they get back together and everyone lives happily ever after.
I want to see that!
Heck, I think we can use the formula ourselves.
Let’s assemble our own rom-com.
All we need to do is identify the elements and then put them all together. You know, like a meet-cute. Treat this like a Mad Lib—I’ll give you the prompts, and you put together the answers. Then, you can share them in the comments!
First, we’re going to need a location.
Seattle in Sleepless in Seattle. New York City in When Harry Met Sally. London in Notting Hill. The location is practically a character itself.
For your location, I want to know [the last city you flew to].
(Not counting the one you live in.)
Next, we’ll need a Romantic Protagonist.
Our lead is quirky. They’re a free spirit.
What do they do? Well, they’re [a job you wanted to have when you were eleven years old that is unlikely to make enough money for them to realistically afford the gorgeous loft they have] inside an old [building representing an obsolete industry in the place the movie is set].
They’re dedicated to their work, but they still have time to hang out with their best friend [the fifth-listed actor in the last movie you watched], take care of their pet [the animal mascot of the nearest-to-you minor or major professional sports team that could conceivably be held as a pet], and volunteer teaching [elderly people or kids, you choose] how to [a skill you have that is not marketable].
It takes two to tango, so we’ll also need an Antagonistic Love Interest.
They’re much more straight-laced than the protagonist. They’re highly focused on their work as [a job that a good friend of yours has that you don’t exactly understand what they do but it seems like they’re doing well at it].
In what little free time they have, they and their best friend [the fourth-listed actor in a recent Best Picture Oscar-nominated movie that you hated] love to play [a recreational sport that you have never played] and they’re a huge fan of [the least-successful sports team in the city the movie is set in].
There’s no rom-com without a meet-cute, so how are they meeting?
Pick one based on the month of your birth:
January: minor car accident
February: fighting over the last croissant at a bakery
March: jury duty together
April: collecting misdelivered Amazon package
May: stuck in an elevator together during a blackout
June: blind date set up by their friends immediately after they’ve had an unpleasant chance encounter
July: they’re both eating big bowls of cereal as they walk down the street and they round a corner and bump into each other and spill both their bowls of cereal all over each other and ruin the clothes they were going to wear to big important meetings that they were each on the way to
August: both witness a crime
September: stuck in a rideshare from the airport together
October: noise complaint related to their weird pet or weird sport
November: they’re both a kids’ birthday party for some reason, let’s not overthink this
December: ice skating mishap
They’re initially cold to each other, but unexpectedly bond over a shared interest in…
[A topic you think about far too often, your Roman Empire]
… and a love of…
[an esoteric regional food associated with the city the film is located in]
They first kiss at a party on…
[the next holiday chronologically after your birthday]
Things are going great—that is, until they have a falling out over…
[open Google, type in “how to” and then the third letter of your first name, and choose the third option that autocompletes there]
They break up, and Love Interest decides to take that job in…
[a foreign city that you would like to visit but have not visited]
Just before they board their plane, they see someone in the airport reading a book about—
[that Roman Empire thing again] and they realize how they’re meant to be together.
They rush to find the protagonist at—
[a top-ten-ranked-on-TripAdvisor attraction in their city]
—on—
[the first holiday after nine months after your birthday]
… where they share a kiss and live happily ever after, probably.
Great. Seems like we have all the elements—we just need a familiar-yet-nondescript title for it.
Go to Wikipedia, and look up the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 list for the year you turned 16. (You can find each year in the first drop-down menu at that link.)
Scroll to the number corresponding with the day of the month you were born. Starting there and working down, choose the first song title that has “love” or some other rom-com appropriate word (“kiss”, “you”, etc.), and that’s your title.
Got that all? Great. Lemme hear it.
While you put all that together, I’ll share mine:
She’s a cartoonist, and while she loves living in Philadelphia1 in her loft in the old Derringer Firearms Factory, hanging out with her best friend (A League of Their Own’s Rosie O’Donnell), taking care of her pet bat and teaching kids how to win at Scrabble, something’s missing.
It can’t be him, though, can it?
He’s a hard-driving intellectual property attorney, and if he and his best friend (Ben Hardy from Bohemian Rhapsody) aren’t playing pickleball, they’re in the stands rooting for their beloved 76ers.
They’ve got nothing in common, and when they first meet—stuck in an elevator during a blackout—it’s hardly love at first sight. That is, until they discover that they both can’t stop thinking about the assassination of James A. Garfield. After they get out, they bond over a plate of scrapple, and share a magical first kiss on Flag Day.
Things are looking great, until a big argument over how to open a Roth IRA tears them apart, and he decides to leave and take that job in Lisbon. He’s about to board his flight when he notices a fellow passenger reading Destiny of the Republic and realizes that, just like Charles Guiteau, he’s crazy for her. He rushes to find her at Reading Terminal Market—thronged for St. Patrick’s Day—and they reconcile.
This Valentines’ Day in theaters, it’s Show Me Love.
You know. Something like that.
Am I already 1,000+ words into the cold open of a Friday Newsletter? Maybe!
I’m just getting started, though. Love is in the air today, and I’ve got some good food, a stellar cocktail, a terrific book, great music, and more!
It’s Friday. I’m in love.