Falling in Love at the Movies: Author Esther Zuckerman
by CHAD KENNERK
Image courtesy Hachette Book Group.
For anyone who has ever swooned, laughed, or cried during a romcom, you’re in good company. And when you’re under the weather, there’s nothing quite like cosying up with one. A great romcom is chicken soup for the heart. The best of the genre brings a hope and optimism that everything’s going to be ok, even when the ending takes the bitter with the sweet.
In Falling in Love at the Movies: Rom-Coms from the Screwball Era to Today, a new volume from Turner Classic Movies (TCM), author and entertainment journalist Esther Zuckerman explores how the beloved genre has shaped cultural narratives and captured hearts at the box-office. Zuckerman highlights the enduring charm of iconic films like Roman Holiday, which features on the cover.
From the golden age of 1930s screwball comedies like It Happened One Night to the romcom boom of the 80s and 90s, Zuckerman explores how these films have not only provided us with comfort and joy but also shaped our understanding of love, relationships and even fashion. The book delves into the work of key auteurs, uncovering how filmmakers both upheld and challenged traditional romantic comedy tropes.
In conversation with author and entertainment journalist Esther Zuckerman.
Images Courtesy of WikiCommons
Film Review (FR): With all genres, in order to understand the present, you also have to have an awareness of what came before and its significance. The book really explores those influences. Rather than looking at romcoms in a linear sense, you're looking at them almost in a cyclical sense, how they're evolving over time.
Esther Zuckerman (EZ): That was totally my idea when I was trying to figure out how I wanted to structure the book, because the assignment was pretty vague. TCM was interested in a book about romcoms and I'd worked with Running Press before, so it was really open-ended. I could sort of do whatever I wanted, and thinking about linking the past to the present was a big way I figured out, not just how to structure it, but also how to make the writing and the analysis interesting. I didn't want it to be just a guided tour from A to Z.
(FR): A lot of genres are challenging to define. Where are those parameters at? How do you sum up the romcom?
(EZ): This sounds so sort of basic, but it has to have romance, and it has to have comedy. Romance has to be a major part of it. I think that's where sometimes those lines get blurry. When you got into the 2000s, I think sometimes movies got glommed on with romcoms because they fell into — and I hate this term — the chick flick designation. Stuff like The Devil Wears Prada, for instance. I think some people call it a romcom, but it's not because it's not about romance at all. There's some romantic interests, but it's about work. If you go further back, some of the ‘women's pictures,’ something like The Women is an example. It's funny, and it's about women, but it's not about romance. That's the really unscientific delineation that I tried to come up with. It has to be funny. Humour has to be the guiding force behind it. It has to have funny scenarios that get referenced. Sleepless in Seattle, An Affair to Remember; it's not a romcom, it’s a drama.
(FR): Romcoms always get such a bad rap. They're labelled as fluff. Why do you think that is?
(EZ): On the basic level, it's because women's entertainment has been largely devalued in popular culture. But I also think that it's partially because when the genre became over-saturated in the early 2000s and you were seeing cheap imitators of the best ones, that's when the romcom started to die in popular culture. There are romcoms that are fluff, and those were not the good ones, but they sort of took over pop culture for a while.
(FR): Romcoms are like cinematic comfort food, but just because it’s comfort food doesn't mean it's bad food. You can have the frozen version, or you can have what Grandma made from scratch.
(EZ): Exactly, yeah. And I think that's part of it. People see stuff that makes you feel good as being lesser, which I don't think is true.
(FR): What's been the most exciting part of this project for you?
(EZ): There were many phases to it. The research is always exciting. It's always fun to dig through archives. I went to the Margaret Herrick Library at The Academy. Stuff like that is really fun on a nerdy level. One of the exciting things post-release of the book has been that I've gotten to introduce a lot of movies at screenings. I’ve gotten to see stuff that I haven't seen on the big screen in forever or I've never seen on the big screen. I introduced a screening of The Philadelphia Story, which is one of my all-time favourite movies — even before I wrote this book — at the Paris Theater in New York on 35mm. That was a great experience. I just did a sold-out screening event in LA where I introduced Broadcast News at the Los Feliz Cinema. Getting to see that movie, another one of my favourites, and the flop sweat scene in a crowd full of people laughing was really moving and memorable. That's been really lovely and exciting.
(FR): That's one of my favourite things, when you get to see a classic film that obviously we weren't around for when it originally came out theatrically, and to get to experience that with an audience. We love these films; we get to watch them at home, maybe with family, with friends, but it's a different experience when you're in a theatre of strangers celebrating a film and an experience together. What's been the most challenging about this project?
(EZ): Figuring out the structure was really challenging. Figuring out how to make those links, but also make it entertaining and fun for the reader. That balance between celebration and analysis was challenging and fascinating.
(FR): You dive into a lot of the different elements of the romcom. I think one for me that's always fascinating is location; how location transports the audience and affects the story. I’m thinking of a film like Roman Holiday.
(EZ): One of the things that I miss from movies and a lot of classic film, is that there's sort of two versions of the classic film location. There's the beautiful Hollywood sound stage, which is something that I do miss, and then there are movies actually shot on location. Roman Holiday is a perfect example.
(FR): There's a quote in the book about Paris, France, versus Paris, Paramount.
(EZ): It's a Lubitsch quote that Nancy Myers was going to use for the title of her movie, which isn't getting made right now, which is sad. The Billy Wilder film A Foreign Affair is another really incredible example because it uses footage of Berlin post World War II. It’s one thing that I miss sometimes in modern movies, when it's just like, ‘Oh yeah, that's like Vancouver, but standing in for New York.’ Or like Toronto or Atlanta, the places where tax breaks are good. I think location, the real feel of a place, is so important. Location also extends to time period, and something like My Man Godfrey is a movie about the Depression and you really feel that.
(FR): There’s also a lot of mistaken identity in romcoms. One of the themes with, for instance, Roman Holiday, is taken to another level, adding deception into the mix. Why do you think some of these tropes have continued throughout the romcom genre? Is it a way to create more of an underlying conflict with characters that are falling in love? What are your thoughts?
(EZ): It's just a really good trope. You don't know who you're falling in love with, and then you fall in love with them anyway. It’s unbeatable as a trope. I think it can be done well, and it can be done poorly. When it's done poorly, it feels icky. It feels like these people don't actually like each other that much. In terms of some of the older ones, through our modern lens, the question of consent comes in. I love the Doris Day Rock Hudson movies, but you look at the ending of something like Pillow Talk, where he's physically carrying her to his house after having lied to her the entire movie.
I think it works best when there's a case of mutual deception, which is why something like Roman Holiday works so well, because she's lying to him about being a princess and he's lying to her about being a journalist. And yes, there's a little bit of a power imbalance, because he knows that she's a princess, but she doesn't know that he's a journalist. But they're more on an even playing field because they're both running away from who they truly are. Or if you have a film from later that really wrestles with the deception, something like Tootsie, where you see the fallout of it I think is helpful.
(FR): Through this book, what were some of the films you were most excited to share and talk about?
(EZ): My all-time favourites are stuff like Roman Holiday, which is on the cover, The Philadelphia Story, Moonstruck, Broadcast News — those are all my absolute favourite, favourite movies of all time. It was also fun to sort of fill in some holes I was missing and then write about those. I really found myself taken with Jean Arthur, who I hadn't spent a lot of time with before, especially in the romcom mode. I love the film The More the Merrier, the George Stevens film, which I think is also a really politically interesting film. I love the Mitchell Leisen film Easy Living with her. I hadn't seen Claudine, which is like a great film from the 70s, a Black romcom with Diahann Carroll and James Earl Jones. It was really fun to share both the movies that I love and movies that were newer to me.
(FR): You mentioned Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, loving that pairing and their spark.
(EZ): The Philadelphia Story is my favourite. That is the one that I've loved the longest. I love Bringing Up Baby too.
(FR): Where is the future of the romcom? Where is it heading?
(EZ): It’s a weird one. The romcom has been called dead plenty of times over cinema history, but it's never really been fully killed. I think right now, we're in a weird period where, frankly, it's really hard for a lot of stuff to make it into theatres if it’s not a major tentpole movie. The mid-budget trend over the past couple of years has lent itself toward horror over the romcom, because for a while there was a proven [formula] where people come out for that communal experience of seeing a horror movie in theatres. Whereas there is a feeling that people just want to watch a romcom on their couch. But I think the interesting thing is that there have been these markers throughout the years that have proven that's not always the case.
Something like Crazy Rich Asians obviously being a huge example of that. That was in 2018, shockingly almost a decade ago, but even more recently, something like Anyone But You opened quietly and then gained a lot of, like power through word of mouth, honestly TikTok, and then became one of the highest-grossing romcoms in recent memory. There is an audience for them, and I think you're seeing a trend back to movie stars wanting to make them. Glen Powell starred in Anyone But You and also made Hit Man. He’s not signing up for a superhero franchise that's going to take up all of his time. I think you're seeing some of that swing back, but I think you just need the studios to sign on and realize that they are good business. I don't have a crystal ball, but I have hope.
Read Falling in Love at the Movies: Rom-Coms from the Screwball Era to Today
ESTHER ZUCKERMAN is an entertainment journalist whose work has appeared in publications like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, GQ, the Hollywood Reporter, and many more. She is the author of Beyond the Best Dressed and A Field Guide to Internet Boyfriends. Esther lives and writes in New York City.
