On February 12th, WaPo published "Stop dismissing love stories. They’re exactly what we need to survive covid-19." I just saw that headline this morning, and remembering my recent blog post, including a memory that it was in the NYT, I worried that I'd misindentified a Washington Post article as a NYT article.
No. It's a different article. It's also evidence that editors are wracking their brain for stories during the lockdown. And notice the difference. The NYT has gone back into its archive, found a way to make an article collecting snippets of old articles and analyzing them. What are the elements of a love story? WaPo addresses the reader's inner life. It assumes we are struggling to survive in the lockdown and purports to prescribe the remedy. We all need the same thing. Exactly.
And we're all really snooty, too, apparently. We dismiss love stories. We think we're too lofty and intellectual for them. Hah! That's awfully presumptuous. And yet the tone is one of a confidential girlfriend, perhaps someone who, in nonlockdown times, would say I know what you need and force you to go out to a bar.
Oh, no. WaPo isn't copying the NYT. Nor is it scraping the bottom of the barrel of Covid-19 stories. It's doing something even more tedious: Valentine's Day has cycled around on the calendar again. Both newspapers are doing what they think they must do every year — pandemic or no pandemic — publish Valentine's Day articles.
We're told that all of these movies about trapped/isolated couples deliver the same message:
Honesty is crucial. Candor is hard, even — and maybe especially — when you’re stuck in close proximity to someone for an extended period of time.... [P]roximity makes grievances harder to keep under wraps. But rather than treating forced togetherness as a death sentence for a relationship, these stories treat it as a catalyst for their characters to develop deeper understanding of each other and commit to stronger partnerships....
Does that make you want to watch a trapped-couples movie for Valentine's Day? We haven't watched a love-story movie in a long time, unless you count Season 4 of "The Crown" (the trapped couples being Prince Charles and Diana). We rarely watch actual movies, maybe only 2 in the last month or so. Which movies? "The Trial of the Chicago 7" and "Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski."
Something else we've enjoyed — also distinctly un-couples-y — are the 2 "With John" HBO shows:
1. "Painting With John":
2. "How To With John Wilson":
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The Portland Press Herald (Maine) has a story headlined: "In months of isolation, has the pandemic made the heart grow fonder?", "Social isolation has slowed romance for some, by putting off weddings and making dating difficult, but it's also intensified relationships, for better or for worse, pushing others to tie the knot or seek professional help.". They also offer advice on safe ways to celebrate Valentine's Day, out and at home.
We don't watch many movies these days either; really haven't seen many in the past several years. The shows available on Netflix and Prime are better. With 6 - 10 episodes per season they tell a richer, more complete story than a 90 - 120 minute movie. We watch non-fiction too: have worked our way through all 7 seasons of The Great British Baking Show. I watched the BBC show Victorian Farm and really enjoyed it.
Don't have big plans for Valentine's day, actually, don't have any plans. Perhaps I'll compose a poem and put it inside a greeting card.
TCM is playing classic love story movies all weekend. We watched Casablanca last night. Wonderful as it ever was.
Movies are the right length if you're going out to the movies. It's about how long you can sit and pay attention continuously. But when you are at home 2 hours is too long. Somebody's going to want to pause. We're always stopping about half way through and saying, let's watch the rest tomorrow. With a serial drama like "The Crown," you get the 1-hour length that is about how long you feel like sitting still and paying attention at home. But you're paying attention intermittently for 10 hours in a season — paying attention to these characters, these actors, this big story.
I like to watch the half-hour long shows too. Even less of a commitment, but I might string 2 or 3 of them together. It suits the home setting... or simple human attention. I'm thinking the 2-hour movie length is and was always unnatural, just a reality of getting people in the theater watching the same thing.
"How To With John Wilson" was a nice surprise when my SO turned me onto it. Love the episode about scaffolding. He has a kind of John McPhee quality. I think I’d also really like “Painting with John.”
Two Night Stand (2014) was a trapped couple, with the usual misunderstanding difficulty.
The worst romcom difficulty plot device is friends of the guy giving bad advice.
OTTO'S SORT-OF GIRLFRIEND: Otto, don't go. What about our relationship?
OTTO: What?
OTTO'S SORT-OF GIRLFRIEND: What about our relationship?
OTTO: Fuck that.
OTTO'S SORT-OF GIRLFRIEND: You shithead! I'm glad I tortured you! How can you leave me? I'm the one who's supposed to be in that car.
I watched Fellini's "8 1/2" for the first time last week.
It is a mess. None of he characters are sympathetic, and it is plotless. If you watched a pair of random five minute scenes, you couldn't order them in time.
But the B&W cinematography is gorgeous and the blocking is precise.
"St. Valentine's Day".
My work here is done.
THEOLDMAN
When will they start calling St. Nicholas just "Nicholas"?
"St. Valentine's Day".
——————-
Apparently it was at one time. I wonder when it changed. But not why.
“The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre was the 1929 murder of seven members and associates of Chicago's North Side Gang that occurred on Saint Valentine's Day. The men were gathered at a Lincoln Park garage on the morning of that feast day, February 14th. They were lined up against a wall and shot by four unknown assailants who were dressed like police officers.”
The Paramount channel is running the first three seasons of YELLOWSTONE starting today at noon. I have heard it is really good, and I don't have Netflix or any other pay channel, so I am taping it.
I stumbled across how to the other night. Watched scaffolding out of curiosity and was hooked. Watched 2-3 more in a row.
I generally prefer series to movies. Recently rewatched the 20 part bbc war and peace downloaded from YouTube.
I generally don't like TV shows unless the have a season arc I can get into. Of course, then they become a series. Justified was a good example.
John Henry
My wife and I are having a great time during this last year. This weekend, we are taking a road trip to Palmdale to go to a Sonic for lunch and visit Edwards AFB. We will drive back home and watch Battlebots...we are huge fans. She is a law review article publishing beast and we are trying to find a hook for her into a combat robot paper. While we have nice offices in Beverly Hills, we have been running our law firm from home and having a good time doing it.
We don’t need no stinkin’ Valentines Day 💝💜💕 for a nice love story.
- Krumhorn
From the blogpost:
"Oh, no. WaPo isn't copying the NYT. Nor is it scraping the bottom of the barrel of Covid-19 stories."
Not yet. Not until something along the line of "How COVID-19 Killed Booty Calls."
Some romantic (not necessarily specific to Valentines Day) sitcom episodes:
1. Honeymooners, "Young at Heart": Ralph takes Alice roller skating and they recall their courting days;
2. I Love Lucy, "Lucy Is Enceinte": Rickey is told that he's going to be a father;
3. Cheers, "Fairy Tales Can Come True": Cliff, in costume for Halloween, meets a girl and is terrified to realize that the next day he will have to meet her as himself;
4. Barney Miller, "Christmas Story": on Christmas Eve, Nick falls for a Japanese lady who was robbed;
5. Everyone Loves Raymond, "How They Met": flashback to Ray and Debra's first meeting - he accidentally saw her naked;
6. The Bob Newhart Show, "A Love Story": Howard meets Bob's sister, who is engaged to be married. Howard falls in love with her;
7. The Office, "Blood Drive": Michael meets a nice girl while giving blood, but he passes out and loses her;
8. Addams Family, "Morticia's Romance": Gomez is betrothed to Ophelia Frump, but falls for her sister Morticia;
9. Andy Griffith Show, "A Date for Gomer": a date is needed for Thelma Lou's cousin, and Gomer is the perfect victim;
10. MASH, "Love Story": Radar falls for an intellectual nurse, and has to learn the classics overnight;
11. Big Bang Theory, "The Zazzy Substitution": Sheldon and Amy break up, and Sheldon starts buying cats;
12. That Girl, "Don't Just Do Something, Stand There": Ann meets Donald.
13. Chance in a Million (UK), "Naming the Day": Tom (Simon Callow) and Allyson (Brenda Blethyn) set a date for their wedding, but the newspaper prints the announcement as Tom's death notice.
After watching and loving all the "How To" episodes I was sad to learn the painting one was a different John.
The WaPo Sunday Arts & Style section gets delivered with the Saturday paper, and this week it has a big Valentine's Day collage with classic movie stills and other images illustrating "Love in all its permutations." There are scenes from Love Story, the Graduate, and Harold and Maude, as well as old people holding hands, and an interracial image. I'm waiting for the backlash over the fact that all of the images appear to be heterosexual.
I, for one, must mention Bob Ross. Happy little accidents. Put a little tree right there. Look at that, we have a mountain. And so on.
As I've mentioned before (I think!) my second son came here and got married last year. He and his bride insisted on taking kissing pictures while wearing masks. Something about the covid and its isolation is romantic to Millennials, perhaps. My first son is engaged and they work from home, together constantly. Again, they're thriving.
I'll take the win.
As a romance author, I can tell you that despite being the biggest seller in the book publishing industry, the "elite" look down on my genre. It finances the publishing of other "better" books, but no one likes to talk about romance. Check out Romance Writers of America (RWA) or see how often (other than February) the literary places talk glowingly about romance books.
Does that make you want to watch a trapped-couples movie for Valentine's Day?
It makes me want to watch The Breakfast Club
Isn't the Althouse story a Hallmark classic?
""How To With John Wilson" was a nice surprise when my SO turned me onto it. Love the episode about scaffolding. "
Yes! The scaffolding episode was truly sublime. I was in awe.
Vivian Gornick's "The End of the Novel of Love" might be worth reading. We live too long. Writers and readers live too long and want to write and read about what they are going through. Novels that lead up to marriage and then stop seem a bit stunted to today's audience. What happens afterwards? Time just doesn't stop on your wedding day.
Gorlick was reading a novel that she thought was rather good about a woman trying to choose between her husband and a lover and figured (I'm oversimplifying or even distorting here, and this isn't what she literally said or wrote) "What does it matter? Five years down the road with the new guy and you'll have the same problems."
Romance novels will continue as a genre, but "serious" or "literary" fiction has apparently moved away from stories of love.
Tom (Simon Callow) and Allyson (Brenda Blethyn) set a date for their wedding, but the newspaper prints the announcement as Tom's death notice.
A natural mistake, given what we know about Simon Callow.
The laws have been changed though, so he finally was able to get married.
I loved the documentary on Szukalski. I've been an admirer of his work since 1981, when Robert Crumb published a selection of Szukalksi's works in issue # 1 of WEIRDO, (a Crumb-founded and -edited twice-yearly or so post-underground comix collection of "weirdo" cartoonists and artists).
George DiCaprio's plaint late in the film at how "shocked" he was at discovering some of Szukalski's more dodgy attitudes seemed theatrical and phony. If he was really as close to Szukalski as he apparently was, how could he not have been aware of those foibles? (Famed journalist, novelist and screenwriter Ben Hecht knew Szukalski when they were both young men in Chicago in the 30s. In Hecht's memoir, A CHILD OF THE CENTURY, published in 1954, he recounts the young and impoverished Szukalski physically throwing a prominent Chicago art critic down a flight of stairs because the critic, visiting Szukalski's studio, had tapped one of the artist's sculptures with his walking stick. Szukalski took this as a great personal insult.)
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