Chapter 2

Other Meets

Arranged Meets

Blind dates. Man Up (2015, written by Tess Morris) has Simon Pegg showing up for a blind date, and Lake Bell, who steals the date, pretending to be the unmet lady, as she is holding a copy of the identifying book she got from a woman on the train who was supposed to have the actual date.

Arranged marriages from other cultures or mail-order brides from other eras in history also fall into this category. A lawyer arranges for an American woman in New York (Andie MacDowell) to marry a Frenchman (Gérard Depardieu) who needs a Green Card (1990, written and directed by Peter Weir). They actually meet at their own marriage ceremony in a judge’s chambers.

Sometimes a work assignment can lead to love. Ninotchka (1939, screenplay by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and Walter Reisch, directed by Ernst Lubitsch) has Melvyn Douglas assigned as the liaison for a Russian diplomat played by Greta Garbo while she is on a trip to Paris. He represents everything she is morally against and loathes. Fun, arts, champagne, happiness, and love. Does it work out between them? The ad line on the poster is “Garbo Laughs.”

A Thousand Clowns (1965, Herb Gardner adapting his own stage play) has buttoned-up social worker Sandy (Barbara Harris) assigned to evaluate Murray (Jason Robards) to see if he’s fit to raise his sister’s little boy. She is the enemy and her home visit to their apartment is a danger to their little family. But somehow Sandy comes round to seeing Murray’s crazy point of view.

Proximity

Sometimes she is literally the girl next door.

In The Duff (2015, screenplay by Josh A. Cagan from Kody Keplinger’s novel), high school senior Wesley Rush (Robbie Amell) is literally the boy next door to his childhood pal Bianca Piper (Mae Whitman).

Sabrina (1954, written and directed by Billy Wilder, co-written with Ernest Lehman and Samuel Taylor based on his play) centers around the chauffeur’s daughter (Audrey Hepburn) who lives in her father’s apartment above the garage only a hundred yards from the big house, wherein resides the object of her affection, the handsome, wealthy playboy David Larrabee (William Holden) and his older brother, Linus (Humphrey Bogart), who may be an even better idea.

In You’ve Got Mail (1998, written and directed by Nora Ephron), Kathleen Kelly’s (Meg Ryan’s) little book shop is right around the corner from Joe Fox’s (Tom Hanks’s) mega Foxbooks. So he’s kind of the millionaire mogul next door.

By Chance

Pretty Woman’s (1990, written by J.F. Lawton) billionaire Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) chances to stop and ask directions of a hooker on Hollywood Boulevard, Vivian (Julia Roberts). His life will never be the same. Neither will hers.

In Sleepless in Seattle (1993, written by Nora Ephron, David S. Ward, and Jeff Arch), if Annie (Meg Ryan) hadn’t happened to be listening to that radio station at that moment, she never would have heard Sam (Tom Hanks) talking about losing his wife. None of the story would have happened. Even though they haven’t actually met yet, this is the catalyst. And Annie has met Sam. Maybe only his voice, but she feels she knows his broken heart.

Coincidences may be hard to swallow later, but in terms of meets, never underestimate the power of chance.

In Crisis

Most disaster movies with love story subplots fall into this category. Whether the opposing force is a tsunami, volcano, earthquake, terrorist attack, alien invasion, or Godzilla.

If a madman hadn’t rigged a bus to blow up if it slows below 50 m.p.h., policeman Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves) would never have met Annie (Sandra Bullock), a passenger he recruits to drive the bus. At top Speed (1994, written by Graham Yost).

John Book and Amish widow Rachel (Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis) are brought together by a brutal murder witnessed by her little boy Samuel (Lukas Haas) in a men’s room in the Philadelphia train station in Witness, (1985, screenplay by William Kelley and Earl W. Wallace).

In The Peacemaker (1997, screenplay by Michael Schiffer), Lt. Colonel Tom Devoe and Dr. Julia Kelly (George Clooney and Nicole Kidman, respectively) are brought together by a rogue nuclear device that’s been smuggled into New York City in a backpack and they are the leading experts in the military and scientific aspects of this crisis. He knows how to find one truck in a convoy from a satellite image. She knows how to defuse a nuke. Together they can save the world. Or Manhattan, anyway.

In crisis two people can meet each other that might never have done so under normal circumstances of daily life. And even if they would not otherwise have been a good fit, the fires of conflict can forge bonds as strong as if lives depended on them. Which they do.

Seeking

Sometimes one person is seeking the other. In Shadowlands (1993, William Nicholson adapting his own play from the true story), American divorcée Joy Gresham (Debra Winger) seeks out the famed and reclusive author C.S. Lewis (Anthony Hopkins) in his rooms at Oxford because her little boy loves his Narnia books. This is the beginning of a great love.

In Only You (1994, written by Diane Drake), Faith (Marisa Tomei) finds the name of her true love on a Ouija board. It turns out to be a total hoax (by her stupid brother) but it launches her on a quest that does deliver true love in the form of Robert Downey, Jr. who has the wrong name, but is Mr. Right anyway.

Not just desperately seeking someone, but someone in particular.

Stalking

Sometimes love can even come in the form we now call stalking, though hopefully in a good way.

In What’s Up Doc? (1972, screenplay by Buck Henry, David Newman, and Robert Benton), Judy (Barbra Streisand) pursues nerdy geologist/musicologist Howard Bannister (Ryan O’Neal) in spite of the fact that he seems to have no interest in her, and a fiancée named Eunice (Madeline Kahn). This movie is an homage to the screwball comedies of the golden age, particularly Bringing Up Baby. Judy, like Katharine Hepburn in the original, is just what the myopic professor needs to bring him to life.

In The Lady Eve (1941, Monckton Hoffe and Preston Sturges) Barbara Stanwyck’s Jean is stalking Charles (Henry Fonda) because she’s a con-woman and he’s the son and heir of the billionaire Pike family, of Pike’s Ale fame. We are rooting for her to get her man. It would be the best thing that ever happened to him.

It Happened One Night won the grand slam in 1934, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Actress Oscars. (This didn’t happen again until One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest forty years later.) Robert Riskin wrote the screenplay and Frank Capra directed. In Night, Ellie (Claudette Colbert) is an heiress who runs away from her wedding in her white gown and veil and goes underground to avoid the press and the mistake she almost made. And her family. And everyone else. The man who catches onto her trail and teams up with her on the road is Peter (Clark Gable), who doesn’t let her know that he’s a newspaper writer after the exclusive inside scoop.

These stalking stories worked better before there was a word for it. Before they became a threat. Keep in mind the most important thing about all of these “meets” is that there is a spark of energy. A flicker of light. After this meeting their lives will never be the same, whether they are aware of it or not. We are. The writer and the audience. We feel it. Something has flickered into life. And it might be love.