Chapter 36

The Alternative is Impossible

In Notting Hill (1999, screenplay by Richard Curtis), when William Thacker (Hugh Grant) has had his shy English book shop owner’s heart good and broken by American movie superstar Anna Scott (Julia Roberts), his two best friends, Max (Tim McInnerny) and Bella (Gina McKee), set him up with a series of blind dinner dates, and the finale of the string of wrong girls is the lovely Emily Mortimer. Her role is actually named “Perfect Girl.”

As soon as Will has seen her to the door, his two friends, a happily married couple and lifelong friends of Will, look at him expectantly.

If we hadn’t already invested in Will and Anna as meant to be, we might have liked this Perfect Emily Mortimer and rooted for her, but we can’t. She’s not The One. It’s your job to lead us, the audience, down the garden path of your design and make us root for the right one. The screenwriter is in charge of Expectation Management. Team loyalty. Cheerleading. And Damage Control. All you. All the time.

The alternative cannot be a possibility. A contender. A reasonable alternative. No. Remember the Cautionary Tale of Serendipity? The Other Guy cannot be John Corbett.

In A Room With a View (1985, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala adapting E.M. Forster’s novel), Miss Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) is engaged to Cecil Vyse, a dandified, silly, bloodless wimp (played brilliantly by Daniel Day-Lewis). That this engagement is utterly and completely wrong is clear to everyone on earth except Lucy. When Cecil asks for her hand and she says yes, he doesn’t even kiss her. She has to ask him to, weeks later when she’s about to give up hope of it ever happening. And when it finally does happen, the kiss is not good. It is embarrassing and you get the impression that it’s something that Cecil hopes won’t happen again, at least not often. Lucy finally receiving this kiss from Cecil, after she has already experienced a great, Throwdown kiss in the field of flowers on the outskirts of Florence by the beautiful, passionate, and unconventional George Emerson (Julian Sands), makes this peck from her fiancé terribly disappointing. It’s the wrong man. Clearly. Obviously wrong. This is part of your job. Making this clear.

In Sleepless in Seattle (1993, Nora Ephron and Jeff Arch), it is clear to Annie (Meg Ryan) that her fiancé Walter (Bill Pullman) is not the right man for her. He’s not as obviously wrong as Cecil, but he seems to be allergic to her. Every time he’s near her, he sneezes. When Annie asks her mother, “How did you know that Daddy was The One?” it’s clear that Annie is not sure Walter is The One. Her mother tells her that on their first date he reached out and took her hand and she just knew. Clearly Annie has not had that feeling with Walter. But at the end of the film, on top of the Empire State Building, when Annie finally meets Sam (thanks to his 8-year-old runaway son Jonah) and the roof observation deck is closing, he says, “I guess we’d better go.” Her heart sinks. She thinks “we” is Sam and Jonah and that he’s saying goodbye to her. But he reaches out his hand to her and she takes it and at the moment their hands touch she knows. He is The One. We never doubted it. Well done, Nora Ephron.

In Coming Home (1978, Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones), Sally (Jane Fonda) is married to Marine Captain Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern), a rigid, sexist military lifer, neck deep in a war he can’t win and probably can’t even defend. By the end of the film he commits suicide. Early on we watch Sally’s face as her husband has sex with her. She lies on her back and stares at the ceiling, not even pretending to enjoy servicing him. It wouldn’t occur to him to try to pleasure her. They are merely performing their marital duty by having sex.

When she falls in love with Luke (Jon Voight), he is paralyzed from the waist down. His sexual organs are useless since this same war severed his spinal cord. But when he makes love to Sally, using the parts of himself he still has to offer, she has the first orgasm of her life. She may not even have known there were such things. When it’s right, it’s right. Undeniably. No question.

In His Girl Friday, Hildy (Rosalind Russell) is engaged to Ralph Bellamy. He is a tall, sweet man. Quiet and conservative. An insurance salesman. But he couldn’t be more wrong for Hildy if he was King Kong. Why? She has around 40 IQ points on this guy. He’ll never be able to keep up with her. Hell, he won’t even be able to understand her. She’s so much too quick for him that she’s going to leave him in the dust like the hare did to the tortoise. Not possible. While Cary Grant as her ex-husband Walter is as fast as she is. They may know each other too well, but they are still right for each other and for nobody else. (Remember Hildy and Walter from Chapter 15, Twins.)

In Shakespeare in Love (1998, script by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard), Colin Firth is Lord Wessex, the stiff, snooty, chubby fiancé engaged to Lady Violet (Gwyneth Paltrow) by royal decree of the Queen (Judi Dench), but he is utterly wrong for her. Violet’s heart, her dreams, her ideal life and world are embodied by young Will Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes). Firth may win his bride in the end, but no one in the audience is rooting for him to do so. Not even diehard Colin-Firth-as-Mr-Darcy fans.

Juliet and Paris?

Scarlett and Ashley?

Bridget Jones and Daniel Cleaver?

Loretta and Johnny Cammareri?

No, no, no, and no. They are all wrong. And it’s your job to make sure we get that.