Why a Scene Works: Fever Pitch (2005)
As I’ve talked about before, Fever Pitch, the 2005 baseball-themed love story starring Drew Barrymore (Charlie’s Angels) and Jimmy Fallon (Almost Famous), is one of my favorite romantic comedies of the 2000’s and my personal favorite film from prolific comedy directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly (There’s Something About Mary). Based on the autobiographical novel — and 1997 motion picture screenplay — of the same name by Nick Hornby (About a Boy) and adapted for the screen by comedy veterans Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (Parenthood), the film concerns high school math teacher Ben Wrightman (Fallon), a devoted fan of the seemingly cursed Boston Red Sox ever since he moved to the city as a child. One day, he meets Lindsey Meeks (Barrymore), a well-paid mathematics consultant for a high-powered business corporation who’s approaching the age of 30 and starting to feel that she wants more out of her life.
The two begin dating, but as baseball season rolls in, she starts to see just how far his obsession goes, and as spring becomes summer and summer becomes fall, Ben now has to choose between the team he worships and the woman he loves. On top of being as delightfully sweet and funny as one would want from a romantic comedy, Fever Pitch is also a sharp, insightful portrait of die-hard sports fandom and what we’re willing and unwilling to compromise when it comes to being in a romantic relationship. How do you keep true to who you are as a human being while at the same time allow yourself to adjust in a way that you feel would make your partner happier? It’s filled with great moments that are still burned into my memory, but the one I want to talk about is an early comedic highlight of the picture: the moment that lays the foundation for their entire relationship.
After Lindsey initially rejects Ben’s offer to go out with him, she’s encouraged by her best friends Robin (KaDee Strickland, Private Practice), Molly (Ione Skye, Say Anything), and Sarah (Marissa Jaret Winokur, American Beauty) while at their workout sessions to change her mind and take a chance on someone who’s the opposite of the type of man she usually dates, said type being someone exactly like her: extremely successful and completely dedicated to their job above all else. She eventually agrees to give him a shot, but her first date with him doesn’t go over so smoothly. Ben arrives at her apartment door, well-dressed but also somewhat casual in his style, carrying a fetching bouquet of roses. From Fallon’s body language, you can tell that Ben is looking forward to the occasion but he also has a twinge of nervousness that’s all too relatable to anyone in his shoes. But then he hears something.
A series of seemingly pained moans and groans come from Lindsey’s apartment. Ben walks towards the door, curious. Lindsey is then heard saying the following, “Oh, just kill me. Just take a hammer and kill me.” Her voice is much raspier and more congested than we’ve heard from her so far, some words slurred while others are enunciated. Ben considers turning around and walking away, perhaps not wanting to bother her, but is emotionally intelligent enough to not jump to any rash conclusions. With this in mind, he rings the doorbell, causing Lindsey to respond with, “Oh, shit,” in a tone of voice confirming she definitely wasn’t expecting any visitors at this time, which seems strange given what a big deal this event is.
Ben answers that he’s arrived for their date, to which Lindsey responds with, “Oh, God, no.” The answer as to why is made evident when she unlocks and opens her door. After the sight of Lindsey’s hair in an unusually messy state as she opens, we see Ben with a smile on his face that, upon seeing Lindsey at the door, quickly turns to confusion, then quickly turns to worry as she pants. It’s there when the film hard-cuts to Lindsey standing there, saying two words that make everything click: “I’m sick.” To put it bluntly, she looks and sounds like a total mess, from her lifelessly pale complexion to her tired, bleary eyes, from her unkempt blonde streaks sticking in a million directions at once to how she’s practically clinging at the door. The only thing about her that says “date night” is the otherwise lovely dress she’s currently wearing, a simple but elegant, comfortable-looking low-cut maroon number, courtesy of the great costume designer Sophie de Rakoff-Carbonell (Legally Blonde).
In her unwell condition and exhausted state, she had forgotten all about their big night. Not wanting to bother him or to be bothered in return, she closes the door and tells him that she’ll give him a call the next day, when she’s feeling better. But Ben, concerned for her well-being, convinces her to leave the door open by asking what kind of sickness she has and if she’s in any sort of pain. She explains that she ate at a new restaurant earlier that day and thinks she had gotten food poisoning as a result. However, before she can even finish her sentence, she winces as her cheeks rapidly fill. Throwing a hand over her mouth, she dashes off to her bathroom, with her pet Border Collie Ernie following her, and she promptly loses her lunch in the toilet, leaving Ben standing there awkwardly in the doorway.
A vomit joke is the easiest of gross-out gags to incorporate into any comedy, and for a lot of audience members, this was probably the moment they realized that what they were watching was indeed a Farrelly brothers film, as they’ve turned this kind of humor into a cultural phenomenon. However, there’s a maturity to the filmmaking here, as Lindsey throwing up is kept off-screen; we never see the gory details, not even by accident. The Farrellys even suggested cutting this scene, as revealed in their DVD commentary, but ultimately kept it in because female audience members responded very positively at early previews and the two were especially impressed by Barrymore’s work in this scene, and they’re right to, because her physical performance is absolutely fantastic here.
One of the biggest appeals of comedies like these is getting to see a big star you like be willing to degrade themselves and look silly and/or gross on-camera, and in these few minutes of film, Barrymore commits to the bit without even an ounce of shame, and the fact that she was also one of the film’s producers speaks to her passion for the material. The hard cut to Barrymore looking like a walking disaster on the brink of death is so funny not just because it’s not what the audience is expecting at that present moment but because of how believably she portrays this suffering, right down to the sore, stuffy voice. With most films, you can tell when an actor is exaggerating something in order to get a desired reaction from the audience, but with this, you could tell me that Barrymore literally went the full method route here and I would easily believe you. She really is that good.
Furthermore, you can tell that Barrymore is enjoying herself here as she acts out being out of sorts and under the weather at the worst possible time, making her looking this disheveled oddly quite adorable. She adds some nice touches that make the situation all the more amusing, and in turn, make you feel more sympathy for Lindsey as a character at her most vulnerable, both mentally and physically. One being that after saying she’s sick, she quickly nods her head to show that she’s not kidding around. Another is that before she can explain how she got sick, she looks down with a hint of shame in her eyes and, not wanting to retch and hurl in front of Ben, who at this point is a total stranger to her, swallows the saliva she’s producing, by extension gulping back her embarrassment, before licking her dry lips. You can also tell that the hair stylists and make-up artists are having a lot of fun too, making her appear as white as a ghost and her head of blonde locks look as though she’s having the ultimate bad hair day.
The choice of the Farrellys, cinematographer Matthew F. Leonetti (Fast Times at Ridgemont High), and editors Alan Baumgarten (American Hustle) and John Gilroy (Michael Clayton) to capture this scene primarily in long, extended takes also does a superb job at highlighting the sensitive and uncomfortable nature of the situation, even without the details made explicit visually, and this sense of helplessness that both Ben and Lindsey feel, with Lindsey violently emptying her stomach on what was supposed to be a fun night and Ben standing there at the doorway unsure of what to do or even say. Further aiding this is the lack of a musical score accompanying it, with the pleasant orchestral compositions of Craig Armstrong (The Great Gatsby) only present before the big reveal, therefore still keeping it grounded, whereas a lesser film would drown it in increasingly over-the-top, escalating music as if it were a cartoon or a late-night sitcom.
Ben questions if Lindsey’s merely faking the ordeal, kindly reassuring that she doesn’t have to go out with him if she doesn’t want to, before another sudden round of vomiting and gagging on Lindsey’s behalf does more to answer him than any words could. Out of morbid curiosity, he closes the door and enters her apartment, handsomely constructed by production designer Maher Ahmad (Doctor Sleep), art director Brandt Gordon (Mean Girls), and set decorator Jaro Dick (Good Will Hunting). Slowly, he moves towards the bathroom to see if this is all for real. At one point, Lindsey quietly calls out to her mother, who isn’t present here, as if she were a wounded child, like this is the sickest she’s ever been. As Ben approaches, she tells her dog Ernie to run off and leave her be before reacting in horror at Ernie eating up her half-digested contents. Ben gets his answer in the most disgusting way imaginable when he gets a quick peek at this.
Again, this is a cheap, perhaps unnecessarily tasteless gag on the surface level, but the choice to focus on Ben’s wincing at the act instead of the act itself, leaving our imagination to fill in the blanks, is what makes it funny. In a final amusing touch, he anxiously asks Lindsey if she wants to cancel their date, to which she responds with a final bout of coughing and heaving. He nods, accepting, before leaning his head back against the wall and looking up, knowing what he’s gotten himself into but unsure of what to do now. This is followed by a hard-cut to Ben, now without his green suit jacket, slowly and steadily walking Lindsey out of her bathroom and towards her bed. His rolling down a laundry hamper in hand, just in case, as opposed to a garbage can is also a funny detail informed by who he is as a character, trying to make the best of a bad situation.
As he gently places her on the bed to sit down, she ends up hilariously falling and flopping across the mattress, tired and weakened to the point of nearly passing out. Quick to help, he takes a pillow and gently places it under her head before asking her if she has any pajamas, to which she mumbles that she keeps them in her top drawer. He opens it and after finding a conservative nightgown, he also ends up finding a pair of vintage panties with the logo of the 1970’s Wonder Woman television show stamped on it, amusingly quipping that he should call her and let her know where they are, another witty touch. As he then gently helps her stand back up, she apologizes for her illness and lays a palm to her face in humiliation while he reassures her that it’s perfectly okay and she has nothing to worry about.
He then tells her he’ll help her undress and change into the gown, initially baffling her — and given that they’ve barely known each other, one can hardly blame her — before he promises her he won’t look. She nods, giving him her consent. He takes her dress off of her before bashfully admitting to her, complete with a shrug, that he ended up getting a look at her naked anyway. This earns a quiet giggle out of her, making for one of the sweetest moments during this scene, a rare glimmer of joy and relaxation in an otherwise unpleasant evening, before he carefully slides the gown on her and carries her into her bed, promising her that she has nothing left to throw up before walking away.
This leads to a quick montage where she tries to get a good night’s sleep while he tends to her, even cleaning up her bathroom and, most humorously, brushing Ernie’s teeth. The use of soft-focus and handheld camerawork to capture Lindsey’s clouded point of view and sense of fatigue from enduring such an awful bug is a strong, inventive visual detail. I also adored the use of the Popium song Sooner or Later, the lyrics wonderfully complementing the situation at hand, as Ben successfully charms Lindsey with his kind heart even during such a dire occasion, something pointed out in a later scene where she refers to him as a romantic: “You have a lyrical soul. You can love under the best and worst conditions.” There’s another bit I can’t help but love here, where Ben gives her Gatorade to drink and a sleepy Lindsey accidentally calls him “Bill” instead of Ben, which is just too cute.
The next day, Lindsey, now in improved health and looking much fresher, supported by the honeyed morning glow, emerges from her bathroom, wearing a robe and with a towel over her shoulder, having gotten out of the shower. She’s surprised to discover that Ben has slept on her couch overnight, nonetheless letting out a warm, winning smile upon seeing him, relieved by his continued presence in her home. He wakes up and asks how she’s feeling, to which she cracks that she won’t be entering a pie-eating competition any time soon. She then asks if he tidied up her bathroom or if that was just her fever dream. Jokingly, he responds that the “vomit elves” fulfilled that duty and that she was “very ladylike” about the whole thing. She laughs sweetly and thanks him while still laying a palm to her face, still feeling apologetic that he went through all this trouble.
It’s here where the chemistry between Barrymore and Fallon really sings in this film, and it only gets better as it carries on. Their real-life friendship truly shines through in how they play off of one another and it’s simply irresistible to watch, practically bewitching the viewer and placing them under a spell. In comedies, Barrymore is better-known for parts that require more of a goofy, light-hearted energy to them, but in Fever Pitch, she plays the “straight man” type in her routine with Fallon extraordinarily well while also still getting to show off a funny side to her. Likewise, Fallon is more restrained and subtle in his approach to generating laughter than we’re used to seeing from him on Saturday Night Love, and in moments where he has to really turn up the charm and not rely much on jokes, he proves to be a very capable leading man, successfully channeling his inner Tom Hanks and Billy Crystal.
Lindsey notices a bag Ben carries with him, asking him what it contains. Ben responds that he purchased DVDs in case she needed one for a comfort watch in the middle of the night. Lindsey tells him her preferred choice of viewing while ill is Woody Allen’s seminal 1977 satirical rom-com Annie Hall. Ben responds in amazement before pulling out his own preferred choice, Rowdy Herrington’s 1989 cult classic action film Road House, sarcastically quipping with: “Whoa, this is unbelievable! Is this crazy? I mean, what are the odds?” Originally, it was scripted that Lindsey would say that her favorite film to watch while sick is Mel Brooks’ horror spoof Young Frankenstein and he coincidentally pulls out a DVD of just that, but the Farrellys suggested this change, and it works for the better, both as a subversion of audience expectations and as a cute bonding moment between our leads.
Some viewers today may see Ben doing what he does here as intrusive and frankly creepy, which is admittedly understandable as — again — at this point in the film’s narrative, they’re basically strangers, and if I may indulge them, perhaps something like this could’ve been better suited for either their second or third date. But with that being said, however, while American rom-coms during this time are often criticized for supposedly creating unrealistic expectations of romance, I don’t think it’s fair to demand the utmost realism from each and every film. Every film we see operates on their own internal logic and takes place in their own world, meaning they’re not intended to be precise, pitch-perfect reflections of real life. If the emotions between the characters feel sincere, then an audience is willing to forgive even a lot, and that’s part of the appeal of a rom-com.
In Fever Pitch, the Farrellys, Ganz, and Mandel do more to keep things grounded than a lot of other rom-coms during the time period, but at the same time, they aren’t afraid to indulge in the “cheesiness” of the sub-genre’s conventions, never coming off like they’re ashamed to be doing a rom-com, which is something the more contemporary likes of Anyone But You can learn a lot from. They may not be reinventing the wheel here, but they do make it their own. In the world that they create, populated with an extremely colorful and well-drawn cast of characters, you can buy that an act like this would bring these two people close together, which is a testament to the direction, the script, and most of all, the actors’ performances and chemistry.
In theory, this may sound like a forced attempt at incorporating a classic Farrelly-style gross-out gag into an otherwise laid-back, relaxed film, but in execution, it’s a cleverly incorporated piece of humor that further develops the characters, as Ben proves to be a nice, caring guy — which makes the contrast with his hardcore Red Sox fandom all the more enjoyable to behold, and you also get the sense that his level of devotion and nurturing is something Lindsey isn’t used to from any other guy — and Lindsey learns to look past class and social status when it comes to potential relationships and that the right person for her could be anyone, even the average joe, not necessarily people who are as competitive and/or as successful as she is, or as she herself describes them in the very next scene, “poodles.” All of these things and more are why this scene works.
