Writing Romantic Comedies
Film Courage: Pamela, with romantic comedies, is falling in love really supposed to be funny?
Pamela Jaye Smith: Well, falling in love seldom is funny. Now it’s hopefully fun. But I think what romantic comedies and the funny look at the situations can do for us, it can make it easier for us to take a look at what happens and how frightened we sometimes get if the changes that are happening when we start falling in love and the resistance that comes from within and often from without, you know? From friends and family who are “What are you doing with that person?” And maybe society’s strictures against who you’re falling in love with…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
Steve Kaplan: I thought you were going to ask me why most rom-coms suck? And I’ll tell you why most rom-coms suck! Most rom-coms suck because there is the mistaken belief that a rom-com is about creating obstacles for two people to keep them apart because otherwise the film would be 12 minutes long. But that is not the way it is in life. In life it’s not about…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
Eric Edson, CSUN Professor and Author: The love interest, now this is (outside of the hero and adversary), I believe the love interest character is the most fascinating of the rest of the character categories because it’s so replete with emotion and a way to explore the nature of the hero, what is right with them and what is hurting them and what is wrong with them…(Watch the video of Professor Edson’s class here on Youtube).
Film Courage: Blayne your new movie that is coming out is CUT TO THE CHASE. And I just wanted to quickly talk about how you previously had three movies coming out that you also wrote, directed, and starred in and those were OUTSIDE SALES, WEATHER GIRL and 6 MONTH RULE. Those were romantic comedies. So now why the change in genre to action/crime?
Blayne Weaver: My last three films were romantic comedies and a lot of that reasoning is just budgetary. My first movie was $80,000. The WEATHER GIRL was under half a million and then 6 MONTH RULE was a million dollars. And slowly growing in budget, but always being a small-budget movie basically because I didn’t think I could do anything else because it’s way easier to shoot a kiss than to shoot an explosion. I just thought that was my only option. Like I could do a family drama or something but no action, no thriller and then I had this experience with filmmaker Paul Osborne making FAVOR movie, which I starred in with actor Patrick Day (watch the video on Youtube here).
Film Courage: Today’s blockbusters are all the rage and I know there’s a lot of debate over if it’s actually good content. Do you feel that romance films are dwarfed by these action blockbusters?
Tosca Musk, Passionflix CoFounder, Director, Producer: I don’t actually…I mean they are not dwarfed by action blockbusters. The ones that do well (the action blockbusters) tend to have a romance in them. So I would consider them romances in many ways, even WONDER WOMAN had a romance in it. It just so happens that she was the lead and she was stronger in the relationship, so I don’t.
I think that in order for us to have great movies there’s generally a little bit of romance in them (personally, for me). My concern is more so the negative content that comes out. So much of our content that we’re watching right now has a negative spin on it. Everything is depressing, somebody did something wrong to you or hurt you and it has more of a negative side to it and I think that we need romance movies in order to bring back the positive. We need to have positive outlooks on relationships and people and look at people in a positive way, as opposed to all these negative movies. My concern is more the negative movies than the action blockbusters. I love an action blockbuster…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
