(Movie) Romance is Dead

The more I think about the ongoing collapse of Hollywood’s cinematic fortunes, the more convinced I become that the main problem is that the people who are responsible for making movies… writers, directors, producers and executives… are completely out of touch with who their audiences are and what their audiences want.

The coming struggles of the latest INDIANA JONES movie are perhaps the best and most current example. If the reviews and rumors are to be believed, we are going to be presented with an Indiana Jones grown old, decrepit and depressed, who is outshined at every turn by the plucky young woman who is his co-star.

If that sounds familiar to you, don’t worry, you’re not going crazy. It’s the same thing Hollywood has done to every beloved 20th Century franchise character over the last ten years. It sometimes seems like it’s the only story they know how to tell anymore. The one obvious exception to this rule is TOP GUN: MAVERICK and, oh hey, has anyone checked the box office results on that one recently?

I can think of about a hundred ways Disney could’ve given us a Maverick version of Indiana Jones… that they did not, but rather went to the same old playbook of making these legacy characters sad and surly and unappealing, tells us something. It tells us that they are anxious to have you feel about Indiana Jones the way they feel about Indiana Jones… that it’s time for him to exit stage left, so that he can be replaced by an actor who is more appropriate for, as The Critical Drinker might say… “modern audiences.”

In a couple of weeks, we’ll find out who is right, and who is fired. But if there’s one thing we know to be true about Hollywood, it’s that they refuse to learn a lesson if learning that lesson requires being responsive to the programming desires of flyover country… even if a few executives have to lose their personalized parking spaces in the short term.

It’s difficult sometimes to remember that there was a time, not even that long ago, when movies were made for one reason… to make the largest possible audience happy on a Friday night… to give them a fun way to spend two hours and to send them home with a smile on their faces to enjoy the rest of their weekend.

A happy customer, Hollywood used to understand, is a repeat customer.

Nowadays it seems like the prevailing wisdom in Hollywood is that if an audience walks out of the theater smiling, then it means they didn’t learn their lesson.

Which brings me to THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS, which I re-watched last week, thanks to the almighty Algorithm.

I have a weird brain for movies. I can quote almost any movie ever made, even if I only saw it one time twenty years ago. True to form, I remembered every major story beat of this 1987 Michael J. Fox (sort of) classic… what I did not remember, is how it made me feel.

It made me feel good!

It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s earnest, it’s emotional and, unlike so much modern movie content, it is relentlessly upbeat. It’s one of those movies that spends its time making you feel like anything is possible, rather than trying to convince you that everything sucks.

It’s a fantasy version of an office love affair, that’s for sure, but by presenting us with a fantasy, it reminds us that movies aren’t supposed to be documentaries… if they were, we wouldn’t need separate categories on our Netflix homepage.

None of us will ever have a relationship quite like the one Brantley (Michael J Fox) and Christy (Helen Slater) have in THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS, and that is prceisely the point of the movies. We don’t go to the movies to see our lives reflected back at us… we go to escape for a couple of hours, to imagine what could be and to lose ourselves in something magical.

I mean… watch this montage of the first moment Brantley sees Christy…

Everything about that montage sequence is pure 80’s movie romanticism. Maybe the kids today, jaded and snarky as they are, would call it cringe. But I would respond that if you can’t remember meeting that one particular girl and losing time, forgeting where you were until you came back to yourself and the sun was in a different part of the sky, then you need to put down your phone, go outside and touch grass…

And while it’s likely that none of us will ever experience anything exactly like the fantasy love affair of SECRET OF MY SUCCESS, director Herb Ross balances the fantasy elements with just enough reality that the story captures the nostalgic feelings we all remember from our first hormone-dump adolescent experiences with the opposite sex… especially if you grew up in the ‘80s, as I did.

It’s a cliche to say they don’t make them like this anymore. But it’s also true. They literally do not make sweet upbeat romantic comedies like this anymore. In the 21st Century, if your love stories aren’t riddled with angst and “gritty representations of the reality of modern dating”, as the New York Times or Rolling Stone might put it, then you just ain’t doin’ it right.

Romance, in the movie business, is truly dead.

And to the extent that culture reflects society, romance is dead there too.  At the extremes, the ritual of dating has been reduced to the mechanical act of pointing one finger, and then moving it slightly to the left or slightly to the right. Sex has been demystified to such an extent that one can learn all about the art of “pegging” or the proper application of a butt plug, at just about any elementary school library in America (or at least, outside of Florida).

In a world like that, who would make time for a two minute montage of a man gazing longingly at a woman as he tries to figure out the best way to introduce himself to her?

There’s a great scene late in the movie that I guess you’d call a madcap sexual farce. All of the main characters are at the Boss’ summer home for the weekend. Brantley wants to wind up in bed with Christy and Christy wants to wind up in bed with Brantley. But the Boss also wants to wind up in bed with Christy and the Boss’ Wife wants to wind up in bed with Brantley. In the end, Brantley and the boss wind up in bed together and when the lights are turned back on, the Boss’ Wife shouts… “The sexual revolution is over, everybody out of bed!”

Except… are we sure about that?

Did the revolution end, or was it just co-opted, commoditized and transactualized until it was just another cudgel for political control?

If the Revolution is over, then the weirdos won. We now live in a world where political and social capital accrues to those who are willing to admit in public that they prefer those sex acts that are considered the most transgressive or exotic, as oppposed to those that are considered more traditional (read: dull and square). As a result, everything is boring, nothing is sexy, and no one seems to be having much fun.

And the numbers back that up. Fertility rates are down, sperm counts are down, Testosterone levels are down and the academic papers are filled with studies that suggest teens just aren’t that interested in sex anymore… and really, who can blame them? When your creepy purple-haired high school English teacher is chasing you down the hall desperately trying to get you to listen to her “empowering” story about how she uses a strap-on to spice things up with her partner, we’re living in a world that has become… well… what’s the opposite of sexy?

But we’ve lost something more than just the mystery and allure of sex… we’ve lost romance too.

I look around the culture and I don’t see anyone telling young men that they should be trying to find their Helen Slater… that they should be on the lookout for that one woman who knocks the tongue out of your mouth the first time you see her… the one who makes you lose time and forget where you are… the one that makes you want to do whatever you have to do to make her happy because you’ll never find another one like her.

All I see across the broader pop culture are Andrew Tate and Dan Bilzerian types telling young men to put as many notches on their belts as possible.

Why?

I hate to raise the spectre of the Socialist boogeyman here (what’s the Socialist version of Godwin’s Law?), but of the shoe fits…

In Orwell’s 1984, Winston Smith’s illicit girlfriend Julia is a member of the Junior anti-Sex League… a group of young women who have taken a vow of celibacy, not for religious reasons, but because Big Brother’s INGSOC has as its stated policy the elimination of sex altogether. This is because sex causes men and women form a bond more powerful than anything that can be offered by a relationship with Government. And in a Socialist world of “all within the state, none outside the state, none against the state”, this simply cannot be allowed. After all, bonded pairs tend to do insurrectiony things like create happy, stable and self-sufficient families that have no need of Government assistance.

Single mothers and chaotic absentee fathers on the other hand, more often create wards of the State.

And sure enough, as the number of healthy families in America has dwindled, and the number of broken familes has exploded, the overall decay of American society has kept pace. As it turns out, while the Inner Party Members of INGSOC may have been evil, they were not stupid.

I don’t think it’s an accident that alongside that incremental death of the family unit, we’ve also seen romantic fantasies like THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS and WORKING GIRL slowly disappear from theaters. It makes a perverse sort of sense… if we aren’t falling in love and building families, then who needs stories about romance?

Once again, Hollywood is not giving us what we want. They’re giving us what they want us to want.

None of which is to say that THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS goes out of its way to avoid thorny politcal issues… quite the opposite. Sexual politics are a critical part of the story. Both Brantley and Christy are pressured to have sex by people more powerful than they are, although it’s worth noting that Brantley gives in while Christy does not. Christy struggles to be taken seriously despite her Harvard degree and reputation as a “financial wizard” because she’s attractive and that’s all that most of the men in the office can see. And Brantley struggles to find acceptance for his ideas because he looks young and is inexperienced in practical business.

Do Brantley and Christy give up and mope arouond the office saying “woe is me” and crying victim? No they do not. Rather they look for ways to overcome the challenges put in front of them.

How they overcome those challenges is yet another important message of THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS, one that is missing from much of modern culture here in 2023. We used to teach our kids that when they run into a barrier, a setback that gets in the way of achieving their goals, that they shouldn’t give up… rather they must find a way over, around or through that barrier… that when it comes to chasing your dreams, the worst sin you can commit is to take “no” for an answer.

(ABOVE: Herb Ross receates the Sermon on the Mount)

Brantley Foster’s solution, to create a fake executive named Carlton Whitfield, and to pretend to be that executive until such time as he can find a way to implement his revolutionary business ideas is a fantasy, just like Brantley’s love affair with Christy… but that’s all part of the fun. It’s the positive “can-do” message that really matters, and it’s that message which resonates as the credits begin to roll.

At the end of the day, the only person who can define you, is you.

Other people can only hold you back or block your way if you let them.

There is always a way over, around, or through.

You can do anything if you are willing to work hard.

You are not a victim.

Now… go out there and find someone who makes you forget what day it is.

(MOVIE CONNECTIONS: Since I mentioned the TOP GUN sequel in this essay it’s worth pointing out that Cash & Epps, the credited writers of THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS, also wrote the original TOP GUN and are credited on MAVERICK as well)