#33: 10 More Romantic Things

Favorite celebrity marriages, 30 Rock and a fan cam.

I am writing this ON Valentine’s Day because originally I’d accepted that I was too busy this week to write anything, but I just listened to three different version of “It Had To Be You” and I was feeling very fuzzy and in love so here is a rushed mini-sequel to last year’s 14 Romantic Things…

Hoots and Hollers #12: Fourteen Romantic Things

10 more romantic things:

credit: Photofest

1. I couldn’t believe I left this off last year because it is the most romantic thing in the entire world and I think about it all the time, but this Anne Bancroft quote about being married to Mel Brooks: “When he comes home at night and I hear his key in the lock, I say to myself, ‘Oh good! The party's about to begin.’”

   1. I really ought to read the book, but this excerpt from Brooks’ memoir is also full of great little nuggets about their relationship: Brooks lying so he could be wherever she was, Bancroft being impressed by Brooks’ taxi whistle, their city hall wedding where Brooks forgot the ring and they had to use a hoop earring instead and the justice that married them had a funny voice and they couldn’t look at each other the whole time or otherwise they’d start laughing :)

2. The end of 30 Rock’s “Dance Like Nobody’s Watching” (S6E1) where Jack drops Liz off at the movies (he guesses that she’s there to see the 9:10 showing of Gary Marshall’s New Year’s Eve alone; ALSO I am only now recognizing this as the AMC Lincoln Square???) and catches her kissing a mystery man (James Marsden as Criss Chros, who she’ll later marry) and this is intercut with a kid singing “Camptown Races” (because it’s free) on a new show Jack is producing called “America’s Kidz Got Singing” where Jenna is the mean judge. This scene makes me WEEP in a really embarrassing way and I can barely hear “Camptown Races” anywhere without tearing up about it.

“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.” haha oh… credit: Focus Features

3. Johnny Flynn on the floor in Emma. (2020) because he’s so overwhelmed!!!!!! From being in love!!!!!

4. Wife Guy Juzo Itami. I’ve only seen 3 of Itami’s films, but each one—in particular his beloved “ramen western” Tampopo—has starred his wife and muse Nobuko Miyamoto and in all three, Miyamoto is radiant. The camera loves her because Itami so clearly loves her. On screen, she is glowing, plucky, smiling and determined. Tampopo and Supermarket Woman seem to be shouting: Look at her! Isn’t she wonderful! I don’t know much about their marriage, but an interview with Miyamoto on the Criterion Channel seems to confirm what is reflected on film—a relationship rooted in creativity, mutual respect, and having fun. I like when directors are wife guys in general, like Christopher Nolan or most famed wife guy of them all John Cassavetes.¹

5. “Love Me Tender” by Elvis Presley. I just like it.

6. Pickle Sam waiting for Izzie at her Bubbe’s house in Crossing Delancey. (SPOILERS!!) Joan Micklin Silver’s ridiculously charming New York rom-com is about Izzie, who is beautiful and cool and works in events (?) at an uptown bookstore but has really stupid taste in men, who’s set up with a handsome, patient, thoughtful pickle purveyor named Sam by a matchmaker her grandmother hires. Izzie spends most of the movie being crazy but also gradually realizing she’s kind of in love with Sam and it definitely doesn’t matter that he hasn’t heard of any of the writers she works with. After a rocky start, they finally set a date but Izzie half stands Sam the Pickle Man up. When she finally arrives, certain he’ll be long gone, he’s still there and they dance around to “It Had To Be You.”

7. On Girls, when Adam says “If you died the world would blur. I wouldn’t know what a tree is” and you know he means it.

8. Exes Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel making The Taste of Things together.

credit: Columbia Pictures/Sony

9. The whole movie qualifies (all those tense conversations with the Walls of Jericho between them! their fake fight where they realize they can match wits and make each other laugh!), but right now my favorite little bits from It Happened One Night are Peter (Clark Gable) asking “Hey, Brat. Did you mean it? Would you really go?” over the sheet wall between them when she’s asleep or when he’s finally admitted he’s in love and he’s so happy and singing “Young people in love/are never hungry” (from earlier in the movie when he and Claudette Colbert’s Ellie hitchhiked with a singing thief) at the top of his lungs while driving around.

10. This Lawrence of Arabia Lawrence/Ali fan cam set to Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck Babe.” I want to get off that site so bad, but if I ever do really leave I need someone there to send me stuff like this.

Happy Valentine’s Day everybody!!!!! You should tell me your favorite romantic things.

1. I, along with the entire internet, also obviously like that story about John Cassavetes getting in a fight with Roman Polanski on the set of Rosemary’s Baby where Polanski was complaining that monogamy is impossible and Cassavetes said Polanski knows nothing about women and he was more attracted to his wife Gena Rowlands than ever before.