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It's Nora Ephron's Fault You Can't Find The Right Man
Self-Help Books Are Not Just For Desperate Twits

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Understater
12/16/08

In reply to It's Nora Ephron's Fault You Can't Find The Right Man
Two of my favorite movies are the fundamentally disparate Annie Hall and Before Sunrise...does that mean that I'm a well-rounded romantic???

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emilyanne
12/16/08

In reply to It's Nora Ephron's Fault You Can't Find The Right Man
Oh and my favourite romantic comedy - The Big Sleep. There is no scene sexier than the one between Bogart and Bacall where they talk about horse racing. Now that's how to raise the sexual tension.
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tscheese
12/16/08

In reply to It's Nora Ephron's Fault You Can't Find The Right Man
Books have shaped my expectations far more than movies can. No no no, you guys, it's not just that I can't sit still for a 2.5-hour borefest in an uncomfortable seat with someone simultaneously kicking the seatback behind me and chatting gleefully on their cell phone when I just drank a gallon of Diet Coke and I have to pee. No no, hear me out!

In books, my mind provides all the voices and scenery. It's more personal. Like, okay, bad example, but it's one I can think up right off the top of my head: Little Women, where Jo rejects Laurie and IT'S OMG DRAMZ. Jo: Blustery and a bit awkward but real and tough! Laurie: Kind of foppish and now totally emo! That's the sort of relationship dramz that really sticks with me, because when the people are inside my head they seem more real.

I'm not nuts, I swear.

(Then Jo gets with a total nerd.)
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emilyanne
12/16/08

@tscheese: oh I agree with you. But I can't even start with my ultimate romantic hero, I should never have been allowed to read complicated historical fiction at a young age.
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kickingthecrap
12/16/08

@tscheese: I don't know, I think the Winona Ryder version got Laurie dead to rights in that scene. (In fact, when I rewatched it with my family of women over Thanksgiving, my sister and I looked at each other during that scene and shouted OMG DRAMZ).

But I do tend to agree with you - I Capture the Castle? The Anne and Emily L.M. Montgomery books? etc. Perhaps also because I read these when I was much younger and more impressionable than any romcom got me at.
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LBB
12/16/08

@tscheese: You're not nuts, I totally agree. (Well, either you're not nuts or we both are...)
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lookethatmyface
12/16/08

@kickingthecrap: No lies, recently read I Capture the Castle (after watching the movie, and seeing Henry Cavill as Stephen Colley) I couldn't help but get angry with Cassandra. Mostly because I think Henry Cavill is the prettiest man ever. Why don't I watch the Tudors more? I Capture the Castle is all about the DRAMZ
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Rooo sez BISH PLZ
12/16/08

In reply to It's Nora Ephron's Fault You Can't Find The Right Man
Some man who is mad that women want men who actually talk wrote this study.
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rmric0.wedding.photographer.and.manny
12/16/08

In reply to It's Nora Ephron's Fault You Can't Find The Right Man
RomComs have also given me unrealistic expectations.

1) That I can act like a creepy stalker and girls will like me.

2) That merely by being a nice guy, hot women will throw themselves at me eventually as long as I pretend to be their friend while pining for them.

3)Everything can be solved with a musical number

Actually, that last one is true.
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LittleBlackFly
12/16/08

@rmric0: You mean like this?

[xkcd.com]
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rmric0.wedding.photographer.and.manny
12/16/08

@LittleBlackFly: yes, I was considering whether or not to link to that.
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YourScreenplaySucks
12/16/08

In reply to It's Nora Ephron's Fault You Can't Find The Right Man
I blame films featuring witty, debonair Brits and stoic, hard-bodied, glistening, perpetually warring Roman/Greek warriors for raising my expectations. They've ruined me for all other men.
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YourScreenplaySucks
12/16/08

@Your Screenplay Sucks: I also blame foreign movies for making tormented artists or ennui-ridden hotasses seem interesting and exciting when in real life they amount to little more than a giant pain in one's ass.

I also blame Twilight because you just know it's ruining someone for something.
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WaltzingMatilda
12/16/08

@Your Screenplay Sucks: HA! I was just about to go there. No kidding. Where's my hottie little vampire? Or, in my real-world version - some freaking drug addict who hasn't washed his hair in weeks that alternatively hates and wants me. I mean - that is the only way that translates into real life.
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Rooo sez BISH PLZ
12/16/08

@Your Screenplay Sucks: Oooo. 300? Troy? Love Actually? The original Die Hard?

Sounds like a good Holiday Film Fest is in order to me ...

(I have found that the best real life men are the ones that get annoyed, but not too annoyed, when you sigh and drool over the men in those films. So I get my eye candy whilst using them as a screening device - if you'll pardon the pun (I didn't mean it, it just appeared).)
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Penny_Esq
12/16/08

@Your Screenplay Sucks: @WaltzingMatilda: And who will protect me from my own burgeoning out-of-control sexuality. A man who will look after my virtue when I am too inflamed by lust to do so myself, now THAT is the ideal.

Although, come to think of it, there are probably scores of girls dating boys from their high school youth group expecting their boyfriends to embrace virtue and take over the sexual gatekeeping duties. I know I expected if of MY boyfriend at that age, and it never ceased to infuriate me when he declined to participate.
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rednrowdy
12/16/08

In reply to It's Nora Ephron's Fault You Can't Find The Right Man
'when harry met sally' completely ruined new year's eve for scores of single and unattached people forever.

it's a great movie, but the new year's eve thing, as lovely a romantic gesture as it was, has put a lot of single people in therapy. i'm sure of it.
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little_engine_that_could
12/16/08

In reply to It's Nora Ephron's Fault You Can't Find The Right Man
hmm so I guess I shouldnt marry that homeless guy outside my window with the boombox... damn, so close.
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WaltzingMatilda
12/16/08

@little_engine_that_could: Get out of my head... and my neighborhood. Dumpster Dan is totally mine. You know he will turn out to be old school royalty from a European country you've never heard of, right?
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Rooo sez BISH PLZ
12/16/08

@little_engine_that_could: What? Is the boombox not playing "In Your Eyes"?
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SarahMC
12/16/08

In reply to It's Nora Ephron's Fault You Can't Find The Right Man
The woooorst thing rom-coms have taught women is that the wedding is the goal :roll credits:.
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Dictator for Life
12/16/08

In reply to It's Nora Ephron's Fault You Can't Find The Right Man
Thou shalt not hate on When Harry Met Sally. It is because of haters like you folkses that the phrase "baby fish mouth" STILL hasn't made it into the common lexicon.
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Rooo sez BISH PLZ
12/16/08

@formerlydictator4life1: What do you mean? "Baby fish mouth" is sweeping the nation.
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kickingthecrap
12/16/08

@Rooo sez BISH PLZ: JINX. No one has ever quoted me back to me before!
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Rooo sez BISH PLZ
12/16/08

@kickingthecrap: That's amazing. Don't you think that's amazing And you wrote it??
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queenieinmanhattan
12/16/08

@Rooo sez BISH PLZ: Pesto is the quiche of the '80's, baby.
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taranwanderer
12/16/08

In reply to It's Nora Ephron's Fault You Can't Find The Right Man
Just because I have the entire script of When Harry Met Sally memorized does not mean I think I met my soul mate whilst driving to New York from Chicago after college, then happened to have run into said soul mate at the airport five years later before finally meeting up for the last time in Shakespeare and Co.
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the dodo, the cuckoo, and the nene
12/16/08

In reply to It's Nora Ephron's Fault You Can't Find The Right Man
I wonder if it works the other way...I have never liked rom-coms. I love Tarantino and David Lynch. And I think that I have perhaps had some twisted, mind-f'd up relationships because of it. I am happy that my current relationship is Pulp Fiction "When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence" quirky instead of Kill Bill revenge evilness. Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but I have never found typical rom-coms realistic in any sense of the word.
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tscheese
12/16/08

In reply to It's Nora Ephron's Fault You Can't Find The Right Man
After you've dated around some, and met some people and had some relationships, don't most people get kind of disabused of the "OMG OMG TRU PERFECT LURRRVE HAS TO CONFORM TO MY PURFIKT FANTASEEEEE!!!11" thing?

I'll admit, when I was in college, I had my own weird romantic little notions and shit, about LURVE! and MARRIAGE! and then absolutely none of it panned out. Can't we just see romcoms as the escapist silliness they are? Do we have to assume that their target audience (read: women) is so stupid that they can't divorce entertainment from reality?
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Mkp-hearts-NYC
12/16/08

@tscheese: I think we can even argue that it's a NECESSARY phase of development. RomComs give us a blueprint for the general structure of a relationship - you meet, you like, something goes wrong, you rebound.... and then it's up to life to fill us in on the details. I too thought I'd figured out my fairy tale while still in college...and then.. I had to start from scratch when that didn't work. Fortunately I'd done enough dating and relationship planning to recognize that some of the pieces of the dream were ok (the ones that involve a guy and some snuggling and eventually, pets and kids) and some would need to be scrapped (Um, everything from the helicopter on - Thanks Two Weeks Notice)
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Rooo sez BISH PLZ
12/16/08

@tscheese: No, we don't have to assume it. I think it's just that a certain class of odious male uses the "men never act like humans, so women shouldn't expect us to" rationale to continue to behave with borderline-criminal jackassery.
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rollergirl76
12/16/08

In reply to It's Nora Ephron's Fault You Can't Find The Right Man
This reminds me I have to go watch Love Actually for the 50th time, while I drink wine, cry, lust after Colin Firth, the hot guy Laura Linney almost hooks up with and the hottie who's in love with his best friend's girl, and then squee when I see a young January Jones looking adorbz as a Midwestern hot chick who likes British guys.
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WaltzingMatilda
12/16/08

@rollergirl76: 'Tis the season for a kick ass remake of "Christmas is All Around."
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Penny_Esq
12/16/08

@rollergirl76: And Tim from The Office as the porno stand-in! I love that movie.
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Penny_Esq
12/16/08

@Penny_Esq: Now that I think about it, I think The Office has done more to jack up my relationship expectations to unreasonable heights. Thanks, Ricky Gervais.
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rollergirl76
12/16/08

@Penny_Esq: OMG, he's so cute and sweet in that movie. I just watched the Ali G movie this weekend on Comedy Central, and he plays one of Ali G's best buds. I couldn't even believe it was him! He was wearing baggy pants and talking all street.
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Sukie in the Graveyard
12/16/08

@rollergirl76: I own that movie and my boyfriend has two copies.

I LOVE EVERY OUNCE OF IT.

If you watch the uncut scenes, you may love it even more. They had to cut out some pretty great stuff...

bubbles, that's all I can say, bubbles...
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theruraljuror
12/16/08

@rollergirl76: I'm from Wisconsin and wasn't even mad when they totally botched the Milwaukee airport AND when he went to the bar and all they served was Bud. (Since Miller is brewed in Milwaukee, it dominates every bar)

Despite these teeny tiny flaws, THIS IS STILL THE BEST MOVIE EVER.

now, i'm going to re-watch the part where colin firth proposes to aurelia in porteguese.
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morninggloria
12/16/08

In reply to It's Nora Ephron's Fault You Can't Find The Right Man
My Best Friend's Wedding taught me that I should have dated my best friend from college, but I didn't, so I screwed myself over forever and am doomed to a life of Rupert Everett's sassy wisdom. At age 28.
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sportz.star
12/16/08

@morninggloria: When that movie came out I was in high school. A friend, now seemingly aptly, thought that I would grow up just like the Julia Roberts character. While my best friend is not yet getting married and I'm not a food critic, similarities may end there (and yeah, his girlfriend is young, blonde, perky and from Chicago).
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morninggloria
12/16/08

@sportz.star: Can you believe Cameron Diaz's character was supposed to be TWENTY YEARS OLD?!

Best friend! You're pervier than I ever could have imagined!
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sportz.star
12/16/08

@morninggloria: No! It was on cable the other day and I was horrified both by than and Julia's costuming. Worst. Clothes. Ever.

You imagined my perviness? Hmm . . . (thinking back to what information I've been giving away on Jez recently . . .)
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Sophie needs to study...damn
12/16/08

@morninggloria: Oh jeez, I just straight up cackled!
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