May I just say how much I miss Roger Ebert? He was for a time the nation's foremost movie critic. He was also a foursquare writer with a plainspoken style who never showed off, the kind of businesslike wordsmith I approve of. I only had contact with him one time, when I tried to commission him to write an article about movies that include photography in their plots. I had arranged to pay him what was, for the company I worked for, a lot, but which was probably too little for him. Even so, he was interested—he came up with a pretty serviceable list right off the top of his head. But in the end had to back away because he was overcommitted. I didn't get the sense that that was an excuse. He just didn't have time. A pity.
Last night I looked up an old rom-com about a May–September romance—As Good As It Gets with Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt. Helen Hunt was a fine actress who seemed to vanish from public view at some point. For a while she was everywhere, then she wasn't. In her heyday she was one of my relatively few screen crushes. I endured many episodes of "Mad About You" because she was in it. I loved her. (Using that expression is a little embarrassing. As I write it, I hear my psychologist kid brother Scott correcting me: "You don't love her. You love her character.") When James L. Brooks made As Good As It Gets in 1997, Jack Nicholson was 60 and Helen Hunt was 34. That alone makes the romance unlikely. I looked it up the other day: less than 1% of intact couples have 28 or more years in age between them. The common cliché when there's an age disparity is that the man is always older (and usually rich), but it's not that uncommon for it to be the other way around. Mary Tyler Moore's husband of 33 years, for instance, was 15 years her junior.
Mary Tyler Moore, by the way, as Laura Petrie in The Dick Van Dyke Show, was my first screen crush—when I was eight years old! Looking back on it I think she (or rather her character, as Scott would be quick to point out) somehow ruined me for women forever. I'm not being serious. But I did think she was as beautiful as humans could get.
Of course, screen crushes aren't real, and "types" aren't determinants. Physical appearance alone is never enough to make a relationship. What really attracts me is another mysterious quality: soul. That's a vague and opaque word, one that doesn't communicate much. But I know what I mean. And I know it when I come across it.Women who truly attract me are rare, and only come along once in a great while. "Soul" as I perceive it is treasurable and uncommon. Strange that it often appears in women who don't know they have it—and who sometimes don't even think all that much of themselves.
Mary Tyler Moore, who stole my tender heart in childhood, was also the only screen crush I got to meet in person. Well, meet might be overstating it. I was visiting Hanover, where Dartmouth College is, and my old friend Jim and I went to the Top of the Hop, a big open lounge and event space on the second floor of the college arts center, to talk. We picked a pair of armchairs in an out-of-the-way corner, and talked all afternoon. As the hours rolled by, the room filled up. There was a buzz in the air. It turned out that Mary Tyler Moore was going to speak. So we decided to stay. We had inadvertently claimed the best seats in the house: after arriving late, she made her way over to where we were, to give her talk. I can tell you one thing: although she was famous as a girl-next-door type, in real life she was uncommonly beautiful. So there I was, right next to Laura Petrie, thinking of myself at age eight sitting in front of our black-and-white television in my pajamas watching her cook for Dick Van Dyke after he tripped over that same ottoman week after week.
Life is strange.
By the time she arrived, the room was packed. Downstairs, another crowd of people had gathered who were being shut out by the fire marshalls. Intermittently we heard rumbles and cries of complaint from the disappointed crowd below, and halfway through Mary's talk she was interrupted by a loud yell from downstairs: "F--- YOU, Mary!" After just a beat, in her best brave-but-querulous Laura Petrie / Mary Richards voice, Mary yelled back, with just the right inflection, "You too-ooo!"
But back to As Good As It Gets. Many of Roger Ebert's reviews spend a good deal of their allotment of space simply laying out the film. This happened, that happened. Yet he manages to hit the nail on the head time after time. If you happen to remember that now 25-year-old movie, read his review of it. He hits it on the nose. "If the movie had been either more or less ambitious," writes Roger, "it might have been more successful. Less ambitious, and it would have been a sitcom crowd-pleaser, in which a grumpy Scrooge allows his heart to melt. More ambitious, and it would have touched on the underlying irony of this lonely man's bitter life. But 'As Good as It Gets' is a compromise, a film that forces a smile onto material that doesn't wear one easily." A narrow miss, but a miss all the same. I'm going to watch it again tonight anyway, I guess.
Mike
UPDATE in the cold light of the next morning: I actually remembered very little of the movie, so it was entertaining a quarter of a century later. But it's also a weirder movie than I remember. Roger Ebert says, "[Nicholson's character] hurls racist, sexist, homophobic and physical insults at everyone he meets, and because it's Nicholson, we let him; we know there has to be a payback somehow." But in today's atmosphere, some of those "hurled" comments seem startlingly vile. The movie as a whole shoehorns what is a grim and sorry story—a desperate, lonely, beleaguered woman allowing herself to be manipulated by a much older, psychologically ill misanthrope, for purposes neither of them quite understands—into the gauzy, feelgood arc of the standard rom-com. That in itself is a little shocking. But there is very fine acting (I think Helen Hunt out-acts Jack Nicholson, frankly, although all the performances are good, even the dog's) and plenty of fine writing, and more than a few moments of genuine laugh-out-loud humor. I was less impressed with the romance aspect of it—even at the end when the big kiss happens, you still feel they're both making a terrible mistake and that there can't be anything but pain and strain in their shared future.
But hey, it's a movie. What are movies for if not for telling us unreal and entertaining concocted stories? So, okay.
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Strange that you should write this, as I was browsing through Roger Eberts site for most of the weekend. I really miss him too, which is strange since I live in Norway and have never seen his show on TV or read the Chigaco Sun Times. But I stumbled upon him on the internet while studying cinema studies in university the 1990s, and became a keen follower of his reviews up until his tragic death. I loved his no-nonsense style and we had pretty similar tastes, which is all I really want from a reviewer.
Posted by: Svein-Frode | Monday, 27 February 2023 at 02:45 AM
Movies that include photography in their plot. “The Bridges Of Madison County” comes to mind. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if instead of she staying at home for the weekend, it was he, and a pretty female photographer substituted Clint Eastwood in the story.
Posted by: David Lee | Monday, 27 February 2023 at 03:01 AM
That movie, As Good As It Gets, with the Nicholson character's obnoxious, racist rants at the start, was the first time I actually saw many people get up and walk out of the movie theater. Until then, that was just a vague expression but not something I had actually witnessed. As I recall, by the end of the movie, I envied the people who had walked out. I expected there would be some redeeming quality - there was none.
As for Ebert, fwiw, at the time they were still on the air, I thought Ebert's reviews were usually a lot closer to my taste than Siskel's.
Posted by: Ken | Monday, 27 February 2023 at 03:39 AM
Thanks for reminding me of the crushes of my own youth - and the ones of my brother (who died a few weeks ago, he was much more of a film buff than I ever was).
Oh, and I, too, miss Roger Ebert and his reviews. Your link btw didn't work for me, so I searched for it and found it here: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/as-good-as-it-gets-1997
Posted by: Wolfgang Lonien | Monday, 27 February 2023 at 08:10 AM
My own probably flawed, overarching memory of the film, is that Nicholson's character played a straight-up asshole who treated his server (Hunt), and pretty much everyone else in the restaurant, Horribly with a capital "H".
I forget why he did so, except that he seemed to get away with it most of the time -- and she apparently found this psychopathy attractive?
Strange movie indeed.
Posted by: David Smith | Monday, 27 February 2023 at 10:02 AM
I miss him,too!
Posted by: Hélcio J. Tagliolatto | Monday, 27 February 2023 at 10:14 AM
"As Good as it Gets" is maybe my favorite of all time. "A Man Called Ove" competes well for top spot.
I hesitate to do this, because we may seldom see you if you go down this rabbit hole, but have you looked into red light therapy?
Posted by: Clayton | Monday, 27 February 2023 at 10:18 AM
Movies. After watching some of the 'behind the scenes' or 'the making of' extras on DVD's, I sometimes wonder how movies get made at all. Yet some of them completely capture us.
But the thing I wonder the most is why any person outside the movie industry would want to date an actor. These people are finest professional liars in the world. How could you ever trust them? For those in the industry, of course, the relationship is just another role to burnish the resume. That some appear to be happy and have long term relationships is even more amazing than the movies getting made.
Posted by: Keith | Monday, 27 February 2023 at 10:59 AM
A good December January romance Harold and Maude includes a Jaguar E type hearse. You might appreciate that.
Posted by: John C Longenecker | Monday, 27 February 2023 at 07:06 PM
M.T.M. "…was as beautiful as humans could get"? Oh my! Please check out Gene Tierney!
Posted by: Bryan Geyer | Monday, 27 February 2023 at 08:48 PM
You never post my posts where I'm (only rarely) being complimentary to you. But here goes...
I read your blog daily because you write with such an ease. An ease that rings like a tuning fork to put me into the kind of mental zone that well suits my best days.
And I thank you.
Posted by: Kye Wood | Monday, 27 February 2023 at 08:56 PM
Large age disparities among some couples reminds me of the Steely Dan song "Hey Nineteen". As an older person, I witness the differences in life experiences when talking with the young adults that I encounter during my work. On the upside, I can recycle jokes that they haven't heard yet!
Famously, some of these relationships do work out. Justice William O. Douglas's fourth wife (if at first you don't succeed...) was a 22-year-old college student whom Douglas married when he was 68 years of age. The marriage lasted for fourteen years, until his death at the age of 81.
Posted by: R. Edelman | Tuesday, 28 February 2023 at 12:14 AM
My girlfriend at the time made me watch As Good As It Gets.
I still don't know why, though I had the feeling she was trying to correct something about me. It's one of those movies where if you see any resemblance between yourself at the characters, you immediately set about to change your ways, but thankfully that time I did not see the resemblance.
But I also liked watching Helen Hunt act, so it was okay. (Or is that OK?)
Posted by: Rick Denney | Friday, 03 March 2023 at 11:03 PM