Just one look....is all it took....

by Stacey Fearheiley

How long does it take to fall in love?  Some would say there's no such thing.  Others would say long enough to know each other's faults and not care.  And still others would suggest that it can happen in an instant.

One thing I noticed about the movies Eric and I talked about this week...movies from 1967.  50 year olds.  All the couples seemed to jump into relationships very quickly.  Whether it was the rebellious fling of Bonnie and Clyde, the mad lust filled affair of Ben and Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, or even the sweet but complicated adoration between John and Joey in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, it happened FAST!  Too fast?

In this day and age of television series that arc across time continuously, we are used to stories and relationships created like old school soap operas...some relationships take YEARS to materialize. And that's ok.  We have the time.  We have 6 to 23 episodes to get there.

Sure, a la GOT, there are "relationships" that happen in an instant, but even there...any emotional bond is a gradual evolution.  Again, we've got time.

But in the movies, before there were sequel upon sequels that were planned from the first line of the first film, you have 90 - 120 minutes to get your story told.

If you were a good film maker, you did so through showing not telling.

For John and Joey, I was convinced, as most of the relationship had happened before the movie started and off screen.  The skill of the actors showing what the emotions were and proving their affection.

For Ben and Mrs. Robinson?  Well, we're bending the definition of "relationship" to call what they had that.  But his "true affection" for Elaine?  Did I believe that?

Bonnie and Clyde had barely any real lines between them before she was hopping into his car and they were off.  In my 21st century vision, it was jarring.

In the end, I suppose, when we look back at movies "of a certain age" we have to view them in the time they were created.  It's not fair to expect films made in the past to take into account the skepticism and snarkiness of future audiences.

How long does it take to fall in love?  You can ask Bonnie and Clyde, you can ask Edward and Vivian from Pretty Woman, you can ask Vianne and Roux from Chocolat, and you can ask Bridget Jones and Mark, and they will all give different answers.    How long does it take to fall in love? Probably the best answer to the question is...as long as it takes.

Bonus:

That (Thirty) Million Dollar Smile

by Eric Peterson

Thirteen years ago, archeologists in Bulgaria uncovered a female skeleton that turned out to be 9,000 years old. That’s a find under any circumstances, but what made this discovery particularly extraordinary was the skeleton’s perfectly straight, perfectly shiny teeth. The scientists named their discovery “Julia Roberts.”

If right now, someone asked you to close your eyes and picture Julia Roberts, and you followed along (go ahead and try it, right now), she might have blonde hair or auburn, she might be formally or casually dressed, but chances are she’d be sporting her trademark smile – warm, generous, full of joy, existing for no other reason than that its wearer feels authentically, buoyantly happy.

Rumor has it that Julia Roberts has insured her smile for thirty million dollars, and it’s easy to see why. If something – anything – were to happen to those precious chompers, it would greatly inhibit Julia’s ability to work, or at least to get the twenty million dollar paychecks she received for some of her biggest hits.

Stacey and I recently devoted an entire show to Julia Roberts’ career, and of course we talked about the smile – that iconic moment in Pretty Woman when Richard Gere snapped a jewelry box just as she was reaching toward it, causing a spontaneous moment of laughter (you know the one), and what it feels like to be denied the smile, in a serious film like Mary Reilly.

When Owen Gleiberman at Entertainment Weekly reviewed Mary Reilly in 1996, he didn’t much care for it – using EW’s “letter grade” system, the film earned a C-minus. In his review – in the very first paragraph of his review, in fact – he writes, “Anyone eager for a glimpse of the famous Roberts smile — those luscious wax lips come to life — had better look elsewhere. In Mary Reilly, the lips are taut and nervous, drawn into a stoic line of woe. Her eyes gleam with trepidation.”

The moviegoing public didn’t much care for Mary Reilly either, or at least most of them didn’t buy a ticket. It cost $47 million to make the film, and it made only $12.3 million worldwide.

As I mentioned on the show, I remember seeing a line chart in a copy of Entertainment Weekly after the film’s release (I searched online when preparing this blog entry, but couldn’t find it) detailing the correlation between the number of times that Julia Roberts flashed her multi-million dollar smile in some of her more notable films and the amount of money each film made – and there was a direct correlation. More smiles, more money. At least in the eighties and nineties, no one was interested in a Julia Roberts that was somber or scared.

Nearly twenty years later, Julia made August: Osage County with Meryl Streep, Margo Martindale, Julianne Nicholson, Ewan McGregor, Juliette Lewis, Abigail Breslin, Benedict Cumberbatch, and more. In it, Julia doesn’t smile much either. The film didn’t break any box office records, but it did make a profit, and it fared better critically (a 64% score on “Rotten Tomatoes” compared to 26% for Mary Reilly). The world, it seems, is finally ready for a Julia Roberts that is something other than a bundle of joy – her performance as Barbara in August: Osage County is a study in a woman’s anger; in fact, it’s difficult to even call it anger; rather, she’s ROYALLY PISSED OFF in almost every scene.

Perhaps it’s because she’s no longer an ingénue. If I were optimistic, I’d suggest that perhaps our society is becoming less sexist and is finally allowing women to express emotions that might threaten or shock people. And while I’d like that to be true, I somehow doubt it. Whatever the reason, it’s entirely possible that what lies ahead for Julia Roberts the actor might be twice as exciting as what we’ve previously witnessed in the career of Julia Roberts the movie star.

And all the same, if we remember her 9,000 years from now, we’ll probably still be picturing that iconic smile. And maybe that’s okay, too.