Falling In Love Again : Hollywood Rediscovers the Power of Romantic Comedies

When Frank Price first took over the chairmanship of Columbia Pictures 10 months ago, there was a noticeable lack of romantic comedies in the studio’s development pipeline. Correctingthat deficiency, he said, was his first order of business.

“If there’s one staple of motion pictures, it’s romance,” Price maintained. “There’s no more important bond than the one between men and women. Romantic comedies are great date movies and, unlike action/adventure pictures which are aimed at young boys, they draw in both sexes. If you hit it right, they have no ceiling.”

That wisdom was borne out in 1990 when Paramount’s “Ghost” and Touchstone’s “Pretty Woman” went through the roof, edging out such mega-budget “event” films as “Days of Thunder” and “RoboCop 2” to become the year’s top two box-office hits. “Ghost”--the story of a couple (Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore) whose love transcends death--grossed more than $200 million domestically. “Pretty Woman”--a tale in which a wealthy businessman (Richard Gere) falls for a Hollywood Boulevard hooker (Julia Roberts)--took in $178.4 million at home and $232 million abroad.

Add in Disney’s current success with “Green Card,” starring Gerard Depardieu and Andie MacDowell, the more than a dozen romantic comedies on the major studios’ 1991 slate--not to mention the current stress imposed by a faltering economy and the Persian Gulf War--and little wonder that there’s talk of a “revival” of the genre that Hollywood first took to its heart half a century ago.

“The verdict of last summer has come through loud and clear,” suggested writer/director Paul Schrader (“American Gigolo”). “The tone of escapism has changed from action adventure to romantic fantasy.”

Paramount Pictures has three romantic comedies scheduled for release this year: “He Said, She Said,” with Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Perkins; “The Butcher’s Wife,” with Demi Moore and Jeff Daniels; and “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” with Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino. That they surfaced now, said Gary Lucchesi, president of production for the studio, is no coincidence.

“A studio’s yearly slate represents a certain philosophy,” Lucchesi said, “and this year, Paramount has made a move towards romantic comedies, emphasizing story and chemistry between two characters. Back around Christmas, 1989, we detected early signs of recession and speculated that the ‘90s might be something like the ‘30s--that those comedies of Preston Sturges, Ernst Lubitsch and Frank Capra, so popular during that Depression-era environment, might be good for these times as well. The need for escape seems to be critical.”

According to UCLA film professor Howard Suber, the issue is more “compensation”--a search by the audience for what’s missing in their lives. “There’s an inverse ratio between what we experience on a feeling level and what we expect out of movies,” he said. “We’re living in a gray, gloomy period with very few blacks and whites. People now are turning inward, looking for power in terms of personal relationships. It’s a time to stay home, light a fire and make love.”

That message wasn’t lost on Disney, whose executives insisted that the original ending of “Pretty Woman”--one in which Roberts spurned Gere’s beauty and bucks--be chucked in favor of one less downbeat. “It was a darker movie at first,” acknowledged David Hoberman, president of Touchstone Pictures and Walt Disney Pictures, “but we knew what we wanted. We were after wish fulfillment, fantasy. The social climate for love has been curtailed in this country. People are looking for ways to find it.”

“Pretty Woman” puts a contemporary spin on the 1938 “Pygmalion,” which surfaced again in 1964 as “My Fair Lady.” “Ghost” throws a modern twist on 1942’s “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” a romance between a handsome bearded specter played by Rex Harrison and Gene Tierney, a woman who was very much alive. “Green Card” seems to update 1941’s “Come Live With Me,” in which Hedy Lamarr fell for a struggling writer whom she had married to avoid deportation. Oil and water when they meet, it’s a relationship that’s ultimately soluble.

“These are all fairy tales, archetypes people love,” said Rudy Behlmer, who teaches film at Cal State Northridge. “Hardy perennials in contemporary dress. Julia Roberts plays her character as a cheery eccentric along the lines of an Irene Dunne or a Carole Lombard, while Gere seemingly used Cary Grant as his prototype. Gerard Depardieu and Andie MacDowell are basically Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, a clever pairing of two unusual personalities.

“The ‘30s phrase for the non-traditional way in which they get together is ‘meet/cute’: one might be shopping for the top of a pair of pajamas, say, while the other is seeking out the bottoms. Depardieu needs a green card in order to work. MacDowell needs to be married to buy a Manhattan co-op. The dressing changes, but the salad is the same.”

Hollywood, though, has always been in the business of recycling icons, passing the mantle from one generation to the next. Richard Fischoff, senior vice president of production for Tri-Star Pictures, sees a little of yesterday in nearly everything that comes along today. “What is Tom Hanks but Jack Lemmon, Melanie Griffith but Judy Holliday, Debra Winger but Katharine Hepburn?,” Fischoff said. “And I’m not the first to observe that Kevin Costner is the Gary Cooper of our time.”

Still, some of those looking for the witty repartee and imaginative plot devices associated with such classics as “The Front Page,” “My Man Godfrey” and “The Awful Truth” maintain that their modern equivalents fall short.

“Last year’s romantic comedies weren’t Preston Sturges, Garson Kanin or Billy Wilder,” Paul Schrader said. “They weren’t even up to the ones Paul Mazursky used to make. The marital comedies that reigned during the ‘30s and ‘40s reflected a sophisticated New York sensibility that came out of the George Gershwin era. These films reflect only a secret pact between the audience and (Disney CEO) Michael Eisner. They’re the cinematic equivalent of big-print books, without a lot of subtlety. Hollywood is recycling fairy tales in an adolescent way.”

Disney’s Hoberman agrees, in part. “ ‘Pretty Woman,’ ‘Ghost’ and ‘Green Card’ are simple premises lacking the weighty plot of a ‘Casablanca,’ a ‘Gone With the Wind,’ or even a ‘Three Days of the Condor,’ ” he said. “But many of the old romantic comedies also lacked plot and edge. That they and the current crop managed not only to survive but to thrive boils down in the end to strong storytelling.”

Keeping the formulas fresh and current is, without question, an important part of the narrative equation. “Ghost” made both the male lead and the villain Wall Street wheeler-dealers. “Pretty Woman” took class humor to Rodeo Drive. “Green Card’s” dilemma stemmed from the headaches posed by the vicissitudes of modern-day immigration law and snooty co-op boards. And while Disney’s upcoming romantic comedy, “The Marrying Man,” starring Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, is set in the ‘40s, the sensibility is said to be very contemporary.

“We deal with the need for consistency as well as passion, the commitment of women to talent and career, the challenge for men in having a strong mate,” said Kathryn Galan, vice president of production for Hollywood Pictures. “There’s now a mature audience for emotion, both comedic and dramatic. But you can’t just reshoot the comedies of the ‘40s with ‘90s stars.”

Romantic comedies stand to benefit from the industry’s newfound determination to “think small”--to put some brakes on its unchecked spending spree. Still, they present their own particular set of challenges. “Because there are no explosives, no car crashes, they have to be particularly well-written,” observed Columbia’s Frank Price. “You have to find the right script. Romantic comedies can’t just be decent, they have to be good.”

Most often they’re not, maintains Michael Peyser, senior vice president of production for Hollywood Pictures. “Love is rarely believable on the screen,” he said. “It’s hard in an hour-and-a-half or two to invest people in the romantic yearnings of the characters. Those that are effective make you root for them.”

Still, say industry analysts, we can expect a batch to surface, at least until the genre loses some of its luster.

“Since a few romantic comedies took off, landing in the right place at the right time, every writer who has ever written one is resurrecting it right now,” said David Forbes, president of marketing and distribution for Orion Pictures, which has two of them--”Mystery Date” and “The Favor”--on its 1991 release schedule. “It’s safe to say that romantic comedies will always be with us. It will take more than a few flops to make them go away.”