Comedy Movie Quotes

Don't bite his face, Eleanor told herself. It's disturbing and needy and never happens in situation comedies or movies that end with big kisses.

It starts so young, and I'm angry about that. The garbage we're taught. About love, about what's "romantic." Look at so many of the so-called romantic figures in books and movies. Do we ever stop and think how many of them would cause serious and drastic unhappiness after The End? Why are sick and dangerous personality types so often shown a passionate and tragic and something to be longed for when those are the very ones you should run for your life from? Think about it. Heathcliff. Romeo. Don Juan. Jay Gatsby. Rochester. Mr. Darcy. From the rigid control freak in The Sound of Music to all the bad boys some woman goes running to the airport to catch in the last minute of every romantic comedy. She should let him leave. Your time is so valuable, and look at these guys--depressive and moody and violent and immature and self-centered. And what about the big daddy of them all, Prince Charming? What was his secret life? We dont know anything about him, other then he looks good and comes to the rescue.

All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman, and a pretty girl.

The Room is a drama that is also a comedy that is also an existential cry for help that is finally a testament to human endurance.

My whole life I though I was the star of an overly earnest romance movie, and it turns out I was in a goddamned buddy comedy all along.

Take care of your costume and your confidence will take care of itself.

Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it's full of surprises, and you're constantly getting fucked.

There’s something very comforting about watching a Hugh Grant movie. You know no one’s head will be blown off in the first three minutes, no one will be tortured, and the worst thing that might happen is seeing a lanky Welshman eating mayonnaise in his underpants

It was one of those ones they call screwball comedies, where people mislead and ill-treat each other in the most shocking and baffling way possible, then forgive and forget about it because they happen to like the look of each other. Only they call it falling in love.

...then we went skinny dippin' and did things that frighten the fish... Character, Shelby Eatonton, from the movie, Steel Magnolias.

With right fashion, every female would be a flame.

Every good book I’ve read. Every good movie I’ve watched. Every good piece of comedy. Every beautiful art piece. All threw me into the conversations I needed to have but could never have with anyone directly.

You're sure he's not a vampire?' Claire said.'I've seen movies. They're sneaky.' She was kidding. Eve didn't smile.

Fashion doesn't make you perfect, but it makes you pretty.

It's time to shop high heels if your fiance kisses you on the forehead.

He looked like every glossy frat boy in every nerd movie ever made, like every popular town boy who’d ever looked right through her in high school, like every rotten rich kid who’d ever belonged where she hadn’t. My mama warned me about guys like you. He turned to her as if he’d heard her and took off his sunglasses, and she went down the steps to meet him, wiping her sweaty palms on her dust-smeared khaki shorts. “Hi, I’m Sophie Dempsey,” she said, flashing the Dempsey gotta-love-me grin as she held out her hot, grimy hand, and after a moment he took it. His hand was clean and cool and dry, and her heart pounded harder as she looked into his remote, gray eyes. “Hello, Sophie Dempsey,” her worst nightmare said. “Welcome to Temptation.

My favorite moment in Jeanne Moreau's latest movie--a comedy called The Summer House--takes place in a kitchen, when she proclaims that every human has something to cry about. When mocked by the owner of the kitchen and pressed to say what it is that we have to cry about, she tosses back her head of flaming red hair and says, "The winds of solitude roaring at the edge of infinity.

In the real world, babysitting is a groovy way for young people to learn responsibility (and earn a little pocket money). In the Terrorverse, it's a plot device used to kill teenagers.

I make jewelry. I drink caramel machiattos. I wear Hello Kitty to bed. Of course I love romantic comedies,' I said with a smile as we neared my house. But I didn’t just love them. I wanted to live within them. I wanted a love like in the movies.

Have you ever seen The Goodbye Girl? Don’t watch it if you still want to enjoy romantic comedies. It makes every movie ever made starring Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock lash itself in shame.

We finally settled on Francis Ford Coppola's version of Dracula, which, unfortunately, Gabriel seemed to think was a comedy. I think it was the combination of Keanu Reeves's British accent and Gary Oldman's elderly Count Dracula hairstyle. They're just misleading.

I love the movie "Titanic." It's my favorite romantic comedy!

Support your partner in their interests. You never know when batting practice, kung fu movie moves, or even a poker night might come in handy during a zombie infestation.

There is something so innocent and sweet about romantic movies. The world doesn't always make sense, but in a good romantic comedy, I'm guaranteed a happily ever after.

Any girl with a grin never looks grim.

It was like being in an exciting movie, except I didn't know whether it was a romance or a comedy.

The magic of boy meets girl, the angst of catch and release, the serendipity of meant-to-be, It doesn't matter if a romantic comedy follows a predictable course, we respond because it's rooted in truth. In magic.

Everything that begins as comedy ends as a horror movie.

I’m of the belief that in most industries, women have to work twice as hard to get half the credit. After putting in so much effort to make a good movie, it felt pretty demeaning when they called it a “female comedy.” This meaningless label painted me into a corner and forced me to speak for all females, because I am the actual FEMALE who wrote the FEMALE comedy and then starred as the lead FEMALE in that FEMALE comedy. They don’t ask Seth Rogen to be ALL MEN! They don’t make “men’s comedies.” They don’t ask Ben Stiller, “Hey, Ben, what was your message for all male-kind when you pretended to have diarrhea and chased that ferret in Along Came Polly?

And it takes me a second to remember what were actually talking about, the horror movie that is my life instead of the romantic comedy that is Millie's.

Dresses don't look beautiful on hangers.

Hands can cook, hands can create, hands can kill. There is no better tool than our hands.

To my way of thinking, whether it’s a superhero movie or a romance or a comedy or whatever, the most important thing is you’ve got to care about the characters. You’ve got to understand the characters and you’ve got to be interested. If the characters are interesting, you’re half-way home.

My whole life I thought I was the star of an overly earnest romance movie, and it turns out I was in a goddamned buddy comedy all along.

Dresses won't worn out in the wardrobe, but that is not what dresses are designed for.

Everyone thinks of romantic comedies as being these sappy, unrealistic stories where love conquers all and everyone ends up happy at the end. But that's not what her movies were at all. Like, in Sleepless in Seattle, you can't really get any sadder that Tom Hanks missing his dead wife. And in You've Got Mail, Meg Ryan misses her mom and loses her store. None of that gets resolved by the end. It's not like Tom's wife comes back to life, and Meg Ryan still loses the business her mom built.

If life is a movie most people would consider themselves the star of their own feature. Guys might imagine they're living some action adventure epic. Chicks maybe are in a rose-colored fantasy romance. And homosexuals are living la vida loca in a fabulous musical. Still others may take the indie approach and think of themselves as an anti-hero in a coming of age flick. Or a retro badass in an exploitation B movie. Or the cable man in a very steamy adult picture. Some people's lives are experimental student art films that don't make any sense. Some are screwball comedies. Others resemble a documentary, all serious and educational. A few lives achieve blockbuster status and are hailed as a tribute to the human spirit. Some gain a small following and enjoy cult status. And some never got off the ground due to insufficient funding. I don't know what my life is but I do know that I'm constantly squabbling with the director over creative control, throwing prima donna tantrums and pouting in my personal trailor when things don't go my way. Much of our lives is spent on marketing. Make-up, exercise, dieting, clothes, hair, money, charm, attitude, the strut, the pose, the Blue Steel look. We're like walking billboards advertising ourselves. A sneak peek of upcoming attractions. Meanwhile our actual production is in disarray--we're over budget, doing poorly at private test screenings and focus groups, creatively stagnant, morale low. So we're endlessly tinkering, touching up, editing, rewriting, tailoring ourselves to best suit a mass audience. There's like this studio executive in our heads telling us to cut certain things out, make it "lighter," give it a happy ending, and put some explosions in there too. Kids love explosions. And the uncompromising artist within protests: "But that's not life!" Thus the inner conflict of our movie life: To be a palatable crowd-pleaser catering to the mainstream... or something true to life no matter what they say?

It was Valentine's Day and I had spent the day in bed with my life partner, Ketel One. The two of us watched a romance movie marathon on TBS Superstation that made me wonder how people who write romantic comedies can sleep at night. At some point during almost every romantic comedy, the female lead suddenly trips and falls, stumbling helplessly over something ridiculous like a leaf, and then some Matthew McConaughey type either whips around the corner just in the nick of time to save her or is clumsily pulled down along with her. That event predictably leads to the magical moment of their first kiss. Please. I fall all-the-time. You know who comes and gets me? The bouncer. Then, within the two hour time frame of the movie, the couple meet, fall in love, fall out of love, break up, and then just before the end of the movie, they happen to bump into each other by "coincidence" somewhere absolutely absurd, like by the river. This never happens in real life. The last time I bumped into an ex-boyfriend was at three o'clock in the morning at Rite Aid. I was ringing up Gas-X and corn removers.

For about a whole month, at least, whenever anybody said anything that sounded campusy or phony, or that smelled to high heaven of ego or something like that, I at least kept quiet about it. I went to the movies or I stayed in the library all hours or I started writing papers like made on Restoration Comedy and stuff like that—but at least I had the pleasure of not hearing my own voice for a while.

When in doubt, watch Die Hard.

Judd: I like to be here until people really want to leave. But that’s kind of how I am as a person. That’s why my movies are too long. That’s why I eat too much.

Peter and Jessie were like Romeo and Juliet. Have you ever seen that old movie? Starring Leonardo Dicaprio?

But if my life were to be a movie, it most definitely would not be a romantic comedy – more like a dramatic comedy. A dramedy.

Kermit: Hey, Fozzie, I want you to turn left if you come to a fork in the road. Fozzie: Yes sir, turn left at the fork in the road. [drives past a giant fork] Fozzie: Kermit! Kermit: I don't believe that.

You know, typically a nickname is shorter than the given name.” “Is it?” he asked in mock seriousness. “Oh. Well, tell you what, you can call me…” She waited several beats, thinking of more than a few unkind examples. “I can call you what?” she finally asked. “That’s it.” He shot her his bone-melting smile. “You can just call me. Anytime.” She rolled her eyes, refusing to give in to the smile that threatened. “That sounds like a line from one of your movies.” He shot her a triumphant look. “Ah, ha! I knew you were a fan.

The story is recycled out of a 1983 French film named Les Comperes, as part of a trend in which Hollywood buys French comedies and experiments on them to see if they can be made in English with all of the humor taken out.

What’s a meet-cute? <> It’s the moment in a movie when the romantic leads meet. They never just meet normally. It’s never like, “Harry, meet Sally. Sally, this is Harry.” They always meet in a cute way, like, “Hey, you just got chocolate in my peanut butter!” / “What are you talking about? You just got peanut butter in my chocolate!

We see then that the self too is an imaginary story, just like nations, gods and money. Each of us has a sophisticated system that throws away most of our experiences, keeps only a few choice samples, mixes them up with bits from movies we’ve seen, novels we’ve read, speeches we’ve heard, and daydreams we’ve savoured, and out of all that jumble it weaves a seemingly coherent story about who I am, where I came from and where I am going. This story tells me what to love, whom to hate and what to do with myself. This story may even cause me to sacrifice my life, if that’s what the plot requires. We all have our genre. Some people live a tragedy, others inhabit a never-ending religious drama, some approach life as if it were an action film, and not a few act as if in a comedy. But in the end, they are all just stories.

Having you here has been even better than fun and great. When we're hanging out by the pool and when we're watching a movie and above all when we're making love, and I already know you'll mock me for saying making love, but that's what it is--all of that is amazing.

Sandra Bullock is an unmatched charm powerhouse, and I feel like nobody acknowledges that anymore because she made too many comedies for women, and men can’t stand that. Watch Sandra Bullock in action. Watch Sandra Bullock in Speed and then tell me you don’t want to frame your spouse for a crime so you can marry her instead! Watch While You Were Sleeping and try not to send Sandra Bullock a thank-you card with $4,000 inside. I DARE YOU.

Of all the inventions Addie has seen her ushered into the world — steam-powered trains, electric lights, photography, and phones, and airplanes, and computers — movies might just be her favorite one. Books are wonderful, portable, lasting, but sitting there, in the darkened theater, the wide screen filling her vision, the world falls away, and for a few short hours she is someone else, plunged into romance and intrigue and comedy and adventure.

And right from the get-go when George Segal puts on a gorilla suit and Ruth Gordon punches him in the nuts, this movie had me. At that age, the height of comedy was a guy in a gorilla suit, and the only thing funnier than that was a guy getting punched in the nuts. So a guy in a gorilla suit getting punched in the nuts was the absolute pinnacle of comedy.

At the end of the world, music always played on like a bad movie.

Human Millipede 6 was the highest-grossing movie of the summer and returned Nicholas Cage to Oscar-winning status.

The impact movies make on us are affected by when we watch it, who we see it with, and where we are in our lives at the moment. - Suzy Nakamura

You fight like my sister! I fought your sister, that's a compliment.

Three blockbuster comedies under his belt and he still felt like the weird wallflower at the movie premiere, the guy not making eye contact with anyone at the Golden Globes.

You hold on to this notion of your angelic mother and the romantic comedy like her greatest wish in life was for her daughter to be swept off her feet in fucking high school.

She’d played her part as the ugly duckling that never became a swan, but remained the goose inside a nightmarish cliché fairy-tale movie...

So far this fairytale was turning into a comedy…or maybe a horror movie depending on how the night went.

I always wished for a life like the movies. I should have been more specific in my prayers for a romantic drama, not a slapstick comedy.

I'm gaining weight in the role I was not even casted or stole! I put weight for the castaway I didn't even choose to play!

the one thing in my favor was that i was kind of a love expert. i didnt have a degree and i hadnt taken any classes, but id watched thousands of hours of romantic comedies in my life

Uh-oh," Will muttered. "This is going to be ... interesting." It turned out the creative genius behind the movie was Will's dad - the god Apollo, which meant this was not going to be a typical orientation flick. No, as we soon found out, Apollo had written, directed, produced, hosted and starred in ... a variety show. For those of you who don't know what a variety show is, imagine a talent show on steroids, complete with canned laughter, pre-recorded applause, and an extra-large helping of hokeyness. For the next hour, we cringe-watched as Apollo and our demigod predecessors performed in song-and-dance numbers, recited poetry, acted in comedy sketches and harmonized in a musical group called the Lyre Choir. Naturally, Apollo featured prominently in most of the acts. The one of him hula-hooping shirtless while satyrs capered around with long rainbow ribbons on sticks ... you can't unsee that kind of thing.

He devoured morning shows, daytime shows, late-night talk shows, soaps, situation comedies, Lifetime Movies, hospital dramas, police series, vampire and zombie serials, the dramas of housewives from Atlanta, New Jersey, Beverly Hills and New York, the romances and quarrels of hotel-fortune princesses and self-styled shahs, the cavortings of individuals made famous by happy nudities, the fifteen minutes of fame accorded to young persons with large social media followings on account of their plastic-surgery acquisition of a third breast or their post-rib-removal figures that mimicked the impossible shape of the Mattel company’s Barbie doll, or even, more simply, their ability to catch giant carp in picturesque settings while wearing only the tiniest of string bikinis; as well as singing competitions, cooking competitions, competitions for business propositions, competitions for business apprenticeships, competitions between remote-controlled monster vehicles, fashion competitions, competitions for the affections of both bachelors and bachelorettes, baseball games, basketball games, football games, wrestling bouts, kickboxing bouts, extreme sports programming and, of course, beauty contests.

Listen, if you are an entrepreneur who is passionate about your product, but you never ask anyone to buy what you are selling, it will never get sold. Sure, there’s a possibility that you can deliver your best sales pitch in your best Sunday suit and they will still say no. But so what? Do you know how many times I’ve been told no for movie scripts, television shows, and comedy specials? A whole hell of lot more times than I heard yes.

The 1960s ended sadly, as did Bonnie and Clyde, as did Jules and Jim, as did Thelma & Louise, a film they influenced; the movement from comedy to tragedy was all the more powerful for audiences who expected one or the other.

For now, the Simple Daily Practice means doing ONE thing every day. Try any one of these things each day: A) Sleep eight hours. B) Eat two meals instead of three. C) No TV. D) No junk food. E) No complaining for one whole day. F) No gossip. G) Return an e-mail from five years ago. H) Express thanks to a friend. I) Watch a funny movie or a stand-up comic. J) Write down a list of ideas. The ideas can be about anything. K) Read a spiritual text. Any one that is inspirational to you. The Bible, The Tao te Ching, anything you want. L) Say to yourself when you wake up, “I’m going to save a life today.” Keep an eye out for that life you can save. M) Take up a hobby. Don’t say you don’t have time. Learn the piano. Take chess lessons. Do stand-up comedy. Write a novel. Do something that takes you out of your current rhythm. N) Write down your entire schedule. The schedule you do every day. Cross out one item and don’t do that anymore. O) Surprise someone. P) Think of ten people you are grateful for. Q) Forgive someone. You don’t have to tell them. Just write it down on a piece of paper and burn the paper. It turns out this has the same effect in terms of releasing oxytocin in the brain as actually forgiving them in person. R) Take the stairs instead of the elevator. S) I’m going to steal this next one from the 1970s pop psychology book Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No: when you find yourself thinking of that special someone who is causing you grief, think very quietly, “No.” If you think of him and (or?) her again, think loudly, “No!” Again? Whisper, “No!” Again, say it. Louder. Yell it. Louder. And so on. T) Tell someone every day that you love them. U) Don’t have sex with someone you don’t love. V) Shower. Scrub. Clean the toxins off your body. W) Read a chapter in a biography about someone who is an inspiration to you. X) Make plans to spend time with a friend. Y) If you think, “Everything would be better off if I were dead,” then think, “That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months.” Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months. Who knows what could happen with all these solar flares. You know the ones I’m talking about. Z) Deep breathing. When the vagus nerve is inflamed, your breathing becomes shallower. Your breath becomes quick. It’s fight-or-flight time! You are panicking. Stop it! Breathe deep. Let me tell you something: most people think “yoga” is all those exercises where people are standing upside down and doing weird things. In the Yoga Sutras, written in 300 B.C., there are 196 lines divided into four chapters. In all those lines, ONLY THREE OF THEM refer to physical exercise. It basically reads, “Be able to sit up straight.” That’s it. That’s the only reference in the Yoga Sutras to physical exercise. Claudia always tells me that yogis measure their lives in breaths, not years. Deep breathing is what keeps those breaths going.

I love romantic comedies. I feel almost sheepish writing that, because the genre has been so degraded in the past twenty years or so that admitting you like these movies is essentially an admission of mild stupidity. But that has not stopped me from watching them.

through the screen door I find all three of my boys throwing a ball around the yard with Cooper. My heart bursts in my chest. Just explodes. It physically hurts to feel so much all at once. It’s like I’m staring at a movie of what my life—our life—could have been.

Do you ever think what might've happened if they weren't so damn impatient? If Romeo had stopped for a second and gotten a doctor, or waited for Juliet to wake up? Not jumped to conclusions and gone and poisoned himself thinking she was dead when she was just sleeping? I've seen that movie so many times, and every damn time, it's like screaming at the girl in the horror movie. Don't go in the basement. The killer's down there. With Romeo and Juliet, I yell, 'Don't jump to conclusions.' But do those fools ever listen to me? I always imagine what might've happened if they'd waited. Juliet would've woken up. They'd already be married. They might've moved away, far away from the Montagues and the Capulets, gotten themselves a cute castle of their own. Decorated it up nice. Maybe it would've been like The Winter's Tale. By thinking Hermione was dead, Leontes had time to stop acting like a fool and then later he was so happy to find out she was alive. Maybe the Montagues and the Capulets would find out later that their beloved kids weren't dead, and wasn't it stupid to feud, and everyone would be happy. Maybe it would've turned the whole tragedy into a comedy.

Don’t bite his face, Eleanor told herself. It’s disturbing and needy and never happens in situation comedies or movies that end with big kisses. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” she said. He hung on to his straps and shrugged. “Yesterday happens.” God, it was like he wanted her to eat his face clean off.

All children in those small-town, unhurried days had a vast inner life going on in the movies. Children were allowed to go without chaperone in the afternoons. My sense of making fictional comedy undoubtedly first caught its spark from the antic pantomime of the silent screen, and from having a kindred soul to laugh with.

The rain is colder than I expect—which is ridiculous, since it’s March. My cheeks are freezing by the time we go two blocks, my hair has a sodden weight on my shoulder. My glasses are so wet I need to shove them in a pocket. I threw Mom’s pullover windbreaker over my sweatshirt before leaving the house, thinking it would be waterproof, but I am so wrong. By the time I make the final turn for the church, I wonder if I’m stupid for being out here. It’s pouring so hard that a haze has formed around the streetlight, and I can barely see anything through the darkness. My sneakers squish in the grass. I get to the spot where we sat for the last two nights. And of course he’s not there. I sigh. Only a complete moron would go meet in the rain. Then Texy woofs and bounces on her front paws. I turn, and it’s like I’m in a chick flick. His shadowed figure lopes across the grass. Okay, maybe the dark and rain make it more like a horror movie than a romantic comedy, BUT STILL. He draws to a stop in front of me. He had the sense to wear a heavy, waterproof coat over his hoodie, but the hood is soaked and rain drips down his cheeks. “Hey,” he says, his voice a little loud over the rain. I’m blushing. I tell my cheeks to knock it off. “Hey.” “I wasn’t sure you’d show up, but I didn’t have a way to text you …” “I had the same thought process.

PAUL IS SOMEBODY WHO DOES THINGS WITH ENTHUSIASM, which makes people feel appalled and insulted at things he chooses to do. If you’re under thirty, you have never heard of a song called “Spies Like Us,” and I am a horrible person for being the one to tell you. It was the theme for a big-budget Hollywood spy comedy starring Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd. Nobody saw the movie, but Paul’s theme was worse than the movie could have been. MTV played it constantly during the 1985 holiday season, though radio wouldn’t touch it. Paul does a rap that goes something like, “Oooh oooh, no one can dance like you.” In the video he plays multiple roles as members of a studio band, mugging and biting his lower lip. The drumming is where his cheeky-chappy act gets profoundly upsetting. You see this video, you’re going to be depressed for at least ten minutes about the existential condition of Paul-dom. His enthusiasm makes you doubt the sincerity of his other public displays. It makes you doubt yourself. You might think it’s a cheap laugh but it will cost you something.

Lindsay’s right,” Izzy says, collecting the leftovers. “Billie Jean is coming back for her. With a little help from his friends.” “So . . . so is this a horror movie now, or a teen comedy?” Brittney says. “It’s an afterschool special,” Izzy says, Hoddering her head over to study Billie Jean. “Know what the take-home message is? Don’t fuck with Izzy Stratford.

Each of us has a sophisticated system that throws away most of our experiences, keeps only a few choice samples, mixes them up with bits from movies we’ve seen, novels we’ve read, speeches we’ve heard, and daydreams we’ve savoured, and out of all that jumble it weaves a seemingly coherent story about who I am, where I came from and where I am going. This story tells me what to love, whom to hate and what to do with myself. This story may even cause me to sacrifice my life, if that’s what the plot requires. We all have our genre. Some people live a tragedy, others inhabit a never-ending religious drama, some approach life as if it were an action film, and not a few act as if in a comedy. But in the end, they are all just stories. What,

Sahl was never a great comic. His nervous, jabbing, keep-them-off-balance delivery was the strategy of a man who was not comfortable in front of an audience. His creative method -- a rapid scanning of the day's output of newspapers, magazines, and radio broadcasts -- was a recipe for superficiality or, at best, the kind of quick, shallow laugh triggered by a topical allusion. Sahl was always devoid of the two basic ingredients of great humor: imagination and soul. He could make fun of the latest Hollywood movies. He could stab at the pieties of his own class. He could take an abrupt insight into politics or wold events and phrase it neatly into a gag. What he could never do was suggest a world of living, breathing people behaving in ridiculous yet recognizably human patterns.

Comedy comes from the pain and sadness you feel in day-to-day life,” he explains. “People who are happy and satisfied with their lives can’t produce comedy, I think. They have no need to make a movie that inspires laughter. Charlie Chaplin grew up in poverty. Woody Allen has an extremely negative personality — he’s a depressed guy who needs to create laughter to live. Laughter is a form of salvation for negative people.

Remember all those classic books you HAD to read in school? They sucked, right? Well, guess what? They are actually . . . classics. 'Brave New World', '1984', 'The Martian Chronicles' and even 'Animal Farm' are pretty cool it you're not told you HAVE to read them. If you discover them on your own or if you reread them without having a report due that sends you scurrying to buy CliffNotes or access Wikipedia, then you can actually relax and enjoy them. - Chris Mancini

The horror story can be the best one there is. Sometimes you want to defend it. Other times you don’t care what other people think because you’ll always have horror for yourself. And yet, it bothers you when people laugh in scary movies. It makes you want to scream in their comedies. It bothers you when people say they’re more scared by something “real.” As if a man with a knife is more frightening to them than a breathing mass of tanned flesh crouched in the corner of their kitchen.

America’s primary institution of learning—the movies—has taught us that when we find ourselves in a strange and eerily quiet place with lots of doors, waiting behind one of them will be either a psychopathic killer or a monster of supernatural or extraterrestrial origin. Of course, if it’s an Adam Sandler comedy, behind the door will lurk a goofy dude waiting to deliver a joke involving poop, pee, or genitals. I wasn’t in such a comedy, but that was all right, because I preferred a psychopath or a monster.

He was especially fond of Svetlana, who was a promising student and very attached to her father. He began to play a little game with his daughter, calling her khoziaika (which could be translated as “housekeeper” or “the boss”) while he played the role of the sekretarishka (little secretary) who followed her orders: “Setanka-Housekeeper’s wretched Secretary, the poor peasant J. Stalin.” Svetlana would write out orders for her father: “I order you to let me go to Zubalovo tomorrow”; “I order you to take me to the theater with you”; “I order you to let me go to the movies. Ask them to show Chapaev and an American comedy.” Stalin responded with facetious pomposity.21 Other members of Stalin’s inner circle were appointed Svetlana’s sekretarishkas, playing along with the vozhd. “Svetlana the housekeeper will be in Moscow on 27 August. She is demanding permission to leave early for Moscow so that she can check on her secretaries,” Stalin wrote to Kaganovich from the south on 19 August 1935. Kaganovich replied on 31 August: “Today I reported to our boss Svetlana on our work, she seemed to deem it satisfactory.”22 Until the war began, father and daughter exchanged affectionate letters. “I give you a big hug, my little sparrow,” he wrote to her, as he had once written to his wife.23

Of all the inventions Addie has seen ushered into the world—steam-powered trains, electric lights, photography, and phones, and airplanes, and computers—movies might just be her favorite one. Books are wonderful, portable, lasting, but sitting there, in the darkened theater, the wide screen filling her vision, the world falls away, and for a few short hours she is someone else, plunged into romance and intrigue and comedy and adventure. All of it complete with 4K picture and stereo sound. A quiet heaviness fills her chest when the credits roll. For a while she was weightless, but now she returns to herself, sinking until her feet are back on the ground.

Jerry thought of Dean as a brother, but in time, tempers and egos flared in the partnership, leading to their headline-making breakup in 1956, exactly ten years after they had joined forces. People worried what would become of Dean Martin, but Jerry Lewis flourished in his first solo films: The Delicate Delinquent, The Sad Sack, Rock-a-Bye Baby, and Don't Give Up the Ship. His directors include such comedy pros as Taurog and Frank Tashlin. Eventually, Lewis decided that he wanted to write and direct his own films. As a steady and stellar money-maker for Paramount, no one at the studio was prepared to stand in his way. His first effort was his most daring: The Bellboy,

Why did people fall in love?he wondered as he watched Rock and Doris pretend to do just that. Obviously, it made people ridiculous and not just in movies from the sixties. There had to be some basis in real life or no one would ever have made a silly comedy about love. Yeah, there were also movies about love that weren't comedies, but in those movies people acted ridiculous for a while and then someone announced the were going to die, or they had to go off to war, or oops I forgot to mention my wife. People stopped acting ridiculous and starting acting really serious and sad, sad because the ridiculous part was over. How could people want this foolishness in their lives?

I have spoken of reinventing marriage, of marriages achieving their rebirth in the middle age of the partners. This phenomenon has been called the 'comedy of remarriage' by Stanley Cavell, whose Pursuits of Happiness, a film book, is perhaps the best marriage manual ever published. One must, however, translate his formulation from the language of Hollywood, in which he developed it, into the language of middle age: less glamour, less supple youth, less fantasyland. Cavell writes specifically of Hollywood movies of the 1930s and 1940s in which couples -- one partner is often the dazzling Cary Grant -- learn to value each other, to educate themselves in equality, to remarry. Cavell recognizes that the actresses in these movie -- often the dazzling Katherine Hepburn -- are what made them possible. If read not as an account of beautiful people in hilarious situations, but as a deeply philosophical discussion of marriage, his book contains what are almost aphorisms of marital achievement. For example: ....'[The romance of remarriage] poses a structure in which we are permanently in doubt who the hero is, that is, whether it is the male or female who is the active partner, which of them is in quest, who is following whom.' Cary grant & Katherine Hepburn "Above all, despite the sexual attractiveness of the actors in the movies he discusses, Cavell knows that sexuality is not the ultimate secret in these marriage: 'in God's intention a meet and happy conversation is the chiefest and noblest end of marriage. Here is the reason that these relationships strike us as having the quality of friendship, a further factor in their exhilaration for us.' "He is wise enough, moreover, to emphasize 'the mystery of marriage by finding that neither law nor sexuality (nor, by implication, progeny) is sufficient to ensure true marriage and suggesting that what provides legitimacy is the mutual willingness for remarriage, for a sort of continuous affirmation. Remarriage, hence marriage, is, whatever else it is, an intellectual undertaking.

Each of us has a sophisticated system that throws away most of our experiences, keeps only a few choice samples, mixes them up with bits from movies we saw, novels we read, speeches we heard, and from our own daydreams, and weaves out of all that jumble a seemingly coherent story about who I am, where I came from and where I am going. This story tells me what to love, whom to hate and what to do with myself. This story may even cause me to sacrifice my life, if that’s what the plot requires. We all have our genre. Some people live a tragedy, others inhabit a never-ending religious drama, some approach life as if it were an action film, and not a few act as if in a comedy. But in the end, they are all just stories.

Even if men and women in America spoke the same language, they would still live by much different standards. For example, if a man in a movie researches a woman’s schedule, finds out where she lives and works, even goes to her work uninvited, it shows his commitment, proves his love. When Robert Redford does this to Demi Moore in Indecent Proposal, it’s adorable. But when she shows up at his work unannounced, interrupting a business lunch, it’s alarming and disruptive. If a man in the movies wants a sexual encounter or applies persistence, he’s a regular everyday guy, but if a woman does the same thing, she’s a maniac or a killer. Just recall Fatal Attraction, King of Comedy, Single White Female, Play Misty for Me, Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and Basic Instinct.

We see, then, that the self too is an imaginary story, just like nations, gods and money. Each of us has a sophisticated system that throws away most of our experiences, keeps only a few choice samples, mixes them up with bits from movies we saw, novels we read, speeches we heard, and from our own daydreams, and weaves out of all that jumble a seemingly coherent story about who I am, where I came from and where I am going. This story tells me what to love, whom to hate and what to do with myself. This story may even cause me to sacrifice my life, if that’s what the plot requires. We all have our genre. Some people live a tragedy, others inhabit a never-ending religious drama, some approach life as if it were an action film, and not a few act as if in a comedy. But in the end, they are all just stories.

He’d recreated the menu he requested for the naked dinner. Ha! “How did you even know my shoe size?” “I’ve seen your foot up close.” Curran pointed to his chest. “I’ve seen it here.” He moved his hand to his jaw. “Here.” He touched the place over his cheek where my kick had cut him. “And here.” Aha. “Would you like to watch a movie while we eat?” “Sure. What sort of movie?” “It has everything: action, drama, comedy, beautiful soundtrack. Hot male lead.” His thick eyebrows crept up half an inch. “That last one isn’t exactly a plus.” “Jealous of the actors now, are we?” “What, of some fancy boy on the screen? Inconceivable.” Oh, this was going to be good. We took our plates to the coffee table by the couch, and I slid Saiman’s disk into the player. The warehouse full of cars solidified on the screen. Curran’s face went blank.

I saw a guy the other day at a wedding, and I told him my theory on why we’ve seen this explosion in comedies in the past fifteen years. Number one, America is tacking hard to the right. That sort of extremism always kind of kicks up the need to create comedy. But the second thing is Avid. What’s Avid? It’s a digital movie-editing program that directors use, and it’s incredibly helpful. I think Avid is hugely responsible for this boom in comedy. In the past, one would have to shoot the film and edit it, which was a big deal. Now, filmmakers can record the laughs from a test audience at a screening, and we can then cut to the rhythm of those laughs, the rhythm of the audience. We synchronize the laughs with the film. We can really get our timing down to a hundredth of a second. You can decide where you want your story to kick in, where you want a little bit of mood, where you want a hard laugh line. All of this can really be calibrated to these test screenings that we do. It doesn’t mean that it becomes mathematical. It still ultimately means that you have to make creative choices, but you can just really get a lot out of it. Sort of like surgery with a laser compared with a regular scalpel. We’re able to download a movie onto the computer and literally do all our edits in minutes. The precision is incredible. You play back the audio of the test screening and get everything timed just right. Like, “This laugh is losing this next line; let’s split the difference here.” You’re able to achieve this rolling energy. You can try experimental edits, and do multiple test screenings, and it’s all because you can move so fast with this program. Comedy is the one genre that I think has just really benefited from this more than any other.

Music centers you,” I whispered to an empty car, staring at his front door. “You listened to your iPod between classes and while you sat on the bleachers before school every morning.” I smiled, letting more tears run down my cheeks and thinking back to him and his black hoodies, looking so dark. “You love popcorn. Almost every kind and flavor but especially with Tabasco sauce,” I said, remembering the times he would come into the theater where I worked. “You hold the door open for women—students, teachers, and even old ladies coming out of Baskin-Robbins. You love movies about natural disasters, but they have to have some comedy in them. Your favorite one is Armageddon.” I swallowed and thought about how little I’d ever seen Jax truly smile. “And while you love computers, it’s not your passion,” I concluded. “You love being outdoors. You love having space.” My whole face hurt, the last words barely audible. “And you deserve someone who makes you happy. I’m just not that person.

As humans we spend our time seeking big, meaningful experiences. So the afterlife may surprise you when your body wears out. We expand back into what we really are—which is, by Earth standards, enormous. We stand ten thousand kilometers tall in each of nine dimensions and live with others like us in a celestial commune. When we reawaken in these, our true bodies, we immediately begin to notice that our gargantuan colleagues suffer a deep sense of angst. Our job is the maintenance and upholding of the cosmos. Universal collapse is imminent, and we engineer wormholes to act as structural support. We labor relentlessly on the edge of cosmic disaster. If we don’t execute our jobs flawlessly, the universe will re-collapse. Ours is complex, intricate, and important work. After three centuries of this toil, we have the option to take a vacation. We all choose the same destination: we project ourselves into lower-dimensional creatures. We project ourselves into the tiny, delicate, three-dimensional bodies that we call humans, and we are born onto the resort we call Earth. The idea, on such vacations, is to capture small experiences. On the Earth, we care only about our immediate surroundings. We watch comedy movies. We drink alcohol and enjoy music. We form relationships, fight, break up, and start again. When we’re in a human body, we don’t care about universal collapse—instead, we care only about a meeting of the eyes, a glimpse of bare flesh, the caressing tones of a loved voice, joy, love, light, the orientation of a house plant, the shade of a paint stroke, the arrangement of hair. Those are good vacations that we take on Earth, replete with our little dramas and fusses. The mental relaxation is unspeakably precious to us. And when we’re forced to leave by the wearing out of those delicate little bodies, it is not uncommon to see us lying prostrate in the breeze of the solar winds, tools in hand, looking out into the cosmos, wet-eyed, searching for meaninglessness.

Nuggsy continued on. ‘Seriously, legend. A bloke might have a six-figure salary at a job he truly loves, but it all means nothing if he has a shit rig and a poor grasp of Anchorman quotes. It probably doesn’t even matter if he averages in the mid-30s and does a lot at the club, because he’ll never go anywhere.’ I briefly wondered as to the relevance of Will Ferrell movie quotes, but then remembered back to my first training session. I had overheard a crew of second graders reciting dialogue from the movie Step Brothers while mucking around on the slips cradle. Obviously this broad style of comedy had particular resonance within grade cricket circles. The humour was absurd, male-skewed, anti-intellectual, and highly quotable. Suddenly, I was beginning to understand the things that made grade cricketers tick. Meanwhile, Nuggsy continued to bluster on, flecks of spit now hissing out from his animated mouth. The next piece of advice he had for me revolved around women: a subject I knew little about.

In the dark melodramas of the forties, woman came down from her pedestal and she didn’t stop when she reached the ground. She kept going – down, down, like Eurydice, to the depths of the criminal world, the enfer of the film noir – and then compelled her lover to glance back and betray himself…. But for all her guts and valor, and for all her unredeemable venality…she hadn’t a soul she could call her own. She was, in fact, a male fantasy. She was playing a man’s game in a man’s world of crime and carnal innuendo, where her long hair was the equivalent of a gun, where sex was the equivalent of evil. And where her power to destroy was projection of man’s feeling of impotence. Only this could never be spelled out; hence the subterfuge and melodrama. She is to her thirties’ counterpart as night – or dusk – is to day. And the difference between their worlds, between the drawing room of romantic comedy and the underground of melodrama, is the difference between flirtation and fornication … or rape” (Haskell 191).

From Walt: The Grapes of Wrath, Les Misérables, To Kill a Mockingbird, Moby-Dick, The Ox-Bow Incident, A Tale of Two Cities, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote (where your nickname came from), The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and anything by Anton Chekhov. From Henry: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Cheyenne Autumn, War and Peace, The Things They Carried, Catch-22, The Sun Also Rises, The Blessing Way, Beyond Good and Evil, The Teachings of Don Juan, Heart of Darkness, The Human Comedy, The Art of War. From Vic: Justine, Concrete Charlie: The Story of Philadelphia Football Legend Chuck Bednarik, Medea (you’ll love it; it’s got a great ending), The Kama Sutra, Henry and June, The Onion Field, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Zorba the Greek, Madame Bovary, Richie Ashburn’s Phillies Trivia (fuck you, it’s a great book). From Ruby: The Holy Bible (New Testament), The Pilgrim’s Progress, Inferno, Paradise Lost, My Ántonia, The Scarlet Letter, Walden, Poems of Emily Dickinson, My Friend Flicka, Our Town. From Dorothy: The Gastronomical Me, The French Chef Cookbook (you don’t eat, you don’t read), Last Suppers: Famous Final Meals From Death Row, The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Something Fresh, The Sound and the Fury, The Maltese Falcon, Pride and Prejudice, Brides-head Revisited. From Lucian: Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, Band of Brothers, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Virginian, The Basque History of the World (so you can learn about your heritage you illiterate bastard), Hondo, Sackett, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Bobby Fischer: My 60 Memorable Games, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Quartered Safe Out Here. From Ferg: Riders of the Purple Sage, Kiss Me Deadly, Lonesome Dove, White Fang, A River Runs Through It (I saw the movie, but I heard the book was good, too), Kip Carey’s Official Wyoming Fishing Guide (sorry, kid, I couldn’t come up with ten but this ought to do).

THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT FRENCH CINEMA, specifically the women of today’s French cinema—a subject as vital as life and as irresistible as movies. Yet many Americans, unfamiliar with French film, will hear “women of today’s French cinema” and immediately imagine something forbidding or austere. Other more refined cineastes may know and appreciate the French movies that play at art houses and arrive on DVD in this country, but they can’t know the full story. They are not in a position to know that what they are seeing is just a hint of something vast and extraordinary. The full story is that for the last two decades France has been in the midst of an explosion of female talent. What is happening in France today is a blossoming of female brilliance and originality of a kind that has never happened anywhere or at any period of film history, with but one glorious exception—in the Hollywood of the 1930s. Indeed, today’s Hepburns, Davises, Crawfords, Garbos, and Stanwycks are not American. They’re French. They are working constantly, appearing up to three or four times each year in films geared to their star personalities and moral meaning. These films, often intelligent, personal, and insightful investigations into what it means to be human in the twenty-first century, are the kinds of films that many Americans want to see. And they wonder why no one is making them. But people are making them, just not in the United States. Moreover, women are not only working in front of the camera in France but behind it, too. Important actresses are writing and directing films, and many of the country’s biggest and most acclaimed directors are women. Truly, this is a halcyon period, happening as we speak, and to miss this moment would be like living in 1920 and never seeing a silent comedy, or like living in 1950 and never seeing a film noir. It would be to miss one of the most enriching cinematic movements of your time. Yet most Americans, virtually all Americans, have been missing it.

You can talk to me, Clay,” I said with a little hope.  I really began to wonder if he could speak.  When he didn’t respond, I spoke again.  “Okay, do you want to go out or stay in?” He moved to the couch and sat in the middle, his choice clear.  Stay in tonight. I hesitated.  The chair, set at an odd angle to the TV, gave you a sore neck if you tried to watch a movie from there.  That meant I’d need to sit next to him to watch a movie.  But I felt so exposed in a skirt and sleeveless shirt. I wasn’t sure if I could sit next to him for a full movie. While I debated my options, he watched me closely. “I’m going to go change,” I stammered. “I’ll be right back.” I turned and made it one step before the back of my shirt snagged on something.  Surprised, I looked over my shoulder and found Clay standing right behind me.  He held a fold of my shirt between his thumb and forefinger.  I could see the glint of his brown eyes behind the still damp strands of his hair.  He tilted his head back toward the couch and gave a slight tug on my shirt.  My stomach dropped, and I couldn’t tell if it was in a good way or a bad one. When I hesitated, he gave another tug.  I surrendered, turned back, and sat on the couch. He padded over to the movies, made a selection I couldn’t see, and crouched to start it.  It amazed me that he knew how to do that.  Then again, he watched everything Rachel and I did.  I wondered if anything escaped his notice. He pressed play, stood, and walked toward me with fluid strides.  I felt graceless in comparison.  He settled next to me and watched the previews.  I tried to focus on them, too, but couldn’t.  Instead, I noticed our bare feet, the scratch on the wall next to the TV, his leg lightly pressed against mine, the sound of the water as it slowly dripped from the showerhead in the bathroom, his hands loosely resting on his lap.  The long list of unimportant details would not let my mind settle. It was midway through the movie when my mind calmed enough to notice we watched an action-comedy I’d wanted to see.  I’d just mentioned it to Rachel this past week.  She must have gotten it after that. Slowly, I began to relax and enjoy the movie.  I even laughed aloud at one point.  Clay’s echoing chuckle startled me, but in a good way.  So, he could do more than growl as a dog.  His deep laugh sounded pleasant. When

Try any one of these things each day: A) Sleep eight hours. B) Eat two meals instead of three. C) No TV. D) No junk food. E) No complaining for one whole day. F) No gossip. G) Return an e-mail from five years ago. H) Express thanks to a friend. I) Watch a funny movie or a stand-up comic. J) Write down a list of ideas. The ideas can be about anything. K) Read a spiritual text. Any one that is inspirational to you. The Bible, The Tao te Ching, anything you want. L) Say to yourself when you wake up, “I’m going to save a life today.” Keep an eye out for that life you can save. M) Take up a hobby. Don’t say you don’t have time. Learn the piano. Take chess lessons. Do stand-up comedy. Write a novel. Do something that takes you out of your current rhythm. N) Write down your entire schedule. The schedule you do every day. Cross out one item and don’t do that anymore. O) Surprise someone. P) Think of ten people you are grateful for. Q) Forgive someone. You don’t have to tell them. Just write it down on a piece of paper and burn the paper. It turns out this has the same effect in terms of releasing oxytocin in the brain as actually forgiving them in person. R) Take the stairs instead of the elevator. S) I’m going to steal this next one from the 1970s pop psychology book Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No: when you find yourself thinking of that special someone who is causing you grief, think very quietly, “No.” If you think of him and (or?) her again, think loudly, “No!” Again? Whisper, “No!” Again, say it. Louder. Yell it. Louder. And so on. T) Tell someone every day that you love them. U) Don’t have sex with someone you don’t love. V) Shower. Scrub. Clean the toxins off your body. W) Read a chapter in a biography about someone who is an inspiration to you. X) Make plans to spend time with a friend. Y) If you think, “Everything would be better off if I were dead,” then think, “That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months.” Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months. Who knows what could happen with all these solar flares. You know the ones I’m talking about. Z) Deep breathing. When the vagus nerve is inflamed, your breathing becomes shallower. Your breath becomes quick. It’s fight-or-flight time! You are panicking. Stop it! Breathe deep. Let me tell you something: most people think “yoga” is all those exercises where people are standing upside down and doing weird things. In the Yoga Sutras, written in 300 B.C., there are 196 lines divided into four chapters. In all those lines, ONLY THREE OF THEM refer to physical exercise. It basically reads, “Be able to sit up straight.” That’s it. That’s the only reference in the Yoga Sutras to physical exercise. Claudia always tells me that yogis measure their lives in breaths, not years. Deep breathing is what keeps those breaths going.