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Rom com diary

Rom com diary

The screenwriter’s cut.

02 Jan

Notting Hill (Universal Pictures)

Ilana Wolpert is a screenwriter living in Los Angeles. She is best known for Anyone But You (2023). This is every rom com she watched on a recent film shoot.

March 9

Notting Hill (dir. Roger Mitchell, written by Richard Curtis)

I keep forgetting that I’m on a plane to Australia. I was instructed to stay up until dinner on the flight and then sleep the rest of the flight, which is proving to be a problem because I took half a Xanax during a bout of turbulence. I’m not a nervous flyer, but I do have the unfortunate tendency to imagine my life as a movie, which means I am always anticipating the most dramatic thing to happen to me. Thus, routine flight turbulence becomes horror movie. I take the other half of my Xanax a few minutes after the first.

To stay awake/stop thinking about crashing into the Pacific (Pacific? Maybe another ocean too? I don’t have an atlas) I put on Notting Hill. I am always telling my girlfriend I’m Hugh Grant and she’s Julia Roberts, for the sole reason that I am a regular (unfamous) person and she is an actress. My girlfriend has never seen Notting Hill and once asked me if Hugh Grant is in one of the Marvel movies. He actually might be, as there’s so many of them, but point aside, I think she is referring to Robert Downey Jr and is therefore wrong. The Xanax successfully vanquishes my images of plummeting through the sky and I fall asleep—before dinner, against all advice given, to the monotony of Hugh Grant strolling through London to “Ain’t No Sunshine.”

March 10

Set It Up (dir. Claire Scanlon, written by Katie Silberman)

I wake up after 8 hours and I am still on the plane. It is fully another day. I could sleep 6 more hours and still be on the plane. This math is daunting and I reason I must dissociate by watching another romantic comedy. I turn on Set It Up. Assistants set up their bosses and then fall in love with each other. During the time I worked as an assistant I managed not to fall in love, but instead have brief bouts of obsession with several different people of the male variety: a Rumplestiltskin-esque boy I met at a party who refused to tell me his name, a comedian-slash-drummer who broke up with me but kept using my HBO Go account, a fellow assistant who blamed our dalliance on a recent eclipse. An illustrious dating history, if you ask me. Set It Up stars one of the stars of the movie I wrote and when I glance over at the woman to my left, I see she is watching another movie, with the same star! A sign!

When I land in Australia it’s summer. I’ve traveled halfway across the world and forward in time two seasons. I am eager to learn if linen is indeed the fabric of the summer.

I am eager to learn if linen is indeed the fabric of the summer.

March 14

10 Things I Hate About You (dir. Gil Junger, written by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith)

I have mostly recovered from the 18-hour jetlag, thanks in large part to the coffee. Australia takes coffee very seriously. Instead of a steady stream of snacks/candy (American craft services), there is a full-time barista. I drink three lattes in quick succession and learn that Australian coffee is much stronger than American coffee.

Today there is a koala on set. Everyone tells me the koala is named “Takka,” and so I start to call the koala Takka. It turns out the koala’s name is “Tucker” and everyone has just been saying “Tucker” with Australian accents. At one point, Takka/Tucker gets too scared of the cameras and climbs a tree all the way to the very top. We have to clear the set so he can be coaxed down with eucalyptus leaves. Takka/Tucker has no interest in stardom. We will try again tomorrow.

Takka/Tucker’s handler tells me that he is in a love triangle at his zoo. He and his brother are both interested in the same female koala. Basically, The Summer I Turned Pretty, with koalas! I say this to the handler and she smiles politely. Something tells me Takka/Tucker’s love triangle is probably not as tame or sweetly romantic.

When we wrap, I go back to the apartment I’m staying in and queue up 10 Things I Hate About You. I hope Shakespeare would be okay that we use his plays to make great rom-coms. I hope Takka/Tucker is the Joseph Gordon Leavitt of his love triangle.