Carrie Brownstein on Cat Power. Plus, “Materialists,” “Too Much,” and the Modern Rom-Com.

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Speaker 1 This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

Speaker 6 This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Ramnick.
Over 20 years ago, in the summer of 2003, the musician Sean Marshall, better known as Cat Power, was on tour with an album called You Are Free.

Speaker 6 Staff writer Hilton Ales went to see one of those shows, and he wrote a wonderful profile of Cat Power in The New Yorker.

Speaker 6 Along with it, was a full-page portrait in black and white by the great photographer, Richard Avadon. Avadon's photograph put her in the lineage of rock and roll icons going back to the old days.

Speaker 7 So in the portrait, Cat Power, aka Sean Marshall, she's holding a cigarette,

Speaker 7 which has a long ash dangling off the end of it. She has a lot of bracelets on.
She's wearing a pair of low-rise jeans.

Speaker 6 That's Carrie Brownstein, a member of the band Slater Kinney and a co-creator of the sketch show Portlandia.

Speaker 6 And for the series we call Takes, Brownstein wrote in The New Yorker about that photograph that was taken right at the moment that Cat Power was going from Indie Darling to a wider musical phenomenon.

Speaker 7 She has a smirk on her face, some smudged mascara or eyeliner, and

Speaker 7 she's holding up a Bob Dylan t-shirt. And the shirt's neither on nor off her body.
And I just, I like the cheekiness of it. There's something very canny about her holding this up.

Speaker 7 You know, you're not sure whether the shirt is covering Cat Power or Cat Power is covering the shirt. And of course,

Speaker 7 Cat Power famously is a fan of Dylan. And her most recent album is Cat Power Sings Dylan at the 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert.

Speaker 1 She does,

Speaker 1 and she aches

Speaker 1 just

Speaker 1 like a woman.

Speaker 1 She breaks

Speaker 1 just like a little girl.

Speaker 7 I'm trying to imagine what a 2003 New Yorker audience would think of this photo. There's all these sort of juxtapositions.

Speaker 7 Like, it's Richard Avidon, like, this is, you know, preeminent artist in his own right,

Speaker 7 capturing a photo of someone who maybe doesn't give a shit about

Speaker 7 being in the New Yorker. Like, you're not sure that she cares about being in the New Yorker, which I can't say is usually the vibe.
And

Speaker 7 yeah, she's not wearing underwear. There's a lot going on, to be honest.
There are just a myriad of signifiers in this photo.

Speaker 7 I think why I wanted to do this take on the Avadon portrait of Cat Power was that I was curious to revisit this time in music,

Speaker 7 this time in both in my own life as a fan and someone who was playing in a band at the same time as Cat Power.

Speaker 7 And, you know, Cat Power is someone I do know personally, and she has opened for my band, Slater Kinney. We have played with her actually many times.

Speaker 7 And Avanon talks about how He's like, photographs, they're, you know, they don't reveal, this is paraphrasing, it's like, they don't reveal truths, but they're accurate.

Speaker 7 And I just, when I watch Cat Power, like, I feel like this is a non-conformist, like in the truest sense, you know, like this is someone who is perhaps asynchronous with what's going on now, or there's like something that feels anachronistic about it.

Speaker 7 And the difference between a non-conformist, and we are in a time of such conformity, like the difference between a non-conformist and like someone who is reactionary or someone who is contrarian is that,

Speaker 7 well, first of of all, it's like a less obvious choice, but also it's just who they are, you know, and I think that also creates kind of a dissonance with the listener or the viewer.

Speaker 7 I think there's an earnestness. I think there is a strong desire to connect.
And that is something that Slater Kinney,

Speaker 7 you know, I think shares with Cat Power that it's just trying to make sense of a world of phenomena, of our own, you know, purpose.

Speaker 7 It's this sort of existential journey that we don't really want to do alone. And music is a conduit and a means to not do that by oneself.

Speaker 1 You were swinging your guitar around

Speaker 1 because I wanted to hear that sound that you didn't want to play.

Speaker 1 But I don't blame you.

Speaker 7 That is I Don't Blame You off Kat Power's 2003 album,

Speaker 7 You Are Free.

Speaker 7 I think a lot of people at the time assumed, and

Speaker 7 Kat Power confirmed, that she was singing at least

Speaker 7 partly about Kurt Cobain.

Speaker 7 But I really think in some ways that's beside the point. There's something about the song that's so

Speaker 7 prayerful and redemptive. And

Speaker 7 when I hear her singing, I don't blame you, and then she is basically also singing

Speaker 7 the backup vocals too. It's like the second, the backup vocals are singing to her.
Like she's singing to Kurt or to some, you know, troubled artists, and then the backup vocals are singing to herself

Speaker 7 as the artist who's suffering.

Speaker 7 I think for me, I just, I felt that your band or your music became part of someone's identity. And I think that is like the greatest privilege and also really, really frightening.
I think, especially

Speaker 1 if, you know,

Speaker 7 like, I didn't yet feel like I had the ballast. I guess, you know, I sort of was barely like carrying myself along, you know, and I think I could sense that

Speaker 7 the cat power was, I think, also overwhelmed by

Speaker 7 the ways that audiences, you know, were claiming her music. It's like everything you wanted, and then you're afraid that it's maybe not enough.
And I think that pressure is hard.

Speaker 7 And at the time, you don't really see it as pressure.

Speaker 7 You just sort of see it as

Speaker 7 like this really intense ride that you've put yourself on.

Speaker 1 Just because they knew your name

Speaker 1 doesn't mean they know from where you came.

Speaker 1 What a sad trick you thought

Speaker 1 that you had to play.

Speaker 1 But I don't blame you.

Speaker 7 The Avadon portrait accompanied a Hilton Owls piece in which there was this line. Marshall was alternately shy and demanding,

Speaker 8 a solipsist, a solipsist, that is to say, a star.

Speaker 8 Her triumphs were as engaging as her disasters.

Speaker 7 And when you read reviews of this era of cat power, in 2003,

Speaker 7 people were frustrated because they found comfort in her songs, but at her shows, they felt uncomfortable.

Speaker 8 The set lasted approximately an hour and 10 minutes, during which time she talked to her friend's baby from the stage, asked no one in particular if the photographer Mark Borthwick was in the house, talked about her friends who had brought the baby, directed a fair amount of bemused antagonism toward a particularly ardent fan, asked someone off stage how many minutes were left in the set, played with her hair, took her large sunglasses on and off, indulged in rambling confessions, and complained about the length of one tune from her current album, You Are Free, before singing an abbreviated version of it.

Speaker 7 And it's like, you know, they wanted like the fragility, but not the mess. And they wanted this brokenness without the shards.
And it was like, what are we asking her to clean up?

Speaker 7 Like, why are we making her do chores? I think my point is when I looked back on this photo, it just really reminded me

Speaker 7 how lucky we are that Cat Power still makes music. And Avadon has a way of reminding us

Speaker 7 to keep remembering, I guess, to keep going back to that place that feels

Speaker 7 sacred and special and

Speaker 7 uncynical.

Speaker 6 The musician Carrie Brownstein of Slater Kinney. She wrote about Richard Avadon's portrait of Cat Power in our series called Takes.

Speaker 7 Is she arriving home or going out? Dressing or undressing? The Bob Dylan shirt is neither on nor off her body. She's not covering Dylan, he's covering her.
Displaying, discarding.

Speaker 7 Stop, it's only a shirt. The unbuttoned jeans are going down, coming up.
The pubic hair is staying, either way. Take in her morning after smoky eye, that half-smile.

Speaker 7 Try squeezing between cat power and Avadon's lens. The space is slippery, inaccessible.
You're not sure you were even invited.

Speaker 7 In the end, you're the one who feels unknown. As temporary as the ash on Marshall's cigarette, everything else is cat power.

Speaker 6 You can find Carrie Brownstein's piece and a whole selection of essays about the New Yorkers archive at newyorker.com slash takes.

Speaker 6 There's Zadie Smith writing about Grace Paley, Ina Gartner on Julia Child, and much more. You can also subscribe to the magazine as well at newyorker.com.

Speaker 6 This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Every week, three of the New Yorker's critics sit down to talk about what's happening in the culture for our podcast, Critics at Large.

Speaker 6 This week, maybe no surprise, they wanted to talk about Lena Dunham's new Netflix show, Too Much.

Speaker 6 And there was a larger question in the room, too, whether the rom-com still has anything to tell us in 2025.

Speaker 6 We wanted to share that episode with you, and staff writer Vincent Cunningham kicks things off.

Speaker 4 Friends. We're gathered here today to discuss, to celebrate, the state of the rom-com.
That's right, the romantic comedy. They used to be a staple at the box office.

Speaker 4 And even though that's not really the case anymore, there has been a trend in the last, I don't know, five, 10 years of trying to reimagine the rom-com for today, whatever that means, and by whatever means possible.

Speaker 4 We're going to dig into this a little bit more later in the episode, but let's give the listeners a little teaser. What do we think is going on with the rom-com in 2025?

Speaker 10 Well, the rom-com, as you said, Vincent, used to be like a mega-commercial proposition, right?

Speaker 10 But I think with the advent of the tentpole IP type movie as kind of the only commercial proposition in town, the rom-com has weirdly become kind of, if not actually indie, then a place for potential experimentation.

Speaker 1 You know, we're in yet another cycle of

Speaker 1 is the rom-com dead? Long live the rom-com. I think we've been here before a few times.
We're back again in 2025.

Speaker 1 But if it's dead, people still keep wanting to make them, to watch them, to discuss them. But it's true that it doesn't have the kind of mainstream cultural purchase that it used to have, for sure.

Speaker 4 And to your point about the cyclical nature of the rom-com and its life and death, this is not the first time that we've talked about this and tried to explore the state of the rom-com way back on Valentine's Day, 2023.

Speaker 4 Can you believe it? Were we ever so young? The New Yorker published a roundtable discussion where we talked about movies like Bros, You People, and Shotgun Wedding. Do you remember that?

Speaker 10 Starring Josh DeMell and J-Lo.

Speaker 1 There you go. It took me so long into rereading that to remember what Shotgun Wedding was.
The abyss that was the film You People did come more readily back to me. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But Shotgun Wedding was truly forgettable, and then I forgot all about it.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's what sometimes that's what it's for as well.

Speaker 1 I mean, we're here because there are these two new properties that we were curious to discuss.

Speaker 1 Celine Song's movie, Materialists, which is being billed as the return of the rom-com, and Lena Dunham's Netflix show, Too Much. We have these two women who are saying, I love the genre.

Speaker 1 I want to reclaim the genre. And we are going to talk about if they have.

Speaker 4 So today we're going to be talking about our favorite rom-coms from the screwball era through the 90s, and we're also going to be considering these new entries into the genre.

Speaker 4 And the question I want us to consider is, is there anything new for the rom-com to do?

Speaker 4 That's today on Critics at Large. Our will they, won't they, with the rom-com?

Speaker 4 So as we mentioned, we're going to get into materialists, we're going to get into too much. But maybe it bears laying some groundwork.

Speaker 4 What are some must-have elements, Alex and Nomi, of a romantic comedy? What are we looking for just to begin with?

Speaker 10 I think there should be a pleasing balance between fantasy and reality. It should be, to an extent, relatable, the plot and the characters, but it has to reach for the stars in some way.

Speaker 10 Like it has to have some element of wish fulfillment.

Speaker 10 And that equilibrium is hard to get, but when it's achieved, it's perfect.

Speaker 10 I'm thinking about like Pretty Woman, for instance, which is of course completely fantastical, but has a kind of core of subjective relatability, like in its characters.

Speaker 1 All right, I have a radical answer. Here's what needs to be in a romantic comedy.
Full penetration.

Speaker 1 I actually myself do prefer a little sheet rustle, although, you know, I'm not afraid.

Speaker 1 I'm not afraid of it.

Speaker 1 No, I'm going to say romance and comedy. And you're all going to say, well, that's obvious.
But you know what? Those qualities are often sorely lacking.

Speaker 1 By romance, I mean just that little hopefulness,

Speaker 1 that little inner shimmy that you want to see someone undergoing, that you want to feel yourself. And for me, that does have everything to do with if you can, Noam, you're talking about relatability.

Speaker 1 There is a kind of fantasy and a romantic fantasy about who you could be, like playing yourself into the film that is almost more important than the romantic partner. And then the comedy element,

Speaker 1 funny, it does have to be funny. And that can actually be a harder note to strike.
Comedy is hard.

Speaker 4 Comedy is famously hard. Yeah.
It's impossible.

Speaker 4 I just think, and this is just straight up rudiments of storytelling, the reason the speech has to happen is that there has to be a moment when all seems impossible.

Speaker 4 I judge it by how

Speaker 4 good is the moment when, whatever it is, somebody's been caught lying, somebody's done some sort of betrayal where it's over.

Speaker 4 And I want to see them climb that hill back into plausibility.

Speaker 1 You love an obstacle.

Speaker 4 And it's weird because in other forms of storytelling, I kind of don't like that. I'm like not as invested in that kind of vertiginous plot, but in the rom-com, for some reason, I I do like it.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 What's on the Mount Rushmore then? So, like, based on these criteria, and many more, there are many more criteria that we could name, what then rises to the top?

Speaker 10 Well, this is not the first time that I've sung this tune on the show: Let

Speaker 1 the River Run. There she goes.

Speaker 1 There she goes. She'll take any opportunity.

Speaker 10 Any opportunity. Working girl, my friends.
Mike Nichols' Working Girl, starring Melanie Griffitt and Harrison Ford,

Speaker 10 about about a woman's search for love, but not just love and the kind of tradition of like 1980s feminism, love, and professional fulfillment. I have a head for business and a bud for sin.

Speaker 10 Is there anything wrong with that?

Speaker 10 And it's a great example.

Speaker 1 of

Speaker 10 a complete wish fulfillment movie where career does not negate love, but in fact complements it in an incredibly satisfying way.

Speaker 1 She can have it all.

Speaker 10 She can have it all.

Speaker 1 Exactly. And she can be it all.
I mean, it's such a great movie, and it is so fascinating because it has to do.

Speaker 1 I mean, I have a whole argument that I just can't wait to trot out at some point in this episode about the condition of women in the 20th century and how it directly tracks onto the rom-com.

Speaker 1 Another New York movie, New York is such a place in the rom-com world because of this kind of, I I think, striving woman who we Nomi and I relate to, surprise.

Speaker 1 You've Got Males, a perfect film. It's a perfect film.
And its reception history, eyes were rolled. And now

Speaker 1 everyone is regretting those roles because

Speaker 10 now we love Barnes and Noble.

Speaker 1 Because, first of all, Barnes and Noble, the enemy in that movie in the guise of Fox books,

Speaker 1 the megastore that's going to put out Barnes and Noble.

Speaker 10 Now it's like a mom and pop shop.

Speaker 1 My goodness. Barnes and Noble is our last hope.
Like a little shoemaking Atelier. Exactly.
But more to the point.

Speaker 1 So You've Got Me is a Perfect movie. It starts with the trope we were discussing in our romantic episode from a few months ago, Enemies to Lovers.

Speaker 1 And it's a clash all the way until some, okay, fairly questionable stuff involving manipulation, but like all for the good, goes down and they befriend one another and accept life.

Speaker 1 But here's why I love this movie. I love this movie because of Meg Ryan, who is utterly pitch perfect, as she's exactly the right degree of frazzled.

Speaker 7 Why did you stop by again? I forget.

Speaker 1 She's utterly functional and loving and adorable and wears her heart on her sleeve, but she also is like totally who she is in the way that she was in those like Nora Efron movies, also in When Harry Met Sally, another total great.

Speaker 1 And so you're rooting for her. You're rooting for the good side of him that could potentially come out.
And this is, of course, the other fantasy in romantic comedy.

Speaker 1 The man is transformed by his love of a good woman.

Speaker 1 Like, he is this, you know, little shriveled-souled Vorce

Speaker 1 who just wants to make money and hang out on his houseboat in the Hudson River. Right.
Who's transformed?

Speaker 4 I always go back and forth about my favorite rom-com.

Speaker 4 It's often Love and Basketball, Omar Epps, Sanal Lathan.

Speaker 4 Sanal Lathan is also in another one of my favorite rom-coms, which is,

Speaker 4 it's a hybrid comedy, drama, ensemble piece, but romance is really at its core. It's called The Best Man.
And essentially, it's about a group of friends. This, for me, is classic.

Speaker 4 Really, it's about a wedding. It's the lead up to the wedding of two of the friends.

Speaker 4 And it is learned because one of the friends played by Tay Diggs is a writer, and he has written a novel, and it's found out by the character that's played by Morris Chestnut, who's getting married, that way back in college, there was a betrayal.

Speaker 2 Mia slept with your best man.

Speaker 4 And what ensues is a drama of betrayal, including... Tay Diggs potentially cheating on his girlfriend, played by Sonal Lathan.

Speaker 4 That should never have happened to you.

Speaker 4 For me, The Best Man is the great text of a kind of black Gen X sensibility. They're kind of like, they have, there's incense and people are playing the guitar.

Speaker 4 And it's like sexy in a way that I want it to be. It came out in 1999.

Speaker 4 And it's directed by Malcolm D. Lee, who has continued to create these movies.

Speaker 4 But for me, one of the good things about a rom-com is that it can introduce you to a whole milieu and a whole kind of social stratum to which you can sort of aspire to live in.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I mean, that makes me think of another point, Vincent, the idea of kind of aspirationality

Speaker 10 and when the rom-com catches you in your own life. Like when are you watching this?

Speaker 10 Like in my early teen years, you know, like watching these classic rom-coms when I was myself on the verge of entering into the romance plot, right? Or like the sex plot, I guess. And

Speaker 10 having these movies transmit to me

Speaker 10 what to look for. Like what are the values that I

Speaker 10 would myself want to adopt as like

Speaker 10 a person

Speaker 10 who is seeking her own love connection.

Speaker 1 That's right. I love that you're saying that because I do think that in some rom-coms, in some of the great ones, that issue is itself dramatized.
What kind of life do I want to live?

Speaker 1 And your expectations around it or the fantasies around it being actually defied in favor of something that is not at all what you thought would be your ideal.

Speaker 1 And that is so fun to watch because the ideal rom-com is also a journey to self-knowledge. It's not just about your perfect wish fulfillment and you got exactly what you wanted.

Speaker 1 You have to learn something about yourself and have your expectations defied and come out realizing that you now know what love is because it caught you by surprise. That's where the magic is.

Speaker 1 And when there's chemistry between the leaves, chemistry, chemistry,

Speaker 1 so that you believe it,

Speaker 1 that's where the magic is. Yes, yes.

Speaker 10 And I want to return once again to full penetration. Okay.
Not because I actually think there should be full penetration in the rom-com-com.

Speaker 1 Let's clarify.

Speaker 10 Let's clarify, it was a joke. But the belief in the possibility of sex, because actual sex, you know, the rom-com is historically not an explicit genre.
There is a hint of forthcoming sex.

Speaker 10 There should be

Speaker 10 in the good ones, there is attraction, you know, chemistry. The promise, the potential of sex needs to be there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's,

Speaker 1 look, I'm, I'm deep in the Nore Efron thing, obviously.

Speaker 1 I know that's rather typical and not going to shock anyone, but when Harry Mets Sally, of course, directed by Rob Reiner, but written by Nora Efron, sex ruins everything briefly before everything is made right again.

Speaker 1 And that is also such a great part of that movie because that's also realistic. We're like, the wish fulfillment finally happens.
And I just, I will never forget that kind of like, just

Speaker 1 on Meg Ryan's face, and she's like, so happy, and he's just like, I cannot get out of here fast enough.

Speaker 1 Brilliant, brilliant. You know, how are you going to work your way back from that? Let's get to that third act and find out.

Speaker 4 Let's find out.

Speaker 4 This summer, two projects are trying to take up the mantle of the modern rom-com: materialists and too much.

Speaker 4 How do they succeed or not in updating the genre? That's in a minute. I'm Critics at Large from The New Yorker.

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Speaker 5 That means your mom gets that cashmere sweater, your best friend, that Italian leather bag. Your coworkers unwrap their favorite beauty brands, and your nephews, the coolest new toys.
Go ahead.

Speaker 5 At prices this good, you can grab something for yourself, too.

Speaker 1 Marshalls, we get the deals, you get the good stuff.

Speaker 5 Shop now at marshalls.com or find a store near you.

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Speaker 1 I went straight to administration and said something.

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Speaker 4 Okay, now it's time to get contemporary. Let's Let's turn to the 2025 hopeful entries into the rom-com canon.
Do they make it in? Let's see. Let's start with Celine Song's Materialists.

Speaker 4 Would anyone like to offer us a synopsis?

Speaker 10 I can try. So, in Materialists, we have Lucy,

Speaker 10 played by Dakota Johnson. She is a matchmaker.

Speaker 7 How many marriages are you responsible for now, Lucy?

Speaker 1 Nine.

Speaker 10 She knows exactly what makes a relationship potentially work. And what makes her so good at her job is that she is completely unsentimental.
She sees marriage as a business proposition.

Speaker 10 It's math, as she says. When the movie opens, she is attending a wedding of one of her clients that she set up successfully.
And two things happen in that wedding.

Speaker 10 First of all, she meets Harry, played by Pedro Pascal.

Speaker 9 You are what we call a unicorn-you're

Speaker 9 an impossible fantasy.

Speaker 10 He's incredibly wealthy, he's very handsome, he's tall, he's urbane, he's stylish, he appears at least kind,

Speaker 10 and he's single. At the same time, as she's kind of flirting with Harry, she runs into John, her old boyfriend, played by Chris Evans, who she broke up with because he was broke.

Speaker 10 And so the movie is basically about this triangle.

Speaker 10 It's about Lucy trying to determine whether she should go with Harry, which according to her principles is the perfect match, or whether she should go back to John, who according to her principles is a complete dud.

Speaker 4 That is 100%

Speaker 4 correct. Between the

Speaker 1 dashing, very eligible, viable Pedro pascal and the dirtbag artist chris evans alex did you like this movie oh my god i have so much to say about this movie oh my god i can't wait to hear alex's take i have a feeling i'm going to be right in between nomi and vincent i'm guessing don't tell me yet if i'm right i'm guessing vincent loved nomi hated and here i am very confused in the middle okay i'm seeing nods so i think i'm on to something okay i know my fellow critics no it's nomi don't feel slighted don't feel slandered not at all i'm just gonna say right I feel in fact seen

Speaker 10 and recognized.

Speaker 10 And that's love. And that is love.

Speaker 1 Good.

Speaker 10 But it's also hate.

Speaker 1 Well, it's my love for you.

Speaker 10 Yes, it's my hate for the materialist.

Speaker 1 Got it.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 10 It's not hate. I did not think it was a very good movie.
I thought it was trying to do something interesting. And there were things about it that I liked,

Speaker 10 but I felt it was completely, and I understand, I think that this was intentional in some ways.

Speaker 10 The saporific vibe of this movie, the complete kind of evenness

Speaker 10 of it in terms of dialogue, in terms of tonality,

Speaker 10 in terms of the characters being indistinguishable from each other in anything, except obviously like appearance, was trying, I think,

Speaker 10 to make a point about this kind of world

Speaker 10 that amounts to math. Dakota Johnson characters, especially.
She is unruffled, but unruffled to the extent where I was like, is she, has she taken like seven Xanax bars like before,

Speaker 10 you know, doing every scene? That I was like, okay, I can see that this could be,

Speaker 10 yes, again, a comment on like, we're not talking about big emotion here. We're talking about calculation, right? We're talking about business.
And so

Speaker 10 this is the way relationships between people are.

Speaker 10 She, you know, famously, and this has been talked about in stuff written about this movie, up front tells Harry, the Pedro Pascal character, when she first meets him, she's like, I make $80,000 a year.

Speaker 10 I know you make much more, basically. She comes to his beautiful Trebeca apartment the first time.
She's like, how much is this place? He's like, it's $12 million, right? The problem for me was that

Speaker 10 this, that the same kind of saporific, like Xanax vibe continued like from start to finish for me.

Speaker 10 But then that seemed to me to be at odds with the kind of like central conflict the movie was trying, the choice, which seemed the kind of the rison d'être of this movie. Alex, what do you think?

Speaker 1 Well, I had a splendid time seeing this movie by myself, the chair next to me absolutely empty, laughing out loud, enjoying myself. Laughing out loud.
I was laughing out loud because

Speaker 1 what I liked very much about it, especially in the first half of the movie, and what I found refreshing was that it foregrounded these materialistic aspects and made them the total focus and part of the comedy of the movie right up top.

Speaker 1 Like we were talking about Jane Austen a few weeks ago.

Speaker 1 This is a world in which everybody knows how much the eligible mate has per year, and the material conditions of what that marriage will look like are everything to determining whether there's compatibility.

Speaker 1 And though we like to think we've moved so far from this world and we like to flatter ourselves that we care about such different things, I don't think that's really so much the case.

Speaker 1 And this is a very like harsh light shown on that.

Speaker 1 There's a really fun opening where it begins with a caveman couple and a scene of courtship that is both ridiculous and somewhat touching and cuts to contemporary Manhattan where Dakota Johnson is click-clacking around in her click-clack heels.

Speaker 1 But, you know, what I like about it up front is you get these interviews between the Dakota Johnson character and her clients, and you see that all of them, first of all, have this desperation around them.

Speaker 1 And I found the frank acknowledgement that worth and the acknowledgement of worth is what people are looking for in the dating market to be funny and to feel true. I didn't, you know, is it cynical?

Speaker 1 It's absolutely cynical, but part of the promise of the movie is that it's going to break down that cynicism and get to the warmer crust underneath. So therefore, you have the Chris Evans character.

Speaker 1 And what got me there was it is for Lucy this choice between the past and the future. Chris Evans' character is living, he's 37.
He lives like he's 27. And I found that funny too.

Speaker 1 Like his horrible apartment with his gross roommates, you know, there's a wince of recognition from me. Like, if you're a woman, you've seen that apartment.
Possibly if you're a man, it's not good.

Speaker 1 It's not a good feeling. And I found the truthfulness of that and the fact that she wouldn't want to go back there refreshing, and I enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 And I also admit to being absolutely fascinated by the affectlessness of Dakota Johnson. Like, it's fascinating.
It's fascinating.

Speaker 1 In part because I think in Dakota Johnson, you have a really capital A adult.

Speaker 1 She is living in her uncluttered apartment. She's making money for herself.
She looks really great. She's focused on her end game.
She's adulting all the way.

Speaker 1 And that kind of character, I think, has actually fallen out a bit of the rom-com space and of someone who actually has it together. Yeah, someone who actually has it together.

Speaker 1 Then, of course, the problem becomes that there's nothing underneath that you don't understand. You don't see what the Grace Evans character is seeing in her.

Speaker 1 And the movie doesn't try to make you see it either. It just relies on the idea that they had a past together.
It relies on,

Speaker 1 you know, him declaring his feelings for her inexplicably. And while she treats him him quite badly, the inexplicability.

Speaker 10 Yeah. That's what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 1 So it did all fall apart, in my opinion. And

Speaker 1 my question for you guys and for the audience of this movie and for Celine Song is, is there no middle ground? Whence the grown-up?

Speaker 1 Where's the grown-up man option who isn't this like weird corporate, I'm going to take you only to sushi restaurants person,

Speaker 1 or an absolute mess who I'm sorry I can't respect?

Speaker 4 Yeah. Well, I think part part of that is like the description of Dakota Johnson's character that you offered at the beginning, which is she's the middle ground.
She is neither of those things.

Speaker 4 One of my favorite things about this film, and this is one of the reasons that you're totally right in profiling me, I loved it, was in fact the performances because

Speaker 4 Naomi's right when we think about the rom-com, we do think about relatability. And with relatability comes naturalism in acting.
And this movie's like, nope, these people don't act like people. Yeah.

Speaker 4 And the dual meaning, it seems to me, of the title is like, yes, there's economic materialism, but there's also a kind of spiritual material. What if there's no great soul either?

Speaker 4 What if people aren't these bundle of wonderful qualities that are waiting to be awakened by love, right? The self-realization thing that you mentioned, Alex. What if that's not in play, actually?

Speaker 4 It seemed to me to be a counterfactual exercise. What if we just are an accrual? Like, yes, we have histories, but we're not some great thing beneath the surface.

Speaker 4 And we're so the awkwardness of all the performances to me seemed to be part of a kind of mission statement, which I admired, the commitment to it all through the film.

Speaker 4 I don't really think that we're supposed to think that she and Chris Evans are really some great

Speaker 4 all-compat like every single backstory shot is just of them.

Speaker 4 There's one where they get out of a car in the middle of what seems to be Times Square, and they're just yelling at each other because of, you know, it's their anniversary, and there's this shitty date, and nothing that he does is good enough.

Speaker 4 He's not, it's not like he's poor, but thoughtful.

Speaker 4 It's not like he's poor, but particularly funny. Yeah.
He's kind of nice to her, but that's. He's just poor.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's just poor.

Speaker 10 Come on, you guys. He's a handsome man.

Speaker 1 He's a hot man. He's a hot man.

Speaker 4 And so, by the way, is Pedro Pascal. And then there's a great big joke in the middle of the movie.
I won't let it go, but he has

Speaker 4 done things to sort of enhance his viability, which calls into question even his sort of dashing exterior.

Speaker 4 But one thing I do want to highlight is that we won't spoil it, but there is like somewhere in the middle of this movie, we are reminded that beneath all dating is also the like the specter of violence, right?

Speaker 4 And so,

Speaker 4 this hope, this aspiration is a great big risk. risk that why are we taking it? It really does call the whole enterprise into question

Speaker 4 in a way that, again, I thought was brave, but also made me think maybe it's not a romantic comedy. It seemed to me to be just like a romantic thriller or horror movie

Speaker 4 that was marketed in this way because of

Speaker 4 it wants to subvert a thing. I don't know that this movie believes in love.
That's what I like about it. This movie's like, no, we're all alone.

Speaker 4 I would like to talk about a story that does believe in love, a TV show called Too Much.

Speaker 4 It's written, produced, largely directed by now a seasoned entrant into this melee, which is Lena Dunham.

Speaker 4 And it is about a young woman named Jessica, played by, for me, and I'll get into my take, the brilliant Megan Stalter,

Speaker 4 who has left New York after a disastrous breakup and moved to London and immediately

Speaker 4 first through kind of a hookup at a bar, immediately finds herself in the throes of a new romance.

Speaker 1 Aaron Ross Powell, I will add another drop into the cup by saying that the personality mix is kind of what this is all about. The Megan Stelter character, Jessica Salmon, is the too much of the title.

Speaker 1 She is

Speaker 1 going to say whatever comes to her mind as soon as it comes to her mind. She's the opposite in every way of who Dakota Johnson is in Materialists.

Speaker 1 She's going to be as much herself as possible, and that person is brassy, loud, out there, unafraid to look like a total mess, which she is at the start of the series.

Speaker 1 And her love object is this indie musician, Felix Remin, who she meets at a pub. And he is much lower key.

Speaker 1 He's conventionally handsome, whereas, and this is something that the show I think wonderfully does not emphasize, but it is part of the subtext, the Jessica character is like this fat woman, and he's just sort of like this conventionally handsome guy.

Speaker 1 And he has had this dark relationship to drugs and alcohol. He's now sober and kind of trying to stay in the straight and narrow, but he is not part of grown-up life.
And she sort of is.

Speaker 1 She has a job. She's in London to be a producer on a Christmas ad, but he, in many ways, seems more grown-up than she does, while on paper, she's the one who's more grown-up.

Speaker 1 And I think the series really works with that. Again, these questions of what is attraction, but also how does that translate into making a life together?

Speaker 1 And how do these sort of youthful questions of sex and love and infatuation lead into something more stable? I think that's at the heart of this series, too. Yeah.

Speaker 10 And one other thing that I think we should note is that this show was produced by Working Title, which is a production company that has worked on kind of the most famous British rom-coms, you know, like Love Actually and like Notting Hill and, you know, that whole genre.

Speaker 10 And so,

Speaker 10 and the series itself plays with that, you know, Jessica as a kind of expat who's coming to London and has these dreams, these fantasies based on watching exactly these

Speaker 10 rom-coms is coming to this new city.

Speaker 10 imagining that she might find her kind of British lover that answers certain kind of either Jane Austenian or kind of the contemporary version of that ideas that she has in her mind about what makes a romance and what ends up happening.

Speaker 10 And this is kind of part of the restructuring of the whole idea of the rom-com in the series is

Speaker 10 life happens in a different way than what she might fantasize about.

Speaker 4 It's interesting, though. And first of all, I mean, I am a big fan of

Speaker 4 Lena Delma's work. The first season of Girls, I think, is just...

Speaker 10 Well, yeah, I mean, nothing like that will ever be repeated.

Speaker 4 It's just such a fastball. And I think she's done it again.
I think she's done it again. It really is a show about

Speaker 4 a kind of life cycle of the most intense parts of romantic couplings. Breakups and beginnings.
Two things that are equally, if different in valence, equally kind of unbearable.

Speaker 4 The texting, the waiting, the roller coaster of emotions that happens in the early parts of a relationship that kind of make it impossible to...

Speaker 4 Jessica has come to work to London and she can barely even pay attention to work.

Speaker 4 There's a capsule episode where she stays up all night knowing that she's got important stuff to do, cannot do it because

Speaker 4 they're talking, they're watching movies, they're having sex, can't focus on anything. And on the other hand, she's fixating on her breakup.
Her ex, Zev, who's played by Michael Ziegan, is in

Speaker 4 a relationship with a kind of influencer who's played by Emily Radikowski.

Speaker 4 And she's watching all of their videos,

Speaker 4 keeping a diary on a secret Instagram, which is directed toward this influencer whose name is Wendy.

Speaker 4 And so this obsession, the horrible bits of love,

Speaker 4 I just thought it was great.

Speaker 1 I love what you say, and yet I have a question for you.

Speaker 1 And that question is:

Speaker 1 did you like the relationship at the heart of this TV show? Did that work for you?

Speaker 4 Do I like the relationship?

Speaker 1 Did that give you rom-commie, ooh, will they or won't they? Or how's this going to go?

Speaker 4 Because it's like they, they get to, it's almost not that because they're so together at the beginning.

Speaker 4 And part of it is that the like absolute mania of the beginning of a relationship when you're not even sure if it's the right thing to do and you're spending probably too much time together.

Speaker 4 So I, liked, I believed the relationship for sure.

Speaker 4 Did I like it?

Speaker 4 No, I was harrowed by it.

Speaker 10 You were harrowed by it.

Speaker 1 There you have it, folks. It's harrowing.
And there you have it, folks. It's harrowing.
And I will tell you why.

Speaker 10 Okay, so what were you harrowed by? Because apropos what you were saying, Alex, about like the will there, won't they?

Speaker 10 They will from the very beginning is the thing which I thought was very interesting and an interesting choice because once again, you know, we talked about materialists and it's kind of like weird relationship to like, is this even a rom-com?

Speaker 10 Here, in a different way, I think that's a question as well, because from the very beginning, it's like they move in together, essentially. I mean, not move in together.
You know, it's like...

Speaker 1 Some of us are like this.

Speaker 1 No, no, no.

Speaker 10 I'm not saying it doesn't happen.

Speaker 4 Serial relationship.

Speaker 1 representation.

Speaker 10 Yeah, no, I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm just saying it's a particular choice to say, we're going in, we're meeting at the bar and we're moving in.

Speaker 10 You know, like it's, it's just a different type of thing.

Speaker 1 No, you're exactly right. They're meeting, they're fucking, they're spending all night talking.
They're, you know, they're in each other's lives.

Speaker 1 But there's the bigger question of, will these two very, very different people find compatibility and a kind of a stability together?

Speaker 1 And in one way, even beyond the way the show works, we know they will because this is a kind of a Romana Clay show.

Speaker 1 It's based on Lena Dunham's relationship with her now husband, Louis Feldber, who is her co-creator on the show.

Speaker 1 And there are strong notes of her ex, Jack Antonoff, in the ex who she leaves in New York, who is not a Jack Antonoff mega producer, but is this kind of failing music writer who's really self-serious and goes from this kind of love bomber character into this much darker,

Speaker 1 egomaniacal putter-downer of Jess. He's a putter-downer.
He's a real putter-downer. So here's what I think about this show.

Speaker 1 I got very irritated by the Jess character. It's not a fact I'm proud of necessarily, but it's just what it is.
She was too much for me for a while. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, I just felt like her expectations for the relationship were things that would serve her in every single particular. Finding someone who would kind of just be able to

Speaker 1 accommodate her in every single way without having to move an inch in a direction towards accommodating the needs of this guy. And I've seen seen five episodes.
I think there are 10 total. There's 10.

Speaker 1 So maybe that will change, but there's a lot of putting up with Jess and kind of the chillness of Felix.

Speaker 1 And to me, I sort of started to feel like, you know, Lena Dunham specializes in these over-the-top female characters. That's what made girls such

Speaker 1 a lightning rod of discussion, I think, in a lot of ways. And I really admire her for that.

Speaker 1 And yet I felt this kind of self-justifying note in some of this where, and I don't know if this changes later in the series, but it just felt like a lot of taking a mile and giving no inches on the part of the character Jess.

Speaker 1 And where she really came alive to me was in this flashback episode about her first relationship.

Speaker 1 And I like that the show accommodates the space for that, this kind of anti-rom-com, basically, in this long episode where you have this super meet cute.

Speaker 1 They meet at a bar, and he, like, her pizza's been taken, and her friends have left, and he just swoops in like a Prince Charming, and he love bombs the hell out of her.

Speaker 1 She's the best, she's so great. And over time, you just see like a noose tightening and he starts withholding affection.
He starts criticizing her body and her fashion choices.

Speaker 1 He just becomes cruel and cold and manipulative. And that, talk about harrowing, utterly harrowing.
So that brings a lot of sympathy to the character.

Speaker 1 And I love what Lena Dunham did with that anti-rom-com format, the falling out of love and the realizing that you've been betrayed by love. I thought that was brilliant.

Speaker 1 I will absolutely keep watching this show.

Speaker 1 But at the moment, I'm wondering, and maybe this has to do with materialists also,

Speaker 1 these are two totally, these are just like poles of straight womanhood that are the extremes.

Speaker 1 One is this like adult robot, like I am adulting, and the other is this, and the other is this, like, absolute mess. Yeah, but like a child, like, like,

Speaker 1 needs a caretaker, insists on her independence, but actually insists on being taken care of at all times. And I'm looking for the one who accommodates both.

Speaker 4 Romantic comedies have always reflected their era's gender dynamics. So what do these rom-coms have to say about ours? That's in a minute on Critics at Large.

Speaker 4 Alex, earlier you mentioned that you had a theory to unspool about the rom-com and the changing fate of women in their lives. I would love to hear this take uncorked.

Speaker 1 You ready to unspool that thread? Unspool. Unfurl it.
Unfurl, uncork.

Speaker 4 All different kinds of metaphors I'm offering.

Speaker 1 I like it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, so Nomi was talking earlier about this kind of like projection onto these figures in the rom-com and the need to project on.

Speaker 1 And I do think that the rom-com really gets its lifeblood from reflecting back women's circumstances in this realistic but also idealized way, as Nomi was saying. And because

Speaker 1 the economic, the political, and the domestic fate of women has changed utterly over the last you know, hundred years, just so happening to coincide with the history of cinema itself, you know, we get this kind of track record of female fantasy of what life and love is.

Speaker 1 And I find that really interesting. So like, you know, we have earlier rom-coms, like I love the classic Tracy Hepburn rom-coms.

Speaker 1 I don't know if that's big for you guys, but like those movies are sparkling and charming and hilarious. And of course, chemistry up to the nines, you know, lifelong semi-secret.

Speaker 1 relationship, like, hello, there it is on screen.

Speaker 1 And like, so a classic example of that is the movie Adam's Rib, which was made in 1949, was directed by George Cooker, and from screenplay written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Koenan.

Speaker 1 And it's about married lawyers who oppose each other in court, and they oppose each other on the question of men and women's rights and relationships.

Speaker 1 And so you have this great view into a time when women had just, you know, been working. during World War II when the men were gone.

Speaker 1 Now they have been powered like never before, but they're on, as we know, the cusp of the regressive 1950s. And so you have Spencer Tracy as a prosecutor, Catherine Hepburn as a defense attorney.

Speaker 1 She is defending a woman who tried to kill her husband because he was having an affair. He is prosecuting that guy.
And you get such

Speaker 1 comedic like friction like no other of this couple going up against one another, but you also have real tension because this starts to eat into their own relationship.

Speaker 1 And this kind of drives them apart before they come back together. So, those are some really real issues getting worked out in the space of one very funny comic movie.

Speaker 1 And then, like, cutting ahead to the rom-coms that Nomi and I love, like, in the 80s, everything has changed. Women, suddenly, it's not taboo to pursue a career.

Speaker 1 There is the beginning of the having-it-all discourse, the like ruinous having-it-all discourse, where there is this idea that you can wear your shoulder pads and perhaps have get higher up on on the corporate ladder or have a career as a journalist as Sally does and when Harry met Sally, even though we don't know very much about her career as a journalist, divorce is an option.

Speaker 1 So the rom-com has to give you a relationship that, first of all, doesn't feel like it's just settling because we now know divorce is an option.

Speaker 1 It has to like sell that fantasy of the empowered women back to women. And when it does, like we eat it up with a spoon.
We totally do. Guilty is charged.

Speaker 10 Yeah, because what could be really more perfect?

Speaker 10 Yeah, career fulfillment and love fulfillment.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and someone who recognizes, you know, your value in both areas, basically.

Speaker 1 And now I feel like we're in a little bit, I wonder if the crisis in rom-coms has to do with a crisis in how adult women want to be or want to see themselves.

Speaker 1 Because again, these characters in Too Much and in Materialists are on total opposite poles to a point of extremity that I find instructive.

Speaker 1 And neither of them seems to me to be living a life that, like, I like to think that the ideal romantic comedy heroine has a little bit of frazzle.

Speaker 1 Not too much, like a little bit of relatable frazzle. And in too much, it's all frazzle.
And in materialists, it's absolutely zero frazzle. She is a straightened ponytail.
Like, that's what she is.

Speaker 1 So, you know, where are women wanting to see ourselves? And also, where do men come into this equation?

Speaker 4 Right. And

Speaker 4 is a little bit of frazzle, but everything's going to be okay. Is that just the romantic expression of Clinton-era political economy? Is that just the end of history?

Speaker 4 Because what's interesting about materialists is the fact that you feel that

Speaker 4 certainly the Chris Evans character could fall off the end of the earth. And there is precarity such that

Speaker 4 there's kind of danger in it. You know, I don't want to do like any kind of rote identity politics, but it does seem to me interesting that Celine Song

Speaker 4 has created a world of mostly white people and is not herself white and was not born in this country.

Speaker 4 And therefore, some of the gimlet-eyed stuff that we're watching in this movie is an outsider's look in

Speaker 4 to perhaps a

Speaker 4 white middle class that doesn't really exist anymore. Yeah, exactly.
And is fraying and and is falling apart. So all of a sudden, class differences are not just aesthetic, they are existential.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And I wonder if that's our changing political economy sort of asserting itself.

Speaker 10 I think there's also a point to be made here that too much takes place in England while materialists takes place in America and New York. I think you're absolutely right.

Speaker 10 It's existential, the class thing, or there's a sense that it could potentially be life and death. Save yourself and hitch your wagon to the star of Pedro Pascal, who will never go hungry.

Speaker 10 You will never go hungry.

Speaker 10 Please, Daddy, save us. Save us with your like $12 million loft, you know? That's right.

Speaker 10 Because that's the only chance we're grasping at like.

Speaker 10 Please, like the Bezoses of the world. Like those are that.

Speaker 4 Send me to space, Daddy.

Speaker 10 Send me to space, daddy. That's the only way to be safe, right?

Speaker 10 Whereas I do think that in too much, there is a scene early on. I don't remember if it's the first or the second episode where Felix is on the dole.
It's implied.

Speaker 10 He goes to talk to like the welfare office and is talking to this guy who's like, have you tried to find a job? Like in the last, you know, I'm not saying that's some idealized state, right?

Speaker 10 Of like welfare isn't, isn't happening in England like seamlessly and frictionlessly.

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 10 Certainly, but there is a sense that he's not going to go hungry.

Speaker 10 Like he'll somehow go on with his life and kind of like be an indie musician and live with a lot of roommates, but it's not going to be a life and death situation, right?

Speaker 10 Whereas I think you're completely right in materialists, there is a much harsher,

Speaker 1 kind of starkly black or white.

Speaker 10 life and death thing going on.

Speaker 1 And I think it also has to do with masculinity, you know, surprise, how could it not? But in materialists, you have these two very different visions of masculinity that are both in crisis.

Speaker 1 You have the Pedro Pascal character who, yes, looks like a very traditional husband material kind of guy. He has all the money.
He's suave.

Speaker 1 He buys the right flowers for the date. He goes to the right restaurant.
He is a provider figure. And then you have the polar opposite, this kind of, I can't even provide for myself.

Speaker 1 I don't, you know, I broke my shoelace three days ago and I've had to walk around with a rubber band, you know,

Speaker 1 kind of, kind of vibe, kind of vibe, kind of vibe, kind of vibe. Um, from the, from this other guy who feels himself to be in crisis over his masculinity for obvious reasons, he can't provide.

Speaker 1 But it comes out, and here is a little bit of a spoiler. Um, it comes out that Pedro Pascal has, his character has, and here we almost laugh together, physical insecurities.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Um, he's had physical insecurities about his own marketability, his own ability ability to attract. So, on the one hand, like,

Speaker 1 I like that this movie is highlighting that fact of reality for men, you know, the fact that the culture is talking about this a little more.

Speaker 1 And then, in Too Much, you have a character who basically is analogous to John. He's an Indian musician.
And

Speaker 1 the masculinity there comes through in this kind of softer, caring way, I think. The fact that he is equipped to care for Jess, to make her tea, to listen to her, to kind of have this gentle touch.

Speaker 1 I think that's presented as this winning version of contemporary masculinity, it's opposed to Jess's ex-boyfriend who feels frustrated and takes out his thwarted ambition on his girlfriend by denigrating her and bringing her down.

Speaker 1 So I think that both of these projects are basically trying to speak to the fact that

Speaker 1 everyone's ideals are in question. No one kind of knows.

Speaker 1 And like to add to this, we're sitting around here talking as if it's, you know, as if we're ourselves cave people about like men and women in heterosexual relationships.

Speaker 1 Like, okay, there are many alternatives to these things now.

Speaker 1 It's enough course, but it's also, I think, like, you know, what you see in what's fun in Too Much is you see that like all of her coworkers are living these very different lives, like divorced or wanting to try being a lesbian or whatever it is, like wanting to kind of flirt with all of the possibilities that are open in 2025, as opposed to like going down the standard rom-com road.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Well, you say masculinity, it's so true.
One of the refrains of materialists is this idea of the quote-unquote high-value man, tall, rich, whatever.

Speaker 4 And that is a refrain that is taken directly from, at least in my experience, the manosphere. Yeah.
One of the refrains of this space, the men's rights activism space is 80% of women want. 10% of men.

Speaker 4 This idea of a kind of scarcity that

Speaker 4 nobody wants, and this goes to the point that you made about Dakota Johnson's wide chasm of choices, nobody wants the 80K man who kind of gets by and rents an apartment.

Speaker 4 And no, no, no, you have to be this superman who can provide and perhaps let you not work. All of a sudden, these ideas of the love match of two equals, even the two-income household.

Speaker 4 Nobody in a 90s rom-com is like therefore leaving their job because they got married. That's not the, at least the ethos.
We're together. I'm the publisher.
I'm a journalist.

Speaker 4 We do this together, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now we both look at each other's work over our shoulder and be like, oh, good job at work, honey.

Speaker 4 All of a sudden, there's this idea that like the love match is not only a haven from the outside world, but it seems that like patriarchal heterosexuality is, as it is in our culture, reasserting itself.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this actually makes me feel very hopeful because about the rom-com, because it does mean that the rom-com has a kind of like a political

Speaker 1 radicalness to it

Speaker 1 simply by positing, you know, in that intermediate space that I keep being drawn to, that's between the fairy tale and the utter Hobbesian, you know, life is nasty, brutal, and shortishness of it all,

Speaker 1 between the looks maxing and the, you know, oh, I just, you know, you took off your glasses and a beautiful flower was beneath the ogress. Yes.

Speaker 1 Like, you know, that in the space of reality where love and attraction and soul spark happen for all different kinds of reason that are both material and totally non-material, that like that's the place to explore, that that's interesting.

Speaker 1 And I do think you're seeing two heterosexual women trying to make a case against that culture that you're talking about, Vincent, that kind of like, you know, the manosphere.

Speaker 1 culture of where everything is about a number and there is this idea that everyone's in competition with one another and and yeah, that it's just about resource hoarding.

Speaker 1 But we're all trying to figure out what we want from other people and that is kind of what the rom-com is is about. So it's rich ground.

Speaker 1 Come back to it, filmmakers.

Speaker 6 I'm David Remnick. Thanks for joining us this week.
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