I couldn’t write a happy movie or romantic comedy to save my life. Yes, Noel Coward’s an idol, but his plays are serious to me. ‘Private Lives’ and ‘Design for Living’ both have an edge. Without psychoanalyzing myself, I think I exorcise my demons in my work.
When I was a kid, I knew the black and white version of ‘Jane Eyre,’ and I guess I became interested in the idea of romantic love – of unrequited love and the tragedies of that; of what are the important things in life; what should one value over other materials.
Here in New Orleans, what a lot of the musical families do – and this is a romantic concept on my part – is they teach their kids to tap dance first. Then after tap dance, you learn piano, and after piano, you get to pick between all the instruments that are out there.
I got a degree in sociology, didn’t read much fiction in college, and I was a pretty political, left-wing type of guy. I wanted to do some kind of work in social change and make things better for the poor man, and I was very romantic and passionate about it.
Movies don’t look hard, but figuring it out, getting the shape of it, getting everybody’s character right and having it be funny, make sense and be romantic, it’s creating a puzzle. Yes, having been a writer for so long, I have an awareness of when things are going awry, but it doesn’t mean I know how to fix them.
Well, there’s just some universal truths in a way that I’ve just observed to be true. You read Voltaire. You read modern literature. Anywhere you go, there’s these observations about romantic love and what it does people, and these rotten feelings that rarely are people meaning to do that to each other.
My husband is the romantic one in our relationship. He’s always doing sweet things for me. Each year, we recreate our first date – it was a blind date, and we met at the zoo, followed by a trip to the museum. I’d have to say that’s my favorite romantic date.
I think we’ve always been fascinated with the idea of the romantic outlaw. John Gotti could be in one instance a charismatic, kind and loving family man, and in another, deadly to his enemies. The opportunity to tell the true story of Gotti with John Travolta is a director’s dream.
I am such a sap when it comes to love! I believe in love at first sight all the way. But that’s just the way it happened to me with my relationships. I love the idea of two people looking at each other and electricity flying around them; it’s so romantic, and it’s a great feeling.
A lot of artists I like end up being queer. Or maybe it’s a subconscious thing that you can identify of, like, ‘Oh this person understands the nuances of the romantic narrative of a queer person, or the social narrative of a queer person.’ And then you discover, lo and behold that they are a queer person.
As a young woman, I had been seeking experience, knowledge, truth, the stuff writers need in their work, but when the artist actually kicked in, I came to understand that in this romantic relationship I was not free to be myself, or to find myself, in order to begin the true work I needed to do.
The thing you can’t let go of is gravity. The reality of gravity in writing. If someone says something really mean in a sitcom, and the next wave isn’t a reaction to the reality of that, you start losing relatability. In a lot of romantic comedies, they throw out the rules of life.
I think Black cinema is thought of in small terms. That’s where most of the problems come from. When there’s a film that has success, like in the ‘90s with the crime hood films; when one of them does well, it becomes the replication, or there’s a romantic comedy that breaks out, it becomes a singular way of looking at it.
I get some of my ideas from watching my three daughters, but most of them come from my own memories of growing up. I can remember how romantic I was, not just about love, but romance in the classic sense – the romantic ideals: of honor and truth, of loyalty, sacrifice and fairness. Those were the elements that made a story satisfying to me.
I was pleasantly disappointed on entering Bohemia. Instead of a dull, uninteresting country, as I expected, it is a land full of the most lovely scenery. There is every thing which can gratify the eye – high blue mountains, valleys of the sweetest pastoral look and romantic old ruins.
I think that romance sort of coincides with effort, so you can fall flat on your face, but as long as you’re making a great effort, I think it comes off as romantic. So it can be something as simple as, like, if you’re someone who doesn’t cook, you can make a meal.
I usually decide if I’m going to do a movie based on if I like the script or not. I thought ‘Pulling Strings’ had every single element that a classic romantic comedy needs to be a success. It’s very well written. The cast was amazing. It was a decision I made based on the power of the script.
When I was about eighteen, I saw myself as a rather sensitive, delicate, poetic, romantic figure. And then I got into the Civilian Conservation Corps and into the army, and I started smoking and drinking and being tough and getting muscles, and I had a whole different image of myself.
Something like ‘Without a Paddle’ does really well at the box office and I’m like, ‘Oh, here we go.’ In ‘Without a Paddle’ I’m the romantic lead – great! A comedy and that’s what America wants. Then it did nothing for me and I went into kind-of a work abyss. I just didn’t get another shot.
I hope that I would be considered romantic. I don’t know… one of my favorite movies is ‘The Notebook’ so I guess that would be considered romantic. But I think being romantic is more than the flowers and the gifts. It’s about connecting with the person and being able to talk and share things with her.
If I wear a suit, as I generally do in the business world, it’s supposed to mean I’m retreating from competition with the bunnies. If I wear a very glamorous romantic dress, as I’m very likely to do if I’m going out in the evening, then I’m supposed to be competing with the bunnies.
The state of New Jersey is really two places – terrible cities and wonderful suburbs. I live in the suburbs, the final battleground of the American dream, where people get married and have kids and try to scratch out a happy life for themselves. It’s very romantic in that way, but a bit naive. I like to play with that in my work.
Young people have this almost romantic attachment to civil rights, liberties, emancipating people from oppression, etc. The idea that such oppression exists in this country offends me, but it’s able to be pushed and sold because education in this country is so woefully incompetent and inept.
People get this very romantic vision of a fashion designer who in one night makes 25 sketches and in the morning throws them on the table and there are a lot of women in white aprons with the pins on the lapel and they start to grab the sketches and… It’s not like that.
Whether labeled as such or not, I think every book I’ve ever written has been, more or less, a romantic suspense. I have always put tremendous effort into making each book a page turner: The harder it is for the reader to put it down, the better I’ve done my job.
