Let’s be honest, most romantic comedies are pretty terrible. They go something like this: handsome movie star X meets insecure but potentially beautiful movie star Y. It’s a match made in heaven except for this one thing that makes it so hard (“He’s a butcher, she’s a vegetarian — how will it ever work?!”) A date goes comically awry and a trip to the zoo has hilariously unexpected consequences, but in the end love conquers all, there’s a kiss, maybe a wedding, happily ever after, kill me now.
I don’t relate to that stuff. And when I watch movies I like to relate. In 2003, unceremoniously dumped by my girlfriend, I did what I always do in times of trouble: I turned to pop culture to explain what I was going through. There were plenty of books, songs, even TV shows that made me feel better, but those Hollywood rom-coms, man did they make me feel worse. Every one seemed so ridiculous, so condescending, so incredibly fake. I was not these people. I don’t look like Matthew McConaughey. I don’t have a hot best friend I haven’t noticed yet ’cos she wears dorky glasses. None of it rang true. So I was irate!
And in this fury I sent my friend Weber an e-mail, no, a manifesto: to reclaim the romantic comedy for the romantic! (My exact words were: “A full-length funny feature that people can laugh at and relate to that is as interesting character-wise as it is structurally.”) I sent that e-mail one August night at 2am after lots of red wine and Smiths songs. With that e-mail, 500 Days was born. We weren’t starting from scratch, of course. We had years of personal experience with the opposite sex to draw from. We had my recent relationship disaster fresh in our minds. And we had examples of how to do it right: The Graduate, Annie Hall, Say Anything, to name a select few. We had three goals in mind and worked tirelessly to ensure that all three were met — make it funny, make it real and make it not suck.
But here’s the thing. Though we set out to write a romantic comedy, somewhere along the way we screwed up. Romantic comedies are about two people finding each other and falling in love. (500) Days of Summer is about one person, and the way in which his expectations of the world diverge from the reality of it. What we realised when we finished the screenplay is that it’s not a romantic comedy at all. It’s a coming-of-age story masquerading as a romantic comedy, something you could also say about The Graduate, Annie Hall and Say Anything. And maybe that’s the trick. Everybody’s love story is different, but everybody’s growing up is the same. We all have that moment when we stop seeing the world as we used to and start to see it as something more real. That’s what 500 Days is about.
(500) Days of Summer is out on DVD and Blu-ray on Mon