Epistolary Blog

Epistolary Thoughts on Fictional Babysitters of the 80s and 90s

To my dearest darling readers:

Sometimes they let me blog at work.  Check out my latest post and vote for Charles.

Love,

Lauren

Epistle to Sarah Jessica Parker

To my dearest darling Sarah Jessica:

As I mentioned to Britney the other day, I was disappointed by the Sex and the City movie. Not only did I see it alone (always depressing), but I also found the writing overambitious and the acting better suited to the small screen than the big one.

The best episodes of the Sex and the City television series are the ones that use a single topic to neatly tie together the lives of four women. Whether it’s Monogamy or Threesomes or The Freakish Behavior of Men, early episodes tackle one theme, and the four principle characters provide four variations on it. You and Charlotte provide idealistic variations, while Miranda and Samantha provide cynical ones. In later seasons, as the audience grew to love the characters as much as the sexy subject matter, the writers were freer to deviate from the neat and tidy single-theme structure and write more complex storylines for the four women, but even in these later episodes the writers never took on more than could be contained in a 30-minute sitcom.

The film, however, takes on too much. It begins with a voiceover in which you explain that women come to New York in search of the two Ls: Love and Labels. Forget the fact that such a statement sets feminism back twenty years. How on earth do you expect to fully explore Love in just two hours and while simultaneously exploring the other L, which will no doubt necessitate devoting at least a half hour to some sort of haute couture montage? Love is more than just a theme. It’s THE theme. There is no topic greater or more imprecise, and to juxtapose Love and Labels feels imbalanced. Saying that the film is about Love and Labels is like saying that the film is about this huge, intangible, invaluable, all-important, life-altering thing…oh yeah, and also shoes. One of these things is way too big to take on, and the other is not nearly big enough.

In the film you and Big finally decide to take the plunge. You buy an apartment together, he builds you a new closet, and you put a fabulous pair of shoes inside it. Then you find a fabulous wedding dress, and the wedding plans begin to spiral out of control, making Big unsure of the true meaning of marriage. (See how one L is getting in the way of the other? Aren’t writers clever? See how Big is acting out of character? He was always such a cool cat, but now he’s a nervous wreck. It’s kind of a glaring inconsistency. And see how Big isn’t quite big enough for the big screen? Chris Noth should stick to television.) Meanwhile, Steve confesses to Miranda that he cheated on her, and it’s really rather heartbreaking—I’m always a sucker for these sorts of confessions. At your rehearsal dinner Miranda is so upset that she tells the already jittery Big that marriage sucks, earning her the Worst Friend Ever Award. (See how Miranda is acting out of character, too?) Big is a no-show on your wedding day, and when you find him in his tux and limo a few blocks from the church you accuse him of humiliating you in front of the hordes you’d invited to see your dress rather than concernedly inquiring what impelled him to stand you up. Nice.

So you go on your honeymoon with your gal pals, who nurse you back to health, and when you get back to New York you hire a personal assistant, Louise: Jennifer Hudson in the most pointless supporting role ever. Louise unabashedly confesses to you that she moved from Saint Louis to New York to find love and also that she uses a service called Bag Borrow or Steal to rent designer handbags. (See how this neatly proves your outrageous opening voiceover claim about the two Ls? Hooray!) So Louise personally assists you and reminds you what it’s like to be young and idealistic and then moves back to Saint Louis so she can get back together with her ex, and you give her a designer handbag as a going away present. (See how your outrageous opening voiceover claim breaks down a little bit here? Louise found labels in New York, but not love. Humph. You also deliver an awkward line about how she’s such a saint: Saint Louise from Saint Louis. See how the writers named her cleverly? And then made you spell it out in case anyone in the audience missed it? Brilliant!)

Anyway, you remember that you put that fabulous pair of shoes in the apartment you’d planned to share with Big and go to retrieve them. You find Big in the apartment, and you kiss and make up, as do Miranda and Steve. (See how Labels, which drove you and Big apart, also bring you back together? I guess vacuity, materialism, and superficiality can both ruin and repair Love! What a clever and confusing message the writers are sending!) Oh yeah, somewhere in all of this Charlotte gets pregnant and says something heavy-handed along the lines of “I’m so lucky. I just keep waiting for something horrible to befall me.” This line, coupled with Cynthia Nixon’s pre-release interview confession that someone in the film dies, leads us all to believe that Charlotte is about to die in childbirth. But no such luck. The only horrible thing that befalls her is a case of Montezuma’s revenge while on your honeymoon. (What a hilarious and anti-climactic twist!) And Samantha, who seems to be spending an awful lot of time waiting for Smith to come home from work, decides that Samantha Jones waits for no man and leaves him. The end.

Anyway, Sarah Jessica, it’s a shame that Sex and the City is over because I would love to be a Sex and the City screenwriter and draw on my recent rash of single gal antics for inspiration. I’m frequently tempted to quit writing epistles to celebrities and start blogging about my love life, but I fear no one would ever make out with me again. Sigh.

True story for you: my kind and clueless friend Dave is a member of a Manhattan cycling club. It’s apparently very fancy—there’s even bike valet. One day there was a new chubby guy in his spinning class. Dave, being the kind and clueless guy that he is, approached New Chubby Guy in the locker room after class and said, “Hi. I’m Dave. What’s your name?” New Chubby Guy looked around as though Dave couldn’t possibly be talking to him and then, seeing no one else to whom Dave might be talking, finally said, “I’m Matthew.” Later, one of Dave’s friends said to him, “Hey, did you see Matthew Broderick in class today?” Ha.

Hope all is well with you and Matthew.

Love,

Lauren

Epistolary Movie Review: Jumper

To my dearest darling readers:

Believe me when I tell you that Jumper is the worst movie I’ve seen in years.

The film begins at a Michigan high school. There we meet David and Millie, played by Max Thieriot and AnnaSophia Robb. (I’ve seen AnnaSophia in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Bridge to Terabithia, which I Netflixed accidentally when I was trying to Netflix Tuck Everlasting with Alexis Bledel but got confused because both films are based on books I read growing up. I’d forgotten how the book ended, and cried for about two hours when AnnaSophia died. I really rather like her.) David’s mom abandoned him when he was five; Millie dreams of world travel. David has a crush on Millie, and she’s very kind to him and not totally unreceptive to his halting advances, but her asshole boyfriend Mark is always getting in David’s way.

One day David makes an amazing discovery: he has the power to teleport himself anywhere in the world so long as it’s a place he’s seen either in person or in a photograph. So David skips town, manages to catch a glimpse of a bank vault, teleports himself there in the middle of the night, and never works a day in his life. Fast forward a few years and David, now played by Hayden Christensen, is living in a posh apartment with walls covered in photos of places he likes to go. He doesn’t have to work; he doesn’t even have to reach for the remote. He has all the money he needs, he goes wherever he pleases (and the places he pleases are oh-so-clichéd: cut to David eating a picnic lunch alone atop the head of the Sphinx of Giza), and he isn’t above using his teleportation powers to move to the other side of the couch.

David’s life of crime and “jumping” is a lonely one until Roland, played by Samuel L. Jackson, turns up in David’s apartment. Roland knows all about David’s powers, bank robberies, and resulting sloth and is NOT pleased. Roland doesn’t seem to have any magical powers of his own, but he does have a bunch of weird electrical equipment that he uses to chase, disarm, and capture people like David—he’s sort of like the Ghostbuster of the teleportation community.

After his encounter with Roland, David realizes he needs a new place to crash, and since Roland has seen all the photographs in David’s apartment and therefore knows all the places to which David frequently jumps, David has to go somewhere he never goes: home to Michigan. Turns out Millie, now played by Rachel Bilson, is still there. In fact, she’s now a loser townie bartender and she’s still dating her asshole high school boyfriend Mark. David goes to the bar to find her and finds himself in a fistfight with Mark—just like old times. David cleverly teleports himself and Mark to the bank vault, ditches Mark there (Mark is locked in and will inevitably be discovered and charged with David’s robberies), and then returns to Millie at the bar in Michigan. The whole thing is ridiculous. First of all, David isn’t even careful about teleporting in public places; he just disappears from the alley behind the bar and then reappears there a minute later. And he never phones ahead to find out if it’s a good time to jump somewhere; he doesn’t ever check to see if there’s a night watchman patrolling the bank or any sort of Sphinx restoration taking place. And secondly, wow. For people who are supposedly boyfriend-girlfriend in real life (or gay guy-beard, depending on your source of celebrity gossip), Hayden Christensen and Rachel Bilson have no chemistry at all. Max Thieriot and AnnaSophia Robb, teenagers, have better chemistry and bigger acting chops. I’m beginning to think that Rachel Bilson can only play one character: Rachel Bilson. Anyway. David, seeing that Millie’s childhood dreams of world travel have yet to come true, invites her to Rome, and even though she hasn’t seen this guy in years, she agrees. In order to keep his little secret from her, David even deigns to fly. “Can you believe we were in Michigan ten hours ago?” Millie asks him upon their arrival in Rome. Ha.

While on their Roman holiday, Millie becomes suspicious of David’s endless supply of money and constant disappearances and reappearances. Back in the states, Roland poses as a federal agent and questions Mark, who has been arrested. Once Roland hears about Millie, he uses her name and flight information to track down David. He also, of course, realizes that he’ll be able to use her as bait. When David notices that Roland is closing in on him, he decides he can afford to spend a few minutes doing something completely nonsensical: he jumps to the jail where Mark is being held and yells at him for spilling his guts to Roland. Because, you know, when you leave someone locked in a bank vault to be your fall guy, you expect a little loyalty.

Anyway. Back in Rome, David befriends Billy Elliot, who apparently gave up on ballet after discovering his own teleportation powers, and learns that there are lots of jumpers out there, as well as lots of Rolands, who are called paladins, and who are sworn to kill jumpers because they fear that jumpers will use their powers for evil, which is of course exactly what David has been doing. Nonetheless, it’s clear that we’re supposed to view the paladins as the bad guys and believe that it is their cult that has been responsible for inquisitions and witch hunts throughout the ages. So David and Billy Elliot team up to defeat Roland and rescue the kidnapped Millie.

Somewhere in all of this, David’s mom, played by Diane Lane, shows up to warn him that the paladins are coming and then promptly disappears. Now the audience assumes that David’s mom must also be a jumper, that his power to jump is an inherited trait, and that his mom is an integral part of the jumper-paladin war, which must be why she had to abandon him when he was five, but how nice that she’s still keeping an eye out for him.

Anyway, David and Billy Elliot defeat Roland and rescue Millie, and David and Millie live happily ever after.

And then we experience the worst twist ending of all time: David tracks down his mother and goes to her home. There we learn that his mother is NOT a jumper, but is in fact a paladin and abandoned David at five because that’s when he first exhibited signs of being a jumper. What? This is ridiculous. First of all, this means that the power to jump is not inherited, but rather occurs randomly, and so we are now asked to believe an incredible coincidence: that a paladin mother just so happened to give birth to a jumper baby. Secondly, being a jumper is like being double-jointed: it’s not something you choose to be or can change about yourself. But it seems to me that being a paladin is like being a Presbyterian or a republican: sure, you may have been brought up that way, but you can cancel your subscription at any time. So we’re expected to believe that Diane Lane decided to abandon her family rather than simply end her membership to the cult that would have her kill her own son. What was she thinking? Gee, it would sure be a shame to let all this weird electrical equipment go to waste?

Oh man. Jumper is the sort of film that makes me wish the screenwriters would go back on strike. Whoever is responsible for this storyline should be shot.

Love,

Lauren

Epistle to Zach Braff

To my dearest darling Zach:

I’ve been meaning to write ever since I saw The Last Kiss.  I enjoyed the film, although it does get off to an awkward start.  The first scene is bookended by voiceover in which you explain that you’re nearing thirty, you have a good job, you’re still friends with the guys you grew up with, and your girlfriend, played by Real World alum Jacinda Barrett, is beautiful: all information the audience would certainly be able to piece together on their own.  The voiceover doesn’t, however, give the audience any practical information about the upcoming scenes, like that you’re going to your girlfriend’s parents’ house and to your friend’s bachelor party, and so the audience spends several panicked seconds wondering who Blythe Danner and Tom Wilkinson are and why you're at a party with strippers.  Nor are we given any explanation as to why beautiful women fall in love with you in spite of your nose.  Strangely, the voiceover device is discontinued right after the first scene, never to return, not even to tie up the ending in a neat bow, which makes me think it should have never been employed in the first place, particularly not in such a pointless fashion.

But I’m nitpicking.  I enjoyed the rest of the film, especially the scenes in which you confess your infidelities to Jacinda.  There’s always something so gut-wrenching about those sorts of confessions: the Julia Roberts/Clive Owen scene in Closer, for example, or that episode of America’s Next Top Model, Season Two, in which Shandi calls her boyfriend and confesses to making out with some Italian guy.

In the movie, you cheat on Jacinda with Rachel Bilson, a flautist who is much younger, dumber, and less attractive than Jacinda, but who is NOT pregnant with your baby, which seems to be the sole basis of her appeal.  (Did you ever feel like playing a thirty-year-old guy dating a dumb musician several years his junior was hitting just a little too close to home?  I love me some Mandy Moore, but the fact that she continues to participate in insipid films like A Walk to Remember and Because I Said So makes me think she must not the brightest candle on the birthday cake.  I was sorry to hear that you two broke up, and very sorry to hear that Mandy took up with DJ AM afterward.  There must be something wrong with anyone willing to date Nicole Ritchie, because if the camera adds ten pounds I shudder to think of what she must look like in real life.  And then Nicole was dating Joel Madden, which was strange because he had been dating Hilary Duff, who always seems like such a nice, appropriately-sized girl.  Is this really a Daisy Chain you want to be a part of, Zach?)  At the end of the movie, after you sit outside her front door for several days in a row, seemingly without ever having to go to the bathroom, Jacinda lets you in.  I told my boyfriend that if he ever cheated on me with Rachel Bilson the last scene of OUR movie would be me stepping over his bones on my way out the door.  But I guess some girls might be more forgiving.

Anyway.  You seem like a nice guy with lots of Jersey pride, Zach.  You used our high school and my doctor’s office in Garden State, and you gave a shout-out to the Campus Sub Shop in your recent SNL monologue.  (Is Kristin Wiig as awful in real life as she is on television?)  You also accepted my Myspace friend request, unlike that bitch Busy Philips.

But what I really want to talk to you about is this clip from The Babysitters Club television series.  I recently discovered this clip courtesy of my new favorite blog, and how you managed to not get your ass kicked for this is beyond me.  This could NOT have been good for your street cred at Columbia High School.  What’s so strange about this, of course, is that just a few weeks ago you posted a Myspace bulletin about your friend Schuyler Fisk, who played Kristy Thomas in The Babysitters Club movie.  How did you and Schuyler become friends?  Is there a club for people who have been involved in various reincarnations of The Babysitters Club?  The Babysitters Club Club, perhaps?  If so, do you know what happened to Larisa Oleynik and Rachael Leigh Cook and Christian Oliver?  I miss them.

Tell Donald Faison that I loved him in Clueless and on Felicity.

Love,

Lauren

Epistle to Judi Dench

To my dearest darling Judi:

I love you.

I’ve been Netflixing my way through As Time Goes By, and I’m constantly amazed by what a smart and charming show it is.  American TV viewers so rarely see older characters who are funny and fully developed, who have careers and love affairs.  Not since Golden Girls has there been an American sitcom with older characters as well-drawn as Jean and Lionel.

My boyfriend and I saw Notes on a Scandal last weekend and loved it.  Your character is so believable, so simultaneously pathetic and manipulative.  You and Cate Blanchett certainly deserve the Oscar nods you’ve received.

Really, Judi, there is only one thing I don’t like about you.

Why on earth do you participate in James Bond films?  I don’t profess to know much about Bond (I’ve only seen The World is Not Enough and Casino Royale), but I do know that any series which asks its audience to believe that Denise Richards is a nuclear physicist is NOT okay.  Casino Royale, to which my boyfriend dragged me, has been touted as the best of the recent Bond films, but I found it implausible to the point of distraction.  Face it, Judi: THERE IS NO CIRCUMSTANCE IN WHICH CAPTURING A BAD GUY WOULD BE DEPENDENT UPON FIRST DEFEATING HIM AT TEXAS HOLD’EM.  There just isn’t.  Adding insult to injury, the film’s Bond girl (who is oh-so-conveniently killed at the end, freeing James to boff whomever he likes in the next installment) is neither famous nor attractive.  She isn’t even British, although I found her accent and snaggletooth to be rather convincing.

Keep up all your good work, Judi, but please stay way from James Bond.

Love,

Lauren

Epistle to Mary-Margaret Humes

To my dearest darling Mary-Margaret:

I had an epiphany the other day: you are both the Mary-Margaret Humes who played Miriam the Vestal Virgin in the History of the World: Part I and the Mary-Margaret Humes who played Gail could-my-hair-BE-any-bigger Leery on Dawson’s Creek.  I’ve been a fan of Dawson’s Creek for eight years and a fan of History of the World: Part I for as long as I can remember; I can’t believe I didn’t have this epiphany sooner.

You were beautiful in History of the World, Mary-Margaret.  The other Vestal Virgins were all played by Playboy Playmates, and yet you were still the most beautiful.  Take a look at this screenshot from the History of the World trailer. (It’s literally a shot of my television screen—it must be in violation of some sort of law.)  Your name is preceded by “Introducing.”  Mel Brooks was “Introducing” you to the world.  This was your ticket to stardom.  And you blew it.  You know who else’s name was preceded by “Introducing” in the trailer of an early eighties comedy?  Christie Brinkley's.  National Lampoon’s Vacation.  Why couldn’t you have been more like her?  Why couldn’t you have become a supermodel and married a rock star and wound up doing home gym infomercials with Walker, Texas Ranger?  Why did you fade into obscurity and then reappear years later as Gail I-just-wanted-to-want-again Leery, one half of the only set of television parents more hateful than Jim and Cindy Walsh?  Why, Mary-Margaret, why?

Love,

Lauren

Epistle to Sophia Coppola

To my dearest darling Sophia:

I normally like your films.

I enjoyed The Virgin Suicides.  That Jeffrey Eugenides is such a good writer.  Maybe you should turn Middlesex into a movie.  Or maybe not.  Multigenerational stories don’t really translate well to film.  Like Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.  The book made perfect sense.  But the movie was so confusing, what with all those flashbacks and Ashley Judd and Ellen Burstyn being the same person and Maggie Smith’s terrible southern accent and all.

I also enjoyed Lost in Translation.  So, so good.  Some people thought it was, like, a love letter to the city of Tokyo, but I didn’t get that at all.  For me, it just confirmed what I had already learned many years ago from that Saturday Night Live sketch in which Chris Farley plays an American tourist who accidentally winds up as a contestant on a Japanese game show on which contestants must cut off their own fingers if they answer a question incorrectly: Japan is weird.

Based on my enjoyment of your two previous films, I went to see Marie Antoinette.  Wow.  What a learning experience.  Before seeing your new movie, everything I knew about the French Revolution I'd learned from History of the World: Part I, so I was quite surprised to discover that Mel Brooks, Harvey Korman, and Cloris Leachman were not integral parts of the story.

You go to great lengths to draw parallels between Marie Antoinette and Paris Hilton.  You demonstrate Marie’s affinity for small dogs, pointy shoes, designer gowns, gay hairstylists, opulent parties, free-flowing liquor, and sex scandals.  Marie dances on a table at a party after having too much to drink, attempts a music career, and becomes fodder for the pamphlets, the tabloids of the time.  But the similarities between Marie and Paris end there.  Marie is under tremendous pressure to represent her family and her country and to produce an heir to the throne, and the mobs of paparazzi aren’t the only mobs she faces.  Paris, on the other hand, seems to feel free to embarrass her family and, luckily for us, she in no way involved in our nation’s government and she has not yet felt the urge to spawn.  Unluckily for us, we will probably never get to see her surrounded by an angry, pitchfork-wielding mob.  Seeing her stand next to a bored, pitchfork-wielding Nicole Ritchie in the promotional photos for The Simple Life is probably the closest we’re ever going to get.  Sigh.

Oh my god, your movie is weird.  With the exception of the rock and roll opening credits, the first half of the movie seems like a standard period piece—the pace is slow, the setting and costuming is elaborate and wonderful, the dialogue is formal albeit American English, the score is classical.  And then we are treated to a split-screen shoe-shopping montage set to Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy.”  Wow.  The film’s ending is terribly rushed, especially in comparison to its slow beginning.  And judging by the many murmurs of, “That’s it?”, I’d say that most people in the theater found the ending abrupt.  Your movie ends long before Marie’s beheading, which, let’s face it, is what your audience is secretly looking forward to.  What can I say?  People are morbid.

Better luck next time, Sophia.

Love,

Lauren

Epistle to Bijou Phillips

To my dearest darling Bijou:

An amazing thing happened last night: I watched the worst movie ever made.  Black and White, released in 1999, boasts an impressive cast: Robert Downey Jr., Gaby remember-how-cute-I-was-in-Uncle-Buck Hoffman, Jared ever-so-slightly-cross-eyed Leto, Marla Maples, Claudia Schiffer, Brooke I-love-Paxil Shields, Ben Stiller, Mike facial-tattoo Tyson, Elijah Wood, and you.  How you all decided this movie was a good idea is beyond me.  Seriously.  It’s worse than Moulin Rouge.

Set in New York City, Black and White gives us a glimpse into the lives of black hip-hoppers and the rich white people who emulate and exploit them.  It’s clear that the film’s maker, James Toback, is trying hard to prove that this phenomenon of emulation and exploitation is worthy of observation and study, and he hardly disguises his attempts at some sort of academic thesis statement.  Brooke Shields and Robert Downey Jr. play documentary filmmakers so fascinated by the phenomenon that they film everything the other characters do—how very meta.  Jared Leto’s character, a teacher, leads a classroom discussion on the phenomenon, while Claudia Schiffer’s character, a graduate student studying the phenomenon, actually reads aloud a long and conspicuous excerpt from her dissertation.  In spite of these desperate and obvious devices, Toback fails to convince me that observing these people is important.  This is mainly due to the fact that not one of these people is likeable: not the young black hip-hoppers; not the rich white children looking to emulate them nor the rich white adults looking to exploit them; and least of all the rich little white girls who think the best way to become ghetto is to have sex with its inhabitants.  These people are greedy and vacuous.

And not only is Black and White a failure, but it also gave me a major case of déjà vu.  I knew I’d seen it all somewhere before.  I knew I’d seen the same heavy-handed but ultimately unclear racial commentary.  I knew I’d seen a metafictional documentary filmmaker filming the same nonsense.  I knew I’d seen you play the same rich little white girl who thinks it’s cool to have sex with ghetto gangsters.  Where had I seen all this?  Havoc.  Now I realize that Havoc is just Black and White set in Los Angeles instead of New York City and featuring Hispanic gangsters instead of black ones.  Wow.  Is Hollywood really so hard-pressed for new ideas that not only do good ones get reused, but bad ones do, too?  And are you at all depressed by the fact that six years after making Black and White you found yourself playing largely the same role in largely the same movie?

Look, Bijou.  You should stop acting.  Actually, it’s probably generous to call what you do acting, as you always seem to be playing your teenage self.  But whatever it is that you do, you should stop doing it.  You should also stop hanging out with Paris and Nikki Hilton and Nicole Richie and Kimberly Stewart and Sean Lennon and all those other kids whose fame was inherited rather than earned.  Don’t you know what happens to kids who spend their whole lives riding their famous parents’ coattails?  (See Minelli, Liza.)

Love,

Lauren

Epistolary Blog Point/Counterpoint

To my dearest darling readers:

Is John or Joan the superior Cusack?  Today on Epistolary Blog my boyfriend and I will duke it out.  My boyfriend will be taking the side of John, and I will be taking the side of sound judgment and good taste.

My Point:  In examining their early work, it is clear that Joan has far more raw talent.  John’s turn as Anthony Michael Hall’s friend in Sixteen Candles is utterly forgettable, while Joan’s performance as the girl with the back brace demonstrates her flair for physical comedy.

Joan’s prominent lips and rubbery features make her facial expressions of inebriation, exasperation, and incredulity pure comic gold, while John can only make one face: the face of a morose, lovelorn underdog.

The fact that John Cusack read the script for Serendipity and thought it was a good idea leads me to believe that he is retarded, as is Kate Beckinsale—I don’t care if she did go to Oxford.  Why do you own this movie, Jim?  Sometimes I worry about you.

My boyfriend's Counterpoint:  While I will admit that Serendipity is sappy, it is far superior to any movie Joan Cusack has starred in—oh wait, she’s never had a starring role.

In examining their early work, it’s apparent that John has natural charisma and presence, and Joan has no raw talent whatsoever.  Her “prominent lips and rubbery features” make her facial expressions exaggerated or non-existent, causing her to either over-act or under-act. On the other hand, John’s acting is more subtle, as if he were playing the part of a somewhat normal person, which is good, because that’s generally what his roles call for.

Okay, they were both in Sixteen Candles together in 1983. What have they done since then? Let’s compare their representative resumes. John: Better Off Dead, One Crazy Summer, Stand By Me, Eight Men Out, Say Anything, Money For Nothing, Grosse Pointe Blank, Being John Malkovich, High Fidelity.  Joan: Mr. Wrong, In and Out, Corrina, Corrina, Addams Family Values, Married to the Mob, Runaway Bride. You’ll notice that I’ve left out all the movies in which John cast Joan, which account for a substantial amount of Joan’s career. So, Lauren, which of these Joan Cusack movies would you recommend?

I guess I can understand why some people like Joan’s roles. They’re all the same. She always plays the plain, uninteresting, pushy, naggy, pale-faced, annoying girl who is unlucky in love: a character I’m sure her fans can identify with. Let’s hope that John and his highly successful production company can continue to create roles for his sister.

My final thoughts:  Um.  I think it’s generous to include John’s blink-and-miss-it role as Gordy’s dead brother in Stand By Me as one of his great starring roles.  And it’s clear to me that High Fidelity should have taken place in London as Nick Hornby had intended.

Of those Joan Cusack films, I would recommend Mr. Wrong.  Ellen DeGeneres and Bill Pullman are in it and, boy, do I love those two.  I would also recommend In and Out, in which Kevin Kline demonstrates that men who enjoy poetry are gay.  As you enjoy both poetry and Serendipity, I’m not holding out much hope for your heterosexuality.  Also, I notice that you’ve omitted School of Rock from your list of Joan’s films.  That movie is awesome—and much better than any lame-o John Cusack romcom.

Oh yeah.  John has a giant forehead.  Bite me.

Love,

Lauren

Another Epistolary Blog Public Service Announcement

To my dearest darling readers:

Today I made an important discovery: Hollywoodland and The Black Dahlia are two different movies.  I did some research and I think I’ve finally got them straightened out.  Hollywoodland, based on the real-life murder of a Hollywood actor in the late fifties, follows the case’s investigator as he uncovers corruption and unexpected connections linking the murder to his own life.  The Black Dahlia, based on the real-life murder of a Hollywood actrESS in the late fORties, follows the case’s investigator as he uncovers corruption and unexpected connections linking the murder to his own life.  These two movies are about as different as First Daughter and Chasing Liberty.  And by that I mean vastly, vastly different.

Hope this clears things up.

Love,

Lauren