I am a sucker for a good romantic comedy. My favourite movie is
Notting Hill, with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. And I have an infinite capacity for watching other schlocky romcoms like
Wimbledon,
Four Weddings and a Funeral,
Ground Hog Day,
Kissing Jessica Stein, over and over again.
So it's no surprise that when Netflix suggested a new romcom to me,
Rewrite (with Mr. Grant and Marisa Tomei), I immediately settled in to watch it.
Is it a classic? No, not really. In fact, it's pretty run-of-the-mill as romantic comedies go. But, it has some witty dialogue and the script writer(s) display a pretty neat knowledge of films and film history.
Moreover, it did prove to me that Grant's schtick still works and that Tomei has aged beautifully. She is warm and lovely in this movie and extremely sympathetic. A great counterpoint to Grant.
And... it involves several conversations related to Harry Potter and his world.
Most fun for me was listening to the Grant character (a one-hit wonder of a screen writer trying to get his career back on track by taking a job as Writer-in-Residence at a small university in New York State) and his agent discuss J.K. Rowling's thoughts on the importance of failure from her Harvard address to which I referred in a blog post some time ago.
It is an interesting moment. The agent quotes Rowling at the struggling screen writer in an effort to cheer him up and give him hope. The struggling screen writer shoots back: "Yeah, that's easy to say after she's banked about a billion dollars and is ridiculously famous" (not a direct quote, probably not even close, but you get the drift).
And it got me thinking. While I agree with what Rowling has to say about the value of failure, of having your life carved back to the its bare essence so you understand what is important and what isn't, that you focus on what's real and central and valuable without the distraction of that which is trivial, she does say it after she has achieved success at a level that few in the world will ever achieve.
Rowling's is an enduring success (and, please don't get me wrong, she deserves it and continues to merit it with her post-Potter-book behaviour) that, even if she never writes another word, will carry her through the rest of her life. She will always be known, respected and sought out. She will always be comfortable financially and loved by the public.
But what about someone, like Grant's screen writer, who had a small taste of that kind of success, then all but lost it. For whom recognition in public takes the form of "Aren't you the guy who?" and then inevitably "But what have you done since?" For whom failure comes
after success, not before it?
Rowling's argument would likely be that, even then, failure is still valuable. Painful, for certain, but also valuable.
And, after all of the above, I think she would be right. Failure, even when it comes after success, helps one to figure out what is truly important. In Grant's character's case, he realises that his relationships (with his son, with Tomei's character, with his students), are more important and fulfilling than the more esoteric relationship he enjoyed with his "fans" or, more generally, "the public".
I am probably attributing more to this little film than it deserves but that reference to Rowling's philosophy on failure added its own depth to
Rewrite.
