Victoria: Today i was thinking about 500 Days of Summer. I love that movie. i’ve listened to the soundtrack so many times that when i watch the movie again, it feels more like a musical than a normal movie.
And the cultural conversation about 500 Days of Summer pisses me off! First, people point to it as the genesis of Zooey Deschanel’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl era, which would strengthen with “New Girl.” This makes me mad because neither Summer nor Jess (the titular New Girl) is a MPDG. Tom in 5DoS SEES Jess that way, but the whole point of the film is that he’s not seeing her clearly. And the whole point of a MPDG is that she has no depth; the main character of a multi-season sitcom has depth!
Anyway, back to my main complaint. I have heard from men that Summer is the villain of 5DoS. This could not be more wrong. Tom is the villain because he refuses to see Summer clearly. She doesn’t want to date him. Tom refuses to accept that. He projects his hopes and dreams on to another person, which is relatable but it isn’t smart. Tom is the master of his own demise. That’s why it’s a good movie.
Hayley, how do you feel about 5DoS? Do you hate this abbreviation?
Hayley: I love the abbreviation 5DoS even though it feels like a Nintendo gaming system from the early 2000s. I also love the movie, and will defend it passionately to anyone who DOESN'T GET IT. This is such a great movie, and one of the best, most honest modern relationship movies that exists. And as you have mentioned, the soundtrack slaps.
Tom is working a job that he hates. His passion is on hold, mostly out of fear (my interpretation), and instead of diving into his desire to be an architect, he fixates on his new coworker Summer. Summer becomes an idealized version of all the hopes and dreams that Tom is not fulfilling at his job or in his relationships. He immediately places Summer on a pedestal and is obsessed with her. Who among us has not fallen for a coworker out of boredom and built an elaborate fantasy life in our heads?
Additionally, the entire "Expectation vs Reality" scene is SO good, and it makes everything in Tom's "expectation" version so insanely over the top that it is clear that he is completely detached from reality. And sure, we have all had an image in our mind of how we are hoping that a night might go, but Tom is so disappointed by the very normal "reality" version that he becomes sullen and withdrawn when things aren't going the way he hoped they would.
Also, the thesis statement of the movie is literally a line of dialogue. It is shocking to me that people don't understand that Tom is the villain when it is literally laid out for him (and us!) by his younger half-sister, played by Chloë Grace Moretz. She tells him point-blank: "Just because she likes the same bizarro crap you do doesn't mean she's your soulmate." But Tom doesn't get it. And neither does anyone else, I guess????
If you want an easy example of a real Manic Pixie Dream Girl, you have the classic Natalie Portman in Garden State, or someone like Mila Kunis in Forgetting Sarah Marshall (even so I will defend Forgetting Sarah Marshall to the grave). Zooey Deschanel isn't a MPDG in this movie, or New Girl, like you said! A great example of a Manic Pixie Dream Boy is Jamie Dornan in Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antoinette. The best way to think about a Manic Pixie Dream Person is that when they're not on screen interacting with the protagonist, you can only assume that they are sitting in a room staring at a wall until they're needed again.
Now that I'm all fired up, what else do you want to defend?
Victoria: Here's something: the music of Ashlee Simpson. Ashlee’s career collapsed when she was caught lip syncing on SNL. Real Ashlee girls know that she had ACID REFLUX which was DESTROYING HER VOCAL CORDS and was often mentioning this many times on the best reality show if all time, The Ashlee Simpson Show. And honestly who even cares about performing on SNL — they let bad people do it all the time and it’s notoriously hard to sound good. If that happened nowadays, no one would notice.
But my main defense is that Ashlee’s first album, “Autobiography,” is perfect. No skips! I could still singalong to every single song. They are pop bangers and I cherish every one.
Your turn! Defend something!
Hayley: As if Ashlee Simpson lip syncing was the worst thing happening at SNL during that time. I have been listening to a Y2K playlist a lot lately and whenever "La La" comes on I am like fuck, this is a great song.
I think that Fever Pitch is an incredible fucking movie!!!! It is a good sports movie, a good romcom, and a good coming of age movie!!! We know that the sins of the Farrelly Brothers run deep, but this movie is a goddamn delight. I think that it captures so much about the way that sports and tradition and family all come together in your life AND the reckoning that you have in your late twenties/early thirties where you go...oh shit what do I actually want to spend my life doing?
I have heard dissent that Fever Pitch is about a woman giving up her career for a man who won't give up his baseball season tickets. I actually find Lindsay (Drew Barrymore) in this movie to be compelling as a character. She loves the work that she does (she's a woman in STEM!) but work is all she does, and she is aware of this. I think that what is great about this movie is that Lindsay and Ben (Jimmy Fallon) realize that they are being too singularly invested in one thing in their lives.
There's a great moment where Ben and his friends are eating at a bar after the Red Sox lose and see Johnny Damon and two other players whose names I don't remember (sorry) also eating there. Ben's friends are, in typical jock-bro fashion, lamenting about how these players show their faces in public, let alone eat, after such a devastating loss. Ben has an epiphany where he realizes that the players understand what him and his uberfan friends do not: it's just a game. You do your best, but there are wins alongside losses, and you have to keep going. It's a turning point for Ben.
Lindsay has her turning point when she finally gets the promotion she has been angling for, a big fancy corporate promotion, and immediately realizes that it is going to dump even more work on her plate when her entire life was already dedicated to one thing: working. She's gotten to the top, and realized that there is still just more cutthroat climbing ahead of her, more nights and weekends and a never-ending rat race. It's not what she wants to spend all her time doing.
Should this movie win any awards? No! But I love it and I think it's great.
Victoria: I ALSO love Fever Pitch, so I appreciate this defense of it very much. Ok let me do some quick-fire defenses:
1. There is no such thing as not deserving to win a season of Survivor. The only criteria for winning is getting people to vote you as the winner. Convincing them to vote for you is the point of the game. Therefore all winners deserve it.
2. People are too hard on Zayn for leaving One Direction. Being in a world famous boy band seems incredibly hard and both physically and emotionally taxing.
3. Iron Man 3 was good.
4. “London Boy” by Taylor Swift is not supposed to be taken seriously. It’s a fun joke!
5. When sports people do badly, no one is more upset than that person is, and everyone should nice to them, and of course everyone is the opposite. I will defend all struggling athletes.
Hayley: 1. Pamplemousse is the best flavor of Lacroix but the actual best sparkling water is Klarbrunn, a Wisconsin brand, specifically their Cherry Lime flavor!!!!
2. Godfather II is superior to The Godfather
3. Everyone has gotten too intense about tracking all the books they’ve read and trying to read as many books as possible and it’s become this weird morality/intellectual signifier which I hate, so, I defend everyone’s right to read books—or not read books!— to their heart’s desire!
Stuff Victoria Loves:
If you're not obsessed with my social media presence (rude), you might have missed that I started a new job at POPSUGAR and have been churning out some stuff I'm very proud of! I wrote about why Moon Knight should be hornier, I interviewed "Everything Everywhere All At Once" star Stephanie Hsu, I wrote about why JK Rowling's transphobia poisons the new "Fantastic Beasts," and I reviewed "The Kardashians." Check it out, and follow POPSUGAR on all platforms :)
I've turned into the type of person who makes their own popcorn on the stove. After much tinkering, my preferred flavorings are salt, this popcorn butter, and a bunch of nutritional yeast. I love you, nutritional yeast.
If you haven't seen "Everything Everywhere All At Once" yet, I'm begging you to go!! Next week, "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent" opens, and you should also see that. Cinema!!!
Things Hayley Recommends:
I just bought these white sneakers because I needed a hot girl sneaker for summer and they're on sale and VERY COMFORTABLE!
Tarot For Change by Jessica Dore is an absolutely fascinating and enlightening read — Dore is a tarot reader and licensed social worker and the way she approaches the philosophy and psychology of tarot and talks about each card in the deck is endlessly interesting.
If you don't know by now, I have a new job! I'm on the newsletter team for BDG, and the Elite Daily and NYLON newsletters are my purview. They will both be relaunching under my direction in the coming weeks, so if you subscribe to them now you won't miss the relaunch (and a fun welcome note from me!)