Waves crash on the shore as your lover embraces you and the end credits roll. That’s love on film. We hate to break this to you, but the movies lie. If you think you’re going to fall in love like they do in Hollywood, film publicist and pundit Rob Harris says you might want to think twice.
Harris began his professional career as a freelance television writer for such shows as Laverne & Shirley. He moved on to head publicity for studious including 20th Century Fox and Gramercy Pictures, and has served as a unit publicist on more than a hundred films, including Gremlins, The Goonies, The Sandlot, The Perfect Storm, Gladiator, Black Swan, The Bucket List and Maleficent.
In his recently released book, The Trouble With Love in the Movies, Harris gives a painfully honest account of laboring in the fields of film production, of loving and losing, living and learning.
From the fraught filming of Troy with Brad Pitt, to the prescient politics of Syriana with George Clooney, to the complexity of marketing the genocide film Hotel Rwanda and the Leonardo DiCaprioepic Blood Diamond, Harris chronicles the drama and comedy behind the scenes that eclipse those in front of the camera. Tales of the famous, including Meryl Streep, Jim Carrey and Jamie Foxx, overlap with behind-the-scenes players whose names don’t appear until the end credits.
As someone who has inside access, Harris has been kind enough to share with us:
5 Lies About Love From the Movies
1. Love Conquers Logistics
This presupposes you don’t fall in love with a mermaid (Splash) or a merman (The Shape of Water). Doctor Zhivago crossed a thousand miles of frozen tundra to get to Julie Christie but he drops dead before they can be reunited. Maybe consider geographically undesirable as a dealbreaker.
2. Lust = Love
I imagine those of you who loved 50 Shades of Gray see it as a story of sensual awakening. Fine as far as that goes. But not every guy who offers to tie you up wants to send you into orgasmic ecstasy. Some might just want to steal your purse.
3. Real love is something to die for
Ask yourself, would you have given up your seat on the Titanic lifeboat if Leonardo DiCaprio had asked? I didn’t think so.
4. True love will change him
No better example of the futility of this idea than Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in African Queen. She changed him from a surly, solitary drunk into a sober sod who was willing to turn his boat into a torpedo just to prove a point. Really not worth the effort.
5. True love will change you (or, if you really love him, you will change for him)
Women tried that twice with Cary Grant. In Notorious, Ingrid Bergman becomes a double agent for him against the Nazis and it nearly kills her. In To Catch a Thief, he’s a retired cat burglar trying to clear his name by solving a series of burglaries only to find the real burglar is Grace Kelly who nearly falls off a rooftop before he catches her. Although by then, she’s caught him — romantically. It’s all very confusing. Better to find someone who says, “don’t change a hair for me.”
If you liked these 5 Love Lies the Movies Tell you, you’ll love the book, The Trouble with Love in the Movies. Find it on Amazon.
Hollywood is long on fantasy romances, but short on reality relationships. Don’t get caught up in these 5 lies about love from the movies.