Saturday, July 01, 2006

The Dearth of Good Romance Movies

I just read an article about Hollywood making fewer and fewer romance movies. Nobody is writing original screenplay, and the romance stories they do film don't make a lot a money...except for a few like Sleepless in Seattle or Titanic (which people call a romance so I won't argue that definition here) or While You Were Sleeping. The article goes on to quote Nicholas Sparks, that lone voice in the romance field (heavy sarcasm), and his reason for the dearth of romance in films is because the stories are too hard to write and too few people do it well. I will agree with him here, but let me go on to post my own theories. The reason romances don't do well for the most part at the box office is because they don't film good stories. Why don't they turn to those authors who know how to pen great romances? Why hasn't Susan Elizabeth Phillips's Ain't She Sweet been turned into a movie? Why haven't Jenny Crusie's works hit the silver screen? Why isn't Linda Howard's Mr. Perfect a film? Hollywood overlooks a major source for stories by overlooking the genre. You can't tell me that a romance wouldn't be successful if they would just pick the right property. And Romance (the genre) has loads of ideas to pick from.
And is it a coincidence that "dearth" and "Darth" only differ by one letter? Hmmmmm...
--Gabi
Books I'm reading now:
Threshold by Sara Douglass
Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen
Size Twelve is not Fat by Meg Cabot

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