Funny Lies

I got a case of “the panics” this morning—you know the feeling. (Or maybe you don’t.) But I was just blow-drying my hair and I realized that last year at this time I had three books to finish. Now I’m almost project-less.

What am I going to write next?

It’s a question you can’t dodge. It follows you everywhere. Everyone wants to know.

Do I have ideas? Oodles of them. But soon I will have to decide which—if any—of them are good enough.

This is not an easy thing!

And it’s harder now than ever before because I’ve been to the promised land (a.ka. Hollywood) and I don’t really want to go back.

So that’s my new bar, and boy is it a high one.

There are people who go their whole lives without coming up with one option-worthy idea. Who am I to think I deserve two?

Still, a girl’s gotta try.

So what makes a great romantic comedy, I had to ask, and as always I came up with the same answer: a lie.

When I think of my favorite romantic comedy movies of all time they almost all have a lie at their center.

--Overboard: Rich woman falls off yacht, gets amnesia, and a small-town handyman tells her she’s his wife in order to get money she owes him back via free housekeeping and babysitting.

--Grosse Point Blank: A hit man in the midst of a personal crisis goes to his high school reunion in hopes of rekindling an old flame who thinks he’s joking when he tells her what he does (note: this is the thing I like best about this movie—it’s a lie without a lie! Brilliant!)

--IQ: an ordinary mechanic falls for Albert Einstein’s genius niece and tries to win her heart by pretending (with Albert’s help) to be a genius himself.

--Working Girl: Secretary pretends to be an executive to get ahead in business.

--While You Were Sleeping: a woman without any family pretends to be the fiancé of a man in a comma, but ends up falling for the man’s brother.

That’s just the start of my list.

What about you?

-Ally

edit: Oh my gosh! How could I have forgotten the greatest lie-based romantic comedy ever????

CAN'T BUY ME LOVE! High school nerd (who eventually grows up to be a 'McDreamy' doctor) pays the most popular girl in school to be his girlfriend so that he can become "in" by association. A classic!