Happy Valentine's Day!

See how happy they are.

Is this Valentine's Day? I guess I should write something about romantic movies, but I generally find romantic comedies horrifying---they're basically about stalking. The first one I saw was Picture Perfect which I got dragged off to. Jennifer Aniston will lose her job because she's not married, so she tells her boss she's engaged. She has a photo taken at a recent wedding where she's with some guy she doesn't know so she claims he's her fiance. Her boss demands to meet him so she pays the guy to come to town and pretend to be her betrothed but then he refuses to leave her apartment and demands she marry him.

We went out after the movie. I thought it should have been a thriller or a horror movie, but the women thought it was hilarious.

There was a radio psychiatrist I used to listen to. He got a call from a middle aged man who wanted to get married and have children, but he was middle aged and he didn't have much time, so he bought an engagement ring. He went into a store. He told the cashier he was old and didn't have much time but wanted to get married. He demanded she marry him and refused to leave. He couldn't understand why they threatened to call police. The manager finally said she would talk to him about it outside. He stepped out and the manager locked the door.

If that had been a romantic comedy, he would have kept coming back.

There was a documentary called Crazy Love. Twenty-one-year-old Linda Riss started dating New York lawyer Burt Pugach in the 1950's. He was an ambulance chaser, more insurance adjuster than lawyer. Riss learned he was married and broke up with him. He started stalking and threatening her. She kept calling the police but they did nothing. They were afraid if him because he was a lawyer. Finally, Pugach hired a man to go to her apartment and knock on the door. She opened the door and he threw acid in her face. She was blinded.

Police arrested Pugach, beat him up, and he wound up in Attica. Being a lawyer, he made a lot of money from the other inmates and he would send letters and checks to Riss.

After fourteen years in prison he was up for parole. Riss told the parole board that he was still harassing her. He kept sending her letters and checks. The parole board was impressed by this and released him. He was now free to stalk her. She finally agreed to meet with him. Her life after being blinded hadn't been good. She horrified her friends and family when she started dating him. They got married.

Pugach was arrested later for threatening to throw acid in the face of another woman he was sleeping with. But his wife stood by him, the simp.

So maybe romantic comedies are more realistic than I thought.

There are straight romances. The director of The Way We Were explained that, in a movie of this type, you show the couple slowly getting together then they're happy for about one minute and they start to drift apart.

Albert Finney who died last week was always shocked that people would tell him how romantic Two for the Road was----it was about a couple in a seriously strained marriage.