Oh yay, the trailer for New York, I Love You, the new movie about "Love in New York" (hah hah, actual monster sightings are more likely).* New York, I Love You features not only an ensemble cast — Ethan Hawke, Blake Lively, Orlando Bloom, Rachel Bilson, Olivia Thirlby of Juno/The Wackness fame, Christina Ricci and so many more indie movie people you felt manipulated into having liked in their first one or two movies before you realized they were narcissistic assholes (duh) and dumb (duh) — but also an ensemble bunch of directors, among them Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman! Here is the movie's most profound thought thus far leaked:
"This is what I've always loved about New York. Those little moments on the sidewalks, you can watch the buildings and feel the air and look at the people, and sometimes meet somebody you feel like you could talk to."
Which sort of highlights the problem, doesn't it! Like, hey, you can actually look at buildings and talk to strangers, technically, in any place that exists but in New York people have actually bought into the notion that their most mundane experiences and interactions are more special because someone might write a movie about them someday. When really the only decent movies about mundane experiences and quirky romantic interactions these days take place outside of New York (just ask Woody Allen!)**
*"Love in New York" is at best a problematic concept. I have already written about that here and here and here and let's be honest, probably a few thousand other places. My general take on this is that New Yorkers are conned—by their permalancer gigs and their sperm donors and their pretentious/prodigious collections of books written by misanthropic pervs and the commodity fetishism (not to mention the materialism!) and the constant distraction of mere survival when you have so many parties to attend and an overabundance of self-esteem—into thinking that they are actually "independent," and that the last thing they want to be is "codependent" when interdependence is the operating principle of human civilization. Just ask that Domino publisher who had to hire both an egg donor and a surrogate mother to make a baby!
Here is a New York, I Love You vignette: yesterday I hung out with an ex-boyfriend who was very sweetly comforting me about a recent breakup with another boyfriend about whom my favorite story goes:
Ex-boyfriend's Ex-Girlfriend, upon meeting me at a party: Oh my god, that time you wrote about how dating was like being waterboarded was just so true! I forwarded it to all my friends and they all agree that is exactly what dating in New York is like.
Me: How about some Jameson's?
Anyway said ex-boyfriend always used to seem confused that I was dating the more recent ex-boyfriend at all, since more recent ex-boyfriend was obviously not the most considerate dude in the world. "I will be your Yenta!" previous ex-boyfriend said, and proceeded to go through his phone. He scrolled through the whole alphabet with nary a suggestion, until he came to "X", where the more recent ex was listed. "Now I get it!" he said.
**Except for The Wackness because it was about 1. the nineties and 2. the actual love story was about a man and his pot dealer, so it was more realistic.