Speaker 1: Pushkin Happy Valentine's Day. As promised, I have a lovely
Speaker 1: little treat for you on this most romantic of days.
Speaker 1: In the last episode of The Happiness Lab, I chatted
Speaker 1: with relationship experts Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick to explore
Speaker 1: what rom coms get right and wrong about romance. But
Speaker 1: Eli and Paul have their own fabulous podcast. It's called
Speaker 1: Love Factually, and it just so happens that I recently
Speaker 1: joined them as a guest. So here's me and Eli
Speaker 1: and Paul talking about the science of one of my
Speaker 1: favorite ever rom coms, the movie Say Anything. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy our conversation, and if you do, be sure
Speaker 1: to check out Love Factually wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Love Factually, podcast that analyzes rom coms and
Speaker 2: romantic films using the science of close relationships. We're your hosts,
Speaker 2: Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel. Welcoming in guest hosts of
Speaker 2: the Happiness Lab podcast, Doctor Laurie Santos, thank you for
Speaker 2: joining us today.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me on the show.
Speaker 2: So Laurie, tell us what are we talking about today?
Speaker 1: So today we're talking about Say Anything. Cameron Crow's nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine rom com starting Hi John Cusack and Iomi Sky,
Speaker 1: which Entertainment Weekly ranked in two thousand and two as
Speaker 1: the number one romance movie of the past twenty five years.
Speaker 1: Some of the themes we'll explore are how attachment bonds
Speaker 1: transfer from appearent to a romantic partner, the benefits of optimism,
Speaker 1: and what exactly counts as stalking.
Speaker 2: And fair warning, we'll be spoiling this movie today, So
Speaker 2: if you don't know how many songs one woman can
Speaker 2: write about Joe and they're all about pain, then go
Speaker 2: ahead and wats this movie and come back, okay? Eli
Speaker 2: tell us who are the key characters and couples in
Speaker 2: this movie.
Speaker 3: The movie explores the love triangle involving Diane, her father Jim,
Speaker 3: and her boyfriend Lloyd. The story takes place during the
Speaker 3: summer after the young lovers graduate from high school. Diane,
Speaker 3: played by Ione Sky, is the unassuming valedictorian who will
Speaker 3: be leaving for a prestigious fellowship abroad at the end
Speaker 3: of the summer. Her peers view her as pretty and kind,
Speaker 3: but she's always been so busy that nobody really knows her. Jim,
Speaker 3: played by John Mulaney is Diane's father. He and Diane's
Speaker 3: mother divorced five years earlier, after which Diane chose to
Speaker 3: live with him. His devotion to his daughter is boundless,
Speaker 3: but the methods underlying that devotion are sometimes dubious. Lloyd,
Speaker 3: played by cy John Cusack, is a principled slacker and
Speaker 3: a devoted brother and uncle. His best friends are Corey
Speaker 3: and DC, both girls, and his primary passions are kickboxing
Speaker 3: and Diane. So, Paul, those are the chess pieces? Are
Speaker 3: you ready to give us one minute on how the
Speaker 3: film moves them across the board?
Speaker 2: Red dye? Count me down. Here we go.
Speaker 3: On your mark, Get set and go superachiever.
Speaker 2: Diane Court delivers a graduation speech as Lloyd Dobbler plots
Speaker 2: how to ask her out on a bona fide date.
Speaker 2: He wins her over by asking her to go with
Speaker 2: him to a graduation party and promising to give her
Speaker 2: all his English tips because she's moving to England in
Speaker 2: the fall for school. At the party, they orbit each
Speaker 2: other as Diane meets all the people she never got
Speaker 2: to know in high school, while Lloyd acts as key master.
Speaker 2: They become friends with potential and plan to hang out
Speaker 2: as much as they can. Over the next sixteen weeks,
Speaker 2: Lloyd survives a family dinner at Diane's house. He visits
Speaker 2: the retirement home run by her father. He teaches her
Speaker 2: how to drive stick They have sex in the backseat,
Speaker 2: listening to Peter Gabriel. Diane's father becomes more and more
Speaker 2: disapproving of her relationship with Lloyd, and Diane ultimately relents.
Speaker 2: She breaks it off with Lloyd, leading to eight unreturned
Speaker 2: phone messages in a boom box Peter Gabriel serenade outside
Speaker 2: her bedroom window. All this time, Diane's father has been
Speaker 2: lying to her about evating taxes, but the i RS
Speaker 2: closes in and she discovers her father's piles of cash.
Speaker 2: Dan confronts her father, she makes up with Lloyd, Her
Speaker 2: father goes to prison, and Diane Lloyd fly to England together.
Speaker 2: As you promised here that everything will be okay once
Speaker 2: the smoking sign goes down. Ah, you did it, amazing.
Speaker 1: I was never going to pull that off. I was
Speaker 1: going to get so stuck on my new details of
Speaker 1: this film. Yes, amazing job pop.
Speaker 2: It very challenging. Okay, Well, Laurie, why don't you kick
Speaker 2: it up by telling us, what is your relationship to
Speaker 2: this movie?
Speaker 1: So I saw this movie back in the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: when I was a kid myself, and interestingly, I just
Speaker 1: rewatched this movie with a friend from grad school and
Speaker 1: his now two thirteen year old kids, and it was
Speaker 1: fascinating to kind of rewatch the film because probably I
Speaker 1: probably watched it around the time I was thirteen, if
Speaker 1: it kind of came out around nineteen eighty eight, So
Speaker 1: it was like a very strange full circle. But I
Speaker 1: kind of both identified with Lloyd as being this sort
Speaker 1: of like kind but clueless, don't really I know where
Speaker 1: you're going type person, and also Diane in the sense
Speaker 1: that she was like smart, not the pretty part. So
Speaker 1: I was kind of the like, kind of unfortunate, not
Speaker 1: very cool, but also smart person. So I like really
Speaker 1: wanted this couple to get together. And then I think,
Speaker 1: like all women who watch this film back of the day,
Speaker 1: I just absolutely fell in love with Lloyd Dobbler. Everyone
Speaker 1: wants their own Lloyd Dobbler, everyone wants the know, and this,
Speaker 1: you know, Peter Gabriel serenade just the whole thing. So
Speaker 1: for me, when I think of like eighties rom coms
Speaker 1: that make me smile and honestly that still hold up today.
Speaker 2: This is really one of them that's really cool. I
Speaker 2: do think that it felt like a permission structure to
Speaker 2: be a sensitive dude and that it but that you
Speaker 2: could also kind of be admired for it at the
Speaker 2: same time. And I also really liked too how he
Speaker 2: seems to really be taken with Diane for many different reasons,
Speaker 2: but also in part that she's like a badass and
Speaker 2: killing it out there, right. I mean, she's, you know,
Speaker 2: very smart and successful, and it's very clear that from
Speaker 2: the beginning he's like, Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Lloyd Dobbler was like the og like
Speaker 1: husband that's going to support the women's career, right like
Speaker 1: in the eighties when that wasn't so much of a thing.
Speaker 1: So I mean he's going to give up, you know,
Speaker 1: his permanent kickboxing kind of teaching ship to fly to
Speaker 1: England with her to help her out in her studies. Right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, aspirational.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's cool. Well, Eli, what about you?
Speaker 3: I had you know, I connected a lot of different ways,
Speaker 3: So this one of them is is when I mentioned
Speaker 3: on this podcast a couple of times that I acted
Speaker 3: in high school, and there's something in Evanston called the
Speaker 3: Piven piv E n known like Jerry Pivens parents, Jeremy
Speaker 3: Pinen's parents Theater Workshop. So I took that when I
Speaker 3: was sixteen and even then, so this was nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 3: and you know famous alumni John and Joan Cusack, Jeremy
Speaker 3: Piven himself, like a whole bunch of stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And when I took it, I took it with you know,
Speaker 3: Martin Scorsese's daughter. And then I sort of had my
Speaker 3: first you know, serious sort of girlfriend situation there.
Speaker 1: And was it Martin Scorsese's daughter.
Speaker 3: You could say, no, oh no, no, I did not do.
Speaker 3: That would have been quite the story. It was not.
Speaker 3: But but what's interesting is just proving that I never
Speaker 3: did grow up. I currently live one block from where
Speaker 3: that that theater workshop is held.
Speaker 2: Oh look, kidding. Yeah, Well, let's transition to talking about
Speaker 2: what this movie gets right about the nature of close
Speaker 2: relationships but also, you know, about the nature of happiness
Speaker 2: and optimism more generally. So, Laurie, do you want to
Speaker 2: kick it off for us.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So one of the reasons I love this film
Speaker 1: is I think it really does a nice job of
Speaker 1: showing the power of optimism, right, So Lloyd is this
Speaker 1: like underachiever, like Diane, core has no idea who he is,
Speaker 1: but he tells his friends, like his two girlfriends, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna like ask her out. And so Corey
Speaker 1: and DC are just like, no, like, are you crazy?
Speaker 1: It's beautiful?
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 1: She's the brain with the body of a game show
Speaker 1: host and she doesn't know it right, and so they're like,
Speaker 1: she's just going to destroy you. Lloyd, like, don't do this.
Speaker 1: But Lloyd is just like, I'm gonna go for it.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to ask her how And as we
Speaker 1: see in the film, ultimately this works. And so this
Speaker 1: raises this interesting question about like, is kind of believing
Speaker 1: you can succeed at something that seems incredibly unlikely good
Speaker 1: for you? Like does it make it more likely that
Speaker 1: you're going to succeed at the thing. And it turns
Speaker 1: out that there's some interesting psychology on this. There's this
Speaker 1: famous effect in psychology called the Roger Banister effect, which
Speaker 1: for you runners out there, you might know that Roger
Speaker 1: Banister is a famous British runner who originally it was
Speaker 1: the first guy to run the four minute mile back
Speaker 1: in the day and they deal with the four minute mile.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't even barely run like a ten
Speaker 1: twenty minute forty minute miles.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So like nobody had run the four minute mile
Speaker 1: before Roger Banister, but but importantly, no one thought anyone
Speaker 1: could was actually believed to be beyond like human capacity, right,
Speaker 1: And so Roger's like, I'm going to run the four
Speaker 1: minute mile, and everyone's like that seems crazy. But then
Speaker 1: there's one thing, it's raised in nineteen fifty four, he
Speaker 1: ran it. But instantly what happened after that is people say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: it is humanly possible, we can run it, and like,
Speaker 1: just like over a month later, somebody else ran the
Speaker 1: four minute mile, and now subsequently a four minute mile
Speaker 1: is like not even anything for somebody who's a real
Speaker 1: runner to like super brag about, because so many people
Speaker 1: have kind of done this at this point. And so
Speaker 1: what does this mean. This means that Roger believing that
Speaker 1: it was possible to run the four minute while when
Speaker 1: everyone else thought it was impossible. The idea is that
Speaker 1: his mental model of this made it easier for him
Speaker 1: to actually physically achieve this, Like it allowed him to
Speaker 1: engage in whatever behavior is he needed to do this,
Speaker 1: like you know, practicing or sort of pushing himself or whatever.
Speaker 1: Believing he could do it meant it made it easier
Speaker 1: for him to do it. And I think this is
Speaker 1: true for Lloyd too, right to believe he had to
Speaker 1: do it, he had to call her up and you know,
Speaker 1: just be his normal kind of jovial, kind funny, self
Speaker 1: like little self effacing, but like he just went for
Speaker 1: it and ultimately it worked.
Speaker 2: That's great. I mean what I love about the Roger
Speaker 2: Banister idea of Visa VI this movie is that we
Speaker 2: also see the inspiration for other people. And so there's
Speaker 2: this point at the at the party where where Lloyd
Speaker 2: goes up to one of his friends, Mike Cameron, and
Speaker 2: he's talking to him, and Mike Cameron says.
Speaker 3: I wanted to ask you, how did you get Diane
Speaker 3: Court to go out with you?
Speaker 2: I called her up?
Speaker 3: But how come it worked? I mean, like, what are you?
Speaker 2: I'm like dobblers?
Speaker 3: This is great? Excuse me, Hope?
Speaker 4: Thanks all right?
Speaker 1: So yeah, right that quote and Mike is basically every
Speaker 1: other runner, like in the late nineteen fifties who were like,
Speaker 1: oh well, if your Roger Banister can do it, you know,
Speaker 1: then the rest of us can do it too.
Speaker 2: Eli, what do you got?
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Laurie, I'm so psyched you mentioned this movie.
Speaker 3: I had forgotten just how much is in here, and
Speaker 3: watching it from the perspective of relationship science was deeply enlightening.
Speaker 3: I'm going to start by talking about something that's a
Speaker 3: little obscure in the movie, and it points to this
Speaker 3: idea that I put a lot of stock in that
Speaker 3: in a sense, social reality is reality, right, that basically
Speaker 3: things exist within our social consensus. And the line Diane
Speaker 3: says this to her dad, she says, it always feels
Speaker 3: good to tell you the truth, because if I can't
Speaker 3: share it with you, it's almost like it didn't happen.
Speaker 3: It's such a great line. And going back into the sixties,
Speaker 3: these sociologists Peter Berger and Hansfried Kellner had this paper
Speaker 3: where they talked about the microsociology of knowledge, and really
Speaker 3: what they're talking about is this idea that the reality
Speaker 3: of the world is sustained in conversations with significant others. Now,
Speaker 3: this is one with her dad, but more recently Maya Rassen,
Speaker 3: yach Malone and Tory Higgins have done research on this
Speaker 3: shared reality idea, and they talked about partners as making
Speaker 3: sense of the world together, and they have this line
Speaker 3: in one of their papers that I love, which is
Speaker 3: that humans are truth cartographers, searching for epistemic companions with
Speaker 3: whom to map out the bounds of reality. And the movie, again,
Speaker 3: it focuses on a lot of things, but I think
Speaker 3: one of the lesser noticed aspects of what they're doing
Speaker 3: is they're playing in this space that that yes, you
Speaker 3: can have these experiences, but until you've shared them with someone,
Speaker 3: they are not fully real. And I love that about
Speaker 3: this film.
Speaker 1: Oh gay Eli, But that raises an interesting question that's
Speaker 1: like shown in the title of the film, this idea
Speaker 1: of say anything, like should we share all our realities
Speaker 1: with people? I have to say again, rewatching this film
Speaker 1: with thirteen year olds, the scene where Diane is telling
Speaker 1: her dad about having sex because she's like she comes
Speaker 1: home lay after the whole like sex in the car thing,
Speaker 1: and then she's like, Okay, I just feel so sad
Speaker 1: I can't share this with you, so I'm just going
Speaker 1: to go through it dad, And she's just like, I
Speaker 1: attacked him. It was so great, you know. It's sex
Speaker 1: and Eilbu and the dad's face, and even these thirteen
Speaker 1: year olds were like something major has been violated there.
Speaker 1: This is a new This is a new, very much
Speaker 1: more sharing generation. I think that the generation like Diane
Speaker 1: came from. And so what does this science say there?
Speaker 1: Is that right? Should we really be able to share anything?
Speaker 1: Is honesty and shared reality about every truth important for relation? Sure?
Speaker 3: Yeah, look so I think there's two ways of engaging
Speaker 3: with that, Laurie, I love this question. The first one
Speaker 3: is about the shared reality aspect. And yes, I do
Speaker 3: think there's something realer about her having sex with Lloyd
Speaker 3: because she shared it with her dad. So in that sense,
Speaker 3: I think this classic shared reality literature is correct. This
Speaker 3: question of discretion. Are there circumstances under which we shouldn't
Speaker 3: be sharing everything with everybody, even our close partners. I
Speaker 3: don't think the field has gotten into this enough, but
Speaker 3: I am persuaded that there are certain sorts of discretion,
Speaker 3: certain sorts of things that are probably best not shared
Speaker 3: in certain relationships. And it's true that Diane and her
Speaker 3: dad had a very close and special bond, but in general,
Speaker 3: like details about one's sex life, sharing those with one's parents,
Speaker 3: might be a little dubious on average, that would be
Speaker 3: my guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and even in the movie, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: there is this moment of like, oh my gosh, she's
Speaker 1: telling her dad that she just had sex, but I
Speaker 1: think it was in the context of her just saying, look,
Speaker 1: I'm willing to share everything with you, even the tough things.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that is actually an interesting message
Speaker 1: that like with if we can't share our tough things
Speaker 1: with close others, or controversial things or you know, sensitive things, like,
Speaker 1: couldn't we share them with so So, Paul.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna throw it to you in a seconcause I
Speaker 3: know you also must have identified a million things. But Laurie,
Speaker 3: on this idea of say anything and share everything, I
Speaker 3: think part of the title of the movie is really
Speaker 3: about her dad's lie. We haven't talked too much about it,
Speaker 3: but the whole conceit of their relationship is say anything.
Speaker 3: But meanwhile, he's been involved in this embezzlement fraud and
Speaker 3: you know, his motives are probably good. Maybe we'll touch
Speaker 3: on that, but she's deeply shaken by it. And on
Speaker 3: this idea of like social relationship partners as truth cartographers,
Speaker 3: I find it interesting what happens to her when she
Speaker 3: finds out she's deeply shaken and what she says. She
Speaker 3: goes to Lloyd at that point, and she says, my
Speaker 3: father's guilty. He lied to me, He lied to everybody.
Speaker 3: I just left home. I need you. And I think
Speaker 3: really what she needs is her reality. Her sense of
Speaker 3: reality is kind of shaken, and she's looking to him
Speaker 3: to find some sort of stability about the world. And
Speaker 3: I do think part of why she went back to
Speaker 3: him is this epistemic the world isn't making sense, Please
Speaker 3: help motivation.
Speaker 2: I think that actually leads into one of the other
Speaker 2: things that I think this movie gets pretty correct, and
Speaker 2: it is the attachment transfer that takes place as people age,
Speaker 2: as people grow up. Typically for most adolescents, they will
Speaker 2: tell you that the people that they have the strongest
Speaker 2: attachment fonds with are their parents, and that includes various
Speaker 2: behaviors like who do you want to be around? We
Speaker 2: call it proximity seeking, right, but it's like who do
Speaker 2: you want to be around? Who do you go to?
Speaker 2: You for support when you're feeling down, we call that
Speaker 2: safe haven? And then who do you go to for
Speaker 2: advice or to celebrate and that we call the secure base,
Speaker 2: and usually the transfer kind of goes in that order
Speaker 2: as people move from having parents be their closest confidants
Speaker 2: to having romantic partners be their closest confidants. So first
Speaker 2: you want to spend all this time with a romantic party,
Speaker 2: but you might still go to the parent for advice
Speaker 2: or for support, and then the support transfers, and finally
Speaker 2: it's that advice component that moves over to the romantic partner.
Speaker 2: And I kind of see we I think we witness
Speaker 2: her go through that process, and any lie that scene
Speaker 2: you were just describing, I think is is the moment,
Speaker 2: the final moment where she has the transfer is complete, although.
Speaker 1: In her case I worry that like the she kind
Speaker 1: of does that transfer, but it really is like the
Speaker 1: only person that she ever talked to because she kind
Speaker 1: of have friends in high school was the dead and
Speaker 1: now it seems like the only person that she's talking
Speaker 1: to now is Lloyd, which bracket it might be a
Speaker 1: great prison talk to because Lloyd is kind and consider
Speaker 1: it and the best significant other they're out there, ever,
Speaker 1: but it's still it's risky, is still not really good,
Speaker 1: and I think even Lloyd Woyd recognizes this at one
Speaker 1: point in the film. He asks this question when she
Speaker 1: comes back to him. He says, do you need me
Speaker 1: or do you just need somebody else? Right? And I
Speaker 1: think there's kind of a open He doesn't actually even
Speaker 1: let her answer. He's like, never mind, I don't care,
Speaker 1: and he just kisses her.
Speaker 2: And this is really good.
Speaker 1: Reunion is perfect, but I think it raises this question
Speaker 1: of like, is this healthy that Diane is kind of
Speaker 1: transferring this attachment but maybe not seeking out kind of
Speaker 1: help support, safe haven's all these other things from just
Speaker 1: like other humans in her life.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, generally speaking, having a thin rather than a
Speaker 2: more developed social network is not great for people. You
Speaker 2: want to feel like your little diad is embedded in
Speaker 2: a set of other people who are all invested in
Speaker 2: helping your relationship to work, and so you know, people
Speaker 2: going off on their own. It's very romantic, but it's
Speaker 2: it's a little risky in.
Speaker 1: The grand and it's an interesting contrast with like how
Speaker 1: Lloyd Dobbler does it right. He's got Corey and DJ
Speaker 1: his like close female friends to go to. He's got
Speaker 1: this close relationship with his sister who's his actual sister
Speaker 1: in real life, Joan Cusack right, and her son. He's
Speaker 1: just like has this. He even has his like bevy
Speaker 1: of dude friends at the sip and Go that he
Speaker 1: goes to to talk to and get like relationship advice from.
Speaker 1: But I think there's there's a sense in which, like,
Speaker 1: Lloyd is healthier in part just because he has these
Speaker 1: other support systems to go to.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Cool, Well, Laurie, what else do you have about
Speaker 2: this movie? The other things this movie gets right?
Speaker 1: So so another thing I think this movie gets right,
Speaker 1: or at least I really hope the relationship science fears
Speaker 1: out and I hope it gets right right is this
Speaker 1: question of like, who do you find attractive?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: You know, Lloyd is this kind of like you know, underachiever.
Speaker 1: He just likes his kickboxing. He's kind of unremarkable, so
Speaker 1: unremarkable that when and he first calls Diane, she she
Speaker 1: pulls out her yearbook and starts flipping through to try
Speaker 1: to look at him and like look at his sort
Speaker 1: of just he's just not known to her, right, It's
Speaker 1: really funny he's but he's kind She sees that kindness later,
Speaker 1: even on that short phone call when he's asking her out.
Speaker 1: He kind of makes her laugh and she's into that,
Speaker 1: and it kind of raises us question, like, do we
Speaker 1: pick people based on, you know, just their looks, just
Speaker 1: their success criteria, what they're going to achieve in life,
Speaker 1: whether they're going to get some huge fellowship and be valedictorian,
Speaker 1: or do we pick people based just on how they
Speaker 1: make us feel? Right, They're kind to us, they make
Speaker 1: us laugh, they make us feel positive. And so my
Speaker 1: sense is that this movie is winning out according to
Speaker 1: the relationship science. But you two are the experts. What
Speaker 1: is a science all?
Speaker 3: You might have a thought or two on this one.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you brought that up, Laurie. In fact, your
Speaker 2: your hopes for the way attraction works are indeed true.
Speaker 2: That is very close to how people actually experience initial attraction,
Speaker 2: which is what I think is happening in that scene
Speaker 2: that you're described. So there's this classic study by Elaine
Speaker 2: Walster than Wallster now Elaine Hatfield, connected in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: and it's affectionately called the computer Dance Study. The idea
Speaker 2: was that these researchers, they brought a number of college
Speaker 2: freshmen together, set them up with each other, looked to
Speaker 2: see who like whom. The lore of this study is that, ah,
Speaker 2: only attractiveness mattered, nothing else really mattered. The reality is
Speaker 2: they didn't like have great measures of the other stuff,
Speaker 2: and even the measures they did have, it like kind
Speaker 2: of worked. It's just I think everybody was surprised that
Speaker 2: physical attractiveness was so potent. So when you look at
Speaker 2: contemporary speed dating data sets, yes, the appeal of attractiveness
Speaker 2: is very much present. It's very powerful, But so is confidence.
Speaker 2: That's also a huge effect size, right, and then that's
Speaker 2: Lloyd in a nutshell. So is being funny, so is
Speaker 2: being nice and responsive. These are all positive, meaningful predictors.
Speaker 2: It is not the case that only attractiveness matters. All
Speaker 2: of those other features end up being important to So
Speaker 2: I think you're spot on there.
Speaker 1: And I love how the movie just develops Lloyd's moral
Speaker 1: character over time. One of my favorite you mentioned it
Speaker 1: in your quick summary. I was surprised they got in
Speaker 1: their polity especially effective stro a summary was one of
Speaker 1: the first things that Diane learns about Lloyd is, at
Speaker 1: least at this party, he's the so called key master.
Speaker 1: For those of you who may not remember eighties parties
Speaker 1: is the person that gets to hold everybody's car keys
Speaker 1: and so that they don't necessarily drive home drunk. So
Speaker 1: Lloyd is sort of the evaluator of whether or not
Speaker 1: somebody is ready to drive home. And we see in
Speaker 1: the movie that this kind of comes to a head
Speaker 1: with one of the friends who comes up to it
Speaker 1: is screaming at him, and Lloyd is just like, you
Speaker 1: must Joe, Joe can't you know, he doesn't give him
Speaker 1: the keys, right. But I think that's a moment for
Speaker 1: Diane to realize, like, oh, this person is responsible. It
Speaker 1: can be responsible outside of your academic pursuits. But this
Speaker 1: person is also kind of compassionate and kind Like she's
Speaker 1: seeing all these like great strengths that he has not
Speaker 1: in the context of her relationship, but just kind of
Speaker 1: generally right. And I think that that must be a
Speaker 1: huge I mean, it's a huge factor in why every
Speaker 1: teenage girl who watched this movie in the eighties fell
Speaker 1: in love with Lloyd Dobbler. Yeah, so must be good
Speaker 1: for Diane too.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So on this like does the movie get the attraction right?
Speaker 3: It does so many different ways. So it also plays
Speaker 3: with some false myths that you know, she might be
Speaker 3: out of his league. She's the brains with the body
Speaker 3: of what did you say, the body of the game
Speaker 3: show hostess. Yeah, so she's also brains. Stay with brains.
Speaker 3: So one is this idea of the other is like, no,
Speaker 3: some like likes attract like like what would she want
Speaker 3: with you? You sort of burn out, you know, kickboxer,
Speaker 3: And the movie basically puts the lie to all those
Speaker 3: sorts of things. Of course, they're compatible because he's got
Speaker 3: these other qualities and they're attentive to each other and
Speaker 3: he makes her laugh. But one of the things that's
Speaker 3: interesting is is we talk a lot about attraction on
Speaker 3: this show, especially with regard to similarity. Right, So there's
Speaker 3: this conventional view widespread that we're attracted to people who
Speaker 3: are similar to us. Turns out if you study that,
Speaker 3: we're attracted to people whom we think are similar to us.
Speaker 3: And you see this here a little bit because you
Speaker 3: see one of the reasons why this might emerge because
Speaker 3: there's this scene where she works at an old person's
Speaker 3: home retirement home, I'm not sure what they call it
Speaker 3: at that time, and she says to Lloyd, do you
Speaker 3: want to come by? And he's like, eh, And she says, like,
Speaker 3: you seem to have something against old people, and then
Speaker 3: he sort of says, well, no, I don't, but I
Speaker 3: kind of do, because you know, I used to work
Speaker 3: at a Shmorgos board and the old people would flock
Speaker 3: there and they love to eat, and they just jam
Speaker 3: their mouths, you know, they with their mouths open. And
Speaker 3: she says, I think that's agism, and that's being prejudiced
Speaker 3: against people because they're old. Maybe their mouths don't work
Speaker 3: as well as yours. And he says, really, I, well,
Speaker 3: you're really turning me around here. I was looking at
Speaker 3: it the wrong way, I think. And there is research
Speaker 3: on this concept called attitude alignment in close relationships, and
Speaker 3: this has work than my advisor, Carol Ruspolt, was doing
Speaker 3: in collaboration with a student who was there with me
Speaker 3: named Jody Davis when I was in graduate school in
Speaker 3: the late nineties. But what they find in that space
Speaker 3: is that alignment is stronger to the extent that the
Speaker 3: issue is central to the other person. And clearly Lloyd's
Speaker 3: happy to recognize that Diane cares more about this than
Speaker 3: he does, and it's stronger to the degree that the
Speaker 3: relationship is important, and so what we see here is
Speaker 3: this will masquerade as look how much they have in
Speaker 3: common they both love old people, but only because he
Speaker 3: basically tuned to her over time into it feels like
Speaker 3: they have these things in common, but in reality they
Speaker 3: developed them together over time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that idea. It's also connected to one
Speaker 2: of the things that I really appreciated about this movie,
Speaker 2: which again sort of this nice guy manifesto idea for
Speaker 2: how it can work. And I think it highlights the
Speaker 2: importance of having fe female platonic friends if you are
Speaker 2: a heterosexual man. And this is everywhere in the literature.
Speaker 2: So if you look, for example, at correlations between like
Speaker 2: hostile sexism and if you're a man having female friends,
Speaker 2: that's a meaningful negative correlation there. The more female friends
Speaker 2: you have, the less likely you are to endorse hostile sexism.
Speaker 2: These ideas like oh, women are out to get men,
Speaker 2: women are out to take advantage of men. Right, things
Speaker 2: like this, and it's a simple inner group contact story.
Speaker 2: We spend more time with people just getting to know
Speaker 2: them as people, and we have less of those really
Speaker 2: pernicious beliefs. Furthermore, having a bigger other gender network and
Speaker 2: this is true for both men and women. Heterosexual men
Speaker 2: and women, they're more likely to form relationships over a
Speaker 2: few year period. This is also done on high school students.
Speaker 2: So I think we're really seeing that here that these
Speaker 2: are good ways to be in the world. If you
Speaker 2: are a heterosexual man, so you're interested in women and
Speaker 2: you want to actually get to know women and ultimately
Speaker 2: date somebody that you're really into, this movie is pointing
Speaker 2: out the one of the more effective ways to do that.
Speaker 1: Plus, the female friends are sometimes incredible songstressing. That's right,
Speaker 1: we'll get to that later.
Speaker 2: Honestly, those songs were stuck in my head all day. Joes.
Speaker 2: They're so catchy. Why no idea?
Speaker 1: Yeah, she should have went on to write commercial jingos.
Speaker 1: I hope that she did well in life. When you
Speaker 1: get that definition, it kind of sounds a little bit
Speaker 1: like the kinds of things that Lloyd's kind of male
Speaker 1: friends he seeks out right after Diane breaks up with him.
Speaker 1: Some of the views they expressed about women, I think
Speaker 1: the most succinct one was the youngest member of the
Speaker 1: Sip and Go crew, which is just this little kid
Speaker 1: who was like.
Speaker 2: You, O, my god, oh my god. But another reason
Speaker 2: that I totally I love that scene because again, it's
Speaker 2: all bearing down on exposing the lie of the of
Speaker 2: keeping the genders separate. And it's when Lloyd asked them,
Speaker 2: I got.
Speaker 1: A question, if you guys know so much about women,
Speaker 1: how come you here at like a gass and sip
Speaker 1: on Saturday night, completely lone drinking beers.
Speaker 2: No women anywhere, and they really have choice? Yeah? Right,
Speaker 2: uh huh. So anyway, there it points out.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wish Lloyd Dobbler could like walk around
Speaker 1: and like go to Embury and sell Reddit like thread
Speaker 1: and just walk in and ask the same Loyd Dobbler
Speaker 1: question to kind of break.
Speaker 2: This up seriously. All right, so tell us about some
Speaker 2: things that this movie gets wrong about the nature of
Speaker 2: close relationships. Either of you, what do you? What do
Speaker 2: you have?
Speaker 1: I just said some of the movie gets wrong generally,
Speaker 1: which is that kickboxing does not seem to be the
Speaker 1: sports It was close, but a little bit that's not
Speaker 1: really relationships. That's not really relationships. One of the things
Speaker 1: I wanted to look at was this question of stocking,
Speaker 1: because I think this movie portrays a kind of strange
Speaker 1: version of it. It was definitely a version that you know,
Speaker 1: I think based on all the memes that still exist now,
Speaker 1: like like thirty years later, like the holding up the
Speaker 1: boom box, which I was able to look up and
Speaker 1: is in fact a sharp GF seventy six thousand.
Speaker 2: Boom bombs, just like old schools.
Speaker 1: Like holding that up, and that is the purely romantic boombox.
Speaker 1: I think you like, it's really hard to find them now.
Speaker 1: I mean in part because it's like not the eighties anymore.
Speaker 1: But I think people have bought them for the specific
Speaker 1: act of sort of copying White Dollar. That's a move
Speaker 1: that like is iconic. It's on T shirts and memes,
Speaker 1: but it's also like border Light Stocker. And so Paul,
Speaker 1: what is the movie kind of saying about Stocker?
Speaker 2: And so I felt that the movie kind of gives
Speaker 2: a pass to certain stalking behaviors. It treats it kind
Speaker 2: of romantically, kind of I don't want to say how
Speaker 2: to manual, but there's there's there's a couple of things happening.
Speaker 2: One and I'll start with this, even though this really
Speaker 2: seems benign. Are the eight phone messages right, eight left messages.
Speaker 2: So there are studies that look at different forms of
Speaker 2: stalking and Leaving messages or unwanted phone calls are some
Speaker 2: of the most common ones. Those show the biggest discrepancy
Speaker 2: between what the person who is being left feels is
Speaker 2: likely to be unpleasant, and what the person who is
Speaker 2: being stalked feels. People who are being stocked hate the
Speaker 2: phone messages, they really want them to stop, and the
Speaker 2: people leaving the messages or like, oh whatever, I'm sure
Speaker 2: it didn't really bother them. They're really really unpleasant, and
Speaker 2: so is showing up at somebody's house uninvited. Also not
Speaker 2: the kind of thing that most people look upon very
Speaker 2: favorably if they've broken up with somebody. I think that
Speaker 2: I think that whole meme, the whole idea, Like rewatching it,
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, this is not what I remembered.
Speaker 2: I remembered something inspiring, not like triumphant, but like like
Speaker 2: let's go like let's defy your father. That is not
Speaker 2: what that scene is it at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all the adults that I watched this film with
Speaker 1: remember the boombox scene as ending with Diane kind of
Speaker 1: rushing out and that's when they made up, and like
Speaker 1: it kind of worked, And I was like, first it
Speaker 1: didn't work. He's just like creepily showing up with spoo
Speaker 1: box in the middle of the night.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it would have been It would have been better
Speaker 3: if they had the scene where he got back into
Speaker 3: his car and drove home. That scene never made it into.
Speaker 1: The Yes, right, So he thought really carefully and was like,
Speaker 1: maybe that was a little too much, like I should.
Speaker 2: Really respect And so I want to actually want to
Speaker 2: give the movie credit for that, that it actually didn't
Speaker 2: show that working right, and that it and that a
Speaker 2: number of other things have to transpire before she changes
Speaker 2: her mind. So it's more I think that I'm critiquing
Speaker 2: the way the movie lodged itself in our collective memories.
Speaker 2: Contained some things that I think the movie didn't intend
Speaker 2: but aren't a very good idea.
Speaker 3: Laurie, you're gonna regret that you ever chose to be
Speaker 3: on our show. But I have a question for you
Speaker 3: about this. So what does it mean to seduce someone?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: What does seduction mean if we stipulate that it isn't
Speaker 3: stuff like this, right, if it isn't stuff like well,
Speaker 3: she wasn't sure, So I tried to be more charming.
Speaker 3: I did something innovative. I left a funny phone message
Speaker 3: or ate, and I agree that, like, I don't think
Speaker 3: we really want these behaviors. Again, the movie gets away
Speaker 3: with it in a way a lot of these old
Speaker 3: movies get away with it because she actually did want it, right,
Speaker 3: That's the thing that he can't know, And certainly she's
Speaker 3: not giving him reason to believe that she really wants it,
Speaker 3: but she did, and so it's sort of okay from
Speaker 3: our perspective, from the viewer's perspective. But Laurie, do you
Speaker 3: have an opinion, like what would it mean to be
Speaker 3: interested in somebody, be unsure whether that person is interested
Speaker 3: in you, and to try to persuade them that, you know,
Speaker 3: give me a try, like it'll be fun? And is
Speaker 3: it if it isn't this, if it isn't what Lloyd
Speaker 3: Dobbler did in this movie, Like what does it look like?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I think it is kind of what Lloyd
Speaker 1: Dobbler does, not with the boombox part, but with the
Speaker 1: other parts. Right, it's really thinking from the other person's
Speaker 1: perspective about how to help them and what they need. Right.
Speaker 1: One of the scenes in the beginning that Diane Court
Speaker 1: actually comments on to her dad later when she's like, well,
Speaker 1: you is why I fell in love with Dloyd was
Speaker 1: that they're just kind of walking around and Lloyd notices
Speaker 1: some broken glass on the ground and you know, it's
Speaker 1: post parties, so she's kind of walking around barefoot. He's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: let me just move that out of the way for you.
Speaker 1: Like he's thinking about it from her perspective. He's kind
Speaker 1: of perspective taking in that case, hopefully accurately about what
Speaker 1: she really needs. And I think that's the spot where
Speaker 1: it kind of seduction works best, like when we're kind
Speaker 1: of perspective taking about what would help another person, but
Speaker 1: then looking for signs of consent, right, And that's the
Speaker 1: spot where I think the boom Box is kind of
Speaker 1: on the borderline. But even Lloyd, again, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: defending him because he's just Sizemoy Lloyd Dobbler, and you know,
Speaker 1: how can I, like, you know, regret all the things
Speaker 1: I watched in the eighties and those things. But even
Speaker 1: then he has this sign where people are trying to
Speaker 1: convince him to call her some more. I think it
Speaker 1: was his girlfriends or trying to convince him to call
Speaker 1: him some more, and he says, I draw the line
Speaker 1: at eight. You know, answer messages, and to be fair bracketed,
Speaker 1: I do think that, like maybe it was okay to
Speaker 1: do a little more in the eighties just because like
Speaker 1: sometimes if you were running for the.
Speaker 2: Phone, like you didn't know that's a good point. And
Speaker 2: the cell phone.
Speaker 1: Goes to the message they don't want to talk to you,
Speaker 1: But the answer machine sometimes is like the chords really
Speaker 1: far away. They don't have any pocket, you know. So,
Speaker 1: but but but Lloyd is saying, I'm setting a boundary, right,
Speaker 1: I'm giving her a chance, but I'm drawing the line
Speaker 1: a home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's persuaded to do that one last one, and
Speaker 2: then we see right that she almost picks it up.
Speaker 2: So he gets an out from our perspective because we
Speaker 2: know what's going on a little bit behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: I hope you're enjoying my appearance on the new podcast Love. Factually,
Speaker 1: it's time for a quick break, but Paul Eli and
Speaker 1: I will be back soon to explain what other things
Speaker 1: say anything gets wrong about relationship science?
Speaker 2: So anything else about what this movie gets wrong about?
Speaker 2: Close relationships? Eli?
Speaker 3: What do you have? Look? It mostly gets stuff right,
Speaker 3: but you know it makes some errors, like every movie,
Speaker 3: and one of them is you know, a very forgivable error.
Speaker 3: But generally it's risky to make forever promises in the
Speaker 3: first weeks and months of a new relationship. And so
Speaker 3: the letter that he writes to her, Lloyd writes this
Speaker 3: letter to Diane after they have sex and he's really
Speaker 3: into her, and the letter in its entirety is Dear Diane,
Speaker 3: I'll always be there for you all the love in
Speaker 3: my heart Lloyd. Now I don't have a problem with
Speaker 3: dear Diane or all the love in my heart or Lloyd,
Speaker 3: but I think the part when he says I'll always
Speaker 3: be there for.
Speaker 2: You it's always, is probably.
Speaker 3: A bold commitment that he's actually he's making a vow
Speaker 3: that he really is probably not in a position to make.
Speaker 3: And we do this. We do this a lot, and
Speaker 3: it's desirable and we like it, and we want to
Speaker 3: feel this way. We stand up at our wedding vows
Speaker 3: and say I will love you forever. These seem like
Speaker 3: high risk choices for somebody who takes seriously what the
Speaker 3: definition of a vow is. But I do think this
Speaker 3: is one of the cases where I just felt a
Speaker 3: little sheepish about suggesting that the really romantic thing to
Speaker 3: do is to tell somebody something that you really cannot
Speaker 3: you probably cannot promise you're gonna be able to deliver overtime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you forget when you see the movie because it
Speaker 1: seems like it's built over this whole, you know, to
Speaker 1: our period. It's a little ROBYO or Juliet, right. You know,
Speaker 1: they've only really kind of hung out with each other
Speaker 1: for like a couple of days really, you know.
Speaker 2: Right, and you and even you know, it's over sixteen
Speaker 2: weeks and now they are going to a foreign country
Speaker 2: together to presumably to live together. And that is pretty
Speaker 2: fast to jump into that level of commitment. And the
Speaker 2: movie clearly wants us to feel that we are witnessing
Speaker 2: a success story. I mean, you know, the ending, I
Speaker 2: love it, and I love the contrast with the graduate
Speaker 2: right that it's you know, here are these two people
Speaker 2: embarking on this adventure and this one. We're supposed to
Speaker 2: be rooting for them and feeling like they've got it.
Speaker 2: But the reality is sixteen weeks. That is quite a
Speaker 2: leap of faith to think that they've got it figured
Speaker 2: out at this point.
Speaker 3: You know, Paul, It's interesting because I actually think this
Speaker 3: is the other thing that maybe the movie doesn't get
Speaker 3: right and this depends on interpretation, but like, what is
Speaker 3: the point of the ding on the airport, Like this
Speaker 3: is literally the last thing that happens in the entire movie.
Speaker 3: It's obvious that this is supposed to be really significant.
Speaker 2: Good though it's good.
Speaker 3: Reading, there is a reading where you're basically like, the
Speaker 3: early parts of a relationship are turbulent. So again just
Speaker 3: a reminder for people who haven't seen the movie. This
Speaker 3: early Diana is scared of flying and Lloyd is with
Speaker 3: her on this flight, literally the last scene of the movie.
Speaker 3: They're going to England for this fellowship that she has,
Speaker 3: and he says, like, if anything goes wrong, it's going
Speaker 3: to be within the first five minutes, So you just
Speaker 3: have to make it to the ding the airport, the
Speaker 3: take off your seat belt ding. I think it was
Speaker 3: the no smoking ding in.
Speaker 1: The no smoking ding speaking because everybody else on the
Speaker 1: plane is like holding their parettes, wait till they get
Speaker 1: light what up?
Speaker 2: I think right, the ding is light up.
Speaker 3: It is basically like but either way it could have
Speaker 3: been the seatbuilting. And so one reading is that now
Speaker 3: they're through the turbulent time and we're witnessing like the
Speaker 3: ding is like and now it's smooth sailing. And if
Speaker 3: that is what Cameron Crow intended, I think he's really
Speaker 3: guilty of the and they all lived happily ever after
Speaker 3: sort of things. Yeah, I think that is My other
Speaker 3: concern about the movie is that if he was implying
Speaker 3: something like that in the closing scene, that strikes me
Speaker 3: as wildly incorrect about what the next sixty years of
Speaker 3: that relationship might look.
Speaker 1: Like, or the next like, you know, four months and
Speaker 1: she starts studying and there's no kickboxing and all of London.
Speaker 2: And right, and what exactly is he going to do
Speaker 2: with himself? I think that's right. I think compared to
Speaker 2: some movies where they get together at the end and
Speaker 2: then we don't see anything about them encountering challenges, I
Speaker 2: think those versions are worse because we do see them
Speaker 2: overcoming some stuff here. But I hear you. As much
Speaker 2: as I love the way that whole ending is done,
Speaker 2: I get it that you know that there are trials
Speaker 2: to come.
Speaker 1: Can I just can I just like, can I try
Speaker 1: out a like a more empirically sane version. Yes, what
Speaker 1: if that whole plane flight where there's a lot of turbulence,
Speaker 1: like an unusual amount of turbulence for like a plane
Speaker 1: taking off before the seatbeltding goes off. What if that
Speaker 1: is kind of a metaphor for like, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: on this, you know, trip together, the long version of
Speaker 1: our life together is gonna have a lot of turbulence,
Speaker 1: but by holding each other's hand, we'll get through it,
Speaker 1: and you know, we'll kind of wait for the day.
Speaker 3: You know it's fair.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: You know what's funny about that, LORI, is that that
Speaker 3: reminds me of the point you made earlier about the
Speaker 3: social network. Because his friends, he's got these two really
Speaker 3: close women friends, girl friends, I guess, and they have
Speaker 3: also packed some stuff for this for them, right, They've
Speaker 3: packed some things to make sure, like I think they
Speaker 3: know that she's nervous about flying and they're having this
Speaker 3: adventure together as a couple for the first time, and
Speaker 3: so those friends who are really invested in the relationship
Speaker 3: have packed for them some nice things for the trip.
Speaker 3: And that is I think hearkens back to Wow, they
Speaker 3: seem to have a pretty good foundation for a lot
Speaker 3: of what they might be going through next.
Speaker 2: That's cool. It's like a wedding thing, right, It's like,
Speaker 2: you know, you get everybody together to sort of give you,
Speaker 2: you know, well, wishes on your way. I object, So
Speaker 2: are we okay with this? Anything in this movie raised
Speaker 2: moral quandaries or other concern to other things? Age badly?
Speaker 2: What does it everybody have here?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: I could say. What was interesting was that, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: I watched it with twenty twenty four thirteen year old
Speaker 1: and they genuinely really liked the film. They had two
Speaker 1: things that were kind of funny, and maybe this is
Speaker 1: that they were a little young. One was that, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, we were watching with their dad, and
Speaker 1: so they really did and like the sexy's like, oh god,
Speaker 1: they're kissing, why are they under the blanket?
Speaker 2: Why is he shaky?
Speaker 1: Like they just literally couldn't handle that. But the second
Speaker 1: thing was that they were really confused when Diane broke
Speaker 1: up with BOYD, where they're like, but she doesn't think that?
Speaker 1: Why is she saying that she doesn't think that? And
Speaker 1: they kind of just like couldn't get it, Like they
Speaker 1: kind of couldn't handle her kind of confusion based on
Speaker 1: what was going on with her dad of sort of
Speaker 1: stepping away and they're like, but she doesn't think that right,
Speaker 1: they're going to get back together, right, like they kind
Speaker 1: of were seeing And so maybe this is the current
Speaker 1: generation having a hard time with like, you know, tough
Speaker 1: emotions or complicated conflict in the film. But they had
Speaker 1: a really tough time.
Speaker 2: That's really interesting.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: One of the things that was really eye opening about
Speaker 3: watching it again and here, Laurie, thank you again for
Speaker 3: recommending this one. It was just a delight. Is it's
Speaker 3: not just a move for kids that was that was
Speaker 3: something that I think you're describing here, like the thirteen
Speaker 3: year olds didn't get it, but also as somebody who
Speaker 3: is now a dad, I'm actually a dad of a
Speaker 3: teen girl, and I just thought a whole lot more
Speaker 3: about the dad daughter or dynamic. And the truth is
Speaker 3: I at the top called this like a love triangle.
Speaker 3: I don't think that's the standard way people think about
Speaker 3: this movie, but I do think that's what's happening, is
Speaker 3: that these are two men who are deeply in love
Speaker 3: with obviously there's nothing sexual with her dad, of course,
Speaker 3: but deeply in love with her that she is going
Speaker 3: to be somewhat or to a significant degree, the center
Speaker 3: of their lives, and she's trying to balance that, and
Speaker 3: she feels awkward about this time that she's spending with Lloyd,
Speaker 3: given that she's going away, and she feels like maybe
Speaker 3: she should be with her dad. And so I think
Speaker 3: there is like a sophistication, an adultness of this teen
Speaker 3: romance that you almost never get in a teen romance.
Speaker 3: And I think that's why. Part of the reason why
Speaker 3: I think the thirteen year olds didn't get it is
Speaker 3: she feels this strong sense of obligation to her dad
Speaker 3: and doesn't know how to fit Lloyd into that schema,
Speaker 3: and therefore ends up playing around for a while with
Speaker 3: breaking up with him in a way that doesn't make
Speaker 3: sense for her feelings for Lloyd, but isn't crazy from
Speaker 3: the perspective of the various emotional forces that are buffeting her.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I flagged as being a
Speaker 2: little bit that sort of age badly or aged strangely
Speaker 2: about this movie is in this same category. And I'll
Speaker 2: pose this in the form of a question, did did
Speaker 2: some gen xers think this was a parenting manual that
Speaker 2: the way to parent is to really push your kid
Speaker 2: as much as possible, cut them off from socialization when
Speaker 2: they are when they are in high school. Again, I
Speaker 2: think this is sometimes a stereotype of Gen X contemporary
Speaker 2: parenting rather than the reality. But I do think there
Speaker 2: is much more pressure today to achieve, achieve, achieve for
Speaker 2: people in high school that people like Diane Court are
Speaker 2: very common these days. Right, you know, she was the
Speaker 2: one person in her high school and now like this
Speaker 2: is a thing, and so how many people saw this
Speaker 2: movie thought like that's how I'm going to treat my
Speaker 2: dad and tax fraud.
Speaker 1: But I mean, apart apart from the text r No,
Speaker 1: I mean, Paul, I think you're really oddto something, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if we look at the current generation of teenagers, right
Speaker 1: the thirteen year olds I were watching as with, this
Speaker 1: is the loneliest generation in history since we've been measuring
Speaker 1: loneliness and teenagers. They're also the most academically busy, like
Speaker 1: the most academically stribe. If we just like look at
Speaker 1: just sheer amounts of homework, those things have gone up
Speaker 1: since the making of this film. And beyond that, we
Speaker 1: see like the seeds of the fact that they're kind
Speaker 1: of like Diane, like shifting away from these sort of
Speaker 1: dating relationships, right Like the fact that, like, modern teenagers
Speaker 1: are having less sex than teenagers have ever had back
Speaker 1: in the day, and so you might be kind of
Speaker 1: onto something where the sort of Diane Court school of
Speaker 1: child bearing was like kind of coming up a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another thing that the kiddo has picked up on is that,
Speaker 1: you know, Lloyd does this lovely thing where he's the
Speaker 1: key master and he's taken everyone's keys, but then when
Speaker 1: his job is over, he's like, hand me a beer,
Speaker 1: and he then goat proceeds to drive home away to beer.
Speaker 1: And even the thirteen year olds were like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: Like I thought we were drinking and driving.
Speaker 2: Good point. Yeah, that's great relationship quotes. We've hit a
Speaker 2: few good ones already. But do either of you have
Speaker 2: any other quotes that we should clip in here and
Speaker 2: talk about.
Speaker 1: So mine is kind of a funny one, and it
Speaker 1: gets back to this idea that like, these are teenagers
Speaker 1: who are acting in the film that were trying to
Speaker 1: identify with, but the film is actually written by adults,
Speaker 1: and in a few points, I think you hear the
Speaker 1: adult voice kicking. And so this was a quote that
Speaker 1: happened just after Lloyd has sex with Diane and he's
Speaker 1: meeting up with his friends and they're trying to suss out, Oh,
Speaker 1: did you have sex or did you have sex?
Speaker 3: Look at his face, he did the deed. You're an
Speaker 3: inflation lady should go on the seven hundred club or
Speaker 3: some saying, all right, calmed downright, calm down, nothing's different, Lloyd.
Speaker 4: Listen to me. Everything has changed. You've had sex. No
Speaker 4: matter what you might think, nothing will ever be the
Speaker 4: same between you two. You might be sixty, you might
Speaker 4: be walking down the street and you'll talk to her
Speaker 4: about something whatever, But what you'll really be thinking is
Speaker 4: we had sex.
Speaker 1: And that struck me as like interestingly, like it struck
Speaker 1: me as the kind of case that you couldn't know
Speaker 1: that unless you were, like, you know, in your forties
Speaker 1: or fifties, like like, I just didn't think any nineteen
Speaker 1: year old will be thinking back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Sometimes sometimes Corey in particular has a wisdom beyond her years,
Speaker 2: beyond her years.
Speaker 3: There was somewhere between the fifty third and the fifty
Speaker 3: fourth songs she wrote for Joe that she just developed
Speaker 3: life's wisdom.
Speaker 2: I think I wonder if that tape is like on
Speaker 2: the internet somewhere else if we can buy like if
Speaker 2: somebody has like cobbled together all of those clips and
Speaker 2: somehow created something.
Speaker 1: And then we can ultimately play on a sharp GF.
Speaker 2: So I love it all right? Any other any other quotes?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's one other thing I love. He left those
Speaker 3: seven voicemails, and then on the eighth and final voicemail,
Speaker 3: he says, I've been thinking maybe I didn't know you,
Speaker 3: maybe your mirage. Maybe the world is a blur of
Speaker 3: food and sex and spectacle and everyone was just hurtling
Speaker 3: towards the Kropos. So which case is not your fault?
Speaker 3: You know, maybe it's a good side all this.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I've been thinking about this thing. The reason I love
Speaker 3: that is because it ties back a little bit to
Speaker 3: this like truth cartographers. He's like really thrown at the
Speaker 3: dissolution of the relationship, and he doesn't really make he's
Speaker 3: not really able to make sense of things. Maybe you
Speaker 3: were just a mirage. It's all sort of confusing. And
Speaker 3: this is a pretty common reaction in the wake of
Speaker 3: a breakup, is we lose a little bit of our
Speaker 3: sense of order, our sense of structure, our sense of
Speaker 3: who we are. And I think this quote, this last
Speaker 3: eighth and final voicemail he leaves for her, I think
Speaker 3: really captures the essence of this idea that it can
Speaker 3: be bewildering, it can be confusing to end a meaningful relationship,
Speaker 3: and he's just struggling to make sense of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That is one of the hardest things that people have
Speaker 2: to do to get over a breakup is to make
Speaker 2: sense of it and develop that narrative. So what do
Speaker 2: we wish we knew about close relationships or any other
Speaker 2: psychological phenomenon, you know, questions that this movie poses that
Speaker 2: we don't have great answers to.
Speaker 3: Yet, How should we act when we are suspicious of
Speaker 3: a loved one? So at first, Diana is convinced that
Speaker 3: there's no way her father did anything wrong. She goes
Speaker 3: to the irs and says, stop it, you've got the
Speaker 3: wrong guy, and he's like, no, we don't. He's guilty
Speaker 3: as sin, and then gives her enough reason to believe like,
Speaker 3: uh oh, maybe he did this. So what does she do?
Speaker 3: She snoops, she looks through his drawers. She eventually unlocks
Speaker 3: something private and then eventually discovers uh, oh, there's a
Speaker 3: bunch of like one hundred dollars bills here that shouldn't
Speaker 3: be here. And I just don't have a sense of
Speaker 3: how people generally when they become a little suspicious. I
Speaker 3: don't know, is he getting text messages from that girl?
Speaker 3: I sort of think maybe is that an excuse? Is
Speaker 3: that something that people use to say, Okay, well I'm
Speaker 3: going to break into his email or his texts and
Speaker 3: try to find out what's going on. When do people
Speaker 3: do that? When do they start acting like private detectives?
Speaker 3: Under what circumstances is it ethical to do those things?
Speaker 3: I just don't think we know that much about that.
Speaker 1: Well, this is as well where I, at least in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, I feel like people crowdsource this a lot.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you all are fans of am
Speaker 1: I overreacting on Reddit? Good, but I think this would
Speaker 1: be like a classic am I overreacting on Reddit where
Speaker 1: it's like my dad, you know, the IRIS is investigating
Speaker 1: my dad or you know, nursing home text fraud and
Speaker 1: you know I saw some money like in his private chamber.
Speaker 1: Am I erecting? But I think that is something we
Speaker 1: can do, right, I mean, I think not necessarily on
Speaker 1: Reddit but we can go to our close others and
Speaker 1: ask the question, like can you give me some advice here?
Speaker 1: Like does this make sense? And again this gets back
Speaker 1: to the kind of thing you were talking about earlier, Eli,
Speaker 1: right where we're looking for truth seeking. Right, we're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out is my like if you have that
Speaker 1: reality just privately? It's hard to kind of know, but
Speaker 1: we're getting some other folks's opinions on things. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden we can know, am I just being paranoid?
Speaker 1: Or is this kind of a real situation that we
Speaker 1: need to pay attention to?
Speaker 2: And more to Youtao, I feel like one thing we
Speaker 2: talk about a lot on this show is the like
Speaker 2: motivated reasoning and close relationships, and we have all these
Speaker 2: biases about our close others. We just want to believe
Speaker 2: what we want to believe, and it is also important
Speaker 2: to realize that sometimes those beliefs cannot be sustained in
Speaker 2: light of reality. Reality is still a thing and at
Speaker 2: some point you have to confront that. And so going
Speaker 2: to other relationships, I mean that kind of social proof
Speaker 2: is a good way to do that. For me. The
Speaker 2: thing that this movie pointed out that I loved but
Speaker 2: also thought like, Oh, I wish we studied attraction like
Speaker 2: this more. And it is the nature of their first date,
Speaker 2: right that they go to this I'm not talking about that.
Speaker 2: Whatever the thing was them, all of those who count
Speaker 2: right that doesn't go when they go to the party
Speaker 2: and they're like kind of interacting, but they're also watching
Speaker 2: each other interact with other people, right that. This is
Speaker 2: in many ways what dating kind of used to be.
Speaker 2: It was about social networks. You're getting to know each other,
Speaker 2: but other people are floating in and out of the
Speaker 2: conversations at the same time. And this is how we
Speaker 2: see if there's a connection with somebody else. And I
Speaker 2: wonder if we've really lost something as we transition to
Speaker 2: the resume version of dating, where you sit down across
Speaker 2: from somebody and I talk and you talk, and I
Speaker 2: talk and you talk and we exchange statistics and we
Speaker 2: hope that something clicks. And I think we really miss
Speaker 2: something by not having these kinds of dates. There was
Speaker 2: something really special about this idea that they are on
Speaker 2: a date and they're only interacting for a fraction of
Speaker 2: the time. Like, what a cool idea this is, And
Speaker 2: you know, I I wish this wasn't so much a
Speaker 2: bygone era totally.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's one that I got interested in. But it
Speaker 1: might just be how the Lloyd Dobbler relationship situation maps
Speaker 1: on to my own love life right now.
Speaker 2: Oh it's good.
Speaker 1: And so there's this open question about whether or not
Speaker 1: Lloyd and Diane got together at the right time. Right.
Speaker 1: Clearly they went to high school for three years together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had this weird three year.
Speaker 2: High school where they had this oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was another thing of thirteen years liked
Speaker 1: went to school for thirty years, was like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a big mind blowing for them. But clearly died
Speaker 1: and Lloyd overlapped for three whole years. Clearly there was
Speaker 1: lots of parties who could have invited her to it's
Speaker 1: after graduation. She's only got like a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: left before she skidaddles off to the UK for her fellowship.
Speaker 1: Was that the right time to kind of get together?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: Should he have done it sooner? Is there something special
Speaker 1: about a relationship that begins when it doesn't have much time?
Speaker 1: And the reason I like this question is that my
Speaker 1: husband and I got together right after I found doubt
Speaker 1: that I was getting a job at Yale, and I
Speaker 1: was about to move there in a couple of weeks time.
Speaker 1: We had almost exactly the sixteen weeks the diet and
Speaker 1: Lloyd had and.
Speaker 3: We found I've always wanted to be a New Haven.
Speaker 2: I think he super didn't think that.
Speaker 1: Maybe yeah, yeah, he didn't think that. He didn't like that,
Speaker 1: but you know, I think that in some ways it was.
Speaker 1: In some ways at the time it felt like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's no pressure to this. We just kind of get
Speaker 1: to know each other and enjoy it, because it would
Speaker 1: be silly to think that the end of this has
Speaker 1: to result in, you know, him hopping on a plane
Speaker 1: to New Haven until you know the turbulence caused a
Speaker 1: ding or I guess a car version of that or whatever.
Speaker 1: And I've wondered, like, is there data on that. Was
Speaker 1: that a good thing? It was a good thing for me.
Speaker 1: It seems like it was a good thing for Lloyd
Speaker 1: and Diana, though as we've talked about, we don't know
Speaker 1: what happened afterwards. Is the preciousness of the little time
Speaker 1: and the fact that we can't think of this as
Speaker 1: a long term thing as there's some other constraint. Does
Speaker 1: that help things or hurt things.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating. You know, we don't study this all that well.
Speaker 2: You're right, this is phenomenon of on again, off again relationships,
Speaker 2: and the general idea is that some relationships have more
Speaker 2: of this turbulence, this turnover than other relationships do, and
Speaker 2: they generally tend to have a number of other features
Speaker 2: that are less than optimal. But I don't think there's
Speaker 2: good work looking at the situational forces that might set
Speaker 2: people up well when they start a relationship or set
Speaker 2: people up poorly. Other than some of the social network stuff,
Speaker 2: there really isn't that much out there. But it'd be
Speaker 2: really interesting to look at something as simple as how
Speaker 2: much time will we be in the same place and
Speaker 2: to see what kind of effect that has.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, there's not much in terms of the
Speaker 3: situations that set you up well. But it occurs to
Speaker 3: me there's another way of thinking about this question, which is,
Speaker 3: are there circumstances that will supercharge the pace of a
Speaker 3: romantic connection regardless of the long term future. And Paul,
Speaker 3: you and I talk sometimes about our errand's fast friends procedure. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you're asking crazy intimate questions, or you look into each
Speaker 3: other's eyes, for three consecutive minutes. Right, there's there's these procedures.
Speaker 3: My guess, Lorie, is that the what I think of
Speaker 3: is like the summer camp romance thing, this idea that
Speaker 3: there's an end date. My guess is that that is
Speaker 3: in some ways a disinhibitor, and I wish the field
Speaker 3: knew more. My guess is that there is probably like
Speaker 3: a hypology or a category of disinhibitors, things that make
Speaker 3: us willing to get vulnerable and intimate quickly. And so yes,
Speaker 3: my guess is that is that knowing that we've only
Speaker 3: got X number of weeks or X numbers of months
Speaker 3: will do that. And then the interesting question is, okay, well,
Speaker 3: if you have supercharged the intimacy, under what circumstances does
Speaker 3: that intimacy last for a long time, possibly even forever?
Speaker 3: And that is something that I'm I'm pretty sure we
Speaker 3: know nothing about.
Speaker 2: That's really cool. So it's like, well, this relationship has
Speaker 2: a certain amount of intimacy potential. And if you give us,
Speaker 2: you know, four days, we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 2: get it off, we're gonna fast it all. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: really cool.
Speaker 1: And you all have talked about cases like this, like
Speaker 1: before Sunrise and before Sunset, these other movies where you
Speaker 1: have these kind of short periods of supercharging relationships. I wonder,
Speaker 1: if these factors.
Speaker 2: Play right, that the ticking clock could in fact be
Speaker 2: an accelerant in some cases. And I think we see
Speaker 2: it in those movies, And yeah, you're right, I think
Speaker 2: we see it here too in some ways, in a
Speaker 2: more realistic way, sixteen weeks would be a more common
Speaker 2: hypercharged romance than those movies where it's happening in a
Speaker 2: matter of hours. Yeah. So we rate movies on this
Speaker 2: podcast from one to five stars. So let's all go
Speaker 2: through and talk about how many stars we give this movie. Laurie,
Speaker 2: I will throw to you first. How many stars do
Speaker 2: you give?
Speaker 1: Say anything, one hundred million? Stuff Like I chose this
Speaker 1: one because it's a favorite Lloyd Dobbler swoon, Swood. Wait,
Speaker 1: what's my top stars?
Speaker 2: For five?
Speaker 3: Five?
Speaker 2: You can go as I as five stars?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so I love this movie Lloyd Doubler's swoon.
Speaker 1: It's got to be five stars for me?
Speaker 2: Okay, and Eli, how many stars for saying it five?
Speaker 3: And only because I can't take all the five hundred
Speaker 3: million or whatever it was I. I knew that I
Speaker 3: liked this movie, I didn't really remember just how great
Speaker 3: it was.
Speaker 2: We're gonna make this a hat trick. Five stars for
Speaker 2: me as well. What a man to have as a
Speaker 2: role model, John Cusack, Thank you, right? I mean, we
Speaker 2: talk about the bad messages from eighties movies, and this
Speaker 2: was the antidote came along in nineteen eighty nine and
Speaker 2: cleaned the slate. We also rate movies on Russbolts now.
Speaker 2: The russ Bold is named after Eli's advisor, the late
Speaker 2: great Carol Rusbold, pioneer of close relationships research, with five
Speaker 2: stars indicating a near perfect depiction of the nature of
Speaker 2: close relationships. I'll go first on this one. This movie
Speaker 2: gets four rouss bolts from me. I think it got
Speaker 2: a lot of things right, a lot of the things
Speaker 2: that we covered here today. A few things that I
Speaker 2: thought were the reason it doesn't go all the way
Speaker 2: to five russ bolts for me, is really just that
Speaker 2: stalking component. I think it somehow lodged in our memories
Speaker 2: as endorsing or maybe excusing some things that we'd call
Speaker 2: stocking today. But overall, four ross bolts from me, Eli,
Speaker 2: What about you?
Speaker 3: I have this at five Roussbolts too. I mean I
Speaker 3: had a list of I think eleven different things that
Speaker 3: I thought the movie got right. We talked about some
Speaker 3: of the bigger ones, but I was floored by the
Speaker 3: level of insight that Cameron Crow had when writing this,
Speaker 3: and also by the delivery from these particular actors. I
Speaker 3: thought it was just great and illustrated exactly. I think
Speaker 3: a lot of how relationships work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Laurie, what about you? What do you think?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I gotta go with like four and a half bustle.
Speaker 1: It's like, Paul, I share your I share your intuition
Speaker 1: that the stocking stuff just had me a little bit
Speaker 1: more skewed out when I rewatched it. That was probably
Speaker 1: because one of the thirteen year olds I watched with
Speaker 1: the boy, Dave max uh just at the end of
Speaker 1: the film, took his iPhone on speaker phone and played
Speaker 1: Peter Gabriel's in your Eyes like standing there looking for Lord,
Speaker 1: and I was like, no, that wasn't it was.
Speaker 2: It was a desperate, desperate moment.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna knock it down point five. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I share Eli's intuition too, that like this
Speaker 1: movie that a whole lot of stuff right for the eighties.
Speaker 2: It really did well. This is all the time we
Speaker 2: have for today. This has been the Love Actually Podcast
Speaker 2: and we have been delighted to have as our special
Speaker 2: guest doctor Lorie Sandris, host of this Happiness Lab podcast. So, Laurie,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 1: Anytime, I'm ready to come back.
Speaker 2: Whenever you need, we are likely to take it.
Speaker 1: Whenever you need an expert on bad eighties movies, I
Speaker 1: am here.
Speaker 2: Let's do it. Let's do it. Were good ones for
Speaker 2: that matter. All right, Well, that is all we have
Speaker 2: for you today and I look forward to doing this
Speaker 2: with both of you at some time in the future.
Speaker 3: The Love Factually podcast is produced and edited by Paul
Speaker 3: Eustwick and Eli Finkel, featuring music from Andrew frakerin Size