Grace Kim & The Spiders From Mars’ writer, Philip W. Chung, on five romantic comedies that influenced the play:

HOLIDAY (1938)

This is the one film that inspired Grace Kim more than anything else.  It’s the story of an eccentric young woman (Katherine Hepburn) who falls in love with her sister’s fiancé (Cary Grant) after he drops a bombshell of an announcement that only Hepburn can understand or sympathize with.  That’s basically also the plot for Grace Kim in a nutshell.

As I explained in a previous post, the family and characters at the heart of Holiday felt very Asian American to me and the idea for doing a screwball romantic comedy with Asian American characters was born, though it would take two decades before I finally wrote the story.  If I hadn’t watched this movie as a kid, there probably would not have been a Grace Kim today.

HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940)

One of the funniest and fastest (according to the Guinness Book of World records) films ever made.   His Girl Friday is brilliant in so many ways, but nothing comes close to touching it for its sheer technical mastery—the rhythm and the pacing are at a level of skill that I can only dream of aspiring to.  But I tried nonetheless.

You watch this movie and the comedic banter feels so effortless and simple, but it’s only when you actually try to write in that same style that you realize how insanely difficult it is to make something that good feel that easy.  If we do achieve this in our show, it’s largely due to my talented director and cast who made up for any deficiencies in the text. 

THE APARTMENT (1960)

No one was more successful in combining comedy and pathos than legendary writer/director Billy Wilder and he never mixed the two more effectively than in this masterpiece about an everyman (Jack Lemmon) who falls for a girl (Shirley MacLaine) who is in love with someone else. 

What Wilder demonstrates in this film is that a romantic comedy could tackle dark subject matter like adultery, suicide and loneliness without losing the laughs or the audience.   In fact, the comedy and the drama could play off each other making the other even stronger.   That balance was something I strived for in Grace Kim and I watched this movie over and over while writing the play to try to get that balance right; knowing I’d never be as good as Wilder and his co-writer I.A.L. Diamond.  But I never forgot a piece of advice Wilder gave me: If you can successfully follow a big laugh with a real emotional moment, you have a shot at reaching greatness.  I tried to do that in Grace Kim (i.e. the scene where dad and Grace talk about mom which starts with a very comedic moment before jumping straight into a heavy emotional scene).

ANNIE HALL (1977)

Woody Allen’s Academy Award-winning film was a new kind of romantic comedy.  It rewrote all the rules of the genre—there were fantasy sequences, a non-linear narrative, the breaking of the fourth wall and an ending where the two lovers do not end up together. 

Annie Hall gave me the confidence to take similar risks with Grace Kim.  Will the audience accept characters who suddenly break out into song and dance (in a non-musical) or act out an over-the-top parody of a soap opera?  If we’ve come to care about the characters like we do in Annie Hall—the answer is yes.  And Allen’s bittersweet ending set the template for Grace Kim’s similar climax.

WHEN HARRY MET SALLY (1989)

This is the iconic romantic comedy of my generation.   It was the first “modern” work in this genre that I remember seeing and thinking, “man, I wish I could write something as good as that.”  It was incredibly witty and funny but also gave us flawed characters we fell in love with (and yes, I stole my Pictionary scene from this film).  This inspired the character of Maysie in Grace Kim.

In most romantic comedies with love triangles, the “third wheel” character is usually a bitch/asshole or somehow deficient in other ways making it easy to root for the other two people to get together.  But in Grace Kim, I wanted all three characters in my triangle to be “loveable” so the audience would be rooting for everyone; thus raising the dramatic stakes.  So I tried to make the character of Maysie (the “third wheel” in my play) as appealing as Meg Ryan was in this film—neurotic and anal, but someone the audience could instantly fall in love with.

Philip W. Chung is a writer and Co-Artistic Director of Lodestone Theatre Ensemble.  He blogs at: http://youoffendmeyouoffendmyfamily.com/