Writing Life

Every year, as Valentine’s Day approaches, Hollywood studios generally release a spate of romantic movies. In recent weeks we’ve seen the release of Leap Year, When In Rome, Dear John, and, today, Valentine’s Day. I love Valentine’s Day (February 14th, that is, not the new Garry Marshall film, which I haven’t seen yet) and I love romantic movies, especially romantic comedies. I don’t own a Hollywood studio, so I cannot present you with a romantic film for Valentine’s Day. But I do own a word processor, and so today I sketched out the synopsis of an extremely silly romantic comedy. I hope you like it. But be warned: If it really were a movie, it would carry an R rating.

MOVIE TITLE: GOOD LUCK IN BED

TAG LINE: Sometimes, how well you do depends on how well you’re done.

Daphne is eating alone at a Chinese restaurant in her hometown of Sacramento, California. Tyler comes in with a bag full of fortune cookies and asks to speak to the manager. Mr. Chan, the manager comes. He and Tyler sit down at a table. Tyler explains that he is the owner of a start-up food company. One of his products is a line of erotic fortune cookies. He explains to the manager the old trick of applying the words “in bed” to the end of a fortune cookie. “Everyone does it,” he says. “You take a boring old fortune – Your persistence and patience will be rewarded with success – and add ‘in bed’ to it and suddenly it spices it up. Every fortune cookie can be made more entertain by adding ‘in bed’ to the end of it.” He tells Mr. Chan that he has found a way to eliminate the “in bed” trick: Fortune cookies that are blatantly erotic.

“But this is family restaurant,” objects Mr. Chan.

“I’m not saying these are for everyone,” says Tyler. “But when couples come in who are obviously in love with one another or, at the very least, hot for one another, you could break out my In Bed Fortune Cookies to spice up the occasion for them. Once word gets around about the erotic fortune cookies at Mr. Chan’s Noodle Palace, this place could become THE hot spot to bring your date. The Noodle Palace could become the Love Palace.”

Mr. Chan is dismissive of the idea. He prepares to leave. Tyler sees Daphne’s bill arrive and has an idea. He begs Mr. Chan to stay for a moment, and then he asks Daphne if he can have a look at the fortune in her cookie. She obliges him. It reads “Stop searching forever, happiness is just next to you.” Tyler looks to Mr. Chan with an expression on his face that says, “See! It works!” But Mr. Chan just looks confused.

“I don’t get it,” says Mr. Chan.

Tyler looks to Daphne for support, but she too looks confused. “Sorry,” she tells him, “but I don’t get it either.”

Tyler, as if to a five-year-old, completes the sentence: “Stop searching forever, happiness is just next to you – in bed!”

Still confused, Daphne says, “Yeah, but what if you’re single? Does that mean happiness is a stuffed animal, or a legal thriller?”

Mr. Chan, emboldened by Daphne’s objection, raises one of his own: “Or what if your spouse just die. This fortune cookie could break someone’s heart. I don’t want to get sued.” Mr. Chan rises from his chair. As he leaves, he tells Tyler, “Sorry. Not interested. This Noodle Palace. Not Sex Palace.”

Daphne, seeing how despondent Tyler looks, invites him to show her some of his erotic fortunes. He comes over and reads her one.

The opening scene ends and we rejoin the two of them an hour later. They are still in the restaurant, with a pile of smashed cookies and curled fortune strips on the table between them. Mr. Chan eyes them irritably from across the room. Finally he comes over and tells them to quit making a mess of his table. They apologize and prepare to leave. “Want to go get a drink?” Tyler asks.

“I shouldn’t,” Daphne says. “I have a big job interview tomorrow and I need to go home and prepare for it.”

“Come on, one drink. What could it hurt?”

We cut to Tyler’s apartment. The two of them, obviously drunk, come staggering in, kissing and fondling each other. They fall on to the couch and continue making out. After a while, Tyler rises and holds out his hand to her, an obvious invitation to join him in the bedroom. Suddenly Daphne seems to sober up.

“I can’t,” she says.

“Come on,” says Tyler. “I have a feeling this encounter will be very, very fortunate for you – in bed.”

She laughs and tries to resist. He kisses her. She kisses back. Eventually she says, “Oh what the hell…” and lets him lead her down the hallway to his bedroom.

In the morning she rises and is horrified to find herself in a strange apartment just an hour before her big job interview. She dashes out of the apartment and speeds home in her car. She races into her own apartment and fixes herself up for the interview in a made rush. She arrives at the interview site certain that she will do poorly. She is ushered into a conference room at which sit three imposing-looking executives of the company she is hoping to work for. They begin peppering her with questions – about her background, her knowledge of the industry, the company’s competitors, and so forth. To Daphne’s shock and surprise, she answers every question brilliantly. She is alert and sharp and relaxed. She impresses the execs so much that they hire her on the spot, which is not their usual practice. She can begin work the next day.

That night she is talking with some acquaintances of hers at a yoga class. She tells him about The Fortune Cookie Guy. They all laugh at the story. “I really dodged a bullet,” she says. “He was cute but a real flaky guy.”

One of her acquaintances, a hippie chick named Gillian who is an aspiring New Age singer/songwriter, tells her, “Maybe this Fortune Cookie Guy had something to do with your good luck. After all, didn’t he tell you that sleeping with him would bring you good luck?”

“In bed,” says Daphne. “He said he would bring me good luck in the bedroom, not the boardroom.”

But Gillian, a bit of a space cadet, is undeterred: “I dunno. He promised to bring you good luck if you slept with him and, presto, you aced the interview. I think you ought to hang on to him.”

Daphne shakes her head. “Sorry. But if I show up at a company function with a boyfriend in tow who sells fortune cookies door-to-door, my bosses will think I’m some kind of a flake. I need a boyfriend who is a bit more responsible, a bit more orthodox.”

A few days later, at the office, Daphne is put in charge of delivering a big presentation to a potential client. She is thrilled to be given the opportunity but worried that she may not be up to the task. Over the next couple of weeks she struggles to prepare a killer presentation but not one of her ideas really pans out. She is getting desperate. Finally, we see her sitting with some friends at a restaurant/bar, drinking away her sorrows.

“I’m cooked. I’ve had three weeks and I haven’t come up with a single thing to say to these people. I’m going to show up in that conference room tomorrow and stand there in front of everybody like an idiot, unable to even open my mouth. It was such a great job and now I’m going to be fired from it.”

Her friends nod consolingly. All except Gillian who seems to be having a flash of inspiration.

“Hey,” she says, “why don’t you call up that Fortune Cookie Guy of yours?”

Daphne is confused. “Why? What good would that do? I barely know him?”

“Yeah,” says Gillian, “but it brought you good luck the last time you slept with him. Maybe you should try it again?”

Daphne looks to her other friends to confirm her belief that Gillian is an air-headed wackjob. But one of them, Anna, takes Gillian’s side, sort of.

Says Anna, “The client whose business you’re hoping to get is a food company, right? Well, Fortune Cookie Guy is also in the food business. Maybe he’ll have some insights for you.”

Daphne shakes her head in disbelief of how stupid this idea is. “Fortune Cookie Guy – whose name is Tyler, by the way – sells fortune cookies door-to-door. NutriKwik is a giant food consortium. How could Tyler possibly have any experience that is relevant to the operating of a multi-million dollar international corporation?”

Anna: “NutriKwik probably wasn’t always a giant food consortium. It might have started out in someone’s garage, a small start-up operation, just like Tyler’s fortune cookie business. Go to him and ask him what kind of business plan he thinks would best help him to grow his fortune cookie business into a successful operation. Then multiply everything he tells you by a million and apply it to NutriKwik.”

“You guys are insane,” says Daphne. “You know nothing about the consulting business.”

Gillian grabs Daphne’s cell phone from Daphne’s purse and holds it up to her. “Call him. Now! What have you got to lose?”

Daphne begins dialing. “I must really be drunk – ” she begins, but is cut off when Tyler answers the phone. “Oh, hey, Tyler you probably don’t remember me. This is Daphne.”

Tyler remembers. He’s eager to see her again. She shows up at his apartment and the chemistry between them instantly ignites a spark. We fade out as they begin the jaunt down the hall to the bedroom.

The next morning, we watch as Daphne, without notes or visual aides, wows the execs from NutriKwik with her business plan. Afterwards, she rushes to her private office and telephones Anna to tell her what has happened. Anna listens carefully and then says, “You’d better hang on to this Tyler guy. He appears to be good luck for you.”

“Yeah, in bed,” says Daphne.

“What?” says Anna.

“Never mind,” says Daphne.

Soon she and Tyler are dating. We see them doing romantic couples activities: strolling through museums and striking funny poses in imitation of the statues, feeding animals at the zoo, exiting a movie theater avidly debating the film they’ve just watched. We see them renting a house and moving their stuff into it. We see Daphne outlining a mural on the wall of an empty bedroom. Later she instructs Tyler on how to fill in the colors of the mural as if it is a giant paint-by-numbers picture. They get into a fight with their paintbrushes. Suddenly they have become a real couple.

One night when Daphne is working late, Tyler wanders out by himself and sees that Gillian is performing some of her songs at a local coffeehouse. He meanders in and takes a seat. She finishes her set and sees him sitting in the audience. She walks off the makeshift stage and takes a seat at his table. They get to talking. Gillian asks where Daphne is. “Working,” Tyler tells her.

“That’s a bummer,” says Gillian, “But I guess you should be grateful that she is so determined to succeed at her job. Otherwise you might never have had a second date with her.”

“What are you talking about?” says Tyler.

Gillian, clueless of the damage she is doing, retells the NutriKwik story in a way that makes it sound as if Daphne is with Tyler only because sex with him seems to bring her success at the office. Tyler thinks Gillian’s joking, but Gillian denies it. “It’s true,” she says. “She told me, the better the sex you guys have at night, the better she does the next day at the office. She said you guys went at it like rabbits on the night before she nailed the April-Fresh Fabric Softener account.”

Tyler smiles good naturedly and says he has to get home. He walks away looking conflicted. The worm has been planted.

When he gets home, Daphne is there waiting for him. “Where’ve you been?” she asks. He makes up some lie. “Well, anyway,” says Daphne, “I’m glad you’re home. I’m feeling…frisky tonight.” She nuzzles up against him.

“Don’t you have some big ordeal at work to deal with tomorrow?” he asks her.

She looks at him, surprised. “Did I tell you about the departmental review?” she asks.

He nods, disappointed to hear about it. “I guess you must have.”

“Oh, well,” she says. “I’m young and strong. A little late-night romance won’t throw me off my game.”

“No,” says Tyler. “I suppose it might even help improve your game.”

Again she breaks off her nuzzling and looks up at him. “What’s that supposed to mean? Is something wrong?”

He shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Good,” says Daphne. “Now come to bed, ya big stud, ya!”

He pulls away from her. “I’m exhausted,” he says. “You don’t mind if I just go straight to bed, do you?”

“Of course I mind,” says Daphne. “I’ve got a big day tomorrow. I need to unwind tonight, take my mind off the departmental review.”

“Sorry,” says Tyler, “but I don’t feel like helping you with your departmental review.”

Daphne reacts as though she has been slapped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Tyler tells Daphne about his encounter with Gillian. Now Daphne is angry too.

“How can you possibly believe anything that New Age freak says – especially when it is so patently absurd?”

The fight grows more and more heated until finally Tyler walks out. “I’ll leave you alone with your career,” he tells. “That’s your one true love, after all.”

They split up. Tyler begins seeing Gillian. Soon they are lovers and her music career begins to soar. They move to Los Angeles, where she inks a record deal. Her album becomes a great success.

Meanwhile, Daphne is miserable. She realizes that she has become the type of success-obsessed careerist she’s always despised and sworn that she’d never become. She quits her job. Her first love has always been painting. She starts up her own business, painting murals for both homes and businesses. To earn a little extra money on the side she teaches painting to children at a local arts co-op. She has moved out of her rental house and into a tiny studio apartment, which is more studio than apartment. Now she is the hippie chick and Gillian is the successful career woman. Scenes of Gillian putting her career first while Tyler mopes in the background tell us that all is not well with Tyler. One night, at their Los Angeles penthouse, Gillian negotiates a contract with a concert promoter while Tyler slips away to the computer and Googles Daphne’s name. He finds the website of her mural-painting business. He smiles as he looks at all the whimsical examples of her work.

It is a beautiful day in Sacramento. We see Daphne up high on a portable scaffold that has been erected alongside an old four-story brick building. She is painting a mural that features six different plastic yogurt containers, each of them advertising a different flavor. Above the containers are the words:
PIMLOV’S YOGURT
IN MARKETS EVERYWHERE THIS SEPTEMBER

In her paint-stained smock, Daphne is crouching down to add some detail to one of the yogurt containers. Suddenly something drops onto the scaffold in front of her and startles her. She looks down and discovers that it is a fortune cookie. She looks up and down and all around but can’t figure where it might have come from. The cookie has been broken by the fall. Daphne pulls the fortune from the wreckage of the cookie. She opens it up and reads, “I can’t live without you. Will you take me back?” While she is pondering this curious message, I rope slaps against the side of the building directly behind her. Startled, she turns around just in time to see Tyler sliding down the rope to the top of the scaffolding.

“Oh my god!” exclaims Daphne. “You scared me to death! What are you doing here?”

Tyler explains that he was miserable with Gillian and her new fast-paced superstar lifestyle. He broke up with her but not before getting her to invest in one more of his farfetched ventures.

“Oh?” says Daphne, intrigued. “And what might that be?”

Tyler turns towards Daphne’s mural and says, “This!”

Confused, Daphne says, “You invested your money in Pimlov’s Yogurt?”

“No, dummy,” says Tyler. “I invested my money in this proposal. There is no Pimlov’s Yogurt.”

“What proposal are you talking about?” says Daphne.

Tyler takes a paintbrush and begins blacking out some of the letters Daphne has painted above the yogurt containers. She protests vigorously but he ignores her. When he is done crossing out letters, the yogurt sign reads:

I LOV YO U
MAR RY M E

Finally the truth begins to dawn on Daphne. “You are Pimlov’s Yogurt?” she asks Tyler.

“Yes” he says.

“You’ve traded in fortune cookies for yogurt? Is Pimlov your corporate alter ego – like Ronald McDonald or Betty Crocker?”

Tyler shakes his head in frustration. “There is no yogurt!”

Daphne: “No yogurt?”

“No,” says Tyler. “I made it up. I wanted to propose to you in a special way. This is it.”

Daphne, still somewhat confused, says, “But why yogurt? Why not fortune cookies?”

“Because the word ‘you’ doesn’t appear anywhere in the word ‘cookie.’ What does it matter what product I used? The point is I wanted to propose to you at the top of a scaffolding in front of one of your beautiful works of art. And now I’m standing here in front of the whole world waiting for an answer.”

Daphne looks down and sees that a small crowd of people has gathered on the street below them, no doubt intrigued by the semi-literate marriage proposal painted on the wall and the romantic proceedings taking place just below those words. Daphne tells Tyler that she will marry him. They kiss. As the camera pulls back to reveal the entire mural, and then the entire building, and then the entire street scene, we here Daphne and Tyler bantering playfully with each other.

“Why did you leave off the E at the end of love?” she asks him.

“There is no E in Pimlov,” he says.

“But if you made up the name, you could spell it anyway you wanted to.”

“I was afraid it would be too obvious.”

“I think you were just too cheap to pay for an E.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I charge ten dollars for every letter. You were being stingy.”

“I was being playful.”

“Oh, is that your word for it?”

FADE OUT