Inside the Untold Drama: Crafting a Trump vs. Anti-Trump RomCom with Erik Bork
Erik Bork
So, The Elephant in the room is a romantic comedy about a lonely progressive young woman smarting for a breakup who meets a guy she might want to date and then finds out he voted for Trump. And it’s December 2020, leading into January 2021, which was a kind of important month. And so but it’s a comedy, and it’s got a lot of heart. And it’s kind of like an edgy indie comedy where she’s kind of trying to give the guy a chance, maybe I can impact his views, how could he possibly feel that way, etc., etc. And, you know, I just got the idea, I think somewhere around 2016, when I started thinking about political polarization as an underlying problem that people recognize, but in some ways, is the biggest problem we have, I think that underpins other problems. And that is pretty toxic in people’s personal lives. But, you know, really, what I was thinking was, I’ve written other like romantic comedies, and you always look for the thing in the way of the relationship. And it just occurred to me that politics could be that thing in the age of Trump, because that’s how big it is. Obviously, it has been in a way of a lot of relationships of various kinds for people. And for understandable reasons, but still regrettable, right? So, so anyway, I just started thinking, well, what if you had these two characters who that was the issue? So in a romantic comedy, you know, the stakes, I mean, the elements of problems that you asked, it’s like the problem has to be punishingly difficult to solve, which this is because neither side is changing their views. And for her, it’s a deal bank breaker, relatable, and that you relate to the main character. In a romantic comedy, you often follow both characters equally, but we don’t, we follow the progressive female character. And I think she’s very relatable. Although if you’re a hardcore Trump voter, you might be annoyed by her politics, but she’s like a lovable person that I think you can get why she’s grappling with this and why this matters. Oh, and problems for original, I don’t think I’ve seen this subject done before, you know, it’s a original take on a tried true genre, I think, B is for believable, I tried to make most care. And by the way, believable is harder than it looks like I often my big note on scripts often have believability reasons behind them, which writers don’t tend to think is ever an issue, I think, but it’s a big issue when you’re doing professionally, making things believable is a huge part of it anyway. So I tried to make both characters believable as voting for who they voted for, while also relatable and likable enough, because you need to like both people in a romantic comedy. So, so that was definitely something we strove for. And I think it’s a believable scenario in our world today. Ellen problem is for life altering, which means the stakes are high enough. And in a random comedy, the stakes are you think two people might be a great couple, and you don’t and you want to see them together, which, you know, hopefully when people watch this, they despite the politics, they do feel like they wish they could work this out. He is for entertaining, which means you’re bringing the audience the emotion they want from the genre they’re watching, like in a comedy, they’re going to laugh. And it definitely is a comedy and does get laughs. And romantic movie also want them to feel the warm kind of bath of romance, which isn’t quite as much happening in this. It’s not a Hallmark movie. And because of what it’s about, what’s in the way of the relationship, it’s a hard edge topic, even though it’s dealt with in a in a warm way, in a light hearted way. So it’s, it gets some of the romantic stuff, but it’s more leaning on the comedy side with this interesting topic in the way. Politics edgy topic. M is for meaningful, which just means thematically, it’s about something more than just the surface story that hopefully applies to the human condition. So like for me, it’s about this movie is about loneliness and isolation. And should you try to change people if you think they’ll be better off and a lot of different things. There’s more than one relationship in it. She has this housemate that she’s trying to be friends with who isn’t that interested. And that’s as equally important as the potential romance in the movie. So those are the seven elements and I tried to follow my own advice.
