A Preview of an Upcoming Pointless Review from the new The first modern rom-com?

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From the new The MoGuGaZine (Out Tuesday?)

Design for Living (A Fiesta 11) (Criterion)

November 22, 1933

Lessons Learned from Design for Living:

A. Marriage does not represent commitment, sex does.

B. Wealth plus love equals a constant.

C. The creative drive is the key to a good relationship.

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Although The Fiesta 13 has no movie critic authority to declare, we do declare Design for Living ‘The First Rom-Com of The Modern Age.’

Teleplay by Ben Hecht of a sketch of a Noel Coward play, Design‘s more progressive than many of today movies, the love triangle in Design edges close to thruple territory than monogamy. Both men and Gilda have sex before marriage. Shockingly off-handed.

We’ve seen tons of 1930’s rom-coms & sex before marriage is only implied in other movies, Design has two comments and a bit about sex before marriage. The thruple creates a Gentleman’s Agreement-No Sex. But Gilda isn’t a gentleman.

We love comedies & romance, but most of today’s Rom-Coms are hack formulaic dreck. How is Design different?

Honesty. All of the characters are 100% honest in their emotions & intents. Today’s Rom-com is built on deception & obstacle. The two leads are separated by space or often have to misrepresent themselves as a function of plot. Love is revealed as truth underneath deceit. We must lie to function in the world. Love reveals truth and courage. The first two acts of most drek-coms drag on in pointless distraction until love shows up. If the couple is together by the end of the first act, the second act sets up estrangement for the third act happy ending. Pre-dict-able.

Gilda meets best friends Tom & George on a train. There’s chemistry between each man and Gilda immediately. She’s honest in her love for both of them. No deceit. No hiding. Only emotional confusion. She admits to dating both of them, unable, unwilling to choose. Men get to date many women before choosing a mate, not women as Gilda protests.

The plot’s driven by honest characters figuring out this new relationship dynamic. The only squeamish character, Gilda’s longtime friend, Max, mostly hides his feelings for Gilda. He’s the square Gilda settles for briefly in a stab at normalcy. Marriage is defeat in the game of love.

These characters know they’re outside the mainstream in the Bohemia of Paris living the starving artist lifestyle. Gilda becomes George the painter & Tom the playwright’s muse propelling each to success just with the advice “That’s Rotten.” The proto Manic Pixie Dream Girl?

Success breeds alienation as duties tear each individual couple apart. The obstacle to their happiness isn’t external, but internal.

The resolution comes from acceptance and forgiveness, not just the realization and courage of love for one. Plus, we can’t think of a RomCom that ends like Design. The ending is perfect.

Fantastic, snappy writing. Charming, breezy acting & a plot that doesn’t slow to explain. A classic.

Design for Living

A Fiesta 11 out of 13.

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…Meanwhile in Blaine, NE #1302

After AMERIKA! was purchased in 1930 by Old Man Blayne, The Great Compression & Capitali$m Unleashed drifting into the 1940’s, most Blainers lived in a Thruple arrangement by 1947. Housing is expensive. All relationships are now contract-based, so marriage is just a piece of paper. Like a rental agreement.

Instead of living alone, people coupled up in pairs, platonic or not, to pay rent. Then 3, then 4, then 5. Today an 8-person octuple is common in The Outlands, away from the more modern single pod cities.

Closeness also breeds fucking. Soon, the thruples of the ’40’s were no longer mainly platonic to pay rent, but sexual to pay rent. Sex plus Capitali$m for rent attracts sociopathic predators.

In the mid-40’s a strange phenomenon started. Scientists noted when Capitali$m became Unleashed in 1930, the percentage of sociopaths rose from 5 to 6 percent of the total population by 1935. ‘The Successful 6 Percent’ proclaimed economists. The prevailing economic ideology holds ‘empathy creates poverty.’

When two expanded to three, the sociopath became bored of manipulating one person. A subconscious Jungian thread—as a sociopath’s conscious is just sub–soon connected the successful 6 percent into a phenomenon called The Cult of Three (It’s Just Us Vs. Them, Baby!). One man controlling two women. One woman controlling two men. Almost always sex-based control. Color co-ordinated Master & Slave 1 & 2 T-Shirts. Conferences, business discounts, specialized pets, sex toys, cereal. Thruple-mania engulfed AMERIKA!. The Thruple Craze lasted from 1945 until roughly 1952 when Four-ples became the norm.

At four, the balance of power equalizes. The Cults of Three faded or morphed.

The Cult of Three still exists in parts of AMERIKA! where the Sex Communes have less influence over our copulation culture.

Here’s one story from 1949:

A three-ple, Herb ruled over Amber & Nickels with a soft, lubed fist. While his embezzlement job provided for the three with ease & expansion, Herb wanted to own more soft flesh. As an embezzler, he would embezzle money for companies he didn’t work for with his companies’ blessing, a 15 percent cut, an office for drugs & a free car. Herb worked for an incipient clone factory. Cloning was in still the early days with human clones more blob than bipedal with only hamster-level intelligence.

Herb embezzled three blob/clones. Through kneading & blowtorching, Herb sculpted the three clones after himself, Amber & Nickles. He often taunted Amber & Nickles that their clone copies were better, sexier, smarter than them.

Because the clones were still new-ish in development, the clone’s bones would sometime dissolve. One night during dogpile sex, Amber’s clone’s bones gave way, shrink-wrapping Herb’s face with synthetic skin. He suffocated.

Panicked at the loss of their money & leader, Amber & Nickles passed Herb’s clone off as Herb with hats, lighting and a deep voice.

As eye-contact is rare, Amber & Nickles became Embezzler of The Year 1950.

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