High Fidelity & 500 Days of Summer: Two Sides of the Same Record?

Two Movies. Two hopeless romantics. Two formulaic plots?

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Recently (well, last year. Time really is a dick), a friend of mine returned a copy of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity to me after I lent it to him a couple of decades ago. I was kind of surprised, to be honest, not that he returned it - because he’s definitely the type of person who would give back something I had lent to him decades ago, meaning a good person - but because I kind of forgot owning the book in the first place. Since I had it in my possession, I figured I would actually re-read it. It’s amazing how little I remembered, but it definitely holds up. Everyone should check it out.

Obviously. I was more familiar with the movie adaptation, starring John Cusack, who is basically playing grown-up Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything. It is also noteworthy (I believe) for being the exact moment we all realized that Jack Black is a small-doses actor. 

Even though I enjoyed the movie, I always felt like there was something missing in it. At the time, characters talking to the screen or people who aren’t actually there (I do love the Springsteen cameo) was pretty fun, and hadn’t been seen much since Ferris Bueller, but since The Office turned fake documentaries into a regular sitcom trope, it now seems more like a fancy writer’s trick to get as many of the book’s funny lines into the movie as possible. The characters are definitely funny enough, and even though by the time the movie was released in 2000, the idea of mix-tapes was probably dying out, the failing record store was a fun backdrop for a movie. So, what was missing from this gentle, romantic comedy? I may have found it, but I’m still sort of noodling.

Since the novel was released and optioned in 1995, it does contain a lot of those 90’s sensibilities. Basically, every romantic comedy in the 90’s followed the same formula: The couple meets in a bizarre but funny way, they fall in love, one of them (usually the man) does something terrible, and then by some weird twist of fate, they see each other again and he proves that he is worthy and they get back together, and the credits roll over a fun pop song that makes you want to buy the soundtrack. It’s the same thing that John Cusack does in basically all his movies, and what he became famous for as Llyod Dobler, the milktoast simp who wooed Ione Skye in the aforementioned Say Anything by playing Peter Gabriel through a boom box that he held over his head, effectively ruining romance for the next couple decades.

As far as the romantic comedy formula, though, while they didn't all work that way, most of them did, and when you think back, you wonder why that poor woman put up with this putz in the first place.

High Fidelity does skip past the meet-cute and falling in love part, and goes right to the break-up. Cusack’s character, Rob, is distraught because his girlfriend, Laura, has left him. Through the course of his brooding at the beginning of the film, we learn that, even though he and Laura dated for 8 years, she is not in the top five break-ups in his life. In case you aren’t familiar, coming up with “Top Five '' lists is one way that Rob and his employees at the record store he owns pass the time. Once Rob learns that Laura has officially moved on and is living with someone else (their former upstairs neighbor, played by Tim Robbins), he decides to add her at #5, and also take a closer look at the other four and see where he may have gone wrong.  It should be noted that, for a guy who has no money and no prospects, Rob has dated some very beautiful women, including Lily Taylor and Catherine Zeta-Jones. I mean, what guy wouldn’t be depressed if they couldn't make it work with Catherine Zeta-Jones?

Skipping past all of Rob’s down-in-the-mouth moping, he ends up learning that Laura was actually the one and, in typical 90’s fashion, they get back together. She even helps him rediscover his passion by basically forcing him into a DJ gig. It is a nice way to wrap things up because Rob gets the girl and the gig, and he realizes that Jack Black’s band is actually pretty good when they sing “Let’s Get it On.” He even proposes, but it is slightly ambiguous if they actually end up married, because she doesn’t really say yes, and that’s fine. For the first time in the entire movie, she actually seems happy, at least. 

A lot of people probably think that this is a perfectly acceptable ending; the guy got back on his feet, realized his short-comings and was now ready to be a suitable partner. And those people are totally right. That’s a good arc and a great way to send the audience home happy. I just don’t buy it. Even though he had supposedly learned his lesson, he also borrowed five grand from Laura, admitted to wanting to date other people, and actually cheated on her. To me, she’s either settling or is just with him so she can get her money back. Maybe the money was what was missing that I couldn’t put my finger on.

Comparisons have sometimes been made between High Fidelity and (500) Days of Summer. Both revolve around broken-hearted men who spend a good chunk of the movie wondering what is wrong with the girl who left them, only to discover, after much self-reflection, that there wasn’t anything wrong with her, but their view of the relationship was the problem.

For anyone who hasn’t seen it, (500) Days of Summer is a story told out-of-order that examines a relationship that has fallen apart, and how the poor schlub deals with it. The problem with the relationship from the beginning was that Summer, played with her usual aplomb by Zooey Deschanel, was never interested in a relationship. In fact, she had told him from the start that she was happy to keep things casual. It was Tom, the poor schlub (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who pushed for them to be called a couple, because they were doing all the things couples do. The movie jumps around to different points during the 500 days of their relationship to show how it all broke down, but unlike Rob and Laura, there was no cheating or money-grubbing. She just wasn’t that into him.    

Just like Rob, however, Tom is crushed when Summer moves on from him, and completely smashed to bits when he finds out that she is actually engaged. It does help him fix his own life, however. When he met Summer, Tom was an architect who wrote greeting cards, and despite the fact that she encouraged him to get back to architect-ing, he never did until one day he realized that writing greeting cards is a pretty vapid existence. Even though “the break-up” was the catalyst, he didn’t actually need someone to do it for him. Rob did end up in the same way in High Fidelity, ending up a deejay and apparently forming his own record label, although I don’t know how one goes from selling old records to just “starting” a record label, but whatever, but you get the impression he did all that to impress Laura more than he felt he needed to make changes in his life. Plus, she set up the gig in the first place. It wasn’t really something he had indicated he wanted at any point in the movie. In the book, it is hinted at a few times, but movies don’t have time for that kind of character work, I guess. They needed to add more Jack Black. 

But what is the major difference between the two movies? Tom and Summer do not end up together, while Rob and Laura do. You could call it going against type, but I like to think that it’s a bit more realistic. (500) Days director Marc Webb said in an interview, “Most romantic comedies are more loyal to a formula than to emotional truth. It's about happiness, and learning that you'll find it within yourself, rather than in the big blue eyes of the girl in the cubicle down the hall.” The “emotional truth” is the part that kind of sticks with me. Tom eventually realizes his emotional truth; that happiness without Summer is possible, and that’s when he happens to come across Autumn, and he actually nods at the camera, as if to let us know that this one is going to work out. In real life, you usually do meet the person when you are truly ready, and that’s what happened to Tom. Do we think that Rob and Laura actually stayed together for long after the credits rolled in High Fidelity? I guess the argument could be made that Rob discovered his emotional truth while he and Laura were separated. But you could also argue that he hadn’t changed a bit. Days before his big DJ gig, he was making a mixtape for a cute college reporter who had interviewed him about the show. For anyone who is too young to know, or was cool enough to not actually need such things, making a mixtape for a girl in the 90’s was code for, “I want to have sex with you.”

Interestingly, the characters of Laura and Summer are more similar than Rob and Tom. They are both honest to their former paramours. When Rob asks Laura what he could have done to make her happy, she responds, “Nothing. Make yourself happy.” While easier said than done, that is obviously the key to making any relationship work. When Summer and Tom meet up after she is married, he tells her that all the stuff he used to believe about love was not true, and she chuckles and says that it is all true, and that he was actually right all along, but, “It just wasn’t me you were right about.” Of course, you could say that Summer led him on quite a bit, sleeping with him and eating pancakes with him, even though she had no intention of actually being his girlfriend. But since the story is entirely from Tom’s perspective, we don’t really know what Summer was thinking. It’s possible for a good chunk of those 500 days, she didn’t really know how she felt. Maybe she did like-like him on some level. Or she just liked pancakes. Either way, these things happen in life. People come and go, and sometimes you think the relationships with these people will be more meaningful than they end up being. For both Tom and Summer, the relationship got them where they needed to go, and that is really all you can ask.

Hey, and here they are looking at records! The similarities!

Just because High Fidelity followed the form doesn’t mean I don't enjoy it. In fact, Rob probably is the most complicated and interesting character of the lot. Like I said, we don’t know what happened to him and/or Laura after the credits rolled (and it’s just a story, so do we need to?), but I feel like after his one gig and the one band he had on his record label fizzled out, he probably went back to selling records. At some point, another gig, maybe another band, and probably another girl came along, and he tackled those with the same esprit de corps that he handled them in the movie. The lesson of these stories is that life is long. Most of us have been through the same things that these characters went through, and we handle them however we handle them. But we don’t really change that much. We are who we are. In a way, it is comforting. The world needs people like Rob and Tom, and women for them to love. And no matter how formulaic they seem at times, we need movies like High Fidelity and (500) Days of Summer. Even if it is just to give the record store employees and greeting card writers some hope.

Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think or these movies, or other romantic comedies, or anything else going on in the world. Like, subscribe, all that crap.