The Nostromo leaves tonight at 20:45. Anyone wanna join me?

Everyone’s life is a movie starring that person. Maybe it’s Love Story or From Here To Eternity, possibly it’s Gone With The Wind or Bridget Jones (the first good one - unless you’re Schapelle Corby, in which case it’s the second not so good Bridget film crossed with Bangkok Hilton). If you’re lucky it resembles a great Katherine Hepburn/Spencer Tracey flick, full of scenes resplendent with great sexual chemistry and a crackling wit and intellect. If you’re unlucky, chances are its . . . well, Chances Are (Cybill Shepherd and Robert Downey Jr. Don’t try to picture it, it is JUST as horrid as you can imagine, this is a film that would have benefited greatly from Mr Downey doing a little speed).
Personally, I would relish the opportunity to say the Movie Of My Life is a less gory Pulp Fiction (where everyone references the pop culture minutiae that I love so terribly terribly much at the same speed as a Season Two Gilmore Girls episode - which . . . dude, is FAAAAST - whilst I harness the fuck off coolness of Sam Jackson.) I would even be excited if it was a watered down While You Were Sleeping (sigh - Bill Pullman - yummy) or a tepid One Fine Day (which, lets face it, was a tepid film to begin with, George baby, I'm sorry but it was). Hell, at this point I’d take a Woody Allen film, where a neurotic older man chases me. Or even Alien, where a man in a creaturefeature suit chases me.
However, it has become glaringly apparent that in the Movie Of My Life I am not the romantic lead, nor am I the revolutionary kick-ass 70’s heroine blasting wee murderous beasties into outer space. I am, in fact, the romantic lead’s Sassy Single Best Friend (SSBF). I am the buddy. I am the comic relief. (Good grief, am . . . am I Rob Schneider? No. NO. Noooooooooo, if I am anyone in the romantic comedy schtick oeuvre, I am PATENTLY Janeane Garofalo. Right? Blackly cute with lashings of bitter sardonic selfeffacing wit. Right? RIGHT?)
This sudden and startling insight was afforded to me at a recent outing with two of my dearest girlfriends to see The Wedding Date (Don’t see it. Do not go pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Read the book instead – Asking for Trouble by Elizabeth Young. Vastly superior, adorable little chicklit book. The movie? Oy, the suckage was astounding.) Sitting on either side of me was Red - who, with the recent purchase of Property has officially become Old Married Woman – and Gnomes, whose partner just got down on one knee and asked her That Question (to which, the answer was a resounding YES. FYI, I’m a bridesmaid – yay!) And watching this awful film version of a book I’m quite fond of, I realised that my single status has now been sufficiently long enough for me to consider myself properly cemented in most people’s eyes as 'that nice single girl that we work with who never seems to have a date’.
Which is not to say that the SSBF doesn’t quite often get a guy by the end of the film, as exampled by one of my favourite romcoms, When Harry Met Sally - Princess Leia and Bruno Kirby fall in love welllll before Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan get their act together in the final stages of that film. Another personal fave is The Truth About Cats & Dogs, where the SSBF (our girl, Janeane) is actually the lead of the film AND gets Ben Chaplin to boot. But the majority of the time the SSBF is either left in the wings with no real ending to her story (Bridget’s gfs don’t merit any romantic storyline at all – except for the odd mention of Vile Richard) or they get rushed into something with someone (see The Wedding Date’s SSBF TJ who at the end of the film is suddenly paired up with the lead’s exBF who we saw for about two minutes during the course of the film and has suspicious personal hygiene. Well, DON’T see it actually, but take my word for it, she deserved better.)
And I say, ENOUGH! The SSBF deserves more! She's Sassy, she's Spunky, often she's the only one who seems to have a sense of humour. Maybe she doesn't dress as well as the lead and often she's not the slimmest or prettiest girl in the world (once again, parallels people) but she usually has more fun. So if this is the film I live, then I want the SSBF Movie Of My Life to be the kind where I actually get the guy (and not two hundred cats and a reputation). Where is MY Ben Chaplin, hell, where’s my Bruno Kirby (he’s not so bad, let me tell you, the little guy is a cutiepie and has that Noo Yawk accent that I find so damned attractive). It is time for the SSBF to take back Date Night and make it hers again!
Alternatively, can someone point me in the direction of the nearest deep space mining vehicle in the process of answering a distress call? I feel the need to kick some alien beeeeeeehind . . .