I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With

I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With.

Jeff Garlin, Sarah Silverman, Bonnie Hunt

All of these lines across my face. Tell you the story of who I am. So many stories of where I've been. And how I got to where I am. But these stories don't mean anything.

When you've got no one to tell them to. – Brandi Carlile, The Story

Alright, ma, I'll wear the blue suit! But I'm still an ugly little man. – Marty Piletti, Marty

Most of us are screwed when it comes to love. Whether you like it or not, the dice of amore are loaded against you. A recent psychological study contended that only 8 percent of Americans will find an emotionally healthy and satisfying relationship that will last until their golden years. In other words, while around 50 percent of marriages end up hitting the iceberg known as divorce, those that remain resemble more closely a lion’s lunch on the Serengeti Plain than something that meets your needs, let alone be something that Nicholas Sparks would write about. To put this in perspective, percentage-wise, you are more likely to be an immigrant in this country than to be in a healthy relationship, more likely to be a Southern Baptist or a Mormon than a success at the most important bond in your life, more likely to visit an indoor salon this year than make that most important link. Yet, it is what almost everyone longs for. It is the backbone of our film and book industry. In 2004, $473 million was spent online trying to find that perfect partner and the net has gotten a lot bigger since then. (For those of you surfing the Internet for love, according to USA Today, 30 percent of those “singles” you are looking at, are really married, or living with a significant other. We all might be catching the Neuromancer wave, but it is still a cheater’s paradise.) Yet, in spite of the odds, in spite of the cheating, in spite of the craziness, in spite of the cold light of reality, most of us still look for love and believe in it.

It is why, as hard as Hollywood tries, it has never been able to capture the magic of a low budget, black-and-white 1955 film called Marty, starring Ernest Borgnine as Marty Piletti, an overweight, good-natured, socially awkward, middle-aged bachelor, Italian butcher in Bronx whose family and friends are constantly badgering him to get married. The problem is, Marty has learned the hard way, that women don’t view him as a catch. They see him as ugly, a dog. So, he has resigned himself to his fate of being alone. In one of the most painful scenes in the movie, Marty calls up a woman he met while out one evening with friends. She lies to him and gives him the brush off. Soon afterwards his mother is on him about going out tonight, telling him he needed to put on his blue suit, go to the Stardust Ballroom and try to meet some young woman there.

In one of the most painful scenes in the history of cinema, as all the pain he has gone through bubbles to the surface, he finally explodes at his mother and says, “Ma, sooner or later, there comes a point in a man's life when he's gotta face some facts. And one fact I gotta face is that, whatever it is that women like, I ain't got it. I chased after enough girls in my life, I went to enough dances. I got hurt enough. I don't wanna get hurt no more. I just called up a girl this afternoon, and I got a real brush-off. Boy! I figured I was past the point of being hurt, but that hurt. Some stupid woman who I didn't even want to call up, she gave me the brush. No, Ma, I don't wanna go to the Stardust Ballroom, because all that ever happened to me there was girls made me feel like I was a-a-a bug. I got feelings, you know. I-I’ve had enough pain. No thanks, Ma!”

Still, he puts on the blue suit and goes to the Stardust. There he meets Clara Snyder (Betsy Blair), a school teacher who has just been ditched by her blind date because she is such a dog. Out of kindness, Marty spends the evening with her and discovers that they have a lot in common. They part with Marty promising he will call her. Over the course of the next day, his friends make fun of her looks, lampoon this wallflower, and even his mother gets into the act when she realizes if Marty finds love she might be abandoned. Beaten into submission, Marty doesn’t call her. Yet, at the end of the film, he realizes that this might be his only chance for love, no matter what his family and friends think. Confronting his friends just before calling her, he confesses, “You don't like her. My mother don't like her. She's a dog. And I'm a fat, ugly man. Well, all I know is I had a good time last night. I'm gonna have a good time tonight. If we have enough good times together, I'm gonna get down on my knees. I'm gonna beg that girl to marry me. If we make a party on New Year's, I got a date for that party. You don't like her? That's too bad.”

Marty won the Academy Award for Best Picture and was the first American film to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. No other film has ever captured both prizes. It was such a powerful film that it was also the first piece of cinema from the United States to be shown in Communist Russia. Even though it is one of the most profitable movies ever, in half-a-century since, no film has ever been able to recapture its magic even though it is primed for a remake. Part of the problem is studios are extremely reluctant to bankroll movies starring physically ugly people. They are dream factories after all. Instead they dress down their glamorous stars like they did when they cast Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer as a homely waitress and cook in Frankie and Johnny (1991) or putting a few pounds on Renée Zellweger for Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001). It never quite works.

Hollywood forgets that, if audiences can identify with the protagonists, they can be drawn into the story because they can believe that it could happen to them. Still, there are elements of Marty in Rocky and John Candy took his turn at that storyline in Only The Lonely.

Now it is Jeff Garland’s chance to recapture the Marty magic. For those of you who don’t know who Garland is, he is most famous the rotund manager and friend of Larry David in HBO’s "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and was one of Eddie Murphy’s buddies in Daddy Day Care. Like Marty, Jeff plays a good-natured, self-loathing, middle-aged man named James who lives with his mother but dreams of finding a soulmate. He is pretty much a loser, getting fired from jobs and shot down by women he asks out. His only comfort is late night junk food which makes him even a bigger zero with the ladies. Unlike Marty, James, who lives in Chicago, meets two potential women who could provide the magic he is searching for. One is Beth (Sarah Silverman), a pretty girl who works at the ice cream parlor Jeff goes to, and the other is Stella Lewis (Bonnie Hunt), a nervous elementary school teacher. Will Jeff connect with either of these two women or will he end up alone in his car eating junk food?

It is one of the pleasures of being a movie reviewer to come across little films like Millions; Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang; Twin Falls, Idaho; Bubba Ho-Tep; The Tao of Steve; The Thing About My Folks; and The Bread, My Sweet that most people miss or have yet to discover. I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With is one of those cinematic experiences. Not as maudlin and tear-jerky as Marty, if marketed correctly, it could be the My Big Fat Greek Wedding for anyone who has ever felt out of place. It is funny, witty and very sweet in places. I have a feeling that the only way people will discover this movie is probably word of mouth.

Although it is extremely clear that Jeff Garland is channeling a humorous version of Marty, what I like the most about the film is the message that is being communicated. It is the message I tell my nieces, the message I mention to almost anyone looking for their other half. As cool as it is to be with the belle of the ball or to be on the back of the bad boy’s motorcycle, find someone who sees and likes the real you. Looks fade, waistlines expand, and your features take on comic book proportions. At the end of the day, what you want is someone you can sit on the porch with, as the next generation of cool kids roll by. Find someone who really listens to you and sees the person inside. Be part of the 8 percent that make it. Find that person you want, someone you can eat cheese with, no matter how they look.

Verdict: A Very Good Small Film To Be On The Look Out For