I've always made a connection in my mind between Kissing Jessica Stein and The Guru. For most people, it seems, these were throwaway romantic comedies that they immediately forgot about the moment the credits rolled, if they saw them at all. For me, they were sneakily emotional, feel-good favorites that both landed in my top ten of their respective years, which happened to be consecutive years in 2002 and 2003. (Actually, now that I look at it, I can see The Guru was only #11, but I now like it better than all but three of the movies that were ahead of it.)
I'd had occasion to think of both movies in recent months. The Guru, of course, was one of my inspirations for watching Bollywood movies this year, and I name-checked it in my introduction post for Audient Bollywood. Then I mentioned Kissing Jessica Stein in my recent post about Everything Everywhere All at Once, when I talked about movie characters overcoming their prejudices, specifically related to embracing the LGBTQI+ people in their lives. This movie has just about the most moving example of that for me -- not because the gesture is so great or unexpected, but simply because of the performance given by Tovah Feldshuh in that moment.
Other than a new viewing of both being overdue -- I hadn't seen either in more than ten years, and in fact last saw both in a six-month period from September 2010 to March 2011 -- and other than them both being on a DVD format I could now access, I had additional reasons to program them both for a Good Friday double feature on my projector. Let's look at some other similarities between these films:
1) Both are set in New York. That's likely a key to why I loved them so much. I lived in New York from 1998 to 2001, getting out just six months before 9/11. Since these movies both came out less than two years after 9/11, I'm sure they helped me experience a romanticized notion of New York that particularly helped me at that time.
2) Both are sex positive. Heather Graham's porn star in The Guru is not the least bit stigmatized for her career choice, either by the other characters or the film itself, and everyone associated with the porn shoots we see is pretty much a sweetheart. She beats herself up, but nobody else does. Jessica celebrates sex of all kinds -- hetero, gay and lesbian (making a distinction between a gay male couple and a gay female couple in the film). Which leads to ...
3) Both are gay positive. It's right there in the text of Jessica, and as alluded to just now, Helen's also good friends with two men in a relationship. But The Guru has a gay subplot as well, as Graham's character's fiancee (Dash Mihok) doesn't actually want to marry her because he's in love with a fellow firefighter (Bobby Cannavale). Then there's the trans character, long before we were really dealing with that in the culture, who works as a fluffer on the porn shoot. Played by Dwight Ewell, not only is she wonderfully supportive to Graham's Sharona, but she's also got one of the best lines in the movie: "I'm more woman than you'll ever have, pencil dick."
4) Both have exactly one scene that takes place in an Indian restaurant. Seriously! Jimi Mistry's Ramu works at an Indian restaurant when he first arrives in New York, getting fired from the gig when he pours chicken tikka masala over the head of an abusive customer, who denies the authenticity of the dish while speaking to Ramu in an accent that would make The Simpsons' Apu blush. And Indian is where Jessica and Helen go for dinner after the couple drinks they have on their blind date, when Helen finally convinces Jessica not to bolt in the nearest taxi.
5) Both are directed by people with really long names: Daisy von Scherler Mayer for The Guru and Charles Herman-Wurmfeld for Jessica. In fact, both names have exactly 21 letters. Given their evident abilities, both should have had busy careers but I'm sorry to say that didn't end up being the case.
6) And speaking of that, both films are fronted by an actor -- the title character, in fact -- whose charisma and acting chops suggested they should have had much longer careers. Alas, I can count on one hand the times I've seen Jennifer Westfeldt or Jimi Mistry turn up in another film. Mistry at least popped up in Blood Diamond, Ella Enchanted, 2012 and RockNRolla, but never in a big role. IMDB says he has 37 acting credits overall, but again, no starring roles. For Westfeldt the pickin's were slimmer: only 30 credits, with only one other film credit I've seen, 2011's Friends With Kids -- though she had to both direct and write it to get cast in the main role, and the attempt to reproduce Jessica Stein was not a success. She also had a recurring role in one season of 24, though I've forgotten that.
More informally, both films give me a sense of joy that few other romantic comedies can touch, resulting from a perfect combination of writing, tone, structure and cast. (I haven't even mentioned that The Guru also has personal favorite Marisa Tomei.) The best evidence of this is that even though it was almost 11:30 when I started watching Jessica, I didn't come close to falling asleep.
I used to proselytize for these movies whenever I could, with whoever would listen. But now it's been 20 years since they were made, and I'm not sure if I can easily find either of them beyond my own region 1 DVDs. In fact, it's been more than 20 years, as Jessica has the year 2001 in its closing credits, while The Guru has the year 2002, though they were both released theatrically the year after that.
Well, if you're reading this and you haven't seen either movie, I hope you can find them, because it might be too far for you to travel to come watch them in my garage in Australia. I mean, if you only like arthouse films and documentaries, maybe skip them. But if you think the romantic comedy can be cinema's greatest genre when done correctly, when tweaking familiar tropes to give them new freshness, when finding just the right actors to speak just the right words, then you owe it to yourself to seek these two movies out.
And if you feel a natural fondness for a New York that may no longer be, and maybe never was, then all the more reason.
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