Materialists is about me getting jaw surgery, actually

Bring back weird romantic dramedies!

Warning: I spoil the entire plot of Materialists!

Now that Materialists has been out for a couple of months, I can finally write about it. I mean, I wasn’t exactly waiting all this time on purpose, but my son is back in school and I have the time and mental space to focus on writing once more. I rambled out a bunch of thoughts into my Notes app after I saw the movie (disjointed Notes app paragraphs with no little to no punctuation or attention to typos/spelling are how I start most posts) so let’s see if I can harness what I was feeling back in June when I sat in the smallest screen at the AMC and drank the world’s largest Diet Dr. Pepper (affectionately referred to as DDP).

There was a moment there, earlier in the summer, when Materialists was everywhere. Do you remember it? Can you put yourself back there? Imagine: everyone was talking about Pedro Pascal. Dakota Johnson was, once again, making the news for being irreverent. Chris Evans was also there, doing his whole thing (basically being “popular guy in high school who was still nice”). People wanted this love triangle. They were talking about Nora Ephron. As always happens at least once every couple of years, there were rustlings about the rom-com being “back,” as if it had, I don’t know, decamped to parts unknown for a little vacation and finally returned. Also, people were constantly calling the film THE Materialists even though it clearly says Materialists on the poster, and that bothered me because I’m annoying.

And then Materialists came out, and people were upset because…it wasn’t a rom-com. Whether or not a film/book is a rom-com/romance might not be something you spend much time thinking about—in fact, it might not affect your life at all! “What do I care whether Celine Song’s sophomore film fits into the strictly defined boundaries of the romance genre?” you might ask. Well, because of my job (which, I really hope you know, is writing novels) this is something I spend a lot of time thinking about. There are very clearly defined rules for what makes something a romance, but more nebulous rules for what makes something a rom-com. And let me tell you, if you make people think your work is a rom-com and it isn’t? There’s gonna be hell to pay.

Where did these rom-com expectations come from? The trailer, I suppose, but mostly a lot of articles talking about rom-coms.

There was a lot of chatter about the film being some sort of homage to Nora Ephron, despite the fact that nothing in that trailer looks all that Ephronian, although it does take place in New York. You might say that New York City is another character…

Celine Song certainly talked about Nora Ephron (here’s an interesting interview with my beloved People), but it turned out she may have been influenced by the Heartburn side of Ephron more than the You’ve Got Mail side. Something that I found absolutely fascinating, though, was Celine Song’s list of films that influenced Materialists.

The Graduate…Broadcast News…Jerry McGuire…Terms of Endearment?? I mean, guys…she gave us all the clues.

Materialists isn’t a romantic comedy at all, and wanting it to be one will only lead to an unsatisfying viewing experience. This is something else entirely, my favorite genre: a weird romantic dramedy. My very first real post on No One Asked was about the film Children of a Lesser God, an intensely strange movie. I love this film, and although the romance doesn’t always feel fully romantic to me, I just don’t care. Terms of Endearment, similarly, has some romantic moments and I don’t know if they ever hit those romance novel ideals (okay, they don’t), but I don’t care. It’s perfect.

Materialists is essentially two movies smooshed into one movie, but what if that’s a feature and not a bug? Basically…okay, here’s where we’re getting into the spoilers, so be warned. Dakota Johnson is a fancy NYC matchmaker. She’s so good at her job because she understands that dating and relationships are often based on things other than love—they’re based on money, or respect, or feeling valued. Okay, we’re seeing the Pride & Prejudice/Age of Innocence inspirations now! She understands that everyone is presenting themselves—their bodies, their money—as an asset. She coldly calculates what everyone is worth, based on their salaries and looks. She and a fellow matchmaker even discuss how some men will get leg-lengthening surgery to make themselves taller. Hold onto this moment. It comes back later.

At one of her client’s weddings, she meets Pedro Pascal, the brother of the groom. He’s into her instantly, because she’s Dakota Johnson. It’s like when Cooper Raiff spots Dakota at a bat mitzvah in Cha Cha Real Smooth—a real “who is she” moment. But just guess who the cater waiter is…it’s Chris Evans, aka her former boyfriend who she broke up with for being poor! Uh-oh! They moved to NYC together and in the one flashback scene we get we learn that the final straw was when he couldn’t afford a parking space in the city and she broke up with him right there in the street. Public transportation would’ve prevented this fight, but I digress. Anyway, Chris Evans still knows her favorite drink order (Coke and beer) and he says, ahem, “Hey, buddy.” I do think that works. I absolutely do think Chris Evans calling a woman “buddy” works very well, and that’s one of those details that wouldn’t work in a book (imagine the Goodreads reviews: “He kept calling her BUDDY for some reason? I’m sorry, is she the titular Elf from Elf?? DNF!”).

Dakota is swept away by Pedro Pascal’s power and wealth and overall Pedro Pascal-ness. At the wedding where they met, Dakota had to talk the bride off a ledge by asking her why she was getting married. It was because her partner made her feel valuable, not because she was in love. That was a valid reason to get married, Dakota said, and that’s how Pedro Pascal makes her feel: valuable.

Dakota has one client she’s been trying forever to fix up, and for some reason nothing has worked out. But now she’s with a guy that Dakota thinks is right for her—until she finds out that the client is now suing the agency because the guy sexually assaulted her. We don’t get a lot of details about this, but Dakota is understandably shaken. Her work had a hand in this woman’s assault. Her boss (Marin Ireland, yes) is like, “Well you win some you lose some! Sometimes men assault their dates!” but Dakota can’t get over it so easily. She tosses and turns in Pedro Pascals’ extremely high thread count sheets…until she looks over and sees some scars on his legs. What scars are those? Could they be…?

Okay, it took me a long time to catch up to this part because I guess I’m not very smart, but they’re LEG SURGERY SCARS! You guys, PEDRO PASCAL did the expensive leg-breaking surgery so he could become taller and therefore more valuable to women! 🤯 I actually appreciated that the film didn’t immediately have Dakota say, like, “Are those leg surgery scars, as foreshadowed in that earlier conversation I had when I was smoking on a fire escape?” This movie gives you two seconds to piece something together.

Dakota and Pedro have a conversation in his kitchen that, to me, felt like the backbone of the movie. They discuss the merits of changing your body, yourself, to make yourself more attractive. To give yourself a chance to make a match that you wouldn’t otherwise make. In the theater, drinking that very large DDP, I thought to myself, “Wow, how weird would it be to have a surgery that changes your appearance like that?”

And then I remembered that…I did have a surgery that changed my appearance and I wrote an entire book about it¹. I had an underbite surgically corrected when I was 18. It involved breaking my jaw and moving it back into place. I know many people who’ve had the surgery, and many people who still have underbites. It’s one of those things that, as an adult, I don’t view as a big deal at all.

But as a kid, it was the biggest deal in the world to me. I cannot express to you without seeming hyperbolic just how ugly I thought I was. It makes me really sad to think about, but no one ever told me otherwise. I just assumed, well, I have this big thing wrong with my face, I’m going to frequent appointments to fix it (it was a years-long process full of braces and a palate expander and I don’t even remember what else to prepare for surgery), so naturally that means that the way I look now is bad. I deeply, deeply wish I hadn’t thought about myself that way back then, but that’s the truth. Things Jolie Needs to Do Before She Bites It is about a girl who’s afraid she’s going to die in surgery, because I was afraid I would die in surgery…but I would probably have rather died than continue to look the way I did, both because I had no understanding of mortality as a teenager and because I was so unhappy.

After I had the surgery, and after all the swelling went down, I don’t even know how different I looked. Maybe not that much, to other people. But to me, it was a drastic change. I can still remember that the summer after my surgery, multiple strangers at my retail job told me I was pretty. No one ever told me I was pretty pre-surgery. It felt like I’d unlocked this secret to living in the world as a normal person: just get a major surgery! Break bones in your face! Bank your own blood ahead of time in case you bleed out! Stay home for two months as the swelling recedes! Eat liquid foods for an entire summer! A real cheat code.

What’s funny (well, “funny”) is that my jaw did not stay in place and my bite is once again screwed up. A few years ago a dentist told me I could have the surgery again and…no! Shan’t be doing that!

I’d like to say this is because I’m so evolved now and I realize that my appearance is the least important thing about me, but the truth is that I frequently wonder if my books would sell better if I was hot. I certainly don’t think it would hurt! Gaining weight a few years ago really messed with my head, because now I often find myself in situations where I think, “Okay, but would they like me better if I was thin?” This extends into basically every situation—would I get better customer service? Would people respect me more? Would my family like me better? Would my friends take me more seriously?

This was the area where the film really succeeded for me, because it made me think about all this stuff. Who am I to judge Pedro Pascal for getting his legs broken? I got my jaw broken, and sure it was so I could actually chew my food more easily, but the aesthetic side effects of that surgery were pretty important.

But Dakota decides that she can’t be with Pedro Pascal, because they don’t have anything in common. She leaves his amazing apartment and calls…Chris Evans. You knew she would. He has roommates, you guys, but you know what else he has? The ability to get them into a stranger’s wedding upstate (because of his catering company) so that they can have a romantic moment. I thought a lot about whether I would notice two complete strangers hanging out at my wedding, and I came to the conclusion that I probably wouldn’t.

I do genuinely feel that a similar attitude about money is one of the most important things in a marriage because it can be stressful as all get out if one of you want to save and one of you wants to spend. Or, in this case, if one of you wants to afford parking and one of you is a struggling actor and cater waiter. A relationship between Dakota and Chris seems doomed to end in resentment—but has she changed? Did she actually realize that love is more important than a good match? I don’t know! What I do know is that Chris Evans utters a line that’s in the trailer: “When I see your face, I see wrinkles, and gray hair, and children who look like you.” I do like that line. I think that’s good. If I were a judge, I’d sigh before reluctantly saying, “I’ll allow it.”

The point is, they get back together and I’m not sure it works logistically but it kind of did work for me on an emotional/spiritual/visual level. I like to see them sitting on a park bench. I like to see them standing together on a stoop. Are they going to last? I don’t know, are Harry and Sally going to make it? Kind of not my problem, the movie ended!

Speaking of the movie ending, I had to pee so bad because of that giant DDP that I left during the credits scene.

I get that this movie isn’t for everyone, because it doesn’t work perfectly. The romance between Dakota and Chris, in particular, doesn’t give as much as a payoff as it could because it just isn’t built up enough (one flashback is the worst number of flashbacks…either several or none is preferred). They don’t have enough of a chance to develop chemistry. But I loved so many aspects of the movie, and to viewers who didn’t like it because it wasn’t what they expected…could I offer a gentle suggestion to not expect anything from movies? Maybe that sounds facetious, but it’s not! One thing I love about the romantic dramedies of the 70s and 80s is that they’re a wild ride, going in all sorts of weird directions you don’t expect. I want more of that in movies, and I worry that many viewers prefer more palatable, beat-following formula films.

I understand beats. I understand formula. Believe me, those are important to my work! But what I want in a film more than anything is to be surprised, to be entertained, to find something to think about. I long for the weird scenes that get stuck in your mind, as so many scenes in Broadcast News or Terms of Endearment are stuck in mine (I can picture Jack Nicholson and Shirley MacLaine in the arbor, or on the beach, or in the hotel right now). In Materialists, I can see that scene in the kitchen with Pedro Pascal and Dakota where he lowers himself down to his pre-surgery height. That worked for me! Materialists gave me a lot to think about, and I really enjoyed it.

My feelings on the film are a lot more positive than many people’s, so of course I’d love to hear your thoughts. Were you surprised by the leg-lengthening surgery reveal? Would you notice if Chris Evans snuck into your wedding? Lots of questions here! See you soon, and please forgive any typos. xo

1. Linking to Amazon because this book isn’t even in print anymore! Find it where you can get it!