Men Are Useless Cinema

Laughing and crying with Terms of Endearment

I’ve always had a very male-centric life. I grew up with two younger brothers, and since my dad was the one taking us to movies (you may remember that Mama Winfrey famously does not like movies), that meant tagging along to a many films that appealed to young boys. Our house was full of action figures, X-Men cartoons were on the TV, and no one wanted to play with my vast Barbie collection. I didn’t have an older sister to teach me how to do my makeup or hair; I had to learn that stuff from the streets (by which I mean copies of YM and Seventeen magazines that I checked out from the library, all of which were filled with terrible advice I still remember). I don’t want to make it sound like I didn’t have female friends in high school, because I had a core group of wonderful girlfriends who I still love to this day, but I spent most of my senior year watching movies in my friend Chad’s basement (hi Chad!) along with a couple of other skateboard dudes. And, of course, I spent my post-college years surrounded by men when I worked in a manufacturing plant. And now I’m married to a man and I have a son. Even my dogs are dudes. I am surrounded by men at all times!

Perhaps this is why I’ve always gravitated towards stories about sisters and all-female environments. There are nuns, of course, but also boarding schools, homes for unwed mothers, embroidery groups in post World War I England, etc. The possibilities are endless. The idea of an all-female environment might also seem exotic to me because I write rom-coms and have spent so much time reading romance. In the worlds of female-centered books and movies, romance is often not the point. In fact, romance often seems to get in the way, because these men? They’re useless!

I don’t find men useless in real life. Clearly. I’m married to one, I’m raising one, and in general men are some of the dearest people in my life. And yet. I love a movie where the men are so beside the point, so annoying, so…useless. This is the case with Steel Magnolias, a wonderful movie where the men are always getting in Sally Field’s way. There’s even a man in Steely Mags (shoutout to Best Friends Forever, a TV show that was ahead of its time) who doesn’t appreciate being married to Dolly Parton. Can you imagine such a useless man? In this film, the men might as well not even exist. When Julia Roberts is dying (sorry to spoil a very old movie), is her husband, the one who impregnated and therefore endangered her, at her bedside? No. It’s her mother, Sally Field. It’s her mother who looks after her and handles everything and cries at her funeral, and it’s Sally Field’s friends who comfort her. The men are nowhere in sight. Probably off shooting more birds out of trees, who knows!

Which brings us to a film I recently watched for the first time, a classic of Men are Useless cinema: Terms of Endearment. Really all I knew about this movie was that it was a tearjerker, and it is, but it’s so much more, too. It’s about the relationship between a mother and daughter, Aurora (Shirley MacLaine) and Emma (Debra Winger). There are men there too, and they’re usually causing problems, but this movie is about the ladies.

A movie full of artfully draped sweaters

And those ladies. I already loved Shirley MacLaine from the aforementioned Steely Mags and, of course, The Apartment. She is such a babe in Terms of Endearment (she was a babe across so many decades of cinema! An icon! A legend!). Her look in this film is memorable precisely because it’s realistic. Her mascara is spidery in a way I admire. Her lips are thin—not a filler in sight. She repeats outfits. She’s an uptight woman who has seemingly no interest in love or sex after her husband dies, despite the fact that scores of men (including Danny DeVito) are constantly following her around. She mostly wants to work in her extraordinarily impressive garden, which I get. If I had an arbor like that, I’d want to sit in it and admire my roses, too.

Emma is played by Debra Winger, who I wasn’t super familiar with because I haven’t seen An Officer and a Gentleman (because of my preexisting distaste for Richard Gere). But the second she showed up on screen, with her honking laugh and her raspy voice, I fell in love with her. She plays this role with zero pretense, creating a guileless character you can’t help but adore. Shortly after the film begins, she ends up getting married to a character named….get ready for it…Flap. Flap is played by Jeff Daniels, and while I normally like Jeff Daniels, I do not like him here!! He is WORSE than Dylan McDermott in Steel Magnolias! This man is so useless. His first offense is coming between Aurora and Emma, because Aurora thinks marrying Flap is a bad idea. “You’re not special enough to overcome a bad marriage,” she tells Emma, and whew, truer words were never spoken.

But as we all know, you can’t exactly tell someone not to get married, and so Emma gets married to Flap and Aurora skips the wedding. You think this might be something that will drive a wedge between them—after all, “should I go to this wedding/should I invite this person to my wedding” is the topic of, like, 50% of Dear Prudence letters—but shortly after the wedding, when Emma and Flap are lying around in their rundown house full of perilously stacked books, Aurora calls Emma. And after a short, almost nonexistent, argument, they pick right back up where they left off. Flap is clearly annoyed, but Emma doesn’t even notice, and that’s where we realize what this movie is truly about: Aurora and Emma, not the guy rolling his eyes.

The film keeps the two of them apart for a long time, mostly because Flap is always moving Emma and their ever-increasing family around the country for his teaching job. And Shirley MacLaine kind of has a thing for her neighbor, who is a) an astronaut, b) a real ladies’ man, and c) Jack Nicholson. I firmly believe there is no movie that couldn’t be improved by Jack Nicholson, an actor who isn’t like anyone else. He’s a total sleazebag, always bringing younger women back to his place, but he’s interested in Aurora. And who wouldn’t be? Have you seen those floral separates she’s rocking? She’s kind of into him, too, but all of his attempts to woo her are so gross and crass (he used a sexual innuendo I’d never heard before and I was offended for her) that uptight Aurora just cannot let go enough to actually sleep with him. Even though she totally wants to (sorry to Danny DeVito, whose devotion just wasn’t enough)

This clip showcases their dynamic, as well as the movie’s insistence on the least subtle musical cues ever that tell you how to feel. “Actually, it’s SWEET that he tells her she brings out the devil in him”—the piano, playing loudly enough that you can barely even hear the actors speaking.

But ultimately, Jack Nicholson is…you guessed it…kind of useless.

TFW Jack Nicholson is being an asshole in your elaborate garden sanctuary.

Meanwhile, Flap is very obviously cheating on Emma and not doing a great job of hiding it. Emma, feeling ignored, falls for a banker who offers to pay her bill in a grocery checkout line when she runs out of money (kind of a You’ve Got Mail move). That banker is…John Lithgow. I’ve seen and loved John Lithgow in many roles, sometimes scary (Blow Out) and sometimes goofy (the underrated sitcom Trial and Error), but never in my life have I had the thought, “hmmm, John Lithgow is kind of attractive.” But that’s the mental state this movie puts you in! You’re so tired of Flap (FLAP!) that when John Lithgow shows up and is nice, you’re like, “hell yes, Emma, get yours.”

Up is down, right is wrong, John Lithgow is hot, I don’t know how to feel!!!

Also, I’m so in love with Emma that I don’t even care that she’s cheating on her husband. When Flap does it, I hate it. I hate him. When Emma does it, Debra Winger is just so dang cute that I’m like, “aw, she deserves some fun.” I won’t apologize for my feelings!

But this movie isn’t all flings with Jack Nicholson and John Lithgow. It’s also sad, quite suddenly, in the last half hour. Emma is diagnosed with cancer and declines quickly and it’s horrible. For all his (many) faults, Flap doesn’t actually want Emma to die, so he’s around again. True to the movie’s deep humanity, Emma doesn’t hate him or push him away or tell him he’s a terrible husband or dad as she’s dying. This isn’t a film with a clear cut villain. But it’s Aurora who locks eyes with Emma right before she passes away, and it’s Aurora who ends up caring for the children after Emma dies because Flap can’t be counted on to do it. I cried big, heaving sobs during these scenes, especially the one where Emma says goodbye to her sons. I can’t even link it here because just thinking about looking it up makes me want to cry.

Aurora is the one who shows up to the hospital, the one who shouts at the nurses to give Emma her pain medication, the one who handles the kids and the details. Along with Emma’s best friend from childhood, Aurora is the one who is there. But perhaps the men aren’t entirely useless, because guess who comes moseying down the stairs to the hotel pool when Aurora is watching the kids? Jack Nicholson. He may have been unable to tame his partying, womanizing ways for her, but when she’s in need, he’s there. It’s a real testament to the uselessness of men in this film that I cried when she saw him. And all he did was show up…that’s all it takes to be a superior man in this film! The bar is so low, it’s in the basement. He literally just showed up and I cried. In the world of this film and Men Are Useless cinema in general, simply being present is #couplegoals. I am swooning at Jack Nicholson saying “I just wanted to see ya.” That’s all it takes!

Here’s the exact scene, and if you’re not sure how to feel, don’t worry. The piano will tell you.

Terms of Endearment swept the 1984 Oscars, which was well deserved. Frankly it should’ve won more Oscars; maybe they should’ve created new categories. I hate to engage in nostalgia (although I wasn’t born when this movie came out so I don’t know if this even qualifies as nostalgia), but I miss this movie culture. I miss the days when Jack Nicholson was a) even at the Oscars at all and b) winning Oscars, as is his right. I miss a time when there were more movies about basic human experiences, ones that blended humor and tragedy. ToE made me laugh out loud and it made me sob; it’s my ideal movie experience! I deeply wish we had more movies like this, starring real, actual movie stars.

Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger were both nominated for best actress, and while I really think Debra Winger should’ve won, I can’t exactly argue with a Shirley MacLaine win. Also, Rock Hudson and Liza Minnelli presented the award! Imagine! Look at how openly nervous these actresses look as they wait to see if they won. I live for these displays of humanity at awards shows.

Shirley and Debra had a famously rocky relationship (some might even call it a feud, although that seems a reach) on set, but I will leave it up to you to google it if you want to find out more. For whatever reason, I found their conflict a little underwhelming (I lived through the Don’t Worry Darling summer, so I’ve had my fill of on-set drama) and also just beside the point. The movie’s so great on its own, and I don’t really care about what happened behind the scenes/whether Debra Winger farted on Shirley MacLaine. Maybe that’s what it takes to make a classic film! I wouldn’t know!

Worth noting but it wouldn’t fit in anywhere else: sometimes Debra Winger looks so much like Lizzy Caplan that I was distracted.

Terms of Endearment is currently streaming on HBO, and if you haven’t seen it recently or at all, I hope you’ll give it a watch. I hope you’ll fall in love with Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger. I even hope you, against your better judgment, develop a crush on John Lithgow. Spring is in the air and anything can happen!

See you next week.