Morgan Matson joins us to talk about how much movies from the ’80s and ’90s influenced her while writing Save the Date.
Save the Date might be required reading if you love movies like Father of the Bride, What About Bob?, and Better Off Dead. Read on to find out exactly how these three films inspired Morgan Matson during her writing process.
What I get asked the most about while touring for my newest novel, ‘Save the Date,’ is inspiration, and if I was inspired by pop culture. And the answer is absolutely yes. In many ways, and more than any of my other books, ‘Save the Date’ is an homage to some of my favorite movies from the ’80s and ’90s.
Perhaps this was inevitable, since I’m a child of the ’80s and these were the movies that I watched, and loved, in my formative years. But the ’80s and ’90s were also just an amazing time for movies. It was a sweet spot when the blockbuster was taking off, but special effects hadn’t gotten to the green-screen fest we’re now mired in every summer movie season. Advances in technology were making for interesting premises, but hadn’t advanced to the point where it would interfere with the story (seriously, half of all pre-2000s movies wouldn’t have existed, because their plots could be solved in minutes if someone had a cell phone/the internet/a GPS).
In this period of relative peace and prosperity, post-Vietnam and Watergate, pre-9/11, movies could be unfettered fun. Most of my ‘comfort food’ movies — the ones I watch over and over again, the ones that I keep downloaded on my phone or laptop, the ones I never tire of — come from this time period. And if you took my favorites away from me — the Back to the Future and Indiana Jones trilogies, ‘Home Alone,’ ‘Princess Bride,’ ‘The Goonies,’ ‘When Harry Met Sally,’ ‘Sleepless in Seattle,’ ‘Jurassic Park,’ ‘War Games,’ ‘Die Hard’ — I would be cinematically bereft. Because I love the movies from this time period so much, it’s perhaps no surprise that I can see their influence in my newest novel.
There were three movies from this period that were the biggest inspiration for ‘Save the Date’ — ‘Father of the Bride,’ ‘What About Bob?,’ and ‘Better off Dead.’ ‘Father of the Bride’ (the 1991 Steve Martin version, not the 1950 Spencer Tracy — though that one is also wonderful) does two things beautifully. It’s a chaotic wedding movie, with impending disasters around every corner — but it’s really a movie about struggling with change, with that specific knowledge that you’re forced to confront during weddings, that things are changing, that your family will never look the same again, that this is a moment in time that will soon be gone.
As much as ‘Save the Date’ is a book about everything that can — and does! — go wrong at Charlie’s sister’s wedding, it’s really about Charlie struggling against change, holding onto the past as tightly as she can, not realizing that it’s preventing her from not only not seeing the present clearly, but also threatening to cause her to miss out on the future. I rewatched ‘Father of the Bride’ (and the sequel!) during the writing process of ‘Save the Date,’ and was struck again by the way it is able to convey the warmth and hominess of this family, in addition to the wedding shenanigans, and confirmed to me again why I love Nancy Meyers. The basketball scenes, pulling together past and present, are just wonderful cinematic moments. And plus, Martin Short. What could be better?
If ‘Father of the Bride’ had the feelings and emotions that I was trying to capture for my novel, ‘What About Bob?’ and ‘Better off Dead’ represent more of the anarchic spirit of ‘Save the Date.’ I’ve always loved ‘What About Bob?,’ which is such a ’90s movie that I don’t know if it would be made now — despite the fact that I’d love to see Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss take on a sequel. One of the things it does so well is showing order and rationality slowly descending into chaos, which is a cornerstone of all good farces. And I definitely wanted some of that feeling in my book — that we start out in a rational world where things make sense, and toward the end of it, as more and more things have gone wrong, the main character Charlie is chasing judges down in country clubs and dancing in supermarkets trying to keep people from being arrested. But probably the most direct homage to ‘What About Bob?’ in ‘Save the Date’ is the Good Morning America interview.
What kicks off the third act of What About Bob? is the aftermath of Richard Dreyfuss’ unsuccessful interview, in his family home, with Good Morning America. Toward the end of Save the Date, there is a disastrous interview, in the family home, with Good Morning America. And the reason I chose GMA, and not the Today Show, or some other made up news program, was because of ‘What About Bob?.’ The interview in ‘Save the Date’ goes much more off the rails than the one in the movie — which is really only bad for Richard Dreyfuss, since Bill Murray does great. But the idea of a terrible at-home morning show interview came completely from that movie, and I was so excited when I realized that I could tip my hat to it just a little.
And finally, we come to ‘Better Off Dead.’ This is a criminally underrated movie from the ’80s, and one I didn’t discover until college. It’s a truly weird movie, and one that makes more sense when your realize the writer-director was 24 years old during shooting. But it’s John Cusack at his most teenage-charming, and there’s an animated sequence with dancing hamburgers, so it’s pretty much a perfect film. But my favorite part of this movie is the feud that John Cusack’s character has with his family’s paperboy. This doesn’t contribute to the plot of the film at all, but is a perfect runner that continues through the movie, including the very last scene — the paperboy, determined to get the two dollars that he’s owed.
Needless to say, in ‘Save the Date,’ Charlie finds herself pulled into a feud with the family’s papergirl, who insists she’s delivering the paper, even though the Grants haven’t received a paper in months. This character is there entirely because of ‘Better off Dead.’ I loved the idea of the local papergirl — something that also feels very ’80s to me — but I also loved that there would be a runner, like in the movie, that didn’t necessarily intertwine with the main action of the novel. I thought it made the world feel more expansive. I had to fight to keep in the whole papergirl subplot since my editor pointed out, correctly, that this book was already very long and it didn’t actually have anything to do with the main plot. But I fought for it — and did, in the very end, find a way to help it tie up some loose ends — and I’m thrilled it made it into the final draft of the book.
All three of these very different movies represent just a fraction of the movies I love from this time period, and I was thrilled to get to see their influences reflected in Save the Date and give tiny homages to them in the book. I’m not sure if I’ll have more hat-tips to this era in future books.
I guess the only one way to find out is to keep on writing.
Save the Date by Morgan Matson is available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound. Plus, don’t forget to add it to your Goodreads list!
