i rewatched while you were sleeping
and it's still perfect
My good friend and die-hard Mets fan1 Danielle Sepulveres published an essay a few years back about how While You Were Sleeping is a perfect Christmas romcom. I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I think it might be THE most perfect romcom, full stop. That’s just my opinion.
I’ve realized that for me, I often want my Christmas media to have just a hint of melancholy to it. You have to be careful not to calibrate too far (Phoebe Bridgers’ cover of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is riiiiiiight on my edge), but personally, a bit of loneliness and sadness and grief often resonate for me around this time of year in part because of the contrast with the general joy and good cheer everywhere.
So, I decided to rewatch While You Were Sleeping for the 137th time2 and write about it.
I think I appreciate this movie even more now that I’ve been to Chicago in person. I really love Chicago!! Even the opening credits got me nostalgic for the Father Time clock (which was right by my hotel), Wrigley Field, riverboat architecture tours (my top recommendation for you if you visit Chicago! At one point our tour guide had a run of cow jokes that had me DYING, and at the very end he said, “That’s okay, only about 2% of people get that one” and I just about lost it. The way this man was working in the medium of “udderly” and “moooove,” I’m just saying if the Art Institute is closed like it was when I was there keep in mind that art is all around you.)
The movie opens with a voiceover from Sandra Bullock as Lucy Eleanor Moderatz, as she talks how her dad raised her by himself and they’d go on little adventures to places as exciting as . . . Milwaukee. She would ask him when he fell in love with her mother and he’d say it was when she gave him the world . . . or at least, a light-up globe. He was a romantic.
Cut to Lucy as an adult, and she works for the Chicago Transit Authority, taking tokens for people to ride the train. Every time Peter Callahan (not that she knows his name at this point, but he’s also played by Peter Gallagher so this is very helpful for US) comes through her line, she smiles moonily at him and dreams of the day when he’ll look up and realize it’s her, she’s the one he’s been waiting for.
(I’m probably going to end up talking about With Love, from Cold World some in this newsletter because, well, a) ‘tis the season, and b) this movie lives so deep within me that I think some of my love for it really came out in that book. For example, I’ve always loved when a character has a huge crush on someone they barely know, and it’s really more about what that person represents to them than anything about the person themselves. See: Lauren dreaming of a date with her boss’ son, Lucy here falling for Peter when all she knows is that he has a nice smile and rides the train.)
We see Lucy in her apartment, trying to haul a Christmas tree up through her window and complaining to her cat about how if you spend ten dollars on Chinese at least they deliver. She’s so effortlessly charming already, how could you not fall in love with this woman? She knows her trees! (“should’ve gotten the Blue Spruce, they’re lighter”) She makes an adorable whoops face when she drops the tree and it shatters a downstairs window. She’s wearing the coziest giant sweater that she later PULLS A PRESENT OUT OF.
Already we know we are in the safe, romantic fantasy of a movie because Sandra’s landlord is the best. I mean, sure he has a son who gets a little inappropriate sometimes, but Joe Fusco, Sr. wouldn’t dream of having Sandra pay for the window and is totally chill about everything while he fills out paperwork with his little glasses on. What a dream!
Joe Fusco, Jr., by the way, steals every single scene he’s in. He casually harasses Lucy every chance he gets and yet somehow makes it lovable. I do think it’s a little unfair that the punchline to this scene is Joe Jr. bending down and showing his buttcrack while Lucy says it’s a “shocker” that he’s still single. Listen, if you’re not wearing the highest-waisted jeans and you bend down, this is going to happen. This is a fact of life and we need to get over it.
Lucy is ordering a Chicago street dog (something which I admit I never did while there! But I did have one at the ball game? does that count?). One thing I love about this movie is it looks legit COLD. She’s all bundled up with her beanie and her fingerless gloves, you can see her breath, and it just FEELS like that moment where you’re like, please hurry and give me this hot dog so I can rush off to somewhere warm.
But ain’t this just like a fuckin’ boss because Lucy’s rolls up to announce the exciting news that he’s choosing her for employee of the month! And then he proceeds to read a fake letter where he basically thanks her for working every holiday even when she worked the last holiday, even when it’s Christmas . . . and we’ve all been here, right? You’re getting praised for how responsible and dependable you are, and it’s all a trap to get you to work more or stop complaining. He apologizes for asking her, but says she’s the only one . . .
“Without family,” she finishes. Lucy is so lonely! At the worst time of year to be alone! God, it hits.
I wish I could call out every single moment in this movie where I think Sandra Bullock is a comic GENIUS actually, but one is the way she puts tinsel on her tree. I think about it all the time. That little wrinkled-nose face, and then the way she just kinda tosses it on there.
So it’s Christmas Day and she’s working the toll booth when Peter comes through her line, and lo! A yuletide miracle! He looks up, smiles right at her, and wishes her a Merry Christmas.
But then there’s a commotion on the platform, and a group of (youths? hooligans? who are these guys?) pushes Peter onto the tracks. Lucy flies into action, jumping down herself to try to get him to wake up and move. “Oh god, you smell good,” she can’t help but say, and then “Sir? There’s a train coming and it’s . . . fast. It’s an express?” She manages to roll him out of the way just in time.
Lucy follows Peter to the hospital, but this Little Weaselface Doctor won’t let her go in because she’s not family. They wheel Peter away on the gurney, and Lucy sighs and says to herself, “I was going to marry him.” A nurse nearby cannot believe what she’s hearing, her jaw literally drops. Well, if she’s his fiancee then obviously she needs to be with him!!!
(This is such a small note, but I think it’s really smart of the movie to plant that Lucy talks to herself! This isn’t the first time! She’s always narrating to her cat or admonishing herself for being so embarrassingly lovesick in her tollbooth or whatever. Sometimes when movies have characters talk to themselves — especially when it then sets up a big plot point, and this is a HUGE one because it’s what the entire rest of the movie hinges on — it can feel a little forced to me. But with Sandra Bullock’s charming voiceover and the way she’s been talking to herself all along, I think it works beautifully.)
Peter’s boisterous, loving family shows up to visit him in the hospital, and what a cast of characters. I admit that sometimes a lot of overlapping voices stress me out (the Parenthood family dinner scenes were always rough for me), but I love their little asides and interruptions and references. They really do feel like a family to me, you know? Where they’re kind of annoying and frustrating and on the way home you’re going to be like, “Can you believe Mom brought up the time —” but there’s such love and warmth there.
This is where the nurse helpfully cuts in that Lucy not only saved Peter’s life, she’s also his fiancee! At first the family is a little taken aback — they had no idea Peter was engaged? — but then they seem truly excited to welcome her into the family. The only one freaking out is Lucy, who’s like wait, what?!? She tries to tell the nurse outside that she’s not his fiancee, she was just talking to herself, and the nurse delivers one of the funniest lines of the movie: “Next time you talk to yourself, tell yourself you’re single, and end the conversation.”
Between Peter’s family hugging her so tight and mentions of his grandmother’s heart “episodes” and everyone wanting to hear the cute story of how she and Peter first met, Lucy doesn’t have the heart to tell them the truth. You can see how much she kinda wants it to all be true, this story about how she saw Peter smile and just knew he was the one and now they’re engaged.
Meanwhile, in her real life, it’s back to her apartment building where Joe Fusco Jr. intercepts her on the stairs asking for a date. “I got Ice Capades,” he says, taking his toothpick out of his mouth and brandishing two tickets. “I know a guy.” The only person having a worse six a.m., day after Christmas, is Ben Folds, because Lucy is waking up when it’s still dark out, Christmas lights reflected in her alarm clock, standing alone on a cold train platform just to go visit Peter in the hospital.
I think this particular scene is such a master class because Sandra Bullock is so vulnerable in it, you just feel everything she’s feeling, and it also manages to get some exposition and characterization out all at the same time. Basically, she sits next to comatose Peter and starts talking about how she got into this mess. “Never been engaged before,” she says. “This is all very sudden for me.” She says she has a good life, she has a cat, she has an apartment, sole possession of the remote control. But she doesn’t have anyone to laugh with. “You ever fall in love with somebody you haven’t even talked to? You ever been so alone you spend the night confusing a man in a coma?”
And then we see that Saul, a family friend, has been standing outside the hospital room and heard the whole thing. Saul knows!
Lucy has just woken up next to Peter’s bed when his family all come in, which of course makes her look more like the devoted fiancee than ever. “You’re like me, I could sleep anywhere,” the grandmother says, and then Saul puts in, “And believe me, she has.” This is the first time I’m ever noticing this, but then the teenage sister says, “Way to go, Gram!” and now I can’t stop thinking about this one line. What does the teenage sister think Gram has been getting up to? Is And believe me she has more innuendo than I ever picked up on? We are still using the word “sleep” to mean sleep, right? Is this meant to mean the grandmother travels a lot and gets around, or that she gets around, I’m sorry, I’m just so confused! Is the teenager really just that impressed by the grandmother’s sleeping abilities, I must know!
On the way to the elevator, Lucy runs into one of Peter’s lawyer colleagues, who immediately starts talking about what a rough year Peter has had, with the accident and all. “Accident?” Lucy asks in a weary, I-really-don’t-want-to-get-into-it-but-am-just-being-polite kind of way, and the lawyer jumps to defensively explain. “Well, of course it was an accident,” he says. “It wasn’t my — I carry a pencil, I’m a lawyer, I do that!”
(Should I go to law school and convert to liking pencils just so I can pull that line off3?)
She confesses this predicament she’s in to her boss, who basically tells her to go along with it. “You tell them now, you might as well shoot Grandma,” he says. If you read The Art of Catching Feelings, you already know that I’m into a “hidden identity” type of premise, and I think THIS character is so important in one. You need someone to tell the main character that they HAVE to keep up the lie, it would actually be extremely harmful if they didn’t, because even if that’s not true it helps fuel the premise and helps you understand why the protagonist would’ve been reluctant to confess. Or, at least, that’s how I feel about it.
To anyone who would argue this isn’t a Christmas movie, I would submit as Exhibit “A” this scene of Lucy getting out of a taxi, holding a pointsettia while she looks up at the cozy, inviting Callahan home all lit up with Christmas lights. She shares a nice moment with Saul before going in where we learn a bit more backstory about her dad — that he got sick and they moved to Chicago for him to go to a research hospital, until “he decided he’d had enough research and he passed away.”
Saul says the Callahans have been like family to him and he’d never let anyone hurt them. WE know that there’s extra meaning to this line — a warning for Lucy not to hurt them, an acknowledgment that he doesn’t think she would. When she agrees that she wouldn’t let anyone hurt them, either, you really believe it, even though she just met these people. She’s already so bought in. She needs this.
There’s a lovely, perfect dinner followed by a present exchange where Gram delivers the classic one-liner: “I don’t drink anymore . . . I don’t drink any less, either!” Lucy is watching the family open their gifts, soft-eyed and smiling, when she gets a present “from Santa” and you see that there’s a stocking with her name on it on the mantle. My heart!!!
(I just finished annotating a copy of With Love, from Cold World (John’s version) with all the parts where John shows up, in preparation for John’s book Never Been Shipped, and one of the things I loved revisiting was that it was John who got Lauren a stocking full of candy to help her feel welcome at Christmas at their house. I always thought they had a special relationship — they’re both quiet observers — and in NBS Lauren gets the chance to give John a little advice and perspective for a change!)
There’s a little cut scene just to remind us that Peter Callahan is actually a dick AND that he also basically has a fiancee — the camera pans over arty black-and-white pictures he has of himself in his apartment, and then you hear his outgoing voice message ending in Ciao (unless you’re Italian, kinda perfect dickhead shorthand). A woman’s voice comes on his answering machine, saying, “What the hey, I will marry you.” Exactly the way I would always hope my proposal might be received!!!
Another way this movie is brilliant to me — the actual love interest doesn’t show up until ABOUT A HALF HOUR IN. We are already just under a third of the way through the movie, and we are only NOW meeting Peter’s brother Jack, played to crinkly-eyed perfection by Bill Pullman. One reason why I think the movie pulls this off is because we’ve been watching Lucy fall in love with the Callahan family, which is really just as important as her falling in romantic love.
It’s such a great meet-cute. He comes in late, leaning in the doorway, looking in on her sleeping on the couch while the teenage sister is like, “That’s Peter’s fiancee” and he’s like “No, that’s not Peter’s fiancee,” which of course makes Lucy’s eyes fly open while she quietly freaks out like oh shit oh shit oh shit. She tries to sneak out of the house in the morning, but he catches her while he’s sitting on the stairs drinking his coffee. Something about the way she says, “Good morning, Jack” — isn’t there an extra little zip when someone uses your name, when you didn’t even formally introduce yourself? Their exchange is a little awkward — she’s nervous that he knows, he’s obviously thrown by the fact that his brother apparently has a fiancee and that she’s . . . her?
Lucy was raised by a romantic dad and is always talking about that feeling when you meet someone and feel those instant sparks, and you really FEEL like Jack is feeling them here! Bill Pullman acts the shit out of this! He’s a little suspicious, a little unsure, but a lot of it is just because he clocks instantly that Lucy is way too good for his brother. She’s beautiful! She seems very kind! (I’m sorry but even in four lines Sandra Bullock can sell that she’s extremely kind). Your boy Jack is already gone to be honest. But that’s his brother’s fiancee!
Back at her apartment, Lucy dumps out all of Peter’s effects that the hospital gave her, including his wallet filled with . . . more pictures of himself. (It’s giving Damn, I was going for thoughtful.) When she comes across a single can of cat food she gives a little gasp because that means that there’s potentially a cat! Who hasn’t been fed in days! You know soft-hearted, cat-loving Lucy needs to make that right.
Another bit of physical acting comic genius is Lucy making a face when she passes Joe Fusco Jr. on the street, hiding her face behind a brown paper bag while she sneaks by him as he struts around his car. The fact that Joe STILL struts like that, even when he doesn’t know he’s being observed . . . brilliant characterization. He has the car manual in one hand and is banging away at the “stupid wingnut” with his other, so this is not a man who deserves to be strutting around cars.
Of course Jack shows up and asks about Lucy (how did he know she lives in 201? did I miss something?), and Joe claims to be dating Lucy and makes a lewd little pumping motion with his fist. Of COURSE Jack is going to take this seriously and think Lucy is lying or cheating on his brother! This is what’s known as a comedy of errors and I’m having the best time.
Lucy goes to Peter’s clean, obnoxiously modern apartment, where she calls “Kitty, rich kitty . . .” trying to get the cat to come out. But then Jack also shows up, and she ends up hitting him right in the face with a door. I love how everything magically works out to help bolster Lucy’s lie in this scene. Jack is like, “Peter doesn’t have a cat,” but then . . . out comes the cat, meowing away. The phone rings and Jack picks it up only to find out . . . it’s for Lucy. He KNOWS something doesn’t smell right about this whole engagement, but he just can’t catch her out.
At the hospital, he even tries to quiz her on a bunch of details about Peter, but she gets them right every time. His favorite Stooge, his favorite ice cream (Jack seems to accept “Baskin Robbins” as an answer, but I’d be like um that’s a brand I mean his favorite FLAVOR). The family says if Lucy really wanted to prove it, she could prove it . . . which is where the lawyer’s earlier “pencil to the testicle accident” story really comes in handy. Everything is really falling into place for Lucy! (For Peter, not so much, because OUCH.) The idea that they’d just take a quick peek at Peter’s ball(s) while he’s unconscious is WILDLY INAPPROPRIATE and one of those parts of the movie that really doesn’t hold up if you think about it too hard, but then, the entire conceit is around her lying about being engaged to a man in a coma.
When Lucy is back at her apartment, there’s a knock on the door. “Who is it?” Lucy asks, clearly over it after her interrogation at the hospital, and Joe Jr.’s voice comes through the door: “What gives?” What an elite way to answer “Who is it?” Setting the tone IMMEDIATELY. Joe Jr. saunters in, accusing Lucy of standing him up for the ice capades and holding his hands up as if to ward off any argument from her, and oh my god do you remember talk to the hand?! Is it time to bring talk to the hand back? Like yes, it’s extremely obnoxious, but it’s also so funny?
Just then, Saul shows up, so Lucy has to shove Joe Jr. in the closet. Saul is basically there to tell her he knows, he was at the hospital that day and heard that she’s not really engaged to Peter. But he also knows that she wouldn’t do anything to hurt the family, and they need her as much as she needs them. Once again, a necessary moment to keep our main character from acting in the way she ethically and morally already knows she should! Plus, I just love all the moments between Saul and Lucy. I think their connection is so sweet.
Lucy goes to rescue Joe Jr. from the closet but catches him trying on her shoes — or, he slipped and his foot just kinda *hilarious sliding gesture.* There’s ANOTHER knock and this time it’s Jack! This is some one-act play shit and I’m living for it. Jack’s there to deliver an engagement present, but between the sounds of Joe Jr. thumping around the closet and the fact that Jack clocked Saul leaving her building, Lucy is like YOU KNOW WHAT let’s just bring it to Peter’s apartment and I’ll come with you.
When they get to the building, Jack opens the back of the truck and Lucy is in awe of this beautiful wooden rocking chair, but he’s like . . . too bad, you got the loveseat. (Which, can I just say, this is a WILD engagement present to give to someone in an APARTMENT? Without knowing that they’re in need of a loveseat and that they’d want that specific one?). There’s a nice moment where Lucy admires the chair and Jack admits that he made it but it’s “tricky,” the idea of going into business for himself, because he works for Callahan & Son and he’s the son.
The doorman stops them when they’re trying to load the couch in the building, and Jack says that he’s with her — Peter Callahan’s fiancee. “They told me about her, sir,” the doorman says, obviously thinking of Peter’s other, real fiancee. “She’s scary.” “Tell me about it,” Jack agrees. I always like this moment. He clearly means scary in a very different way.
It’s a bit of a struggle to get the sofa into the apartment, and they end up taking out part of the doorframe and knocking a vase of blue water onto the white carpet (I’m sorry but that’s what you get!!! for having DYED BLUE WATER and WHITE CARPET!!!). The whole scene is very charming, because I love seeing a couple do the domestic-y type stuff you could imagine them doing if they were really together, and they laugh a lot in a way that reminds you of Lucy’s confession earlier in the movie that she’s never had anyone to laugh with.
When they get back to the truck, they realize that Jack is totally blocked in (which Lucy CALLED, I’m sorry, this is also a nice domestic moment because ain’t that the way these things go). Lucy is ready to dip and just walk home but Jack gallantly offers to escort her . . . actually for his protection, he says, because he doesn’t want to be alone. He’s so cute.
Let’s take a moment to appreciate Bill Pullman’s reversible khaki/jean jacket, which he says he still owns! I’d have kept this, too!
When I was in Chicago, I did an absolutely INSANE lap around the Riverwalk with a friend who lives there and was showing me around a bit. I say this with love (because she reads this newsletter sometimes, hi, Sarah!), but she was just like, “Oh yeah, I run this every day” but meanwhile it was quite hot and we’d already done a lot of walking and yeah. It was beautiful, I’m glad I did it, but I also remember trying to keep up with her fast little legs while she narrated a bunch of cool stuff about Chicago and I tried to pretend I wasn’t dying.
Anyway, one little factoid she shared with me is that Jack and Lucy are oriented the wrong way in this scene! For where Peter’s apartment building is (and one time she was looking at a unit in that building she ended up not going for, but she sent me pictures and it was so cool because I was like omg that’s where Peter lives!!!), it’s kinda backwards.
But I obviously love this scene, any continuity errors in geography aside, and I think the entire romance between Jack and Lucy hinges on it. She opens up about her dad, wanting to go to Florence but not having had the chance yet. She gives Jack this very soft, romantic look and says, “You know, in a very small way you kind of remind me of him a little bit” and honestly he DOES! If you remember the actor who played her dad at the beginning. He asks her more questions and she says well aren’t you chatty and he makes some excuse about how making conversation helps keep his face from freezing and they’re sliding on the ice and holding on to each other and laughing and it just all feels so much like a perfect first date.
Now Lucy full-on likes Jack and is openly admitting it — to Joe Jr. when she doesn’t even hesitate before saying she’d pick Jack over him, and then to her boss. Who now, after I’ve been giving him alllll this credit for being the character you need in this kind of story who’s like “don’t say anything, it’ll hurt Grandma” now completely turns and is like, “Tell the truth!” And to be fair, this is narratively what we need him to say at this point, because Lucy’s the one who’s in so deep she can’t fathom a way out of it, and meanwhile he’s like, “pull the plug,” get back to work, the end.
Jack is in Peter’s hospital room, “playing” poker with his brother by dealing out both hands. “You are unlucky at cards,” Jack says, “but lucky in love.” He’s obviously glowing from his night with Peter, but also feeling bad that he’s falling for the woman he thinks is engaged to his brother. “I was never envious of anything you had,” he says. “Until now.” Sometimes I think some of the most romantic scenes are the ones that only involve ONE of the characters, but the way they’re thinking/talking about the other! Case in point!
At family dinner, they’re talking about which actors are tall versus short, Cuban versus not, and other random things when the mom asks Lucy if she can help set Jack up with someone. “I really don’t know Jack’s type,” Lucy demurs, and Jack says he likes blondes — chubby ones — and his mom kinda beams a little (because she’s a chubby blonde). I don’t know why but I find that moment a little cute, that his mom is so pleased by that. This movie really tests the “is it weird to find someone who reminds you of your parent” thing I guess but in context I find it sweet. Of course, the teenage sister immediately blows up Jack’s spot by being like, “You like brunettes,” and the awkward way Jack looks, you can TELL he was just covering. And Lucy a little bit knows it.
Jack and Lucy get caught under the mistletoe, of COURSE, and they give each other a kiss that’s kinda juuuuuust on the corner of each other’s mouths. Like perfectly acceptable, but also just on the line of not. In real life, I think mistletoe is a nightmare, but in FICTION? I love it. (This is the bonus scene I’ve been working on for With Love, from Cold World! A prequel chapter about that first mistletoe kiss at the company party that happened before the book starts. We’ll see if I can finish in time for Christmas lol.)
(Also speaking of finishing in time, I’m inching closer to bedtime and I still have 45 minutes left of this movie so I better SPEED THINGS UP.)
The teenage sister (her name is Mary, sorry I never bothered with it before) comes through Lucy’s line and introduces her to her friend as her brother’s fiancee, which has Lucy’s colleague reeling because like, she didn’t even know her girl was SEEING anyone much less engaged?!?! After Mary walks away, the friend is like “Are you pregnant?” and Lucy says (obviously sarcastically, not that a teenager can always pick this up) that yes, she’s pregnant. OBVIOUSLY Mary’s friend hadn’t walked away far enough and overhears! Another delicious miscommunication!
Meanwhile, Peter’s real fiancee is leaving more messages on his machine, so we know there’s a TICKING TIME BOMB before the fiancees somehow meet and everything explodes.
At the Callahan house, Mary wastes no time in telling everyone in the family that Lucy is pregnant, news which Jack receives with a resigned little smile.
It’s New Year’s Eve and Joe Jr. tries to make one more play for Lucy. He brings her flowers like from “the winner’s circle at Arlington” and says his pop will knock a whole fifty bucks off the rent if they lived together (generous!). Lucy turns him down and he says, “It’s that other guy, isn’t it? I’ve seen the way you look at him . . . like you just seen your first Trans Am!” I do love an I see the way you look at him scene, and the fact that this one is translated through Joe Jr. speak is just so good.
Jack is outside Lucy’s apartment and clocks that she’s headed to a party with her bottle of wine, so he offers to drive her. Somehow that translates to him going INTO the party with her, trying to interrogate her a bit about the pregnancy, and I do have to admit despite my “perfect romcom” declaration (WHICH I STAND BY), this . . . is not my favorite Jack moment. Like, let her go to her own party, jeez. But of course her colleague immediately thinks that Jack is her fiance, there’s a fun little “Who’s on First” type routine between Lucy and her boss where he tries to figure out who’s the fiance and who’s in a coma and who’s Peter and who’s Jack, and he ends with, “Lucy, they have doctors for this kind of thing!” which is I feel one of the iconic lines from the movie.
Lucy is ready to drink some spiked punch, but Jack tries to warn her away, of course yelling “Because it’s not good for the baby!” at the exact moment the music drops out.
I do love that when they’re walking home from the party, and Jack says the evening didn’t go exactly as he’d planned, Lucy is like, “And I’m supposed to share some responsibility for that?” YES, tell him, Lucy!!! All she was doing was minding her own business (okay, and living out a complete lie, but for the purposes of THIS conversation we’re moving past that part) and it’s his family’s meddling that’s causing all the problems.
This is also where we get the classic “leaning” conversation, where Jack still thinks there might be something going on between Lucy and Joe Jr. because of the “leaning thing.” “Hugging is very different. Hugging involves arms and hands, leaning is whole bodies moving in like this. Leaning involves wanting . . . and accepting.” They almost kiss except Joe Jr. chooses that moment to ask Lucy with impeccable timing if Jack is bothering her. “‘Cause it looks like he’s leaning.”
Jack tries to clear up the pregnancy misunderstanding, but Lucy is clearly hurt by the implication that the only reason Peter might marry her is because she was pregnant. “Fact is, you’re not really Peter’s type,” he says. “Whose type am I?” she shoots back, but he obviously can’t say MINE even though he wants to. She gets pissed and calls him out for not talking to his dad about leaving the business, and he’s like hey, spending a week with my family doesn’t make you an expert and she’s like, “Spending a lifetime with them hasn’t made you one either.” Damn. This is another way you see that they really complete each other — they need someone to call them on their shit and get them out of their comfort zones a little!
Of course, Jack can’t just let that one sit, and so he calls her out right back. “Would your father be happy knowing you’re sitting in a token booth planning vacations that you aren’t taking?” he asks, and Lucy makes this sad, hopeless little face, giving up the argument completely. “No,” she says. “He wouldn’t.”
And then, this is my favorite part of the movie, I’m sorry but it just hits for me — she says, “You don’t know what it’s like to be alone.” Jack tries to assure her that hey, she has Peter. “I don’t have anybody,” she says. I thanked this moment in my Acknowledgments for Cold World, that’s how important it is to me. Just when I think about loneliness and Christmas and romance and family and yearning, it’s all tied up in that one line. I also love an argument that starts out angry but turns a little sad. ALSO New Year’s Eve is always a hella bummer night for me, I’m sorry, but “Auld Lang Syne”?!?! Who came up with that shit?!?
But wait! PETER IS AWAKE!!!!!!!!!! “Boy will he be glad to see you,” they say to Lucy, but she knows better. When he scans over his family’s faces, he pauses on Lucy and is like, “Who are you?”
Of course, the family just assume he has selective amnesia, where the only thing he can’t remember is his own fiancee. Lucy is about to confess everything, because once we’re starting to incorrectly diagnose someone with neurological disorders, time to come clean, but Saul takes her aside to tell her to let him do it. Naturally, Saul doesn’t do it, and so Lucy has to live with her lie for at least another night.
Jack gives her a ride home from the hospital, and when they stop outside her building she says that starting tomorrow things are going to be a little different. Obviously, SHE’s talking about the fact that everyone is going to know it’s all been a lie, but he agrees with her because he’s clearly thinking, “Yeah, I’ll have to stop openly pining for my brother’s fiancee.” Then she says, in what is another heartbreakingly vulnerable line read from Sandra Bullock, I’M SORRY but she’s just killing it in this movie: “I just wanted you to know that you’ve become, uh . . . a really good friend.” There’s so much packed into that one sentence. And Jack feels it, too, because he doesn’t want to be just a good friend to her. He gets his shit together fast enough to tell her that he didn’t mean what he said before, and he thinks she and Peter are going to be very happy together. My heart!
I actually think about this scene where Jack shows up with Dunkin Donuts and sits down with his dad at the dining room table. I just think the sets in this movie are so good — like this is a dining room populated with the best estate sale furniture has to offer! This is where the family gathers! This is your parents’ house, your grandparents’ house! Anyway, the point of this scene if I can stop yapping about the fucking furniture is that Jack finally confesses to his dad that he wants to strike out on his own and make furniture. His dad takes it surprisingly well, and is basically like, damn, I could’ve sold the business and taken your mother on a cruise! Let’s just hope that can still happen!!! Midge deserves her cruise!
Peter is a Pisces! This surprises me. Saul visits him in the hospital and instead of telling Peter that Lucy isn’t really his fiancee basically just . . . calls Peter a putz and tells him that Lucy saved his life and he should look deeply into her eyes and propose all over again.
Every sweater Sandra Bullock appears in is better than the last, and I really like this slightly cropped blue fuzzy cardigan, it’s really cute. Peter and Lucy talk about heroic deeds, and how you don’t have many chances to perform them as an adult. (Except Lucy, of course, who jumped in front of a train to save him!) She tells Peter that he gives up his seat on the train every day, and he says that’s not heroic. “It is to the person who sits in it,” she says, and HOW COULD YOU NOT FALL IN LOVE WITH THIS WOMAN? Truly, I’d propose right then and there. She just sees the good in everyone. I mean, she’s bringing out the best in Peter.
Just then, Peter’s REAL fiancee Ashley Bartlett Bacon shows up and the doorman is like, “You’re not his fiancee!” and you can tell that pisses her off. Shit is about to go DOWN.
Jack is wheeling Peter out of the hospital and Peter feels the urge to confess everything, including that he’s never been faithful to a woman and that the squirrels he saved as a child and was written in the paper about, first he’d knocked them out of the tree with a rock! Okay, wow, this is a very different vibe from the man who gives up his seat on the train. Jack is appalled and is like, you didn’t say any of this to Lucy, right? Peter says Lucy’s terrific but then can’t come up with anything more specific to say about her.
Oh, but Jack can! In a romantic speech for the ages, he says, “I’d say that she gets under your skin as soon as you meet her. She drives you so nuts you don’t know whether to hug her or just really arm-wrestle her. She would go all the way to Europe just to get a stamp in her passport. I don’t know if that amounts to insanity or just being really, really . . . likable.”
Peter the putz is like, “No, that’s not it” and then goes on a long speech about how if he has to spend his whole life figuring out why he loves her, he’ll do it. Jack is like okay, the squirrels were one thing but this is just about all I can take and abandons him by the elevator.
Meanwhile, both Lucy AND Ashley Bartlett Bacon show up at the hospital — the former to tell Peter the truth for once and for all since Saul is obviously not going to do it, and Ashley to be like, “What the fuck, why aren’t you answering my calls and why doesn’t your doorman know who the fuck I am.”
Ashley gets there first and opens with “Scumbag,” which is ALSO a greeting I’m going to remember along with “What gives?” She confronts Peter about how he proposed to HER first and she didn’t know he’d go running off to some bimbo and the guy in the hospital bed next to Peter is just LIVING for the drama of it all. She says she wants her stuff back and he says, fine, he wants his stuff back, like her nose. She grabs her boobs and is like, “Here, you paid for these, too!” and the guy on the next bed is like, going to CHOKE on his drink if he’s not careful, he can’t believe what he’s saying. She leaves by calling him a “one-balled bastard” which is pretty funny if not very nice.
Lucy comes in just as Ashley is leaving, and Peter proposes to Lucy in a speech that includes him name-checking his French apartment (“Where?” Lucy asks — “Paris,” the man in the next bed dreamily puts in) and such romantic phrases as “My family loves you, I might as well love you.” The nurse who misheard Lucy in the first place and set this whole farce in motion happens to be there and she faints at the news!
We don’t get to hear Lucy’s answer, because of all the fainting, but then she’s in her apartment with a cream-colored dress still on its hanger slung over her neck, trying on different shoes that both look kinda silly because she’s still wearing thick socks. (This is what I look like around the house sometimes, when I’m wearing socks and then slip on my shabbiest flats just to run out and get the mail. My husband and I call it my “breadline” look and we have a whole bit about “Where’s Gorbachev,” anyway why am I telling you this.)
Jack shows up at her door and they have a cute little moment of misunderstanding, where she thinks he’s Joe Jr. and so is shouting things through the door and then they flirt a little but like, respectfully, because after all she’s about to marry his brother. He brought her a snow globe with Florence inside of it, a callback to their earlier conversation about where she’d first want to visit in Europe. He says all the right things about Peter being a lucky guy and how he had to say that because she’s going to be his sister-in-law. She makes this sound that’s halfway between a laugh and an aw, and it’s the perfect conversation where you can tell both their hearts are breaking a bit but they want to keep up the pretense that they’re happy. “I better get going,” Jack says, leaving in such a rush he leaves the door open like he was raised in a barn, but you know what, man’s going through it, we can be gentle with him.
Lucy stops him on the stairs and asks if he can give any reason why she shouldn’t marry his brother. And because he’s a good guy, and a good brother, he just says, “I can’t.”
Lucy drops off a wedding invitation to her boss and he’s like, “Whom are we marrying?” and then when she says Peter he’s like “The coma guy?!?!” which is another one of those lines just made for the movie trailer. The boss gets a lot of those. Lucy goes on a rant about how she wishes the wedding were yesterday because that would mean she’d already be in Italy. “What happened with the other guy?” her boss asks, in a way that suggests he really does care even if he’s been a bit brusque and boss-like (making her work on Christmas, etc.) the whole movie. “He didn’t want me,” she says, her voice breaking a little.
And then it’s the day of the wedding! It’s being held at the hospital, where Lucy is rushing in her cream dress with her hair braided and tied with a bow, and Peter is waiting still wearing his hospital pajamas but with a suit jacket thrown over his shoulders. “You suck,” Jack can’t help but tell him. “I suck, or the outfit sucks?” Peter wants him to clarify. Jack just says it’s a toss-up.
Lucy arrives and starts her wedding march down the aisle, but has to go back and hang her coat up and start again. She locks eyes with Jack, who looks pained but gives her a very sweet smile, and you can just tell she’s going to do what she does. “I object,” she says when they’ve barely gotten through “Dearly beloved.” Jack is like oh thank god, we’re doing this, so he objects, too. The priest is like, “What about you?” and Peter is like, “I’m thinking” in a hilariously confused way.
“I am in love with your son,” Lucy says, then points at Peter. “Not that one . . .” She leans farther to point at Jack, “. . . that one.” Fuck, this is so iconic.
She basically comes out with all of it. That she saved Peter’s life but was never engaged to him, hadn’t even met him. Jack whispers, “why didn’t you say something,” and she says because she didn’t know how to tell him. She then addresses the whole family and says she fell in love with all of them, and went from being all alone to being a fiancee, a daughter, a sister, and a friend. It’s such a great speech and she does the tearful delivery of it so well. Like, this and 10 Things I Hate About You. Two of the most iconic scenes like this.
Then all hell breaks loose when Ashley Bartlett Bacon shows up to object, her HUSBAND shows up to object to her objection, Peter’s mom is upset that he proposed to a married woman, he’s upset that while he was in a coma his brother made a play for his fake fiancee, it’s a mess! In the middle of that, Lucy slips out, exchanging one last look with Saul as she goes like, well. So much for not hurting anyone.
Joe Jr. shows up to try to comfort Lucy, and when she asks how things are going with his chick from the third floor he does this “oh, it’s fine” hand-waving thing until he starts breaking down in tears. This is how I basically want to always answer any “how’s it going” question ever lol.
Okay! We’re at the end of the movie!!! This classic scene!! And thank god because it’s past midnight and I need to go to bed. Lucy is back at her job, taking tokens, but LISTLESSLY, LOVESICKLY, in a way where you know she is full of regrets and sadness about the way everything went down.
BUT THEN. A diamond engagement ring drops in instead of a token! And Jack and all the Callahans are there — he says he wants to ask her a question and they do their family bit where they try to meddle in how exactly he’s proposing, and everyone is very cutely excited. I love Lucy’s adorable little tongue-between-her-teeth squee look when he drops his token in so he can come in the booth with her. He asks her to marry him, she says yeah in this soft way like it’s a foregone conclusion, she says she loves him, he says he loves her back, and then they’re kissing.
Which is WILD to me. One thing I think about this movie all the time — they do not even KISS, not truly, not except for that mistletoe kiss, until the very end AFTER HE HAS PROPOSED. And yet the movie sells it, one hundred percent.
It closes with a shot of them riding away on the train, all dressed up in their wedding finery with a Just Married banner on the back of the train car, which is honestly goals as far as I’m concerned. The movie closes out with a reference to the title, where Lucy says Peter once asked her when she fell for his brother and she says, “It was while you were sleeping.” Which is actually kind of a shitty thing to say, when you think about it. Like oh yeah, it was totally while you were in your coma. But also . . . when do you think she fell for him?!? You were asleep and then you woke up and a couple weeks later Jack was dropping a ring in the token booth!!!
Anyway. If there are any typos in this post, I’m so sorry, please excuse them. I just love this movie and it’s always such a joy to revisit it around this time of year. If I don’t talk to you before then, I wish you the very best as you hopefully get to enjoy a festive, restful time with your own friends and family.
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Not strictly relevant, but one of my favorite things about Danielle so I had to shout it out.
I haven’t kept track; I’ve just been reading Sweet Valley High and it’s ALWAYS 137 with Jessica!! What is with her fixation on this number?
Although actually I think “I carry a pen, I’m a paralegal, I do that” might be just as funny?
Also, I reiterate: your newsletter is my favorite!
I had to pause at the Ben Folds joke to scroll and comment on how uncomfortably hard I laughed. This is also one of my favorite movies and you’re covering it perfectly.
All right, scrolling back up now…