What I did after learning of the Trump assassination attempt: I went to see a great rom com, Fly Me to the Moon!

Like most American’s I was shocked and saddened by the assassination attempt on former President Trump last Saturday afternoon. I stopped writing the proposal I was working on to watch the chaotic news coverage, not on CNN or Fox, but on X, which is now the best news source.

A profound sadness came over me, as I’m old enough to remember the spate of assassinations and attempts from JFK in 1963 to Reagan in 1981. During that ~20 year span, political violence was normalized in America, but faded over the next ~40 years for no apparent reason. Then we got the often violent George Floyd demonstrations in 2020 (organized by BLM and Antifa), January 6th incursion into the Capitol, recent virulent Anti-Semitic mobs on college campuses and in big blue cities, and culminating on Saturday with the Butler County shooting. As Yogi Berra is said to have said, “it’s deja vu all over again.”

What to do? I did the same thing I learned to do as a kid during my unhappy childhood—I looked for a movie and went with a gal pal to see the newly released romantic comedy, Fly Me to the Moon (my brief review is below). It’s pretty hard to remain depressed after being transported into a Technicolor world where all problems are resolved in about 120 minutes.

Faithful readers know that I’m a huge fan of classic films from the ’30s – ’60s. While I love most genres of the period like Film Noir (Double Indemnity, The Killers, etc.) and sci-fi / big animal movies (Godzilla, Them, etc.), I’m also very fond of the romantic comedies and screwball comedies dating from the mid-’30s to the end of WWII. Americans needed relief from the back-to-back Depression and war—Hollywood delivered with a parade of funny movies from directors like Preston Sturgess and Ernest Lubich (“the Lubich touch”) to comfort audiences. Watch The Lady Eve or The Shop Around the Corner: you know that the boy will always end up with the girl in a happy ending no matter what crazy plot twists they must overcome. But so what, the point was escapism.

Fly Me to Moon is very much in the tradition of classic rom coms: there’s what Roger Ebert used to call “the meet cute” involving initial misunderstandings between the two leads; the reveal that forces them together over their faux objections; the parallel story to the romance driving the narrative that Hitchcock called “The MacGuffen,” a plot device that never really matters, and, in this case, are the preparations for the Apollo 11 moon shot in July 1969; one of the characters having a shady past that looks like it will prevent the eventual romance; a menacing government official from some unnamed secret agency; lots of great character actors; and resolution of the MacGuffen so that the boy and girl can live happily ever after.

If you’ve seen North by Northwest, you’ve seen the plot of Fly Me to the Moon, but again, who cares? It’s not the plot, it’s the fun ride to get from meet cute to the romance, all with great casting and acting, script, direction, costumes, editing, set design, and so on. Oh, there’s also the best use of a cat in a movie since Pyewaket, Kim Novak’s Siamese, in another great rom com, Bell, Book, and Candle. The cat is central to the plot of Fly Me to the Moon, and I’m pretty sure you will be able guess how he’ll be involved in the end of the movie as soon as the cat is introduced. Again, who cares? Like most rom coms, it’s never a good idea to think about the plot too much.

The two leads, Scarlet Johansson and Channing Tatum, are wonderful with plenty of screen chemistry. If this movie had been made in the ’40s, it might have starred Joan Blondell and Van Johnson. One of the best aspects of the script is that there is no overt sex, just as there wouldn’t have been during the Code era. Even better, there’s not even any tired sexual innuendo to get in the way of the romance, or heavy-handed PC lecturing, which are all too common in movies these days.

The supporting cast is also perfect, with Ray Romano doing his nervous nebbish thing and Woody Harrelson as the the enigmatic and over-the-top funny government agent, Moe Berkus (love this character name: next time I’m at a Vegas buffet, I’m going to ask for some mo’ berkus). Of particular note are the costumes, which are perfect for 1969, with Scarlet in tight tailored suits (pretty fly for a Jewish girl) and Tatum wearing the same knit short sleeve mock turtlenecks I wore in high school, except I was a skinny kid without his massive chest and arms!

The soundtrack includes lots of late ’60s pop songs, mostly not all that well known, so are less obvious than in many period films. Standouts include Arthur Conley’s “Sweet Soul Music” (“Spotlight on James Brown, y’all He’s the king of them all, y’all”), “Moon River” performed by Aretha Franklin not Andy Williams, and of course “Fly Me to the Moon” over the closing credits but it seems the producers couldn’t get the rights to Frank Sinatra’s definitive version (still, Bobby Womack’s cover is just fine).

Now that you’ve gotten this far, you may be wondering what all of this has to do with grant writing, since I intentionally “buried the lead.”

Any real grant writer will eventually become stressed because of the endless absolute deadlines and the simple loneliness of the writing process—in most cases it’s just you and your computer. When combined with other life stressors that we all face, this can easily produce writer’s block. I’m facing very significant challenges in my family at the moment, which I won’t share here because we all have personal issues that intrude on the writing process from time to time. Like the MacGuffen, my travails don’t matter to the reader with their own problems. When this happens to me, I might take my big Golden Retriever for a walk, read a chapter from a good novel, or go to a movie. If you’re feeling down today, Fly Me to the Moon is a great distraction and worth seeing in a theater with other folks, not alone on your TV at home.