About Season Five

February 13th, 2024 - Present

We make Hot & Bothered because we are interested in the way that love stories have impacted our lives and culture. For our fifth season of the show, we’re turning our attention to romantic films.

The season begins with ten episodes on How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, an iconic film of the early 2000s rom-com oeuvre. It has a perfect yellow dress. It has a karaoke battle. It has Matthew McConaughey on a motorcycle. It’s basically the epitome of everything people consider ‘silly’ about the genre. In the first ten episodes, Vanessa Zoltan will revisit How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days in conversation with media experts and scholars to better understand the language of romance on film.

Following those first ten episodes, Vanessa will be joined by beloved academic and podcaster Hannah McGregor to dig into the canon of romantic films, from Casablanca to Love & Basketball to When Harry Met Sally, (just to name a few).

 
 

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An introduction to Season Five featuring Vanessa in conversation with dear friends who were part of her romantic film-filled youth.

For our first deep-dive into How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, we wanted to look at the history of the rom-com genre. To help us dig into it, we called up the incredible Kathleen Karlyn, the founding director of the Cinema Studies program at University of Oregon and author of The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter.

We wanted to know: Where does the history of the rom-com start? What do people mean when they say something is a ‘battle of the sexes’ movie? and how do gender norms and ideals inform this particular movie? 

For our next deep-dive into How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, we wanted to better understand the story structure of a Rom-Com. We called up the delightful Hannah Giorgis, a film critic for The Atlantic, to help us break down the three-act structure and how it operates in this film.

Hannah brought some great citations and resources to the show:

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, like many Rom-Coms, is set in New York City. It’s got fire escapes, taxi cabs, and a dramatic Manhattan Bridge scene. In order to understand this film, we have to understand: What is it about New York that is so ripe for romance? And what parts of the city are highlighted in this movie and why?

To help us answer those questions, we’re joined by Eric Hynes, the Curator of Film at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York. 

After talking about setting last episode, we wanted to dig even deeper into the physical space inhabited by Ben and Andie. How does the design of their workplaces, apartments, and date-nights affect how we perceive each of their characters?

To help us tackle this topic, we're joined by Production Designer Stuart Blatt. Stuart walks us through the role of Production Designer, how he works with other crew members, and what he noticed specifically when watching How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days?

The success of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is built around the chemistry and star-power of its two leading actors: Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey. To truly understand this film, we have to understand the way movie stars operate in Hollywood, what casting these two actors meant in 2003, and what it means today.

Helping us in that task is Russell Meeuf, a professor in the school of Journalism and Mass Media at the University of Idaho. His work focuses on celebrity culture, popular cinema, masculinity studies and disability studies. He is the author of several books on media culture, including White Terror: The Horror Film from Obama to Trump, Rebellious Bodies: Stardom Citizenship, and the New Body Politics as well as John Wayne's World: Transnational Masculinity in the Fifties.