Casting Call 4.02.08: Issue 48 - Chris Brander
Posted by Jason Chamberlain on 04.02.2008
Jason Chamberlain marks his one year '411' anniversary in his latest issue of Casting Call! This week he takes a look at a guy who lands in the most feared place on Earth... the friend zone! This week it's all about Chris Brander from 'Just Friends'.
Welcome to a special issue of Casting Call.
It's still a couple issues shy of the big 5-0, but the column does hits an important milestone today. It's hard to believe, but I'm already celebrating my first anniversary as a member of the 411 staff! In my first year here at the site, I've enjoyed having a platform to reach and (hopefully) entertain countless people that I wouldn't have otherwise. Through this column, my short lived hockey column, the Heroes review and most recently our Buffy the Vampire Slayer retro reviews, including features like the monthly roundtables, top fives and fact or fictions, I've been able to discuss a lot of my favourite stories and characters and work with a lot of talented writers.
Before I get on with the column, I want to offer my thanks, first to Ashish and former movie zone editor Leonard Hayhurst for bringing me into the fold and giving me the chance to be a part of 411. It's been a very enjoyable trip thus far. I also want to thank all of my fellow 411 writers for bringing their top game week in and week out and drawing in way more readers than I likely do. Thanks also go to John Meehan for pimping out all my columns, this one included, with sweet banners. And last but certainly not least, I extend great appreciation to anyone who has taken the time to read any of my work throughout my first year here. Nobody likes to be shouting in a vacuum, and whether you like what I write or not, I am truly grateful that you take time out of your day to read it. I'll continue to work as hard as I can to make sure your time isn't wasted.
Now enough sucking up. Onto the column!
This week I'm going to discuss a character that comes face to face with the three words that all men fear the most.
The Friend Zone!
Is there any more terrifying piece of real estate in the life of a man (I'm speaking from a heterosexual point of view, but I imagine it exists for homosexuals as well.... and for women of course) than the friend zone? You meet a girl (or guy), you get to know them, you like what you see. You're attracted to them, you find them interesting, and it seems like the more you find out about them the better they get. You're on top of the world! And then you make a move for something more and you discover....
Yep. You're just a friend.
That's the nightmare that Chris Brander (played by Ryan Reynolds) finds himself in the film ‘Just Friends'.
When Chris is in high school in mid 90's New Jersey, he's a pretty lame guy. He's very overweight, wears clothes that are accurately categorized as the Michael Bolton starter kit and sings along to Boyz II Men tunes. He also hopelessly pines after his best friend, the beautiful Jamie. Hopeless being the key word, because his situation is the very definition of ‘stuck in the friend zone'. During their high school days, Chris might as well be a brother (or a lamp) to Jamie. He papers his bedroom wall with pictures of the pair (with her boyfriends neatly excised from them) and on the night of their fateful grad party, he decides to finally make his feelings known by writing a message in her yearbook. Unfortunately for Chris, one of the drunk football players at the party steals the book and reads the romantic confession aloud for all to hear, thoroughly humiliating Chris, who leaves town to become ‘somebody'.
Ten years later we see that he has. He's become a fit, trim and good looking record exec that dates supermodels, but through a quirk of fate he finds himself back at home for the first time in a decade over the Christmas holidays. Where, of course, he runs into Jamie. And this time, he thinks he can win her over by giving her what she always seemed to want back in high school; a good looking asshole.
But Jamie has changed as well in the ensuing ten years, and what she used to want doesn`t apply any more.
Matters of the heart are never easily dealt with, are they? Dating in the 21st century is a tricky business at the best of times. I think it's fair to say that most of us are good, genuine people, and so when we find ourselves attracted to somebody we try to put our best foot forward. But is there such a thing as too nice? Too friendly? When do you cross the line from being a dating option to being, well, a lamp?
Maybe it's different for everyone, and you'd be hard pressed to find someone who hasn't been in that situation. Nonetheless, whatever Jamie's line is, Chris passed it long ago, but ten years later he has another chance to prove he's the right guy for her.
His original experience with Jamie hardened Chris into, well, a bit of a prick. He dates really hot but vapid models and seems to have trouble getting emotionally connected. He is also VERY cautious of ending up in any woman's friend zone. He councils his friends to walk away if they even feel like the girl in their lives is guiding them there, and preaches a cool, aloof approach to all dating situations. Lunch is an express lane to the friend zone, he says, and no matter what, kiss at the end of the date, because friends don't kiss!
It's a strategy that falls flat on its face when he tries it with Jamie, who has grown up a bit. She's no longer interested in the aloof, asshole type guy. She wants a sweeter guy, more like who Chris used to be!
So he goes back in that direction for a while- the Mr. Rogers approach as he calls it- but that doesn't work either.
Because what Chris fails to do until the very end of the movie is what he needed to do all along. Simply to be himself. Sure, being himself got him stuck in Jamie's friend zone in high school, but they're both different people now. What Chris really has to do is truly let his feelings show and let Jamie decide. It's a tough spot to be in (don't we all know!) to put yourself out there for someone and to make yourself vulnerable. Even if you're just asking for a date, you're offering yourself, giving another person the power to say no to you, to tell you you're not good enough. Asking for a date or professing love to a friend are both acts of great courage, and it's when Chris has that epiphany – that there really is no way to ‘control' the circumstance, that all he can do is offer himself and hopes she likes him back – that he turns the corner in his life.
"I want to take you out on a date. And I don't care if it's in the day or at night or whenever as long as it's a real date. And I want to tell you how beautiful I think you are, inside and out. And I want to have babies with you, and I want to marry you and I love you, Jamie, I always have."
If you ever find yourself in the friend zone, unfortunately there are no guarantees you'll have a happy ending like Chris. But if you put yourself out there, make your feelings known and take the chance, you'll definitely be as brave as he is.
