Friendships in Films and Pages
They’ll be there for you.
Second only to our love of all rom-coms, the “buddy” genre offers equally fertile ground for entertainment. Of course, it’s not always all fun and games when it comes to friendship-forward content—and that’s ok by us. We’re infinitely fascinated with these complex and rewarding relationships and luckily, so are the content-makers of the world. So here are some classics in the genre, along with important takeaways for our real-life friend groups.
Friends: your chosen family.
“Friends,” like other 90s mainstays, is having a moment all over again. We like to think its enduring relevance is one part peak nostalgia and three parts recognizing the familial bonds we form with our friends. During the recent “Friends: The Reunion” special, the show’s creators said they wanted to explore that time in your life when your friends are your whole world—in between leaving the nest and building your own. We’d argue that time is actually timeless.
A case for the frenemy.
One time in Paris, one of us caught a brilliant Matisse and Picasso show, curated as a kind of conversation between the two painters as they reacted and iterated on each other’s advancements. Accordingly, we were excited to see the pair included in the brilliant book, The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals and Breakthroughs in Modern Art. Art critic Sebastian Smee chronicles the friendships of Manet and Degas, Picasso and Matisse, Freud and Bacon, and Pollack and de Kooning during their most productive periods, reflecting on how their works influenced each other. Sadly, these friendships ended in major falling-outs, but luckily their beautiful works have lasted.
Secure your friendship deck.
You’re likely no stranger to the ebbs and flows of your own friend group, but even when we have rough patches, our true friendships can weather the storm. If you didn’t catch “Insecure” the first time around, it’s worth seeking out this Issa Rae-created comedy. It explores these timeless themes in a fresh, modern, authentic and funny way. Much like New York was to “Sex and the CIty,” Los Angeles is a central character—as is the hip-hop driven soundtrack.
Three truths (no lie).
The reality of human relationships is that we rarely have objective reality. As the saying goes, there are usually three truths—mine, theirs and the actual truth. This is abundantly clear in the episodes of the podcast “Conversations with People Who Hate Me.” Host Dylan Marron seeks to explore what happens when “online feuders step out from behind the keyboard and get to know the human on the other side of the screen.” While not necessary entirely about friendship, it is a powerful reminder of how we can misinterpret events—especially when interacting online.
Find a ride-or-die.
As lovers of old movies, we enjoyed the book, Elizabeth and Monty: The Untold Story of Their Intimate Friendship about real life BFFs Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. Turns out, “A Place in the Sun” was indeed the beginning of a beautiful friendship for the two actors. Clift pushed Taylor to become a better actress, while she accepted him for who he was: a hugely talented, closeted gay man with a terrible drinking problem. She literally saved his life after a horrible car accident, and used her star currency to get him work when his career was on the rocks. He was a constant for her through multiple marriages and break ups; Taylor’s husband Richard Burton once told him, “Monty, Elizabeth likes me, but she loves you.”
