BROMANCE IN HOLLYWOOD!
-Naveen K.Gupta
In FTII, Pune, where I and my first batch of Screenwriting classmates grew to learn to scribble dreams into words, anything new was introduced by this zany classmate of ours called Megha Ramaswamy! Megha read and watched more films than us and would often tell me new words being in circulation, like bachelorette instead of spinster!
My net roving got me the meaning of the word "Bromance," quite the currency in films and videos at present! It is a portmanteau of the two words "brother" and "romance," coined by author-editor Dave Carnie in "Big Brother Magazine," a sort of adult skateboarding or skate culture magazine that was eventually purchased by Larry Flynt's Hustler conglomerate and promptly snuffed due to unsatisfactory sales performance!
Carnie was given to use the word to describe relationships between skate-buddies who spent a lot of time together or shared hotel rooms on every skate road trip. One of the elaborate websites devoted to explain Internet slang tells us that bromance is "Non-sexual relationship between two men."
Bollywood has thrived on bromance for ages! It’s a staple feature in every film of ours to have a couple of bros chasing a set of babes around trees in India or abroad! If that aunt the scheme of things then the ‘second bro’-read supporting hero or no.2 in the prevalent Bollywood superstar rankings- helps the ‘main bro’-read hero!- get the babe or the object of his quest through a string of journeys befitting the hero himself!
Bro by the way is the derided slang term of 80s made popular by African-American TV or Movie characters to express support in fellow minority members. Today the way Sky uses it in ‘Big Boss,’ or Hindi Films it means buddy, friend or brother!
To cut to chase now that you’ve got me all keyed up about bromance and its absolute absence in Hollywood as compared to Hollywood. And plus the fact that this MCRC, Jamia pass out friend of mine called Sanjay Mattoo once told me when I was not an FTIIan but a mere AIR Producer and he an allegedly filmmaking student, that the learned female professor of theirs had found many shades of homosexuality in bromance between Jai and Viru in ‘Sholay’!
He had stoked my anger then and at that time by clever skullduggery with phillulmlese worth Mahesh Bhatt, I had subdued the know-all Kashmiri Pandit in my friend! But after many years of wrangling with jargon connected with films and getting branded from the most snob film school in India and Asia, I thought to myself, why not try to find the finest bromance Hollywood films seen so far by me! This list is incomplete and you’re free to add to it, bros and sisters!
Back to the Future took the world by storm in 1985. This All American science-fiction adventure film was directed by Robert Zemeckis, an USC alumnus, and co-written with Bob Gale, produced by Spielberg, Marshall and Kennedy. It starred Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, a teenager who is accidentally sent back in time from 1985 to 1955 by this genius Scientist called Doc Emmett Brown, a whacky combo of Einstein and Stokowski assayed by Christopher Lloyd.
Marty meets his future-parents in high school and as you wouldn’t want it- attracts his future mother's romantic interest! Not only Marty must repair the damage to history by causing his parents-to-be to fall back in love, but aided by then younger Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown, he must find a way to return to 1985.
Both Michael J. Fox and Lloyd were the second choices instead of Eric Smoltz & John Lithgow. A feeble Bollywood inspiration titled, ‘Action Replay,’ failed because it concentrated on Ash-Akshay romance with no comparable bromance the likes of Marty-Doc variety in the original. This first part of the trilogy made$210mn of the total$381mn! It was an out and out bromance between old dude-young dude kinds!
Back to the Future was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2008, the American Film Institute based on polling from more than 1,500 people from the creative community acknowledged it as the 10th best film in the science fiction genre. Seven (stylized also as Se7en) was a 1995 American thriller film, with shades of horror and neo-noir elements, directed by David Fincher and written by Walker. It starred Brad Pitt as rookie detective Mills, Morgan Freeman as world weary and soon to retire detective Somerset and Kevin Spacey, as the psychopathic and sadistic murderer who bases his murders on seven deadly sins of Christianity: gluttony, envy, lust, pride, sloth, greed and wrath.
The film grossed $327 million at the box office internationally; William Hurt and Al Pacino were to assay the role of Detective Somerset but one wonders if the Pitt-Freeman chemistry would have been matched by either of the veterans with Brad Pitt. It was the elder, wise and empathetic old cop vs. young, ebullient but hot headed and doomed cop bromance, which has made this film, a cult classic of all times.
Rush Hour was the first part of American action comedy film trilogy that hit the screen in 1998 and starred Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, Rush Hour l grossed over $140 million dollars. Rush, in 2001 was set in Hong Kong. Rush Hour 3, in 2007 was set in Paris. Rush Hour 4 is said to be released in 2012 is reportedly set in Moscow. This was bromance between an exotic Far East bro and mainland US bro or an ebony & ivory kinda bromance that once Mr. Stevie &Sir Paul had ignited in music once!
The Shawshank Redemption (1994) written and directed by Frank Darabont starred Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, the veteran bromancemeister. It was adapted from the Stephen King novella ‘Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption’. The movie was nominated for seven Academy Awards in 1994 (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Original Score, and Best Sound Mixing) but it landed in the shadow of Forrest Gump, and did not win any awards.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) was the ultimate western bromance film directed by George Roy Hill and written by William Goldman (who won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film). It was a saga of Wild West pardners Robert Leroy Parker aka Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and his partner Harry Longabaugh, the "Sundance Kid" (Robert Redford. In 2003, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


The title roles were originally cast with Newman but the original choice for Sundance’s role were Steve McQueen, Jack Lemmon, Warren Beatty and Marlon Brando, eventually it went to the lesser-known Redford. This film catapulted Robert Redford to stardom and irreversibly changed his career and won four Oscars and Six BAFTAs. The Scenes like the song where Late Mr. Newman takes out Katherine Ross for a bicycle ride in the rain, with her boyfriend Redford smiling in the background or the heroic end has made this one of the greatest films and paean to bromance!
The Midnight Cowboy Midnight Cowboy (1969) was based on the 1965 novel of the same name by James Leo Herlihy. It was directed by John Schlesinger and starred Dustin Hoffman and newcomer Jon Voight in the title role. This angst ridden bromance in the same category as Of Mice and Men won three Oscars. It is the only X rated film ever to win Best Picture and one of two X-rated films to be nominated for an Oscar (the other being Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film A Clockwork Orange).
Both Hoffman and Voight were nominated for Best Actor. The film won six BAFTA Awards. In 1994, this film was deemed by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. The ultimate compliment that Angelina Jolie’s daddy Jon Voight got for starring in this bromance was when just after the film’s release, at Chicago Airport a certain Mr. Muhammad Ali hailed and took Voight aside and praised him no end!

Rain Man (1988) was directed by Barry Levinson. It had Mr. Beefcake or Tom Cruise as an abrasive and selfish yuppie, Charlie Babbitt who finds that daddy dear before croaking bequeathed all of his multimillion-dollar estate to his other son, Raymond or Dustin Hoffman, an autistic savant of whose existence was perceived as danger to Charlie in his childhood. The film won four Oscars, the Golden Bear at the 39th Berlin International Film Festival and would end up as the highest-grossing film of 1988 with $172 mn! This tale of road bromance and redemption for evil younger brother for once got women mighty worked up! And they went in droves to theatres bewitched by this film!
Blood Diamond (2006) was directed by Edward Zwick and starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly and Djimon Hounsou. Blood diamonds are diamonds mined in African war zones and sold to finance conflicts thus profiting warlords and diamond companies across the world. This interracial bromance had a mix of everything- civil war of Sierra Leone, many of the atrocities of that war, including the rebels' amputation of people's hands to discourage them from voting in upcoming elections & child abuse. And the entire cat and mouse bromance based on distrust between Di Caprio and Hounsou over this huge diamond turns into a tale of sacrifice and endearing relationship. This film remains etched in memories of viewers with Di Caprio’s fine bromantic end! The film received 5 Oscar nominations at the 79th Academy Awards!