Last night Sue and I pulled out the Blu Ray of our all-time favorite rom-com, Moonstruck, starring Cher and Nicolas Cage. It’s hard to imagine a better screwball romance than that of the Italian-American bookkeeper and the baker from Brooklyn. We’ve seen the film a dozen times, but this was the first time we noticed that the performance of La Boheme they were to attend at the Met is on November 15. So, happy first-date anniversary to Loretta and Ronny!
I know of no other rom-com script (by John Patrick Shanley) that is more perfectly crafted. Here’s one of my favorite exchanges between the two lovers, after Loretta has seen Mimi’s fate in La Boheme:
Loretta: That was so awful.
Ronny: Awful?
Loretta: Beautiful… sad. She died!
Ronny: Yes.
Loretta: I was surprised… You know, I didn’t really think she was gonna die. I knew she was sick.
Ronny: She had TB.
Loretta: I know! I mean, she was coughing her brains out, and still she had to keep singing!
While I was looking for a photo of the two lovers–that’s them above, at the Met–I ran across a couple of interesting posts about locations in the film. Ronnie Camareri’s bakery apparently actually was called Camareri’s Bakery. I assume they named the two brothers after the real bakery. And Loretta’s house in Brooklyn Heights sold in 2008 for $4 million.
D. R. Martin & Richard Audry Books 