Western Comedy TV Movie is a Midnight Classic

On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age. 

First, the spoiler-free pitch for one editor’s midnight movie pick — something weird and wonderful from any age of film that deserves our memorializing. 

Then, the spoiler-filled aftermath as experienced by the unwitting editor attacked by this week’s recommendation.

The Pitch: A Midnight Movie for the Love of a Woman

The cinematic understanding of romance is on the run. It’s a sad topic ahead of Valentine’s Day, I know. But the big romantic gesture and sweeping professions of love that once characterized the rom-com genre are now about as welcome in real life as TikTok therapists are welcome on the big screen. Add a family counselor to your next “Clueless” viewing and you just won’t see Paul Rudd the same way; try planting one on your step-sister at the next family gathering and you won’t see her in any way.

And yet, if every great story is marked by at least one character experiencing extraordinary change, then it stands to reason that sometimes we can and should do drastic things for love. But an insincere attempt at personal growth can quickly veer toward love-bombing, just as running through an airport after “the one” can be confused for an actual bombing. Suffice to say: Chivalry isn’t dead, but chivalry can’t just show up unannounced like that.

Is there anywhere the problematically impassioned…