9 / 10
Official trailer
A Token Booth at Christmas
Lucy Moderatz sells train tokens in a booth on the Chicago L. She has a cat, a tiny apartment, no family left and no one to spend Christmas with, and every morning she watches a handsome man in a good coat buy a token and walk past without noticing her. She’s named him and planned their wedding. He doesn’t know she exists.
On Christmas Day, some thugs mug him and he falls onto the tracks. Lucy jumps down and pulls him clear of an oncoming train. At the hospital, a nurse overhears her saying she was going to marry him and tells his family, and within minutes the Callaghans, who think she’s Peter’s fiancée and adore her on sight, surround Lucy.
It’s a ridiculous setup, and I bought every minute of it. This is romantic comedy the way I want it made: warm, funny and serious about loneliness underneath the jokes. My only gripe is a plot that leans on too many coincidences, and I forgive it every one.
Sandra Bullock
This was Bullock’s first big film after Speed, and it made her America’s sweetheart. Lucy is shy, funny, a bit awkward and deeply lonely, and Bullock plays her with such open-hearted charm that you’d forgive her anything, including lying to a whole family at Christmas.
The film gets one thing exactly right. Lucy doesn’t lie on purpose. She tries to tell the truth, again and again, and every time, something interrupts her, or the family is so happy that she can’t bear to crush them.
She’s a lonely woman who’s been handed the family she always wanted, and she can’t bring herself to give it back. Bullock makes you understand that completely.
It’s easy to call a film like this lightweight. Anybody who does has never tried it. Playing a woman this likable without making her sappy is hard, and Bullock does it without breaking a sweat.
For Writers
Lucy never lies on purpose. She tries to tell the truth over and over, and something always stops her. The audience stays on her side because her deception comes from circumstance.
If your protagonist deceives people, the reader needs a reason to forgive them. Let circumstances trap your character in the lie, and show them trying to escape it. Each failed confession deepens the reader’s sympathy and raises the stakes, because the longer the lie runs, the more the truth will cost. Give your character three sincere attempts to come clean, each interrupted by something believable. By the third, the reader will be desperate for the truth to come out and dreading the moment it does.
The Callaghans
The family steals the film. Peter Boyle plays Ox, the gruff father who owns a furniture business. Micole Mercurio plays the doting mother. Glynis Johns plays the grandmother, who’s hard of hearing and says whatever she likes. There’s a teenage sister, a family friend, a sprawling Christmas dinner, and everybody talks over everybody else.
The Christmas dinner is the scene I’d keep if I could keep only one. Everybody talks over everybody, Glynis Johns says whatever pops into her head, and Lucy sits in the middle of it looking like she’s been handed a present she’s afraid to open. Jack Warden plays Saul, Peter’s godfather, who figures out the truth almost immediately, and instead of exposing Lucy he decides to protect her, because he can see she’s good for the family. Warden is wonderful, all twinkling mischief and quiet kindness. Lucy grew up an only child whose mother died young and whose father died not long before the film starts, and the Callaghans give her everything she’s been missing. That’s the real love story. It’s why the film still works nearly thirty years later.
Jack
Bill Pullman plays Jack, Peter’s brother, who’s suspicious of this mysterious fiancée at first and then finds himself falling for her. He runs the family furniture business and dreams of making furniture himself, and he’s gentle, funny and a little lost, the complete opposite of his polished, successful brother.
The romance between Lucy and Jack is slow and sweet. They walk home in the snow, they talk about their dreams, and they argue. Pullman is terrific, and he and Bullock have an easy, lived-in chemistry that makes you root for them from their first awkward meeting.
Leaning
The film’s most famous scene has Jack and Lucy on an icy sidewalk, arguing about leaning. He wants to know whether she’s leaning toward him. She insists she isn’t leaning. They go back and forth, getting closer on the ice, until the tension is almost unbearable.
It’s funny, it’s romantic, and it’s all built out of a single silly word. That’s great writing for a romantic comedy: the characters talk about something trivial while the unspoken subject is standing right there between them on the pavement.
I think the leaning scene is the best thing Pullman and Bullock do together, and I’d put it up against any romantic scene of the decade. Neither of them says a single thing that matters, and I could watch them not say it all day.
For Writers
The leaning scene is an argument about a single silly word, and underneath it two people are falling in love. They’re arguing about a word and talking about love.
Take your most important romantic scene and rewrite it so the characters argue about something trivial. Let the real feeling leak out through word choice, pauses and body language. Resist the urge to have anyone say what they mean. The moment somebody says I love you, the tension drains out of the scene, so save that line for when you want the release.
The best romantic scenes are rarely about romance on the surface. Characters talk about the weather, a word, a piece of furniture, and the reader hears everything they’re not saying. Subtext makes the scene work. It’s far more exciting than a declaration.
Peter Wakes Up
Peter, played by Peter Gallagher, wakes from his coma about two-thirds of the way through, doesn’t recognize Lucy, and is told she’s his fiancée. He assumes he must have amnesia. The comedy of errors gets thicker, and Lucy finds herself about to marry a man she doesn’t love, to keep a family she does.
Gallagher is funny as the vain, charming Peter, who turns out to be a bit of a jerk, and the film is smart enough not to make him a villain. He’s just the wrong man. The right man is standing in the background, looking miserable.
I’m glad the film refuses to make Peter a villain. That would’ve been the lazy way to clear the road for Jack, and letting him be a charming, slightly vain nobody-in-particular makes Lucy’s choice harder and better.
The Ring Through the Booth
The ending involves a wedding that doesn’t happen and a proposal delivered in the most perfect place imaginable: through the window of Lucy’s token booth, with the whole family crowding the platform behind. It’s corny. It’s wonderful. I’d defy anybody not to smile. Jon Turteltaub directed, and he later made National Treasure. He keeps everything light, warm and Chicago-cold, with snow, Christmas lights and the rattle of the L. The film was a big hit and has become a holiday favorite, and it deserves it.
For Writers
The proposal happens through the window of Lucy’s token booth, the place where the film began and where she was loneliest. The ending turns the symbol of her isolation into the place she’s finally found.
Go back to your opening scene’s setting. Can your ending take place there, with everything changed? If so, you’ve found your final image. If not, look for an object or a ritual from the opening that you can bring back, changed, so the reader measures the distance your character has traveled.
A strong ending returns to the story’s opening location and changes its meaning. The reader recognizes the place, feels how far the character has come and gets the full emotional payoff. I’ve gone into this further in my piece on opening pages that hook readers.
A Few Quibbles
The plot depends on a lot of coincidences and a lot of people not saying obvious things, and Lucy’s deception would get her in real trouble in real life. The middle drags slightly, and the teenage sister has almost nothing to do.
None of it matters. It’s one of the warmest romantic comedies of the nineties, and Sandra Bullock alone makes it worth a Christmas rewatch.
Craft Note
Craft Note
While You Were Sleeping looks like a romantic comedy about a coma, but it’s really a story about a lonely woman finding a family. The romance carries the plot, and belonging is where it ends up.
Genre stories often work best when the genre’s surface goal hides a deeper need. The reader enjoys the plot on the surface and feels the deeper story underneath.
Write down your protagonist’s surface goal and their deeper need. Make sure your ending satisfies the need, even if the goal changes along the way.
A Christmas Keeper
Yes, especially at Christmas. It’s a 9 because I can’t find much to hold against it beyond some creaky coincidences and a teenage sister with nothing to do. Sandra Bullock at her best, a family you’ll wish was yours and a proposal through a token booth window make it the warmest romantic comedy I can name from the nineties, and it deserves every rewatch it gets.
