Love Bit(e)

Love. This seemingly unassuming little word - perhaps the ultimate four-letter word - spurred Shakespeare to compose amorous sonnets, gave heartfelt soul to Etta James’s “At Last”, and prompted Gerson Peña to pen With Her. But beyond a muse for the arts, what exactly is love?

In Gerson’s first blog entry (The Idea of "With Her" and Three Films That Were An Inspiration) he wrote:

“I knew that everybody who would see this film would have been in love at some point or had loved someone but possibly never receiving that same love in return.”

This sentence led me to a realization: I’m working on a film about love, but have never actually been in love. Sure there are different definitions: a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection that exists between good friends and family (check); sexual passion or desire (lust? check); strong predilection, enthusiasm or liking for anything (as in I absolutely love Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream! Double check)…but when it came to that other definition, the one more commonly meant, the one that has a its own looming Hallmark holiday – a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person, a person toward whom love is felt, beloved person, sweetheart – for that definition my check box remained empty.

And so, in order to work whole-heartedly on With Her without feeling like a phony, I felt I needed to get a better understanding of what love is. Since I’m too much of a realistic-romantic to believe I can decide to find love today and then fall into Mr Darcy’s lap tomorrow, I decided to take a more methodical approach and do research to discover what other people think love is…stay tuned for the results…

Emer Schlosser

Associate Producer