Rom Com Fest is a festival celebrating love through film and experiences. We are in planning mode for our second annual festival, which is scheduled for June in Los Angeles. In the meantime, we could also use more love and light in our days, so we are hosting our first free virtual screening to connect the community of rom com lovers!

Our host Tess' favorite rom com is Moonstruck, which we'll all watch simultaneously and then chat together. The film is available to stream for free with Amazon Prime membership. Everyone will hit play on Thursday 4/2 at 6pm PST/9pm EST. Then we'll hop on a Zoom call to chat about the movie, with a discussion hosted by Tess Morris and Billy Mernit. RSVP to receive the Zoom link and other pre-movie fun content!

Joining the discussion is free, but you must RSVP. All registered attendees will be emailed a zoom link prior to April 2. Donations to Rom Com Fest welcome, any contribution will help in planning the next festival.

About The Movie

In her Academy Award winning role, Cher, while waiting for her timid fiance to decide between her and his mother, falls in love with her fiance's estranged brother (Nicholas Cage), a bakery worker with a love of opera and life. Supporting actress Olympia Dukakis and screenwriter John Patrick Shanley also won Oscars in this rom com classic. (1987)

About The Discussion Hosts

Tess Morris and Billy Mernit host a romantic comedy podcast, YOU HAD US AT HELLO. They started the podcast about 2 years ago, because they felt it was niche, and also because they love to talk to each other about rom coms! It’s for rom com lovers and haters everywhere. They met because Tess wrote Man Up using Billy’s book, Writing The Romantic Comedy, and when she sold it, she found him on the internet and emailed him to tell him that, and it all evolved from there! Then the movie got made, as did a friendship!

TESS MORRIS, born and bred Londoner, has been writing since she could walk (not 100% true) and her first words were ‘Elvis is the King!’ (100% true). Her first screenplay, the romantic comedy Man Up, made the 2011 Brit List, was picked up by Big Talk Pictures, co-produced by Studio Canal and BBC Films and released in 2015 directed by Ben Palmer and starring Simon Pegg and Lake Bell. Tess has done numerous rewrites on both sides of the pond, and began her career in the UK, writing soap opera and sitcom. In 2015 she was named a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit. Currently, Tess resides in LA with her rescue cat Nora Ephron. She most recently worked on Hulu’s upcoming series, The Great, and was on the final series of Hulu's Casual. She is currently working on a romantic comedy for 20th Century Fox and Scott Frank, and on ANOTHER romantic comedy, Textbook Behaviour, for Nira Park and Rachael Prior. Tess also hosts a sporadic but highly informative rom com podcast with Billy Mernit, You Had Us At Hello, available at all good podcast providers.

BILLY MERNIT is a script consultant, a story analyst at Universal Pictures, and was a Distinguished Instructor at the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. Author of the bestselling screenwriting textbook Writing the Romantic Comedy (Harper/Collins), the novel Imagine Me and You (Random House) and co-author (with Claudia Nizza) of That’s How Much I Love You (Tallfellow Press), he has also published twenty romance novels for Harlequin and Berkeley/Jove under a female nom de plume. During his many years in the entertainment industry, he has written for NBC's Santa Barbara, and composed songs recorded by Carly Simon, Judy Collins, and Morrissey.

Rom Com Fest Virtual Screening + Discussion: Moonstruck