Punters and Pushers

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/28/the-december-comfort-watches-2025-day-twenty-eight-roxanne/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58908

The one problem I have with Roxanne is, alas, its central premise: that its protagonist, Charlie “C.D.” Bales (Steve Martin) is tragically undesirable because of his unusually long nose. C.D. is a pillar of the community with a steady and useful job, is well-read and cultured, empathetic and funny, kind to all, loved by his many friends and neighbors, and he owns a house. A nice one! In a town where the property values are clearly outrageous! That he is undatable because of his nose stretches credulity, not only back in 1987, when this film was made, but especially here in 2025, where a single, available, gainfully-employed and psychologically-undamaged middle-aged man would be snatched right off the sidewalk in front of his absolutely ridiculously cozy and well-appointed home. You can’t tell me otherwise. He’s the whole package. With a little extra!

Be that as it may, we are asked to accept that this updating of Cyrano de Bergerac is not lying to us, and that C.D., despite all this other advantages, is admired but lonely. This being the 1980s, not the 1640s when the original tale was set, we are told that C.D. has a serious, possibly deadly, allergic reaction to anesthesia, a fact which has put him into a coma before. This is great for patching up an obvious plot hole, but does mean it must suck for him to have regular dental care. C.D. is trapped with his nose, and seems resigned to it and tries to live with it with some amount of acceptance… unless someone tries to use it to make fun of him.

Then! Roxanne! For every Cyrano must have a Roxanne, even if the number of “n”s in her name is variable. This Roxane is Roxanne Kowalski, an astronomer who has come to C.D.’s ski town of Nelson (and actually shot in a ski town called Nelson, but in Canada, not the USA, where this film takes place). She’s in town for the clear skies to help her locate a comet. C.D. takes a shine to her, not only because she looks like Daryl Hannah, but because she’s smart, and is the only person in town besides him to traffic in sarcasm. The townsfolk of Nelson are lovely, but wit and wordplay are not exactly their thing.

Now arrives Chris (Rick Rossovich), the deeply hunky and handsome professional firefighter that Fire Chief C.D. brings into town to help train his hapless volunteer crew. Chris and Roxanne spy each other from across a crowded bar, she smiles and he… goes to hurl in the bathroom, because the idea of talking to women gives him a panic attack. Roxanne confesses her liking of Chris to C.D., who is crushed but wants her to be happy, intercedes on her behalf with Chris and, as the strictures of this tale require, starts feeding Chris the words that will woo Roxanne. Complications ensue, as they would.

I take it back, I have another problem with Roxanne, although this is with the tale of Cyrano in general, and a persistent feature across its many tellings. Which is that Roxanne, especially in this telling, where she is both a scientist and someone with social aptitude, would not be able to parse out the fact that Chris, who is a nice guy but mostly has well-marbled beef between his ears, is not the author of the letters and speeches that capture her sapiosexual heart. I mean, okay, I get it, horniness is a hell of a drug, but even so. The disconnect between Chris and “his” letters is a lot.

I’m willing to go with it because it means we get Steve Martin’s performance, which offers up a masterclass in having one’s heart break with a smile, and showing grace (up to a point) with people who offer none themselves. One of the highlights of the film, early-ish on, is when a boor in a bar calls C.D. “Big Nose.” Rather than take the bait, C.D. shows him up by offering a stack of much wittier insults the man could have offered. It takes skill, and guts, to humiliate someone by offering him all the better ways he could have humiliated you, and to do it in a whole bar full of people. It also takes skill to write the scene in a way that works. Martin, as the screenwriter, pulls it off.

This was the part of Martin’s career where he was doing smarter-than-average guys who held back heartbreak with melancholy humor. As a writer he’d follow up Roxanne a couple of years later with LA Story, another favorite of mine, where he played a similar character, albeit with a smaller nose, in a film with a somewhat more farcical tone. This is actually my favorite part of his career, when he became a somewhat improbably romantic leading man, and while it wouldn’t last, I enjoyed it while it did. I wasn’t the only one, as Martin found himself with a WGA award for Roxanne, in the category of adapted screenplay (I could have sworn he was also nominated for an Oscar for this script, and even wrote that down before doublechecking. He was robbed!).

The film centers on the character of C.D., and secondarily on the love triangle between him, Roxanne and Chris, but this film is also an ensemble film, and this ensemble nature is the one thing that I think elevates it, and gives the film lots of opportunities for grace notes and filling in of character. I’m telling you here that C.D. is well-loved by friends and neighbors, but the film simply shows it, unspooling fun little scenes that give you those details. This is another important point about C.D.’s character: He may be the only practitioner of sarcasm in Nelson, but he’s not cruel to, or bitter at, the rest of the town, which does not share his enthusiasm or facility for it. He is a good person, and worthy of love.

(And as the two other legs of the romantic triangle, Hannah and Rossovich are… fine! Hannah gets good lines and delivers them well. You can believe C.D. appreciates Roxanne’s whole package of person, not just the parts that look like a supermodel. Rossovich is also convincing as a lunk who is very good at his job and very bad at peopling. It’s important to note that Chris isn’t stupid — he knows what he knows and knows it well. One of the things he knows is that he’s not weapons-grade intelligent, like C.D. and Roxanne are. It’s also pretty clear he wouldn’t want to be.)

The original Cyrano de Bergerac (spoiler) does not exactly end on a happy note. Martin knows, as a writer and an actor, that his version is meant to be a romantic comedy, and so (spoiler) his version deviates from the original in significant ways. Martin is neither the first nor last filmmaker to have his adaptation swerve for the dictates of the market. He does it in a way that makes sense for the story he tells, and, importantly, gives agency for the resolution of the story to the right person. It ends well, even if Edmond Rostand, who wrote the original, might have notes.

For those who don’t know, Cyrano de Bergerac was an actual person, a noted soldier, raconteur and writer, who wrote some of the earliest work that could be identified as science fictional, including L’Autre Monde: ou les États et Empires de la Lune, published after his death. He did have a cousin Roxane, who married a Baron Christian of Neuvillette. There was no actual romantic triangle between the three of them. He did by all reports have a large nose, although probably not so large as the one attributed to him by both Rostand and Martin. It was unlikely that Cyrano’s nose kept him unavailable for amorous encounters; he was associated with noted libertines of his time.

See? I’m telling you this big nose thing is bunk!

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/28/the-december-comfort-watches-2025-day-twenty-eight-roxanne/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58908