"The Story of Us" is a perfect "Married Date Movie"

Item from the Smart Marriages Archive, reproduced in the Divorce Statistics Collectio n

1999 Smart Marriages Media Award....the envelope please

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE/ OCTOBER 27, 1999
CONTACT: CMFCE
202-362-3332
CMFCE@smartmarriages.com

"The Story of Us" receives 1999 Smart Marriages media award.

You've heard of date movies. The problem is that if you're married "date
movies" make you feel the only way you can find romance
is to have an affair or get a divorce.

"The Story of Us" is the first "MARRIED date movie" says Diane Sollee,
Director of the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples
Education (CMFCE) the Washington-based organization that charts
indicators of the emerging marriage renaissance.

Director Rob Reiner is onto something. Like so many who have earned
their stripes supporting children's issues - he is founder of the I Am
Your Child project on early childhood development - Reiner recognizes
that an intact family is one of the most important ways to insure child
well-being.
Kids who live with both parents do better on all measures. And so do the
adults. Staying married is the best indicator for adult health, success
and
happiness.

Reiner is tapping - and nurturing - a trend. It's suddenly cool to be
married. A 1999 survey funded by Fortune 500 companies reported that a
long-lasting
marriage is the new status symbol. The bestselling "How to Get Rich"
lists two main ways to make it to the top: get an education and get and
STAY
married. That's all great, but how do you do it? How do you STAY
married? "The Story of Us" spells it out - staying married has to do with
growing up,
getting past the myths about marriage and taking the long-view.

The ads say the movie is about whether "marriage can survive marriage."
It's really about whether marriage can survive our fantasies about
marriage and our belief that we have the
right to perfect romance.

Americans believe in marriage - 85% - 90% of us marry. Yet we divorce at
an alarming rate and predictions are that those who marry this year face
a 50% or
higher divorce rate. 75% of us who divorce run right out and remarry,
trying to get it right. This movie shows that 'getting it right' is
about getting real
about our expectations of marriage and each other. The movie is
realistic AND romantic and that's no small feat.

"What is interesting is WHY this film got such terrible reviews.Why is
the reviewing community so against it?," asks Hara Estroff Marano,
Psychology
Today editor-at-large and member of the awards committee. "I read the NY
Times and Washington Post reviews and couldn't believe how negative they
were. But I loved it. I cried at the end. Everyone I know who was
willing to risk seeing it, liked it. And it's not just the smugly
married who
like it, I have two friends who are getting divorced who liked it, too.
Is it that it defies the hollywood formula about marriage? It is very
brave to tackle the
topic the way it did."

The award will be presented at the next Smart Marriages conference
following a screening of the film.

The CMFCE Media Committee -- Frank Pittman, Shirley Glass, Michele
Weiner-Davis, Scott Stanley, Gary Smalley, Hara Marano, Barbara Dafoe
Whitehead, Bill Doherty and Diane Sollee -- are available for interviews.

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