Relationships Talk

It’s been more than two decades since “That Thing You Do” brought us fictional 1960s pop band the Oneders, er, we mean Wonders, and their infectious hit of the same name.

And Tom Everett Scott, who played drummer Guy Patterson, told TODAY which scenes stick with him most.

“I remember being very excited for our first performance at the talent show,” he said. “We had been practicing it for like two months, and that was our first opportunity to play. We were all a little bit nervous how everyone was going to perceive it, and it turned out great.”

He added, “I think my favorite moment from the movie is the first time it plays on the radio. And just the way that that scene all comes together with Liv Tyler and Ethan Embry hearing it and running down the street, running to the store that I work in, and everyone jumpin’ around and dancing.”

The film was Tom Hanks’ directorial debut, and Scott says the Oscar winner — who also appeared in the film as band manager Mr. White — was the perfect mentor for a young actor.

Corbis via Getty Images

“Tom Hanks gave me so much advice that I’ve used my entire career,” he said. “I really couldn’t have started off with a better person to guide me. One of the things that he told me right away was, ‘Less is more, especially on film.’ You know, the camera sees everything. He one time said to me, ‘You think you’re not interesting enough, but you are. You really are, and you just gotta trust that.’”

As for his other castmates, Scott said Johnathon Schaech is the one who least resembles his character, Jimmy Mattingly.

“He’s not this maniacal lead singer,” he said. “He’s just a sweetheart.”

Scott cited himself as the actor most similar to the band member they played.

“I think that helped me in my audition, when I told Tom Hanks that this character was basically paralleling me, but in music instead of acting,” he said.

Fans will be happy to know that the Wonders still keep in touch.

“Steve Zahn was my best man in my wedding,” Scott said. “We’re very close. Our wives are extremely close, and the kids. And so even though we don’t really live near each other anymore, we definitely stay in touch and try to hang out as often as we can.

In 2017, Scott, Schaech and Embry even reunited to play “That Thing You Do” at LA music venue the Roxy.

“It was just supposed to be a laugh,” Scott said. “But a lot of people were really excited to see us. We were super nervous all over again, thinking that people would just be like, ‘What are they doing?’ But it was really fun.”

Tom Everett Scott stars in “I Hate Kids,” which also features Tituss Burgess, Rhea Seehorn and Rachel Boston. The film is available on VOD now.

Four hours after Warren and Lorraine Cooper’s wedding in Brisbane, Australia, on January 24, 1959, their marriage hit a speed bump.

Mr Cooper was driving his father-in-law’s unfamiliar car on the way to the Gold Coast, and said his new wife was telling him he was not experienced with it and he should let her drive.

”In the end we had a damn argument and she told me she wished she had never married me.”

Despite that early hiccup, the Queenstown couple today celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary.

A long-time former National Party MP, cabinet minister and two-time Queenstown mayor, Dunedin-born Mr Cooper (85) said he can remember first clapping eyes on Lorraine ”as though it was yesterday”.

In late 1956, she and two other Australian travelling friends asked Mr Cooper’s father Bill, also known as ”Wicked Willie”, for jobs at his Queenstown hotel, Wicked Willies.

Mr Cooper asked his father, ”You’re not going to employ those silly girls, are you?”

”He told me it was his hotel, he would do what he wished to do.”

When Mrs Cooper, nee Rees, returned to Australia, Mr Cooper pursued her.

”I proposed dozens of times,” he said.

”Hundreds,” she quipped.

”It wasn’t that I didn’t want to get married, I didn’t want to leave all my family and friends in Australia.

”I thought when I said ‘yes’ we were going to be over there, but then he changed his mind, and I have never regretted coming back [to Queenstown].”

Asked about their marriage, Mr Cooper said: ”It would not have been possible for any person that married Lorraine to be unhappy.

”I consider myself extremely fortunate to have lived that period of time and enjoyed the whole of the marriage.”

Having served 36 years in local or central government, Mr Cooper said his wife coped well being a mother of five ”with an absentee husband for the greater percentage of that time”.

Mrs Cooper (81) confirmed it was tough with young children, especially moving to Mosgiel, when Mr Cooper first got into national politics, then Wellington, when he became a cabinet minister.

”We’ve had to develop a fairly thick skin over the years because politics is not an easy life, for a family, particularly.

”I’m very lucky that I inherited my mother’s and father’s very placid natures, because we’ve had our ups and downs, everybody does.”

The couple had five children – Jo died of cancer, aged 32 – and also have 11 grandchildren and, just in the past six months, two great-grandchildren.

Asked what makes a lasting marriage, Mr Cooper said he had only one piece of advice: ”Choose the right person.”

The Coopers planned a low-key celebration today after jointly celebrating their anniversary in Australia late last year, with two of Mrs Cooper’s brothers and their wives, who were also married within six months of them.

”We’re all going strong,” she said.

-By Philip Chandler

Animation by Lisa Larson-Walker. Photos by Getty Images.

How to Do It is Slate’s sex advice column. Send your questions for Stoya and Rich to howtodoit@slate.com. Don’t worry, we won’t use names.

Dear How to Do It,

I am the guy who did the stupid thing from a hundred overheated online stories: I slept with my straight roommate when we were both drunk. I am the only gay guy (seemingly!) in a shared house of five guys, and this was very much unplanned. I was totally fine with it, and he acted like he was too, but it’s clear he’s not. A month later, I now hear him having loud sex with women regularly, which I definitely never heard before. He’s not hostile, but he won’t really look me in the eye either. The other roommates have asked me if I’ve noticed him acting strangely. Is it wise to bring this up with him, or should I just let it go? Again, I know I am dumb.

—Straight Shooter

Dear Straight Shooter,

The best immediate course of action here is to relax. Stop beating yourself up. It’s not dumb to hook up with a self-identified straight guy; it’s hot. You (presumably) introduced him to the joys of gay sex, and he clearly wanted to learn sometime. What was on the “dumb” side (to use your word) was hooking up with a platonic roommate, as now you have to look at him not looking at you every day.

Like many of life’s pleasures, hooking up with a straight (or closeted) guy comes with a cost. The price you pay for hooking up with someone who is less than secure in his sexuality is the awkwardness that comes after. Let him sort this out on his own, or at most, let him make the first move. (This, by the way, is a good rule of thumb for handling “straight” guys in a sexual capacity in general.) On your end, I do not think any further action is warranted at this time.

But, man, if he is really banging chicks loudly to send you a message, it means he’s thinking about you when he’s having sex, which means you rocked his world. Relish that. It’s likely all you’re going to get out of this, so might as well appreciate what you do have.

—Rich

Dear How to Do It,

I’m a woman who recently started seeing a guy who is not at all my type—jock-y, clean-cut, works in finance—and found myself desperately wanting to have sex with him. I can’t even look at his thighs in pants without thinking about it. But while I’m used to guys coming on strong, he is not one of them. He told me he likes to take things slower, and I complied. We didn’t get naked until the fifth date. That night he told me he wanted to avoid penetrative sex “for now” (forever?) because it makes people get “too attached.” We have oral sex, which is nice, but isn’t this strange? I’ve asked him to elaborate, but he just says “that’s his experience” with penetrative sex. Twist: Recently, drunk, he told me his fantasy is to bring a third guy in to join us—who would presumably penetrate me.

—Inner Conflict

Dear Inner Conflict,

There’s a lot going on here, but I worry the real issue is on your end. It sounds like you’re feeling frustrated desire, especially in your parenthetical. But I urge you to be cautious of invading his boundaries, including psychologically. His avoidance of penetrative sex and his threesome fantasy could be preferences, or kinks, or they could point to something deeper. He might not feel comfortable elaborating. Sometimes people aren’t ready, or had a negative experience they still aren’t in a place to process.

As for you, well, it can be really hard to spot the red flags or plain-old core incompatibilities when your vagina is screaming at you. If you’re getting a faint vibe, it might be your instincts trying to protect you. Then again, I don’t know how often your “strange” meter gets checked, much less how often it’s right. Have you had big divides with sexual partners before, and what happened then? I would think about how confounding he—and your strong against-type desire for him—seems to be for you.

While you’re thinking about those questions, consider a sex toy, get back in touch with your own body (by which I mean masturbate copiously), and maybe talk about your overpowering sexual desire here with a therapist.

—Stoya

Dear How to Do It,

On a recent trip abroad, my husband and I, feeling emboldened by a few glasses of wine, went into a sex store and bought a sex toy. It’s nothing too crazy, but definitely crazy for us: It’s a vibrating ring that’s supposed to go around his business. It’s now been five months, and we still have not used the thing. It’s so easy to get into a perfectly enjoyable, reliable weekly routine when you’re married that I think we’re just both finding it difficult to improvise. What are we waiting for? Do we need to have a conversation about it beforehand? What does it mean that neither of us has as of yet taken the initiative to produce that vibrating ring and declare that Now’s The Time?

—Tool Time?

Dear Tool Time,
I think what it means is that neither of you are that interested in using this toy. If you were, you’d be using it. People don’t procrastinate stuff that they actually want to do. Right now, it sounds less like a fun prospect and more like something that is haunting you like a tell-tale heart under the floorboards. Except it’s coming from your underwear drawer and it really is making noise because you knocked it on the last time you were getting dressed.

If your weekly routine is indeed perfectly enjoyable, surely this added stimulation isn’t needed. But if you are genuinely curious and hung up on this thing for practical reasons (and not merely the principle of it burning a hole in your underwear drawer), I think it’s up to you to bring it up. For one thing, you care enough about it to ask a stranger for advice regarding it, and for another, from what I understand, these kind of toys can be way more pleasurable for women (and their clitorises) than for men (though certainly, they get the extra stiffness that the cock ring component provides).

And hey, maybe your dude is the kind who would totally get off from the incessant stutter of a vibrator perched around his junk. That would be interesting and, hey, there’s only one way to find out. Crack open a bottle and see.

—Rich

Dear How to Do It,

What is a non-weird way to ask new partners whether they’re clean? I don’t want to just ask people for their medical information, but I want to stay safe while I’m screwing around.

—Safe Word

Dear Safe Word,

“Weird” is fantastically subjective. You clearly want me to give you an easy, fast way to get the conversation out of the way, but I’m going to do the opposite. Gather ’round.

Safety is a lot more complicated than “Was your last test negative?” When you’re mashing body parts together that we don’t usually even show each other, there are a lot of risks. You’ll need to ask questions about specific high-risk behaviors (what fluids you’re willing to allow where, whether you’ve had multiple partners recently, to name a couple) and get an idea of how well the person you’re considering having sex with keeps track of these things. You’ll have to observe their behavior, and you will at some point probably need to make a leap of faith.

There are window periods—spans of time between exposure to a bacteria or virus and a reliably positive test result—that mean you need to take the sexual activity before the person’s most recent test into account to evaluate the risk. There are also risks we think about less than, say, chlamydia. Mono can be passed through kissing, but because we don’t stigmatize it, we aren’t as afraid of it. (A note on that stigma: This is not an original point, but don’t use the loaded word “clean” to mean STD-free. When you do, you’re making the conversation harder, not easier.)

In terms of how to actually broach this conversation, pick a time where you’re both sober and can communicate clearly. Have the discussion before things have gotten too hot and heavy. Start with something like, “I care about sexual health, and I want to do this as safely as possible.” If you have something to disclose, you can say, “I need to disclose something about my health and give you time to think about it.” Share your boundaries as clearly as possible, and listen to theirs.

One last thing: If there’s a Planned Parenthood in your area, or assuming you’re a legal adult, a BDSM or swingers’ organization, you might consider asking for resources from people who want practice navigating these conversations. Something all three places—and others like them—have in common is that they’ll probably be able to give you a more nuanced idea of the incredible variety of ways people mitigate the risk of sexually transmittable infections. If you want to stay safe, this conversation is an essential first step, not something to get out of the way.

—Stoya