5 Matchmakers on What Materialists Gets Right and Wrong About the Job

Time​ Magazine

6 days ago

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Materialists.
Since its release on June 13, there's already been plenty of discussion as to whether Materialists is more of a romantic comedy or a state of the nation on modern dating. There have also been questions around how well it captures its protagonist's profession of matchmaking. Well, who better to ask about love, dating, and matchmaking than matchmakers themselves? The age-old tradition is alive and well in New York City. We've assembled a crew of five matchmakers—helping singles find the kind of love romantic comedies have made us believe in—to weigh in on how well filmmaker Celine Song's new movie has captured their jobs.
In Materialists —which beat box office predictions for a solid opening weekend—Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is a matchmaker, a job inspired by Song's own stint as one herself. At the start of the film, she's celebrating her ninth match to make it to the altar. She's got very specific ideas of what makes a good pairing, though all that is called into question when she finds herself stuck in a love triangle between millionaire finance executive Harry (Pedro Pascal) and her old flame, actor-cater waiter John (Chris Evans). And when one of the dates she sets up goes horribly awry, she wonders if it's time to walk away from her chosen profession altogether.
To talk all things Materialists, we spoke to five leaders in the matchmaking community: Bonnie Winston (Bonnie Winston Matchmaker), Maria Avgitidis (Agape Match), Liana Bell (BOND), Erin Butler (Dateable), and Samantha Daniels (Samantha's Table). We asked them for their thoughts on the movie and contemporary dating, from whether or not they think Lucy is a successful matchmaker to the importance of money in pairings and the surprising things prospective lovers have done to give themselves an edge. Their answers are excerpted below.
TIME: Do you think Lucy is a good matchmaker? Why or why not?
Samantha Daniels: When I started, I was essentially Lucy. I was trying to find love for myself while being paid to find love for others— Matchbook, my book, takes place in that period of my life. But it can be hard when you're navigating your own love life as you're trying to help other people find love. She starts off well, but as the movie goes on, she becomes burned out, and that takes away from her effectiveness.
Liana Bell: There's no denying that she seemed to be able to deliver what the client wanted, but maybe not always what they needed. I think Lucy is great at the mathematical component, but it's not purely mathematical, as she discovers. The bigger component is a creative one, nurtured through intuition as opposed to stats. As Lucy evolved through her lived experience, she began to discover that the checking-boxes approach did not work. Just as the caveman in the movie reinforces, love is easy when it's kept simple, but it seems we've turned it into this complex list of requirements.
Bonnie Winston: I do think she's a good matchmaker because she acts as a vessel of hope. Her clients come searching for love, and whether they believe it or not, she believes it. Whatever you do in life, if you have someone who believes in you, it can shift your entire perception.
Erin Butler: She's invested emotionally in her clients. She has heart and she's vigilant for them. Those are things that matter. However, Lucy says that it's a smart investment to make big physical changes like that invasive surgery to increase your height. I think that shows a poor side of her matchmaking. I think a lot of what makes matchmaking good is hard work and emotional intelligence.
Maria Avgitidis: No, and the fact that she gets offered a promotion is insane to me. She does things I'd never do or allow my employees to do. First is fraternizing [with clients]. The second is how she takes notes on a match. When I saw the notes she took on the man who assaults his date, I was like, fire her! She has about three sentences, and two of them were quantitative answers, like age and income. We write essays on every potential client because we have to present this metric to make a case for each match. I will never set up a match with a client if that match is not absolutely enthusiastic. Then she stalks the match! Your lawyers would tell you, fire this employee and press charges.
Lucy mentions that burnout is common for matchmakers—what is it about the job that's so draining?
Butler: It's a very Hollywood presentation of burnout: OK, you're burnt out. Go have a four-week vacation. I don't know if I would call it burnout, but there is no other job quite like this one. You're dealing with a person's biggest hopes and dreams, biggest fears. It can be very hard when all that hard work comes crashing down. Or you can't get past certain hurdles. You don't have much control. You can't control how people behave.
Winston: Burnout for me doesn't exist because I have a staff that does other things. For instance, we have a Director of Client Relations, so she will curate our clients' dates. I love what I do. I was born to do this. I loved it when I didn't get paid, and I love it now. I made my first match at 16 years old. I have clergy-like hours; my clients know they can call me seven days a week at any time. I act as a coach, mom, sister, and matchmaker.
Daniels: I've been in business for over 20 years, and when I first started, I spoke to various matchmakers who are no longer in the business. They said, you have to be careful. People are investing in you and putting all their hopes and dreams in you. So it feels like a lot of pressure. You have to make sure that everything you do is professional, but the relationship that you have with your clients needs to feel personal. They need to feel like you're their best friend and their confidant. It's a lot to handle.
Bell: Burnout is one of the biggest downfalls in the industry. The turnover rates are extremely high. For some people to be managing this many clients and doing this many tasks, it does create an actual burnout.
How much vetting is there with matches? It's impossible, like Lucy's boss suggests after her client is assaulted, to know how people will act in an intimate setting.
Bell: We are functioning in the realm of dating, which has an element of the unknown. So while we clearly vet and do a basic background check, interview them, and get a feel for what they're like, as the movie correctly portrayed, you still don't know what they'll be like on a date. What happened in the movie is plausible, sadly, but I haven't encountered that in my 10 years.
Butler: There are steps in terms of cross-checks and identity verification. We use "blind vetting," meaning that we get an understanding of someone's wants/needs/background before we ever present a client to them. While there are markers of character and red flags we use to weed people out, we want clients to follow personal safety measures across the board, because no one can control for behavior in an intimate setting.
Winston: Nothing like that incident has ever [happened] for us. We don't pretend to be detectives, but we run basic background checks. And everybody should do this, whether they're meeting somebody online or through a matchmaker. You have to be safe. And the easiest way is to Google someone's first and last name and write 'plaintiff' to see if they're being sued by anybody.
Avgitidis: We run background checks and really get to know our clients. Lucy's boss says assault is something that just happens in our industry. I've been a matchmaker for nearly 20 years. I'm surrounded by a great, professional network of matchmakers. I don't know anyone who's had that experience.
Daniels: That's a big part of the service, to vet the matches. It's also getting to know the person and making sure that their value system is in place. You know that they're honest, there's no bad press about them. If we come across something negative, whether it's a reputation or a gut feel thing, I'm not going to send my client up with that person.
Lucy talks a lot about what makes a good match, particularly similar family backgrounds, economic status, etc. Does money play a large role in finding the right match?
Avgitidis: In my book (Ask A Matchmaker), I talk about the five pillars of compatibility. One is financial compatibility. The others are physical, spiritual, intellectual, and emotional. There's a formula to financial compatibility, and that is how you value the way you spend your time, plus how you value the way you spend your money, equals lifestyle. I have had clients who are billionaires, who still divorce, despite them both being wealthy, because they do not have the same values.
One time, one of my clients got divorced. I asked her what happened. She's like, 'Well, when we went to Paris, I wanted to take a private jet, but he wanted to fly business class. I wanted to stay at the penthouse in the Ritz-Carlton, and he wanted to stay at a local hostel, to live like a local.' They were so misaligned, despite having all the money.
Daniels: Some people think opposites attract, and I do not agree. I think it's really important that people have a lot of similarities, and that that comes from all different things: background, upbringing, education, value system. Sometimes money can come into play, but that's more what people are used to, instead of what truly matters.
Winston: Our clients are high-net-worth individuals. We're very pricey. They're used to getting what they want, and they have high demands. But they're different. Some wealthy women are looking for a great companion, and they don't need to match incomes because they have the money, so they want somebody who respects them, or they just want good chemistry.
Men might want younger women to have children with, and they certainly don't need a woman who matches their billionaire status. That said, I make matches of all different income levels. Every single client has different dating criteria. They're as different as snowflakes. I have one client who is a sapiosexual. She gets turned on by super smart guys.
Butler: People do care a lot about money. It's on everybody's radar because people care about survival. You could have a successful female client, and they've had men who have felt threatened by their success in the past, so they want to correct it. People have reasons why they care about money, and part of our job is to help people correct for that.
Bell: It's something that I weigh. Socioeconomic backgrounds play a role. But in my belief, culture plays a much greater role. Everyone in the movie was evaluated purely based on their salaries—the movie is titled Materialists. And while we do ask what their yearly income is, I wouldn't say it's the driving force, and especially not with men.
What challenges has the rise of dating apps created for the matchmaking process?
Avgitidis: Online dating apps gave people in relationships permission to not participate in dating. Dating was never meant to be a solo activity. I think about my grandmother, who was a matchmaker in Greece during wartime, famine, civil unrest; she was still matching people. People were coming into her house every day. They were drinking good coffee, and they were gossiping. Gossiping is a form of matchmaking. And you had your friends meddling, your parents. That all gets lost in the dating apps.
Winston: It's a boon for me. People are tired of apps. They hate scrolling, texting, and sexting, and then being disappointed with the deception. So they've been great for me!
Daniels: 20 years ago, when I started my business, people were more private about working with a matchmaker. It was like, why do you need to work with a matchmaker? Today, everybody's using a dating app, and then matchmaking is considered like the Rolls-Royce of alternative ways of meeting. It almost makes people look better that they're not using apps.
Bell: The novelty of apps is fading. People are inundated with so much screen time that the last thing they want to do is download another app and experience all the ghosting and swiping with diminishing returns. A crucial component that dating apps are missing is picking up on vibe matches. Vibe and energy, in my book, are a crucial part of the process, something an algorithm simply can't sniff out.
What does Materialists get right about matchmaking?
Winston: What they got right was the unrealistic expectations, especially about age. In the film, there's an older gentleman who wanted a 27-year-old. I had a guy who's 72 that wanted children. And I'd say to them, I have this beautiful match who has eggs, and she's 50. But that was too old! You're 72, dude—like, what do you want?
Avgitidis: That part of the beginning of the movie where people are barking numbers at you is insanely accurate. That's what happens!
Butler: The concern over age is very real. The guy who says 30s are okay, but 39 is actually 40, or the other gentleman who won't date over 27, and Lucy is just looking at him in disbelief. They do get the over-reliance on metrics right. If I could make anything a blind factor, it would be age. I think age gets people very off track. The movie gets that right.
Bell: The unrealistic expectations. People sometimes come to us looking to Build-a-Bear, but it doesn't work like that! It captures a lot of the obstacles that matchmakers face in finding the right fit for clients with unrealistic expectations and the emotional impact they can have on the matchmaker. It also portrays some of the deeper connections that you can build with clients. The process should be fun, and the film makes sure to showcase a lot of the levity.
Daniels: It shows how people really want to find love. I think that you see that through Lucy's own quest to find it herself, and then how people are kind of coming to her, and so frantic about wanting to find somebody. People still care about love, it's still there and people desperately want it.
What does Materialists get wrong about matchmaking?
Winston: Everybody is a character archetype. If they showed all the normal people, they'd have no movie. In my business, I choose people that are genuinely lovely, and they just want to find love at the end of the day. But that wouldn't make a very good movie.
Daniels: It feels like they trivialize it a little bit too much. I think it's hard to show in a movie, unless it's like a documentary, exactly how deep the business is and how it's a full-bodied thing. People think that it's just this willy-nilly easy thing to do, but it's not. There's a science to it.
Avgitidis: Lucy has no sense of community. She doesn't have friends! I love matchmaking. It's all I know how to do. Most of my employees have been matchmakers for over 10 years. And we were excited about this movie because it could be validating, but we were left disappointed. Like, where's your community? Where is the community building?
Celine Song worked at Tawkify, which is more of a dating service [with many more clients]. At Agape, we take 15 clients at a time. So, of course, they only talk in numbers, because you don't have time for conversation! The film loses the human element of matchmaking. In the one scene where the client calls Lucy a pimp, I sunk into my chair and started to cry. For the first time in my nearly 20-year career, I felt embarrassed to be a matchmaker.
Bell: The movie touches on this term that gets flung around a lot in our industry: Unicorn. I think that term is a load of BS. Every single person is awesome and weird in their own way. To me, everybody's a unicorn.
Butler: I don't think height is as much of an issue as they make it in the film, but I think psychologically it probably is for men. Men will always think that their height is going to be an issue, but 80% of the women I talk to want someone who's kind of, you know, they're height or taller. I would say closer to only 20% of them really care about height.
I think they also simplify the money equation. At the end of the day, she's going to be fine because she's getting a big promotion, and her guy is going to try harder, but the idea that you're choosing between a superficial, loveless existence or love with poverty doesn't ring true.
One of the surprising details in Materialists is a surgery that can add up to 6 inches in height. Do you have any stories about the wild things clients have done to improve their odds?
Winston: I signed a lovely woman, and she was overweight. We were having issues. Even the men who were overweight themselves and had dad bods only wanted someone slender. She went on Ozempic, and when we had lunch three months later, she was 35 pounds lighter. Then we started getting her matches. It's a complete game changer in the world of dating. 50 years ago, it was rhinoplasty, 10 years ago it was lip fillers, and now it's weight loss injectables.
Butler: I'm not really seeing that specifically. I haven't seen a trend of people running out to get surgery. But social media creates a landscape with endless comparing that can be extremely painful. With the app culture, and swiping culture, people are very image focused.
Avgitidis: I think the biggest way to change your odds is to increase your capacity for empathy. If I notice that a client is very close-minded and conservative, I will also ask them to read two fiction books. And if they do it, their mindset changes. The moment you read fiction, especially if it's written by a woman, it shows you a different perspective from a character. And you do build the pillars of empathy this way, and it makes you a far more appealing match.
Daniels: I didn't like the thing about the six inches. I felt like it was kind of making fun of the process. I'd have cut the whole thing. I have seen people go and get surgery done before they start dating. Whether it's an eye lift or having Botox, I think that it's just people deciding that they're going to put the best version of themselves out there.