Well, dear readers, whoop-de-doo, which, of course, is ood-ed-poohw spelled backwards. I have no idea what I’m whoop-de-dooing about since no modern major miracle has made itself known, and I’m currently having a little heartburn, most of which was brought on by the motion picture I watched, entitled Heartburn, a 1986 Nora Ephron thing, based on a Nora Ephron thing about her unsuccessful marriage to a philandering husband known as Carl Bernstein. Now, you look at this motion pictures’ bona fides and think, how could this fail. Mike Nichols as director, Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson as the married couple, a supporting cast including Stockard Channing, Richard Masur, Steven Hill, Jeff Daniels, Maureen Stapleton, Joanna Gleason, and, in his film debut, Kevin Spacey. Nora Ephron was really not my kind of writer, but she certainly struck gold with When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle, but I’m probably the only human who doesn’t really care for the former and likes but doesn’t love the latter. Nothing after those two made much impression on me. But Heartburn, for me, is a complete fiasco as a film. You don’t care about anyone, Jack Nicholson, who I normally love, is just awful in this one, Meryl Streep is always wonderful but struggles here, and while there are a couple of moments with the supporting cast, it just doesn’t work. Mike Nichols seems to flounder, too, trying to figure out the tone, which never coalesces into a whole. Carly Simon’s “score” is basically the same four chords over and over and over again, although the film did produce a hit song. Tony Walton’s production design is the one thing that works perfectly. Now, let’s compare and contrast Heartburn with the motion picture I watched before going to bed the night before. I meant only to watch the first ten minutes, just to see if it was a new transfer, but I got hooked and could not stop watching. I laughed, I cried, I cared. That motion picture was entitled The Goodbye Girl, and it’s a film where everything works. For me, it’s at the very top tier of Neil Simon’s work and that’s saying something. It may, in fact, be his best work. Every single person in the film is perfectly cast, with Marsha Mason giving one of the most endearing performances ever, Quinn Cummings perfect as her daughter, and Richard Dreyfuss fully deserving of the Oscar he won. But right down to the smallest role, everyone is great. You care instantly about Paula and her daughter, Dreyfuss shows up and is funny but truly obnoxious and you feel for Paula having to deal with it. Slowly, she begins to see his charms and she and we begin to fall in love with him. The tone is always perfect, and the entire Richard III sequence could have been awful but Dreyfuss makes it work. The short scene where Paula and Lucy go backstage after his opening night show is heartbreaking because Dreyfuss is so real in it – he says absolutely not one word – it’s all in his eyes and face. Herbert Ross, a director I found very hit and miss, is in the hit column here with nary a misstep. It holds up beautifully after all these years. It also has a great score by Dave Grusin – spare, but always doing the right thing at the right time. The Simon jokes are in abundance and every one of them lands, but it’s the other stuff, the emotional stuff, that is the glue of the film. If you’ve somehow never seen it, it’s on Prime and it’s highly recommended by the likes of me.
And then there was the musical they made of The Goodbye Girl, which was a textbook in how to ruin something in completely unnecessary ways and the blame is all on Mr. Simon. What does he do? He makes the cardinal sin of reversing the dynamic that worked so perfectly in the film. From the start, Paula is whiny and almost a shrew, and they give her an eleven o’clock number at eight-fifteen and it throws the show into complete disarray. Then Martin Short shows up and is so lovable that you hate Bernadette Peters for not seeing that instantly. It just subverts everything. The daughter, played by Tammy Minoff, is a bit older than Miss Cummings was in the film and that doesn’t work. The gay Richard III apparently scared everyone, and it shouldn’t have. Instead, it’s some Victor/Victoria thing that doesn’t work at all. There are some decent songs here and there, but by the time we’re halfway through the show it’s too late. It was in serious trouble in its Chicago tryout and Mr. Simon apparently didn’t want to listen to anyone about the issues and he severed his relationship with Gene Saks, which was a real shame. Instead, they brought in Michael Kidd to fix it, but he couldn’t fix anything and he was many years past his prime, so to speak. It ran paltry 188 performances, mostly because of the star power of the two leads. Many attempts to “fix” it over the years, but none that were successful.
Yesterday was okay, I guess. I got eight hours of sleep, answered e-mails, shaved and showered, and then moseyed on over to the theater to see a run-through with costumes of our little playlet. It went very well and there’s really not much more to do on it until I put in the other lead actor for the rest of the run, which I’ll do probably in a week or so. He’s already rehearsed a few times, so it’s just a matter of getting him up to speed and making sure that it’s all working as it should and not throwing the other two actors. I left right after it was finished, stopped at Subway and got a foot-long ham and turkey and a six-inch spicy Eyetalian for food. I came home and ate the ham and turkey – it’s only about 500 calories. A few hours later, I had the six-inch sandwich, also about 500 calories, so that was all fine. Then I watched the movie and here we are.
Today, I was supposed to go see a new musical with the Pearls, but that’s been postponed until the end of the month, so I can sleep in. I don’t have to be at the theater until around 7:45 so it can mostly be a ME day. I’ll eat something fun, maybe some pasta of my own making, and after I get home I can watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow is a day off and I have several things that I must do and I’m hoping for a modern major miracle to show itself. The rest of the week is hopefully getting the other blurb I’m waiting on, and once I have that I’ll probably reveal what the HELL this thing is, I have some work to do on the project with David Wechter, Tuesday and Wednesday are preview performances and then we open on Thursday. I won’t be attending many of the performances – too much going on, including finalizing the casting for 70, Girls, 70.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, sleep in, be lazy, eat, see a run-through, come home, and watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, after having told a tale of two movies.