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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Addams Family: Revisiting Barry Sonnenfeld’s Directorial Debut 30 Years Later

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“We would gladly feast on those who would subdue us.” These are not just pretty words, but the motto of The Addams Family. Originally released on Nov. 22, 1991, the comedy about lovable and pioneering psychopaths, fiends, mad-dog killers, and brutes hits its 30th anniversary this year. To celebrate, the film will be released for the first time on Digital 4K Ultra HD on Oct. 19, and has the full sequence of the Mamushka dance restored in its entirety. Paramount Home Entertainment says the release is timed for Halloween, but every day is a dark holiday for fans of The Addams Family.

While both Uncle Fester (Christopher Lloyd) and Wednesday (Christina Ricci) might prefer to spend their holidays in the Bermuda Triangle, Gomez (Raul Julia) and Morticia (Anjelica Huston) need go no further than the family plot for their most relaxed reposts. Charles Addams’ characters have happily blighted American culture since The New Yorker published his first one-panel cartoon in 1938. In the 1960s, The Addams Family premiered on the same day as The Munsters debut, though both were ultimately taken down by the caped crusaders of Batman. The TV series codified many amorphous aspects of the comic, including family names, Thing, and the theme song. Written by songwriter Vic Mizzy, it was so memorable it inspired the Addams clan’s most imaginative reimagining.

Before remakes of The Flintstones, The Beverly Hillbillies, My Favorite Martian, and Sgt. Bilko tried to recapture the light comedy of TV’s Golden Age, Twentieth Century Fox’s big-screen version of The Addams Family tarnished the landscape. The screenplay was written by Caroline Thompson and Larry Wilson, and punched up by an uncredited Paul Rudnick, who would write the screenplay for Addams Family Values (1993).

The Addams Family marked the feature debut of director Barry Sonnenfeld, who had been cinematographer for such films as the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, and Miller’s Crossing, as well as Danny DeVito’s homage to Alfred Hitchcock, Throw Mama from the Train, Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally��, and Penny Marshall’s Big. He would go on to direct Men in Black I and II. Get Shorty, and A Series of Unfortunate Events. Sonnenfeld’s storytelling camera exposed the spookiest of the creeps to be the modern world, while the strange, deranged Addamses are the most permissive of units, equally accepting of all but the most wholesome good cheer.

To celebrate the reissue of The Addams Family, Den of Geek threw on a shawl and paid a call on Sonnenfeld, who spoke openly about It, Thing, and other things.

Den of Geek: What was it about The Addams Family that said “this is the first feature I have to direct?”

I wasn’t looking to direct. I was reThe Addams Family’s Barry Sonnenfeld breaks down the Mamushka, his directorial saddle, and James Gandolfini’s patois.ally happy as a cameraman. I was a couple of weeks from finishing Misery for Rob Reiner, and Scott Rudin sent me the script for Addams Family. The script wasn’t very good, but if there was one script that would make sense for me to be the director on, as a first-time director, it would be The Addams Family. It’s quirky. It’s dark. It’s black comedy. And I grew up with the Charles Addams cartoons in The New Yorker. Every week my dad would read The New Yorker, and I would look through to see if there was a Charles Addams drawing in there. So, it was the perfect first thing for me to do because it let me do a lot of visual stylizations, but also be very true to Charles Addams’ tone, which the original script didn’t do, and we worked with Paul Rudnick to get it there.

I spoke with Charles Addams’ biographer, who said the screen versions were never as dark as the comics. But with lines like “widows and orphans, we need more of them,” I think you captured it best. What was so jokey about the first draft of it?

You know, I don’t remember, but it was much more like the TV show, there were comedy scenes and jokey scenes and slapstick. It felt like it was one step short of a banana peel kind of script. There are so many moments where I just stole Charles Addams’ images and put it into our movie. Gomez playing with the train set and me looking over it and seeing Gomez’s face? That was a New Yorker cartoon. The cauldron, in the opening scene, where they pour oil on the carolers on Christmas Eve, is a Charles Adams cartoon. I even stole, well used, a concept in the teaser. Charles Addams drew this drawing: you’re in a movie theater and there’s a woman on the screen and the woman is going like [screams] and everyone in the audience is turned to see what she’s screaming at, as if the woman on the screen is actually seeing something in the theater.

How do we know which are your visual gags and which are the gags that you lifted from the cartoon?

Well, the ones I’m telling you I got from the cartoon, but it’s a good question. Charles Addams never had a moving camera, so he couldn’t follow Thing around a house from a séance to a door. One of the things I’m proud of is putting the full Mamushka back in there, which is one of the add-ons for this 4K version. To get Marc Shaiman and Comden and Green to write the song and actually film this whole dance number. That’s not Charles Addams, but the tone is. They’re throwing blades and juggling knives and Fester swallows one. In tone, Charles Addams, in execution, Barry.

Charles Addams had a crazy apartment in Manhattan with suits of armor and torture devices. And you have a public bathroom as a bathroom, and direct movies from a saddle. Will you ever direct one from a mechanical bull?

No, it’s too heavy and you don’t want to make the crew carry it around from location to location. I often dress like a cowboy. I wear a cowboy hat. I wear cowboy boots. And at the end of Men in Black II, which was 20 years ago, the crew, as a joke when we wrapped, gave me a saddle and it sits on an Apple box. And ever since then, we’ve improved the saddle. It now has various drawers for my medications and bottles of water.

Now, I have a second saddle that on A Series of Unfortunate Events, we actually took a Rascal, which is one of those things that old people use to get around like Walmart and stuff, in the villages down in Florida, and we put a saddle on that. So now I have a motorized saddle so I can just drive myself up to the actors and go, “OK, just do it again, just a lot faster.” And then I pull on a joystick and go back to the monitor or to the camera. So yeah, I’m a quirky guy, and I always say I take my work seriously, but I don’t take myself seriously. So that’s how I get through the day on the set.

I heard the Mamushka was cut because of a test audience. How does that feel to have to cut something so fully formed and fun?

That’s half true. When you have a recruited-audience screening, you don’t really need tests. You don’t need them to fill out forms. Just being in the theater, you sense when people start to cough or fidget. You always want every scene to move the story forward. If you can cut a scene out of your movie and it doesn’t affect the plot or emotions, the scene shouldn’t be in there. And the problem is, before the Mamushka there is a very long lead-up to the Mamushka. We introduce Lumpy Addams, we introduce Flora and Fauna Amour, and there’s this endless setup.

Dede Allen, who was a brilliant editor, and I felt we should leave all of the Mamushka in, but get rid of some of the stuff before, because somewhere in there we weren’t moving the plot forward, and we could sense the audience getting just a little bit fidgety. And at the end of the day, instead of losing the stuff before the Mamushka, we cut the Mamushka in half because it was an easy way to just cut into it in the middle.

But I regretted that decision. It’s the only time I’ve ever wanted to make anything longer. Joel and Ethan, they produce special editions, and they’re always shorter. The Blood Simple special edition is shorter than the original. Joel and Ethan and I are working on a rerelease of Miller’s Crossing for Criterion. And Joel is actually reediting the movie and making it shorter. This is the only time I’ve ever wanted to lengthen anything, and I really miss the full Mamushka because it starts wonderfully. Raul Julia is such a brilliant theatrical actor, on Broadway musicals, so I regretted taking out the first half.

How did the Mamushka inform Schmigadoon!?

Well, I’m not a fan of musicals, but yet I seem to know how to shoot them. I’ll tell you the truth. I think that most dance movies and most modern musicals don’t know how to shoot. There are too many inserts. Too many cutaways. In both the Mamushka and Schmigadoon!, we see full bodies, we see people dancing head to toe. We played everything very proscenium, in wide shots, so you can see whole dancers. The way they used to shoot musicals. I’m just not a fan, but it doesn’t mean I don’t know how to shoot them.

What is the Fred Astaire connection to Thing and is Thing you as a living camera?

I think the camera is me. I love how energetic and self-aware and self-important the camera is in everything I do because it’s me saying, “Hey, here I am. I know I’m not on screen, but pay attention to me.” That’s why, in Raising Arizona and Throw Mama from the Train, I do all these wacky camera moves. It’s so the people know that I’m the cinematographer or the director. Fred Astaire, he’s a darn good dancer. Thing was good too, and what I loved about Thing is, again, he wasn’t CGI. It was always Christopher Hart, with a black sleeve, coming up Gomez’s shoulder or sticking his hand underneath through a hole in the table. But ninety five percent of Thing, 98 percent is real Christopher Hart. And he was patient and brilliant and worked long hours.

The casting, obviously, is perfect, but Christina Ricci was 10 years old. Was she just born, fully formed, as a comic genius?

Yeah, very flat. Knew never to hit the comedy. That’s what I loved about her. She never hit the comedy. Just said the lines as flat as possible. She was joyful to work with because my whole motto is: fast and flat. I don’t want to hear any intonation, just say the lines without any artifice. And she was perfection and the epitome of Charles Addams, which is find the joke. I’m not going to tell you where the joke is, but you’ll find it. And that’s Christina’s acting style.

It would seem that there’d be very little improvisation on your sets. How do you let actors play?

I really think that if your script is really good, a good screenwriter is a good screenwriter and actors are not necessarily writers. Actors can often say, “I don’t know how to say this line” or “this doesn’t sound like me,” or “this is a real tongue twister.” But in general, if your script is good, you really don’t want a lot of improv. I would, sometimes, have Will Smith improv, and he would come up with some really funny, funny ideas, like in the first Men in Black, the stuff you couldn’t write. For instance, Will is chasing this alien, the alien jumps off the top of the Guggenheim Museum. He’s now chasing him and Will jumps off, and he did this stunt. He jumps off this bridge and lands on a double decker tourist bus, and stands up and says “it be raining black people.” You’re not going to write that line, but Will said it. But yes, very little improv.

The worst part of the filmmaking process is shooting the film. I love pre-production. I’ve got all the time. There’s no pressure. I can design all these great shots. I can write shot lists. The DP can come in and say, Do we need a techno crane for this? When you say boom up or is this on a dolly? So, it’s all worked out.

I love post-production because your movie, when you’re done filming, is as bad as it’s ever going to be. And now, in post you get to make the movie better again. You know that scene where you needed the sunset? It was raining, but you had to shoot anyway. That extra ruined every take. Even though he only had one line. He never got it right. So, you get rid of that. The thing I like the least is shooting, because nothing ever gets better. Except “it be raining black people.” That got better. That’s pretty funny.

I don’t like the pressure of figuring stuff out on the set. I always say, do you want to try something? It’s usually not different words. But maybe they want to be angrier. Or maybe they want to be less angry. Or maybe they want to try not crying, but it won’t be “Let’s do an improv.” I hate improv. I’ll tell you. Raging Bull has amazing, amazing, amazing fight sequences, but some of those improv scenes with De Niro and Pesci. You just feel the improv and it drives me crazy. So, there, I insulted Marty Scorsese.

Who first noticed Raul Julia had the burst blood vessel?

I noticed that. I said, “Raul, what happened?” And he said, “I was at a bar last night and I was just sitting at the bar and my eyeball just fell out on the table.” It can’t be true. An eyeball is attached to an optic nerve and. And he said, “Yeah, the eyeball just popped up out and you know, it’s unrolled and I picked it up and I put it back in my eye. But I guess I scratched it.” I said, “OK, that’s a good story. But we can’t shoot with you today because it was really red.” And then the next day it was better. But I love that he had to create a dramatic story because that’s who Raul was.

One of my favorite movies is Get Shorty. What was it like to work with James Gandolfini back then?

It’s really funny. Gandolfini, in the movie, plays a stuntman, and Gandolfini came to me and he said, “You know what? I think this guy is from North Carolina. I know so many stunt guys who are all from North Carolina. So, I’m going to make him be from North Carolina, and I’m going to give him just a little accent.” I said, “Bad idea. Don’t do it.” And he said, “Why?” I said “You’ll never talk fast enough.” And he said, “What do you mean?” I said, “I’m going to ask you to talk faster and you’re going to say, ‘no, there’s a certain lilt to people that talk in North Carolina,’ and I’m going to say, “you’ve got to do it faster” and you’re going to have a problem with that because you’re from North Carolina.

He said, “Please give me this.” And I stupidly said, OK, I think you’re making a bad decision. But if you think you can talk fast enough. The whole time [shooting], I’d say “Gandolfini, you gotta do it faster.” And he goes, “Yeah, I know, but there’s a certain patois and rhythm.” I go, “Yeah, exactly. And that’s why.”

Anyway, the movie is done. He sees the finished movie and he comes up to me and he says “You were right. I was wrong.” And so, he was lovely to work with. Piece of cake to work with. Easy. But I wish he didn’t have that sort of slight North Carolina accent, because I think it did slow down his performance. Just the littlest bit. I think we get away with it. So that was what it was like working with Gandolfini. Lovely guy who wouldn’t listen to me about no accent.

How does shooting nine porno features in nine days prepare you for the subversive comedy of The Addams Family?

Well, going back before then, what I taught the producer on those nine pornos in nine days was to block shoot. We would light, and we shot all those movies in the loft on 17th Street and Sixth Avenue. I taught him the only way we can shoot nine entire features is to light a set like the dentist’s office set, or the bedroom set, and shoot scene three of movie one, scene four for movie two, scene seven of movie three and shoot out sets.

I learned at film school that filming is all about pre-production. So, when it came time to be a director, I had already shot nine feature films and an additional nine pornos and a lot of TV. For me, it’s all about pre-production, all about prep. Even on those porno films, it was: light a scene, light a set and shoot everything you can in that set before you move on. Other than that, I didn’t learn anything except don’t work on pornos.

I heard that you were hospitalized, and there were quite a few mishaps on the set of The Addams Family.

I fainted. The day before, we had shot Thing at the séance, and they hear a knock at the door and Thing runs, and we follow Thing. That Thing is Chris Hart on a dolly, doing this with his hands, going down the hallway and we’re following. And Chris is on the same dolly with his hand, that was all in camera. But because it was such a wide lens, and because we had to go through so many rooms, it took two thirds of a day to shoot that one shot, and we probably had 15 shots to do that day.

So, I went home and didn’t sleep all night. I literally was trying to figure out what I could lose in the next day’s shooting to make up for the time, and I realized I should have had Thing leave frame at the end. And I didn’t. But I couldn’t reshoot that because it took us nine hours to light and shoot it. So, the entire night I stayed away trying to stay on schedule, stay on budget, what could I do?

The next morning, I was still awake, on the set during first set-up I drank my fifth espresso in a row, and then I heard [cinematographer] Owen Roizman say “get a blanket.” and discovered I had fainted and was on the ground. There was a lot of pressure and I was a first-time director. We were going over schedule, over budget. Our film had been sold from Orion to Paramount. That was a big change of regimes and working styles. So, it was a very tough first film because it was very ambitious.

Did the cast send in Christina Ricci to beg not to have Fester be an imposter?

Oh yeah. After our table read, by that time we had hired Paul Rudnick to do a rewrite and we had read his rewrite, the movie ended with Fester still being the imposter, and Gomez knew he was the imposter, but said, “You know what? Family is a state of mind. It’s not biology. Welcome to our family.” And we thought that was a good ending.

But the cast was totally freaked out. After we were done with the table read, they huddled in the corner. They made Christina Ricci their spokesperson, and they all came back and they said, “We hate this ending. It can end this way.” And then Angelica said, “Christina?” And Christina said, “Well, Barry, here’s the problem. The audience will not accept that ending because you haven’t answered all those questions. Where is Fester? Will he come back? Has Gomez suddenly fallen in love with imposter Fester so much that he no longer cares about his brother?”

And what Scott Rudin and Rudnick and I realized is we had created an intellectually satisfying ending, but not an emotionally satisfying ending. And the cast of actors, being actors, went right for where the emotional heart was. Christina was so articulate that I looked over to Rudnick and I said, “I think we’re going to need a new ending.” And Rudnick said, “Yeah, I think we are.” And thank God that they rebelled because our ending is so much more satisfying emotionally than if he still had remained the impostor Fester.

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The Addams Family reissue will hit select theaters and be released on Digital 4K Ultra HD on October 19.

The post The Addams Family: Revisiting Barry Sonnenfeld’s Directorial Debut 30 Years Later appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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healthycoffeeguy · 3 years

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Check out Family Favorites: 10… on Mercari!

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Family Favorites: 10-Movie Collection

New. Never Opened. Still in original shrink wrap.

Cloak & Dagger: Fantasy video gamer Davey (Henry Thomas) suddenly finds his imaginary Cloak & Dagger world has come to exciting and perilous life and he must team up with his game’s hero to defeat enemy spies.

The Wizard: Two runaway brothers (Fred Savage & Luke Edwards) join forces with a resourceful girl (Jenny Lewis) on an adventure of a lifetime when they head to California for a video game competition.

Cop and a Half: Devon’s dreams of becoming a cop when he grows up suddenly come to life after he witnesses a horrific crime and is paired with a reluctant police veteran (Burt Reynolds).

King Ralph: After the royal family is accidentally wiped out, a rude and crude Las Vegas lounge singer (John Goodman) is discovered to be a distant relative and the next king of England!

Matinee: Movie promoter Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman) brings his unique brand of flashy showmanship to the unsuspecting residents of Key West in this hilarious tribute to a more innocent (and outrageous) time in American cinema.

Sgt. Bilko: Leading the sorriest group of soldiers ever to enlist in the armed forces, the outrageous Sgt. Bilko (Steve Martin) must prevent his base from being shut down… and clear his name.

Ghost Dad: In this spirited family comedy, a workaholic father (Bill Cosby) crosses over to a different world and must learn how to be seen and heard as a ghost in order to care for his three kids.

Ed: Minor league pitcher Deuce Cooper (Matt LeBlanc) gets a major league boost in good fortune when the team’s new star player – an amazingly talented chimpanzee – becomes his roommate and buddy.

A Simple Wish: When Anabel (Mara Wilson) wishes for a fairy godmother, her wish takes the form of magical misfit Murray (Martin Short) who helps to rescue her dad and thwart a wicked witch (Kathleen Turner).

The Borrowers: A family of four-inch people living beneath the floorboards must save their home from being destroyed by an evil real estate developer (John Goodman).

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incorrectnancydrewquotes · 2 years

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Maybe, a plan is not what I really need. What I really need... is just a little puppy. A little puppy with big brown eyes, who would just come to me and lick my face, and just love me so much, no matter what kind of person I am.

Emily Crandall, Secret of the Old Clock

#emily crandall #clk #Secret of the Old Clock #original: sgt bilko #mod amy

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meanstreetspodcasts · 3 years

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Episode 241 – Phil Silvers

Phil Silvers broke out on Broadway before he became a household name as the scheming Sgt. Bilko on TV's The Phil Silvers Show. The funny man showed off another side of himself in "The Swift Rise of Eddie Albright" on Suspense (originally aired on CBS on April 3, 1947). Plus, we'll hear him welcome his buddy Frank Sinatra to an episode of radio's The Phil Silvers Show (originally aired on NBC on February 9, 1946).

Check out this episode!

#suspense #old time radio #golden age of radio

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broughttoyouby · 4 years

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lnfinitc replied to your audio post: “This is Wes’ canon voice actor from AoStH, Michael Donovan.”:

I WISH I DIDNT KNOW WHAT HE ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE ITS ALL I SEE WHEN I HEAR THIS VOICE LMAO ))

VERY TRUE but fun fact, his original design (and voice) are inspired by Phil Silvers, from this show when Silvers played Sgt. Bilko!

#lnfinitc #off the air (ooc)

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sohannabarberaesque · 1 year

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Ursine Battle Royale!

(part 1)

For Hokey Wolf, natural-born scam artist and scammer extraordinaire, the whole idea of a wrasslin' match between the likes of Breezly Bruin, onetime torment of Nome, Alaska, and Square Bear, the somewhat dopey but likable one of the Hair Bear Bunch, could only have ensued spontaneously.

As in over a buffet luncheon with Ding-a-Ling, his somewhat cheeky son, and his girlfriend and romantic interest, Harmony Wolf. (One, thankfully, not involving greasy and at times hackneyed Chinese fare.)

"Ding ... Harmony ..." Hokey began, "I can just imagine it now--quite the pay-per-view event extraordinaire for such who can't quite get enough of the overbaked 'professional wrestling' schtick, one basically going back to Gorgeous George and Texas Rasslin', even, as Snagglepuss would parse it!"

"You don't mean, Hokey--" Ding-a-Ling tried interjecting.

To which Hokey responded, "Yes, Ding--the classic days of wrestling on the vidiot's lamp of Diogenes!! Especially coming between no less than a polar bear like Breezly Bruin and a Kodiak bear like Square Bear from the Hair Bears--and whose origins are rather amusing, if a bit weird, I have to admit!"

"This I have to hear," Ding-a-Ling remarked.

"You see, Ding and Harmony," Hokey went on, "it all started at the Washington Park Zoo in Milwaukee back in 1932; for some reason, some zookeeper there had this BRILLIANT idea of trying to keep several species of bears--and a couple of wolves, for good measure--on display in a reasonable simulation of natural habitat, one inspired by the Hagenbeck Tierpark back in Hamburg, Germany!" (You could sense the Sgt. Bilko histrionics throughout.) "Without any sort of cages or bare cramped space, and a modest-size moat to discourage attempts at escape!"

(At any rate, the details of what ensued on no less than three occasions at the since-closed zoo when the resident polar bear decided it would be sport to dunk a couple of black bear cubs in a modest pond in the bear display without regard to the consequences is perhaps best regarded as horrible dictu considering the gruesome nature of what ensued and the bad publicity as resulted for as much zoo as zookeeper.)

"Still, though," Hokey Wolf went on to add, "reading about such an exercise in a Happy Kingdom gone berserk led me to imagine the very possibility of a polar bear like Breezly Bruin rasslin' against a clumsy Kodiak like Square Bear on pay-per-view! And who exactly would come out on top in the end!"

And you could just picture Ding-a-Ling thinking "Hokey is MY HERO!" as would be the case in such flashes of lupine inspiration which Hokey hoped to profit from and ride the proverbial gravy train.

"So what did you have in mind as the venue for this rasslin' display?" asked Harmony Wolf, ever curious about these things.

"Pratt's Rainbow Gardens, where else? Doubtless the home of the tackiest in professional wrestling seen on the vidiot's box of late, not counting the so-called WWE!"

"But what if Pratt's isn't interested?" asked Ding-a-Ling.

"Backup plan, Ding, is no less than Tipium Grove!"

And you could just picture what further plans were bound to be hashed out in the ensuing lunch buffet conversation, much of it unlikely to be of interest to the average Old Hanna-Barberian. But in the next such, we get a profile of Breezly Bruin, the polar bear contender here.

*************

@warnerbrosentertainment @thebigdingle @princessgalaxy505 @nighttimehound @warnerbros-blog1 @themineralyoucrave @screamingtoosoftly @archive-archives @jellystone-enjoyer @thylordshipofbutts @theweekenddigest @warnerbrosent-blog

#hanna barbera #fanfiction #fanfic special #hokey wolf #tv wrestling #rasslin'#unlikely matchups #breezly bruin #square bear #unlikely venues #hannabarberaforever

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angellestat · 7 years

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Klub Foot was a highly influential London nightclub in the Psychobilly scene of the early and mid-1980s.

It was hosted at the Clarendon public house in Hammersmith until the pub was demolished as part of the redevelopment of Hammersmith Town Centre. It regularly showcased the rising stars of the scene, including The Meteors, Demented Are Go, Guana Batz, Batmobile, Long Tall Texans, The Sting-Rays, The Caravans, Klingonz, Coffin Nails, Skitzo, The Highliners, Sgt Bilko's Krazy Combo and many others. On all the Klub Foot posters the address stated was "Clarendon Hotel Ballroom, Hammersmith Broadway W6". The Clarendon itself was a very large 1930s public house with attached function rooms built in the Art Deco style, and it stood on the corner of the Hammersmith one way system until its demolition in 1988. The Klub Foot was held in the main ballroom on the first floor, which held around 900 people. As well as hosting concerts, the Klub Foot promoter released a series of live recordings, titled Stomping At The Klubfoot on ABC records. Six volumes were released on vinyl and CD. After the Clarendon closed, attempts were made to relocate the club at various locations including the Boston Arms in Tufnell Park, and the Town and Country Club in Kentish Town, but the dying Psychobilly scene in the UK in the 1990s made it difficult to attract crowds. Since 1999, subsequent Klub Foot Reunion concerts at the Relentless Garage in Highbury have been more successful and it is now a yearly event featuring original 1980s bands with newer support acts.

#Klub Foot #London #old school psychobilly #psychobilly #neo rockabilly #festival

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uacboo · 7 years

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The film and Emmy-nominated TV actress was shooting Hulu's 'Future Man.' Glenne Headly, the Emmy-nominated TV actress and star of films such as Dick Tracy and Mr. Holland's Opus, has died, The Hollywood Reporter can confirm. She was 63. “It is with deep sorrow that we confirm the passing of Glenne Headly,” her reps said in a statement. “We ask that her family’s privacy be respected in this difficult time.” No cause of death was given. Headly, who most recently appeared on the big screen in The Circle and in HBO's limited series The Night Of, was in production on the Hulu series Future Man. She was starring alongside Josh Hutcherson, Ed Begley Jr., Eliza Coupe and Derek Wilson in the comedy created by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Throughout her career, Headly starred in feature films such as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, in 1988, and Sgt. Bilko, in 1996 — both alongside Steve Martin — as well aa in 1990's Dick Tracy with Warren Beatty in 1995's Mr. Holland's Opus with Richard Dreyfus. In the Tom Hanks-starrer The Circle, out earlier this year, Headly and Bill Paxton played the parents of Emma Watson's character. Paxton passed away in February of this year. Headly was nominated for an Emmy for the 1989 mini-series Lonesome Dove and went on to play memorable TV roles as Dr. Abby Keaton on NBC's ER and Karen Stottlemeyer on USA's Monk. She began acting in stage productions, including Arms & The Man, which was directed by her ex-husband John Malkovich, and was an originating member of the Steppenwolf theatre company. She is survived by her husband Byron McCulloch and son Stirling. RIP Glenne Headley. Emma Watson is probably very sad today. Bill Paxton and Glenne Headley dying too young and just months apart.

#glenne headly #john malkovich #steppenwolf theater company #mr hollands opus #lonesome dove #ER #monk #future man #Abby Keaton #the circle #dick tracy #dirty rotten scoundrels

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funnythingshere0-blog · 6 years

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Neil Simon, Broadway's master of comedy, dies at 91

New Post has been published on https://funnythingshere.xyz/neil-simon-broadways-master-of-comedy-dies-at-91/

Neil Simon, Broadway's master of comedy, dies at 91

NEW YORK (AP) — Playwright Neil Simon, a master of comedy whose laugh-filled hits such as “The Odd Couple,” ”Barefoot in the Park” and his “Brighton Beach” trilogy dominated Broadway for decades, has died. He was 91.

Simon died early Sunday of complications from pneumonia at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, said Bill Evans, a longtime friend and spokesman for Shubert Organization theaters.

In the second half of the 20th century, Simon was the American theater’s most successful and prolific playwright, often chronicling middle class issues and fears. Starting with “Come Blow Your Horn” in 1961 and continuing into the next century, he rarely stopped working on a new play or musical. His list of credits is staggering.

The theater world quickly mourned his death , including Tony Award-winning actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein, who tweeted that Simon “could write a joke that would make you laugh, define the character, the situation, and even the world’s problems.”

Matthew Broderick, who in 1983 made his Broadway debut in Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs” and his movie debut in Simon’s “Max Dugan Returns,” added: “I owe him a career. The theater has lost a brilliantly funny, unthinkably wonderful writer. And even after all this time, I feel I have lost a mentor, a father figure, a deep influence in my life and work.”

For seven months in 1967, he had four productions running at the same time on Broadway: “Barefoot in the Park,” ”The Odd Couple,” ”Sweet Charity,” and “The Star-Spangled Girl.”

Even before he launched his theater career, he made history as one of the famed stable of writers for comedian Sid Caesar that also included Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner.

Simon was the recipient of four Tony Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, the Kennedy Center honors (1995), four Writers Guild of America Awards and an American Comedy Awards Lifetime Achievement honor. In 1983, he had a Broadway theater named after him when the Alvin was rechristened the Neil Simon Theatre.

In 2006, he won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which honors work that draws from the American experience. The previous year had seen a popular revival of “The Odd Couple,” reuniting Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick after their enormous success in “The Producers” several years earlier.

In a 1997 interview with The Washington Post, Simon reflected on his success: “I know that I have reached the pinnacle of rewards. There’s no more money anyone can pay me that I need. There are no awards they can give me that I haven’t won. I have no reason to write another play except that I am alive and I like to do it,” he said.

Simon had a rare stumble in the fall of 2009, when a Broadway revival of his “Brighton Beach Memoirs” closed abruptly after only nine performances because of poor ticket sales. It was to have run in repertory with Simon’s “Broadway Bound,” which was also canceled.

The bespectacled, mild-looking Simon (described in a New York Times magazine profile as looking like an accountant or librarian who dressed “just this side of drab”) was a relentless writer — and rewriter.

“I am most alive and most fulfilled sitting alone in a room, hoping that those words forming on the paper in the Smith-Corona will be the first perfect play ever written in a single draft,” Simon wrote in the introduction to one of the many anthologies of his plays.

He was a meticulous joke smith, peppering his plays, especially the early ones, with comic one-liners and humorous situations that critics said sometimes came at the expense of character and believability. No matter. For much of his career, audiences embraced his work, which often focused on middle-class, urban life, many of the plots drawn from his own personal experience.

“I don’t write social and political plays because I’ve always thought the family was the microcosm of what goes on in the world,” he told The Paris Review in 1992.

Simon received his first Tony Award in 1965 as best author — a category now discontinued — for “The Odd Couple,” although the comedy lost the best-play prize to Frank D. Gilroy’s “The Subject Was Roses.” He won a best-play Tony 20 years later for “Biloxi Blues.” In 1991, “Lost in Yonkers” received both the Tony and the Pulitzer Prize. And there was a special achievement Tony, too, in 1975.

Simon’s own life figured most prominently in what became known as his “Brighton Beach” trilogy — “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” ”Biloxi Blues” and “Broadway Bound” — which many consider his finest works. In them, Simon’s alter ego, Eugene Morris Jerome, makes his way from childhood to the U.S. Army to finally, on the verge of adulthood, a budding career as a writer.

Simon was born Marvin Neil Simon in New York and was raised in the Bronx and Washington Heights. He was a Depression-era child, his father, Irving, a garment-industry salesman. He was raised mostly by his strong-willed mother, Mamie, and mentored by his older brother, Danny, who nicknamed his younger sibling, Doc.

Simon attended New York University and the University of Colorado. After serving in the military in 1945 and 1946, he began writing with his brother for radio in 1948, and then for television, a period in their lives chronicled in Simon’s 1993 play, “Laughter on the 23rd Floor.”

The brothers wrote for such classic 1950s television series as “Your Show of Shows,” 90 minutes of live, original comedy starring Caesar and Imogene Coca, and later for “The Phil Silvers Show,” in which the popular comedian portrayed the conniving Army Sgt. Ernie Bilko.

Yet Simon grew dissatisfied with television writing and the network restrictions that accompanied it. Out of his frustration came “Come Blow Your Horn,” which starred Hal March and Warren Berlinger as two brothers (not unlike Danny and Neil Simon) trying to figure out what to do with their lives. The comedy ran for more than a year on Broadway. An audience member is said to have died on opening night.

But it was his second play, “Barefoot in the Park,” that really put Simon on the map. Critically well-received, the 1963 comedy, directed by Mike Nichols, concerned the tribulations of a pair of newlyweds played by Elizabeth Ashley and Robert Redford, who lived on the top floor of a New York brownstone.

Simon cemented that success two years later with “The Odd Couple,” a comedy about bickering roommates: Oscar, a gruff, slovenly sportswriter, and Felix, a neat, fussy photographer. Walter Matthau, as Oscar, and Art Carney, as Felix, starred on Broadway, with Matthau and Jack Lemmon playing the roles in a successful movie version. Jack Klugman and Tony Randall appeared in the TV series, which ran on ABC from 1970-1975. A female stage version was done on Broadway in 1985 with Rita Moreno as Olive (Oscar) and Sally Struthers as Florence (Felix). It was revived again as a TV series from 2015-17, starring Matthew Perry.

The play remains one of Simon’s most durable and popular works. Nathan Lane as Oscar and Matthew Broderick as Felix starred in a revival that was one of the biggest hits of the 2005-2006 Broadway season.

Besides “Sweet Charity” (1966), which starred Gwen Verdon as a goodhearted dance-hall hostess, and “Promises, Promises” (1968), based on Billy Wilder’s film “The Apartment,” Simon wrote the books for several other musicals.

“Little Me” (1962), adapted from Patrick Dennis’ best-selling spoof of show-biz autobiographies, featured a hardworking Sid Caesar in seven different roles. “They’re Playing Our Song” (1979), which had music by Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager, ran for more than two years. But a musical version of Simon’s movie “The Goodbye Girl,” starring Martin Short and Bernadette Peters, had only a short run in 1993.

Many of his plays were turned into films as well. Besides “The Odd Couple,” he wrote the screenplays for movie versions of “Barefoot in the Park,” ”The Sunshine Boys,” ”The Prisoner of Second Avenue” and more.

Simon also wrote original screenplays, the best known being “The Goodbye Girl,” starring Richard Dreyfuss as a struggling actor, and “The Heartbreak Kid,” which featured Charles Grodin as a recently married man, lusting to drop his new wife for a blonde goddess played by Cybill Shepherd.

In his later years, Simon had more difficulty on Broadway. After the success of “Lost in Yonkers,” which starred Mercedes Ruehl as a gentle, simple-minded woman controlled by her domineering mother (Irene Worth), the playwright had a string of financially unsuccessful plays including “Jake’s Women,” ”Laughter on the 23rd Floor” and “Proposals.” Simon even went off-Broadway with “London Suite” in 1995 but it didn’t run long either.

“The Dinner Party,” a comedy set in Paris about husbands and ex-wives, was a modest hit in 2000, primarily because of the box-office strength of its two stars, Henry Winkler and John Ritter. A hit revival of “Promises, Promises” in 2010 starred Kristin Chenoweth and Sean Hayes.

Perhaps Simon’s most infamous production was the critically panned “Rose’s Dilemma,” which opened at off-Broadway’s nonprofit Manhattan Theatre Club in December 2003. Its star, Mary Tyler Moore, walked out of the show during preview performances after receiving a note from the playwright criticizing her performance. Moore was replaced by her understudy.

He wrote two memoirs, “Rewrites” (1996) and “The Play Goes On” (1999). They were combined into “Neil Simon’s Memoirs.”

Simon was married five times, twice to the same woman. His first wife, Joan Baim, died of cancer in 1973, after 20 years of marriage. They had two daughters, Ellen and Nancy, who survive him. Simon dealt with her death in “Chapter Two” (1977), telling the story of a widower who starts anew.

The playwright then married actress Marsha Mason, who had appeared in his stage comedy “The Good Doctor” and who went on to star in several films written by Simon including “The Goodbye Girl,” ”The Cheap Detective,” ”Chapter Two,” ”Only When I Laugh” and “Max Dugan Returns.” They divorced in 1982.

The playwright was married to his third wife, Diane Lander, twice — once in 1987-1988 and again in 1990-1998. Simon adopted Lander’s daughter, Bryn, from a previous marriage. Simon married his fourth wife, actress Elaine Joyce, in 1999. He also is survived by three grandchildren and one great-grandson.

“I suspect I shall keep on writing in a vain search for that perfect play. I hope I will keep my equilibrium and sense of humor when I’m told I haven’t achieved it,” Simon once said about his voluminous output of work. “At any rate, the trip has been wonderful. As George and Ira Gershwin said, ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me.’”

Source: https://whdh.com/entertainment/neil-simon-broadways-master-of-comedy-dies-at-91/

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latestnews2018-blog · 6 years

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Neil Simon, Broadway Playwright, Dies At 91

New Post has been published on https://latestnews2018.com/neil-simon-broadway-playwright-dies-at-91/

Neil Simon, Broadway Playwright, Dies At 91

By MARK KENNEDY, AP Entertainment Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Playwright Neil Simon, a master of comedy whose laugh-filled hits such as “The Odd Couple,” ″Barefoot in the Park” and his “Brighton Beach” trilogy dominated Broadway for decades, has died. He was 91.

Simon died early Sunday of complications from pneumonia surrounded by family at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, said Bill Evans, his longtime friend and the Shubert Organization director of media relations.

In the second half of the 20th century, Simon was one of the American theater’s most successful and prolific playwrights, often chronicling middle class issues and fears.

Starting with “Come Blow Your Horn” in 1961 and continuing into the next century, he rarely stopped working on a new play or musical. His list of credits is staggering.

Simon’s stage successes included “The Prisoner of Second Avenue,” ″Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” ″The Sunshine Boys,” ″Plaza Suite,” ″Chapter Two,” ″Sweet Charity” and “Promises, Promises,” but there were other plays and musicals, too, more than 30 in all. Many of his plays were adapted into movies and one, “The Odd Couple,” even became a popular television series.

For seven months in 1967, he had four productions running at the same time on Broadway: “Barefoot in the Park”; “The Odd Couple”; “Sweet Charity”; and “The Star-Spangled Girl.”

Even before he launched his theater career, he made history as one of the famed stable of writers for comedian Sid Caesar that also included Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner.

Simon was the recipient of four Tony Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, the Kennedy Center honors (1995), four Writers Guild of America Awards, an American Comedy Awards Lifetime Achievement honor and, in 1983, he even had a Broadway theater named after him when the Alvin was rechristened the Neil Simon Theatre.

In a 1997 interview with The Washington Post, Simon reflected on his success. “I know that I have reached the pinnacle of rewards. There’s no more money anyone can pay me that I need. There are no awards they can give me that I haven’t won. I have no reason to write another play except that I am alive and I like to do it,” he said.

Simon had a rare stumble in the fall of 2009, however, when a Broadway revival of his “Brighton Beach Memoirs” closed abruptly after only nine performances because of poor ticket sales. It was to have run in repertory with Simon’s “Broadway Bound,” which was also canceled.

“I don’t write social and political plays, because I’ve always thought the family was the microcosm of what goes on in the world,” he told The Paris Review in 1992.

Simon’s own life figured most prominently in what became known as his “Brighton Beach” trilogy — “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” ″Biloxi Blues” and “Broadway Bound” — which many consider his finest works. In them, Simon’s alter ego, Eugene Morris Jerome, makes his way from childhood to the U.S. Army to finally, on the verge of adulthood, a budding career as a writer.

Simon attended New York University and the University of Colorado. After serving in the military in 1945-46, he began writing with his brother for radio in 1948 and then, for television, a period in their lives chronicled in Simon’s 1993 play, “Laughter on the 23rd Floor.”

But it was his second play, “Barefoot in the Park,” that really put Simon on the map. Critically well-received, the 1963 comedy, directed by Mike Nichols, concerned the tribulations of a pair of newlyweds, played by Elizabeth Ashley and Robert Redford, who lived on the top floor of a New York brownstone.

Many of his plays were turned into films as well. Besides “The Odd Couple,” he wrote the screenplays for movie versions of “Barefoot in the Park,” ″The Sunshine Boys,” ″The Prisoner of Second Avenue” and more.

In his later years, Simon had more difficulty on Broadway. After the success of “Lost in Yonkers,” which starred Mercedes Ruehl as a gentle, simple-minded woman controlled by her domineering mother (Irene Worth), the playwright had a string of financially unsuccessful plays including “Jake’s Women,” ″Laughter on the 23rd Floor” and “Proposals.” Simon even went off-Broadway with “London Suite” in 1995 but it didn’t run long either.

He wrote two memoirs, “Rewrites” (1996) and “The Play Goes On” (1999). They were combined into “Neil Simon’s Memoirs.”

The playwright then married actress Marsha Mason, who had appeared in his stage comedy “The Good Doctor” and who went on to star in several films written by Simon including “The Goodbye Girl,” ″The Cheap Detective,” ″Chapter Two,” ″Only When I Laugh” and “Max Dugan Returns.” They were divorced in 1982.

The playwright was married to his third wife, Diane Lander, twice — once in 1987-1988 and again in 1990-1998. Simon adopted Lander’s daughter, Bryn, from a previous marriage. Simon married his fourth wife, actress Elaine Joyce, in 1999. He also survived by three grandchildren; and one great-grandson.

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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