Word: devil
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Some playwrights, like Shel Silverstein in The Devil and Billy Markham, presume that Mr. Scratch has nothing to teach mankind: the sensible response is to spot the fiend's tricks and escape perdition. Other dramatists, like David Mamet in Bobby Gould in Hell, recall that Beelzebub is a fallen angel and reckon he must be something of a moral philosopher. Both authors seem to think nothing could be more instructive than a sojourn in Hades to enhance the remainder of a life back on earth. They give that opportunity not only to the title characters of their...
Billy Markham is a talking blues about a failed songwriter who decides the devil could not possibly be any worse than the music publishers and producers who have thwarted his career. A gambler, boozer, womanizer and general hellion, Markham tosses away eternity in exchange for a single, futile roll of the dice, then squanders what reprieves are offered in unrepentant revelry. He nonetheless stumps Satan twice, escaping the first time and settling down the second time into a perverse sort of domestic bliss. Markham's good-ole-boy world view is distasteful: women are treated as property, and both defeats...
Mamet's wit at first appears equally prankish -- the stage is ablaze with hellfire and brimstone, aroar with howls and explosions, and the devil's chief clerk (Steve Goldstein) doggedly keeps trying to tell a "two Jews in a bar" joke -- but he has more serious matters in mind. His subject is how to live morally in this world rather than penitently in the next, and the dynamic that fascinates him is why people make excuses, time and again, rather than attempt to be better. The title character, played by Treat Williams, is the conscience-pricked but ultimately expedient movie...
...DEVIL...
...series, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil went gleefully over the top, pitying or despising all its characters. But comedy on the American plan can go soft, as Barr proved when she gave her abrasive stand-up-comic persona a sweetie-pie makeover for her hit TV show. She-Devil does the same to Weldon, without substituting much style or attitude. The movie is its own sitcom pilot, and only Streep watchers will be laughing...