Word: lardners
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...kicking around Hollywood for several years. Fourteen directors had been offered the property; all turned it down. Director number 15 was Robert Altman, a television refugee with one major picture (That Cold Day in the Park) to his credit. Altman decided to make the film, hired blacklisted writer Ring Lardner, Jr. to do the screenplay, and produced a brilliant black comedy that was a tremendous critical and popular success. M*A*S*H* took the Grand Prize at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival, earned Lardner a screenwriting Oscar, and was nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award...
...Heaven for anything other than an American movie. Malick's ability to capture the terror in plain, homespun settings recalls the spooky vistas of Painter Edward Hopper. The film's naive narration-recited in deadpan colloquialisms by the teen-age Linda-is right out of Ring Lardner's sardonic stories. In the tradition of these other native ironists, Malick keeps his distance from his material. Though built around a heartbreaking love triangle, Days of Heaven has no introspective dialogue and no Freudian fireworks. Accordingly, actors have been cast more on the basis of how they look than...
...than Altman but at times exhilaratingly funny. But Ritchie still doesn't know how to use actors--he should hope six-foot eight, 275-pound Doug Atkinson, the prototype for Jenkins' defensive end T.J. Lambert, doesn't see this movie. Ritchie's biggest mistake might have been firing Ring Lardner Jr. as the scenarist. Lardner's credits include M.A.S.H. and he probably genetically knows more about pro athletes than Ritchie. Kristofferson is woefully in need of direction; his lines are often on the order of "Sounds good, B.J.," delivered in his nasal "Me and Bobby McGee" tones. Kristofferson played college...
...passage of time, obscure (read: boring) political figures of this century--all of whom she seemed to know. Edwards name-drops in the style she no doubt refined working as the society page editor fo the Chicago Trbiune for several years. Stories of working side by side with Ring Lardner and Charlie McCarthur are as interesting as the tales of life as a New Deal Democrat in Chicago society (one socialite slapped her for opposing Alf Landon). The experiences of later years take on more significance: discussing with Truman the idea of dismissing General McArthur, urging a reluctant Adlai Stevenson...
...Lardner, in short, was a newspaper man with all the mythical implications the term implies--he smoked heavily, drank constantly and loved sitting in the press box at baseball games. And it seems appropriate that Yardley should end Ring with Fitzgerald's epitaph...