Word: lasser
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Will the irreverent Mary Hartman! Mary Hartman! inspire the same kind of fevered loyalty? The first episodes feature exhibitionism, mass murder and impotence. Louise Lasser plays pliable Mary as if in a permanent coma. A fast and funny show, Mary Hartman! underscores the euphemistic nature of the soaps: terrible things may happen, but it is the emotional reaction to them that is emphasized...
Finally, Ann Marcus, a veteran soap writer, came up with a script that met all Lear's requirements. He then persuaded a reluctant Louise Lasser, Woody Allen's ex-wife and co-star in Bananas, to play Mary. "I was a little afraid of the material at first," says Lasser, whose lethargic portrayal of the permanently stunned Mary is a comic turn on its own. Before long, she fell in love with what she calls "the Frankenstein soap...
...most cases there is little hope that amputation can be avoided. But some of its trauma can be reduced. The reason is an organization called Reach to Recovery. Founded in New York in 1953 by Terese Lasser and now operating in all 50 states, Reach is an exercise in self-help that uses women who have undergone mastectomies to counsel women who have just had the operation. Their approach is nothing if not direct. Volunteers visit patients three to five days after the operation, about the time that the worst post-surgical depression begins to set in. A few even...
...here, a little like one of Thomas Pynchon's wonderland allegories. A motley but not unlikable crew of misfits chases around rural California in quest of a greenback grail: $312,000 in cash embezzled from a talent agency years earlier. James Caan, Sally Kellerman, Peter Boyle and Louise Lasser barrel over the back roads towing an Airstream Land Yacht, pursued by two absurdly sinister motor homes painted deadly black and piloted by unseen, relentless drivers...
...does not make the fantasy of the script quite abstract enough, nor his odd, self-consciously cute characters quite believable enough. Whimsy and reality, neither fully realized, cancel each other out. Caan, a perennially baffled ex-con, basically plays straight man to Boyle as a bunko artist-bandleader and Lasser as the band leader's addled spouse, both of whom are amiably funny throughout. Keller man, a souped-up Bonnie Parker, pushes much too hard, perhaps in reaction to ZiefFs almost laboriously studied direction, which favors lingering takes and long pauses...