Word: laughter
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...correspondent to Swedish Film Director Jan Troell, calling Birnbaum George C. Scott. "Poor Troell bit," says Birnbaum, "shook hands eagerly, apologized for not having recognized such an important star and wondered whether he might discuss a little project that he had in mind. Liv collapsed in shame and laughter and blew my imminent stardom...
...play is a comedy or a tragedy (despite all the jokes, one of the rats kills the other in the end), and the actors tend to vary their technique according to the prevailing mood. At Fliot for example they began to exaggerate the melodrama when they found it provoked laughter. "I think the play is funnier than Currier House thought it was, but not as funny as they thought it was at South House," said Glenda. The cast, on the other hand, enjoyed the South House performance tremendously. "When everybody's laughing, people don't feel so self-conscious about...
...more elegantly, Disraeli offered several equivalents of "You won't have Disraeli to kick around any more." Both men returned more than once from the political dead. Dizzy was defeated four times before he finally was elected to Parliament. His flowery maiden speech was greeted with gales of laughter and catcalls. Prophesied an enraged Disraeli: "I will sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear me." He had to wait so long to become Prime Minister that nobody thought he would make it. But at 63, he reached the top of what he fondly called...
...cast of intermittently insane characters. It is only when the insane borders on the zany, the pathetic on the ludicrous that I found myself questioning Wasserman's skillful adaptation. This speeded-up version of a long and often agonizing story is hilariously funny. At times I fought my laughter, waiting guiltily for each new joke or comical incident, wondering who I was to laugh at the tragedy of mutilated minds, twisted psyches and lobotomized egos. In the book, laughter had come as relief from too much suffering, for both the characters and the reader, and accompanied the happier episodes...
...more humorous sides of the situation, and only towards the very end, in a scene like the one in which he gets Chief Bromden (Frank Savino) to talk, does the underlying seriousness become apparent. Faced with the prospect of remaining "committed" for life, he keeps up his laughter, if desperately, finally realizing that "you gotta laugh, especially when things sin't so funny...