Word: playwrightes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Simon admits that he has felt restricted, to some extent, by his reputation as America's foremost comic playwright. Yet no matter what direction his work takes, the comic spirit is always an integral part of his writing. Much as he admires Woddy Allen, he could never write an Interiors: "You can't do anything serious without comedy," Simon argues, adding that his plays often encourage the audience to laugh at basically tragic human situations. "I put it all down, and if some see it funny and some tragic, it's all right with me," he notes...
...best, Simon says he feels not like a writer but like some sort of secretary, a middleman between the characters and the paper. Furthermore, he believes in the playwright's axiom that "great plays are not written, but rewritten." Rewriting, Simon feels, is "like taking a test, finding out the answers, and then taking the test again the next day." He admits that he has often been tempted to rewrite some of his past plays, but always opts to start a new play. "Every time I believe that this will be the perfect one, but of course it never will...
...York luncheonette, in which he can overhear several different conversations at the same time, Simon thinks car-oriented L.A. limits his exposure to the people with whom he works. Simon enjoys making movies but not the town in which they are made. "I couldn't be a playwright in L.A.," he remarks...
...lengthy monologue as Lewis's father, revealing the old man's perpetual dissatisfaction with his son. The speech should be a tour-de-force--Dern does a beautiful job with it--but it is so empty in concept, so obvious in construction, that it reveals nothing except the playwright's desire to wrap things up neatly...
...Duke begins pulling strings to end the story before it runs on for ten acts instead of five, the production turns more superficial. Thomas Apple's Duke is nothing to be unhappy about--he's smooth, fatherly and reassuring. But Shakespeare wrote the part as a playwright's nightmare of schemes gone bad, plots out of control. Apple remains blithe, unperturbed, not the sort of Machiavellian man you'd look towards to resolve the mess at the play's end. He comes off more like the big daddy of a commune in Vermont than Duke of Vienna...