Word: richler
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Surveying the skyline of Calgary, where 29 huge construction cranes are climbing atop new office towers, Canadian Novelist Mordecai Richler observed: "That's going to be a helluva city when they get it uncrated." In Edmonton, 180 miles to the north, Ford has sold hundreds more Thunderbirds than usual this year. Boasts Dealer Ryan Taylor: "They can't give those gas guzzlers away south of the border, but they are going like crazy up here." Around the town of Medicine Hat, where 1,700 oil and gas wells have been drilled in the past year, Canadian, British...
STILL, MOST of the blame for stereotypic characterization belongs to director Kotcheff and his scriptwriter Mordecai Richler, the same team responsible for the superior The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. By choosing the names Dick and Jane (and Billy for their child, Spot for their dog), Richler intends to present a typical family. At one point, Dick shouts that he won't be destroyed, because he represents the American middle class. But this conception of the middle class appears ludicrous, unless Richler wishes to depict the average Beverly Hills household, replete with swimming pool and cabana. It's difficult to sympathize...
Just as the characters fall flat, so does most of the humor. Korcheff and Richler try to mingle comedy with satire by including all of the obligatory but overworked jokes. As they indiscriminately mock diverse sectors of American life, their many-colored pallet congeals into a brown blob. Particularly offensive are the overheated but not well done comments on sex change operations, the welfare system, and rugged individualism. In one scene, Jane's father refuses to lend money because he worships an icon of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the promoter of self-reliance. Here, the humor is too forced...
Screenplay by DAVID GILER, JERRY BELSON and MORDECAI RICHLER...
Like Childbirth. On amenities at the average TV or radio studio, Canadian Novelist Mordecai Richler wrote recently that the best you can hope for "is something brown, reminiscent of coffee, poured into a Styrofoam cup that, in most cases, you are advised to hold onto as it must also serve as your on-camera ashtray." Authors sometimes deserve no better. When Gore Vidal appeared to do New York's Casper Citron radio show, recalls Citron, "he walked in and said, 'Cash my check for $50, get me a drink, and what's your name?' " Vidal admits...