Word: schepisi
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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directed by Fred Schepisi...
Guare addresses this story to his audience in a very intimate fashion. In the play, Ouisa and Flan narrate their story directly to the audience, a highly effective comedic technique which also serves politically to directly indict its upper-middle class ranks. Schepisi creatively adopts this to the screen by having the Kittredges recount their story to a group of friends at a function which they attend the morning after the incident...
...opting against a Woody Allen-esque presentation in order to give an already highly theatrical piece a more cinematic feel, Guare (who wrote the screenplay) and Schepisi forfeit some of the humor inherent in direct declarations to the audience. Thus, the dramatic aspects of the work leave the most lasting impression in the film. Whereas the comedic "dialogues" with the audience convey the tone of the play, it is the intensely powerful and haunting conversation between Ouisa and Paul which succeeds most gloriously in the film...
...stage. The frantic emergence of the actors from the Lincoln Center audience not only circumvented slow entrances and exits but added sheer exuberance. However, by fully embracing the possibilities of the new medium, cutting swiftly between different shots and merging the narration and flashbacks in rapid succession, Schepisi gives the work an even more natural celerity...
...young black man (here called Paul) who invaded the lives of some well-to-do New Yorkers by passing himself off as a college friend of their children. And though Guare has cleverly reshaped the material for the screen, where it has been directed with elan by Fred Schepisi, the piece is still not much more than a bit of urban folklore -- a newspaper feature story rather than a full-fledged narrative...