Word: schlepping
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...MAJOR THEME comes out early. Sex. Or love if you like. Patti (Patty Woo), facing the classic problem of all hopeless romantics in "Used To," the third song of the evening, gives up her search for an Aryan demigod when swept away by a sweet schlep. Though we never found out just how long it was before her affair crashed, Woo's lovelorn overachiever presages the cast's comprehensive review of their dealings with boys from a casual come hither to determined attempts to do without...
...produce a straight movie like The Front and then move on to the Bergmanesque Interiors. And the shots of Allen at home talking casually to the unseen documentarian and playing his clarinet put to rout forever the myth that Allen is still the totally nervous, completely incompetent schlep; inept in daily life and in his relationships. Fact is, Allen is as well-adjusted, self-actualized as he will ever be, and, after years of struggle--through analysis and through self-expression in his films and stand-up comedy--he seems relatively at ease and happy. The documentary's only redeeming...
...yields steatopygia-which is a different matter altogether.) Bernstein's backward dictionary is a kind of combination thesaurus and crossword-puzzle dictionary. It gives only the "target" words, not their pronunciations and derivations. For moments of verbal parapraxis the deipnosophist seeking just the mot juste (ulotrichous? schlep?) may wish to keep it handy. Too frequent a reliance on the book, however, may have the reader sounding like William F. Buckley...
Allen's relative sanity in Sleeper shifts the emphasis from the traditional part he plays. At the heart of Allen's appeal, of course, is the schlep, the cumsy neurotic from Brooklyn who's always victimized but likeable. The endearment generally doesn't trigger pathos, however, as with Chaplin (although Allen's capable of that). he shuns the universal in favor of something more contemporary, more esoteric, keener. The source of pleasure is the basic I-thought-I-was-messed-up-but-look-at-this-guy response--a comforting thought. But you never feel sorry for him. He understands somehow...