Word: stritch
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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September, which Allen wrote and directed, is one of these sticky wickets. After a summer, six people prepare to take their leave of a country house owned by the quakingly vulnerable Lane (Mia Farrow). They include her mother (Elaine Stritch), a bruising emotional bully; her stepfather (Jack Warden), who is a noisy irrelevancy; a neighbor (Denholm Elliott) who expresses love by being socially obliging; a best friend (Dianne Wiest) who is obscurely tense; and Peter (Sam Waterston), the ad man who rented the guest cottage on the property and then failed in two obvious duties: he didn't finish...
...with her separated daughter and her five-year-old grandson. Her opening lines, directed to the audience, are pleasantly sardonic: "Let me tell you how much I love being called Grandma . . ." But this grandma turns quickly into a cloying paragon of hip, enlightened '80s attitudes. When her mother (Elaine Stritch) sneaks into the closet for a smoke, Ellen admonishes, "You've read the Surgeon % General's report." When the family dog is about to have puppies, Ellen argues that her young grandson ought to be allowed to watch the event. And when one of her students wavers in motivation...