Jeannie Berlin

We've talked about Charles Gordon on this podcast several times, you know, uh, in other movies, this may be my favorite Charles Gordon performance.

And it's so, he's such a slime ball in some respects, uh, the premise of the movie is essentially he is at the beginning of the movie he gets married to Jeannie Berlin who notably is the real life daughter of Elaine May and while on their honeymoon He ends up meeting this beautiful young woman played by Sybil Shepard, and he falls head over heels over her and decides that he is essentially going to ruin his entire life in order to try to go after her.

She is the daughter of Eddie Albert and Audrey Lindley, I believe, is who plays her.

Audrey Lindley, who plays her mother, I believe, in the movie.

Yeah.

And the movie has a lot of these undercurrents about kind of Jewish assimilation and this idea of like trying to, you know, get it.

Because there's this whole idea that like Jeannie Berlin, like they have this like Jewish wedding.

He is clearly, you know, doing this.

And maybe it's that... moving camera that gives you a sense of like he's communicating community and he's always trying to communicate this great context in it, which I love.

But yeah, and I also noticed, going along the graduate thing, with Jeannie Berlin in the film, her first film, right? Is this her first film? I believe so.

Elaine May.

I read the Elaine May and the Mike Nichols biographies back to back, and she's just the supreme script doctor.

Pay me, but you can't give me credit.

I don't want credit on anything.

And it just, it leaves all this room open for like, where did she touch? And there were some lines in this script that I felt like if they aren't in the book, they had to have come from Elaine May picking up Jeannie Berlin's script and being like, what if

he said this?

You can kind of get it if you sort of look hard and aren't too strict about legality.

But she used improv with Charles Grodin and Jeannie Berlin and the other actors in order to give them a kind of feeling for their characters and then bring back the line.

So it's interesting.

Like one of the things I thought was really interesting is you situated sort of the production of this in the 70s.

We recognize these people because no matter how time marches on, there are things about human behavior that do not change.

Much of what we think of as modern American comedy has direct roots in Jewish comedy, and there is a good deal of humor here about the tension between what Linney, Charles Grodin, has in the person of the prototypically New York Jewish Lila, played by Jeannie Berlin, and the fantasy that he has of Midwestern shiksa Kelly, played by Sybil Shepard.

It's a kind of comedy that's dark and scabrous and razor-edged.

Like Philip Roth, May was accused of antisemitism because of the severity of her wit, but I think this is simply unsparingly satirical character work.

He accomplishes his life's goal, and his response is to turn to the camera so he can hold up a sign that just says, Now what? Lenny is a hollow man, a boy who wants to play at adult relationships, all desire with no actual interest in the other person.

Kelly isn't a person to him any more than Lila was, and his inability to commit has nothing to do with the women or any flaws that each of them may possess.

Jeannie Berlin's work in the film is terrific, and utterly without vanity.

Like Mae starring in her previous film A New Leaf, Berlin is playing a woman who seems unaware of how others might see her.

Yes.

But Jeannie Berlin understands their dynamic from that scene.

Like later on where she says, your mother is not your enemy.

The fact that you're having problems with her.

I actually, it's not really reflected much in my choices today, but I, I really like romantic comedies and I guess I also like what would later become kind of cringe comedies and Heartbreak Kid is a very good example of an early version of this.

It's based on a Neil Simon script but in Elaine May's hands she kind of does something magical with it um and it's it's just a very interesting movie because you know it's about a guy who uh marries um his you know like i guess like his first real girlfriend and on their honeymoon like literally the first day uh he meets um you know this gorgeous blonde on the beach and decides he wants to end his marriage and and pursue her Charles Grodin is just playing like the ultimate schmuck in the movie but he's he's very funny and then of course Elaine may cast her own daughter Jeannie Berlin as

yeah

his wife and it's such an incredible performance because even though you know the humor in many ways is at her expense it's a very very very um like heart-wrenching performance you know um and they sort of don't hold back on on showing uh you know just just what a horrible experience this is um even while it stays within the logic of a rom-com and he's eventually kind of pursuing uh civil shepherd um And I think it's, it's just, it's such a, it's such a, like a, like a great example of, of a comedy that like is, is a bit dark, but also stays like works within the genre quite well.