Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

And you come aboard.

Um, Olivia said she was sort of inspired by Mike Nichols' films, especially Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which makes sense when you see this movie.

But the, the way this one came together seems pretty unusual, because for more than a week, the actors and the writers sat down and kind of developed it together.

Can you explain what that was like and why maybe that was part of the appeal?

Tonight, after we covered Some Like It Hot and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, we're covering a non-Maryland Monroe movie.

Mike Nichols' 1966 directorial debut, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, George Seagal, and Sandy Dennis.

And she looks around this room And she sets down her groceries.

And she says, What a dump!

a pretty faithful adaptation of Edward Albee's 1962 play of the same name, although because it is a film rather than a stage play, it's able to add scenes in the car, at a bar, and on the Smith campus that wouldn't have been able to make it into Albee's extremely self-contained play.

The dialogue in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is basically all kept from the stage play.

For that reason, it falls into a very specific sub-genre, which I'd include 12 Angry Men and A Streetcar Named Desire as examples of modern plays being performed as films pretty much intact.

The actual play usually takes three hours to perform with two intermissions and three acts.

I grew up in a suburb just outside New York, and my parents took me to see plays a lot, including plays that I was too young to understand.

You know, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf when I was nine years old.

I loved the sound of dialogue, didn't really know what was happening in the play, but the dialogue sounded like music to me, and I wanted to imitate that sound.

I think a lot of people go to see Shakespeare now, and we honestly can't fully understand what they're saying, but it's nice to hear the rhythms there.

Arthur Penn, who had previously been nominated for Best Director for The Miracle Worker of 1962, after winning a Tony for directing it on stage in 1960, was chosen to direct the film.

The exact same career trajectory is what happens with Mike Nichols this year with The Graduate, where he makes Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which he also directed on stage and won a Tony for, and then he does The Graduate, which is an incredibly revolutionary new wave film.

It's interesting that both of these directors started out in theater.

I said this in the Graduate episode, but It's very similar to the British New Wave, where the movement that sparked the British New Wave started out in theatre, in British theatre.

It felt very much like a stage play.

And a bit like a very tame and respectable Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf as well.

So I don't know, like I got that sort of vibe.

If that's what you're into, I'll take a watch it.

All right, but let me see.

So we have Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

That's right, yeah, yeah.

More classic cinema.

things.

Anyway, Mike Nichols rules.

I personally think Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is his best movie.

I actually met him in The Graduate, which I quite like.

[laughs]

They're doing Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf in the afterlife.

Um-

She's st- she's stuck in that one scene, which is where her life turned.

Or, or it's big movies that are sort of real events and really kind of make a big stamp on their year.

I'm thinking about something like "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" or "Bonnie and Clyde"-

Right

... where it's just sort of a dominant film in its year.