GOODBYE, COLUMBUS 1969

One of the things I liked most about film critic Pauline Kael was how much her passion for film mirrored my own. Even when we didn't see eye-to-eye about certain films and performances, I always enjoyed how she poked fun at her own pseudo-sexual obsession with movies in the titles of her books: I Lost it at the Movies, Going Steady, Reeling. Kael, the late film critic for The New Yorker, was in a class by herself when it came to legitimizing the sensual side of that inter-sensory experience we call moviegoing. 

I'm a huge film fan and it’s easy for me to enjoy a (reasonably) wide spectrum of movies from perspectives academic and analytical. But in order for me to truly fall in love with a movie, it has to hit me on some deeply visceral, highly subjective emotional level. It has to contain what I call “the goosebump moment”; a spontaneous physical/emotional response (it needn't last more than a moment) independent of aesthetic qualifiers. A moment in the film that engages my heart, spirit, or imagination in a way that overrides the cerebral. Such a sensation takes me to a place where I’m experiencing a film more than just watching it.

In Goodbye, Columbus, my goosebump moment occurs less than two minutes into the film. It's when this rapturous vision called an Ali MacGraw dives into a sun-dappled pool of water and becomes, right before my eyes and in dreamy slow-motion, the ethereal vision of what “love at first sight” feels like. This almost Freudian commingling of woman, water, and weightlessness (infinitely enhanced by the very '60s sound of the pop band The Association on the soundtrack) rates right up there with Barbarella’s zero-gravity striptease as one of the most magical and erotically-charged title sequences I've ever seen.

Nymph Errant

Of course, I wasn't the only one who fell in love with Ms. MacGraw that spring of ‘69. My infatuation fell somewhere in line behind Richard Benjamin’s onscreen character, Paramount production head Robert Evans (the two would marry later that same year), and what seemed at the time to be the entire male and female population of North America. Although Goodbye, Columbus represented the film debuts of both Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw, it was former fashion model MacGraw who was given the "Introducing" credit and emerged as the instant superstar of the '70s. Revisiting this film 43-years later, it's still easy to understand why.

Richard Benjamin as Neil Klugman

Ali MacGraw as Brenda Patimkin

Jack Klugman as Ben Patimkin

Nan Martin as Mrs. Patimkin

Michael Meyers as Ron Patimkin

Lori Schelle as Julie Patimkin

Goodbye, Columbus (adapted from Phillip Roth’s 1959 bestselling debut novella) is one of the best of the many coming-of-age films released in the wake of The Graduate. It's a seriocomic look at Jewish identity, class conflict, and changing sexual mores as seen through the prism of a heated summer romance between Bronx poor-boy Neil Klugman (Benjamin) and nouveau riche Westchester goddess Brenda Patimkin (MacGraw).

Like the novel, the film release of Goodbye, Columbus was met with controversy related to its frank sexuality (subtle nudity and frank discussion of diaphragms, sex, and the like) and what many perceived to be an offensive depiction of Jewish culture. 

Neil lives in the Bronx with his Uncle Leo (Monroe Arnold) and Aunt Gladys (Sylvie Strause)

The position taken was that Roth's broadly satiric take on the Jewish middle-class leaned too heavily toward caricature and stereotyping, resulting in a vision more representative of antisemitic self-loathing than class commentary. As for the film's once-bold sexual content, Goodbye, Columbus today feels really rather restrained and surprisingly gentle-natured. So much so that the R-rated film was eventually re-rated as PG for DVD release with nary a cut to the original print.

Brenda, a student at Radcliffe spends the summer at the home of her parents,
a shrine to their material success

Goodbye, Columbus was a huge hit in 1969, but over time has somewhat faded from the public's memory. Puzzling, because the film is smart, insightful, funny as hell, and contains the best screen performances of several members of its cast.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Arnold Shulman’s deservedly Oscar-nominated screenplay for Goodbye, Columbus is a slavishly faithful adaptation of Philip Roth’s funny novella - a library paperback copy I remember taking to junior high school with the intention of poring over the “dirty parts” with my friends during lunch period. I've seen many films about poor boys falling in love with rich girls, the girls always WASP fantasy figures serving double-duty as totems of the attainable virtues of the American Dream. In having the working-class Jewish boy fall for a Jewish-American princess, Roth not only revitalizes the familiar tropes of the rich girl/poor boy romance but adds an ethnic perspective to the American Dream fantasy. 

Director Larry Peerce (with a screenplay by Funny Lady writer Arnold Schulman) present the contrasts of Neil  Klugman's bohemian Jewish intellectualism with Brenda's materialism in broad strokes sometimes, but the social satire is keen and behind the at-whose-expense? humor is a great deal of emotional poignancy.

In one of my favorite scenes, Jack Klugman (who's really terrific) gives voice to the film's tagline: "Every father's daughter is a virgin," and expresses the elder perspective of the '60s Generation Gap issue.

Neil Klugman and Brenda Patimkin are no Romeo & Juliet, but they’re certainly a young couple who start out on a romance with several strikes against them. I’ve always thought the intense sexual aspect of their relationship figured so prominently in the film because both Neil and Brenda seem to be working off a lot of repressed resentments and rebellious impulses through each other. Bookish Neil, college-educated, intellectual, almost passive-aggressive in his aimlessness, is a stark contrast to the ambitious, go-getter Country Club types Brenda usually dates. Neil’s humble Bronx background (son of Jewish immigrants) may mirror that of Brenda’s crass-but-sweet father (Jack Klugman), but his lack of ambition (i.e. middle-class assimilation/ Jewish-erasure) represents everything her upwardly-mobile family (who've only recently struck it rich through Mr. Patimkin’s plumbing-fixture business) is trying to leave behind.

One look at the acrimonious relationship Brenda shares with her mother (Nan Martin) is enough to confirm suspicions that perhaps Brenda’s attraction to Neil, a man so obviously unsuitable (ostensibly to her parents, but also, one senses, even to her in the final analysis) feels less like true love than a subconscious act of rebellion against her parent's stifling values.

If Neil represents perhaps a mutinous lark on Brenda's part, beyond a physical attraction to her beauty, it's hard to discern what exactly Neil is looking for in Brenda. Like one of those guys who courts the prettiest, sexiest girl in school only to spend a lifetime berating her for cashing in on her looks; Neil purports to be in love with the rich, spoiled, daddy’s girl, but rarely lets a moment pass where he isn't being critical of what he deems to be her corrupted values and false priorities. Whether it be her nose job, contact lenses, the shallowness of her friends, or the materialism of her parents, there’s a thinly veiled aggression to his jibes that makes you wonder if perhaps he’s not drawn to her out of some barely acknowledged desire to punish American Jews who seek to deny their Jewishness.

Of course, I love that Goodbye, Columbus has a scene where our couple sneaks into a moviehouse playing my all-time favorite film, Rosemary's Baby. At another time in the film, they repeat the ritual at a theater featuring The Odd Couple. No coincidence,  Rosemary's Baby and The Odd Couple are shameless plugs for Paramount films- the producers of Goodbye, Columbus.

The ethnic angle is is why I've always had a thing for Goodbye, Columbus, and why I’m surprised its reputation never remained in step with other seminal films of the '60s. It’s a romantic comedy, yes; a coming-of-age film, certainly. But perhaps its humor did too good a job of masking what I think is a provocative issue related to ethnic heritage, youth, and identity in the culturally rebellious climate of the late-'60s. White American youth was rejecting the materialism and false values of their middle-class parents. But if you were Black, Asian, Jewish, an immigrant, or any member of a historically disenfranchised people, it's likely that your parents, if fortunate, had only recently gained access to the kind of materialistic privileges white youths were finding so distasteful. 

Did assimilation into the American middle-class automatically signal a loss of ethnic identity? Did the progeny of immigrant parents or the ancestors of slaves dishonor their parents if they rejected the fruits of their struggles to attain a piece of the American Dream?  your race? 

There was definitely a Generation and Culture Gap waging in America during the late-'60s, but Goodbye, Columbus was one of the few films to look it through a perspective of the gains and losses of American middle-class assimilation.

The historical exclusion of ethnic groups from country clubs, colleges, and athletics is satirically contrasted with Goodbye, Columbus' wealthy, assimilated Jewish-Americans portrayed as athletics-obsessed members of their own exclusive country clubs and the preppiest of prep school undergrads.

This was certainly an issue for me as an African-American youth. My parents (staunch assimilationists) were realizing the American Dream just at the cusp of the Black Power movement. By the mid-'70s we had moved into a tony, predominantly-white, upper-middle-class suburb and realized all the benefits my grandparents had fought so hard for. Was it my place to confront my parents with arguments about selling out, or accuse them of embracing materialistic values when they had struggled and fought so hard to overcome so much in a racist society that sought to prohibit their access to these very things? And in the pursuit of assimilation into the larger culture, what unique values of character and racial authenticity did we lose or compromise? Goodbye, Columbus has been labeled superficial by many critics, but I have always seen at its core, a terrifically thorny social issue entertainingly addressed.

PERFORMANCES:

In her 1991 memoir Moving Pictures, Ali MacGraw makes no bones about her limitations as an actress, and this is of course true (although she’s extremely good in 1980s Just Tell Me What You Want). But being limited isn't the same as being bad. MacGraw may not have range, but she has presence. Real star-quality. And, under the guidance of a particularly strong director — as she seems to have here with Larry Peerce — she can be very effective. She's beautiful to be sure, but the character of Brenda is supposed to convey a sharp intelligence and sense of self-possession which suggests to Neil that she herself seeks an alternative to the stultified life her parents want for her. MacGraw captures this quality extremely well. Perhaps it’s because she’s playing a typed role, but I like Ali MacGraw’s performance in Goodbye, Columbus more than any other in her career.

As Brenda's gentle-natured, jock brother, Ron (here, with jockstrap in hand, lost in bittersweet reverie listening to a recording of his glory days as star basketball player at Ohio State - the source of the film's title) newcomer Michael Meyers makes a scene-stealing impression. Richard Benjamin, who would build a career playing variations on this character in several films throughout the '70s, is a solid lead and near-flawless master of the deadpan take.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

With all my comments about the film's ethnic/cultural subtext, I don’t want to give the impression that Goodbye, Columbus is a deeply serious drama. It’s really an at-times hilarious comedy of manners that offers more than the usual food for thought for the typical '60s Generation Gap film. Some characters may seem a tad broadly drawn, but (more's the pity) I can’t say that there’s a single individual or type in this film that I haven’t actually encountered at some time in my life. Some within my own family!

More befitting appetite suppression than stimulation, this line of reasoning has nevertheless remained popular with American parents for generations.

This wedding scene drew a lot of criticism for being over-the-top and more burlesque than authentic. Well, those critics clearly haven't attended enough weddings. In fact, the behavior displayed here at the wedding buffet table is tragi-comically similar to what I witnessed at the reception following my father's funeral. 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I’m aware that many of the things I’m fondest of in Goodbye, Columbus (the Charles Fox music score, the montages, the class-distinction humor, the appeal of Ali MacGraw) are the very things that don’t resonate very strongly with audiences today. Still, there is much in the uniformly fine performances and witty screenplay that makes me categorize Goodbye, Columbus as something of a neglected classic. If the film has any flaws, perhaps its biggest (and ultimately costliest) is in laying on the ethnic humor so heavily that some of the more thoughtful, perceptive points of Roth's novel are lost or at the very least, blunted.

Neil Klugman, a kind of reverse Gatsby, is ambivalent about his feelings towards wealth and the kind of life Brenda leads. He responds to and identifies with an African-American youth who comes daily to the library to stare at the pictures in a book of prints by Paul Gauguin depicting the colorful dreamscapes of Tahiti. Benjamin and the young actor (Anthony McGowan) share a kind of heartbreaking chemistry in these scenes that bring a tear to my eye every time. 

I've written in earlier essays about how You’re A Big Boy Now and The Graduate stick in my mind as my top favorites of the '60s coming-of-age films. But as much as I enjoy and admire those films, I can't deny that Goodbye, Columbus is the one I regard as both the funniest and most emotionally satisfying overall. If one cares to look beyond the occasionally overstressed humor, it's a movie that really has a lot on its mind and a lot to say. Also, I can't ignore the fact that it's the only film of the three to have given me my “goosebump moment.”

If there's a sequence that strikes me as having not aged particularly well, it's the scene where Neil is shocked that Brenda is so cavalier about not taking birth control. For some reason, it never hit me in the same way in past years, but now, as I watch Neil rant and rave about Brenda's so-called carelessness, I always think "Then wear a condom, Mr. Intellectual!"  

That scene presages the film's conclusion. Filmed almost exclusively in two-shot during their romance, Brenda and Neil's eventual estrangement is dramatized in a scene of mounting tension that denies their sharing of the same frame. The couple, miles apart in their ideologies and principles, realize at last that they are from two different worlds.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012

HAIR 1979

Not having been a huge fan of the original stage production of Hair (Gerome Ragni, James Rado, and Galt MacDermot’s legendary “American Tribal Love - Rock Musical”), I think I’m one of the few to find Milos Forman’s screen adaptation—which deviates significantly from the source material in that it actually has a plot—to be a flawed but vastly superior improvement upon the original. The music was always great, but only the movie version got me to care about who was doing the singing.

Evolved from the free-form, counterculture, guerrilla theater experience taking place on college campuses across the country in the late '60s, Hair debuted on Broadway to great acclaim and much brouhaha in 1968 (nudity, swearing, hippies…on Broadway?) almost a year after 1967s so-called "Summer of Love" signaled both the pinnacle and simultaneous pop-cultural co-opting of the hippie/flower-child movement. Yet, much like A Chorus Line, Hair, when viewed today, is one of those Broadways shows whose reputation as a groundbreaking cultural phenomenon may be a little hard to fully comprehend.

As a 10 year-old living in San Francisco’s Haight St. district in 1968, I was too young to have been a participant in the whole Flower Power scene, but when it came to bearing witness to all the social and political changes afoot, I have to say I had the best seat in the house. Even then it was odd to think of one's neighborhood as the hub of a "movement" the entire nation was talking about. Mostly I remember the poster stores, the head-shops, the buttons with slogans, the streets full of panhandling hippies, and vibrant color everywhere...especially in the clothing. (Sartorially speaking, the hippie movement hit my older sister pretty hard. Once recognizable by her Catholic School uniform, virtually overnight, sandals, love-beads, headbands, tie-dyed tops, and tinted granny-glasses became her standard mode of dress. It was like a Timothy Leary reversal of The Stepford Wives.)

Ren Woods (Sparkle, Xanadu) sings the hell out of "Aquarius" in the film's visually explosive opening sequence.

Never fully the blissed-out, flowers & freedom era depicted by the nostalgia-prone, I recall the late '60s as a time undeniably colorful and charged with a kind of “winds of change” electricity (each day brought something new in fashion, language, ideologies, music), yet also a time seriously untethered and terrifying. I’ll always remember how confounding it was to be surrounded by so much talk of peace and love while the TV filled my head with nightmare images of Vietnam, the Zodiac Killer, assassinations, riots, and Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan. I suspect the hopeful message proffered by Hair's anti-war themes struck a chord with a disheartened America favoring the promise of a Utopian “Age of Aquarius” over what seemed to be the existing dark specter of Barry McGuire's “Eve of Destruction.”  

Treat Williams as George Berger

John Savage as Claude Hooper Bukowski

Beverly D'Angelo as Shelia Franklin

Annie Golden as Jeannie Ryan

Dorsey Wright as Layfayette (Hud) Johnson

Don Dacus as Woof Daschund

Had Hair been granted a film adaptation back in the late '60s or early '70s - when Hollywood awkwardly courted the youth market by green-lighting any and every druggy, nonsensical, counter-culture script that came along (Skidoo; Head; Alex in Wonderland; Angel, Angel,Down We Go); there’s a good chance the show’s somewhat meandering free-form structure would have reached the screen intact. Mercifully for me, the passage of ten years and one flop 1977 revival contributed to the perception of Hair as a timepiece too dated for unaltered big-screen transitioning. This precipitated the enlistment of playwright Michael Weller (Moonchildren) to fashion an honest-to-god storyline around Hair’s marvelous score of songs, and, in lieu of the then-requisite bearded twenty-something fresh out of film school to helm the project, we have Oscar-winning director Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), a man who was actually making films about '60s youths in the 60s (his 1971 comedy Taking Off is a favorite). Certainly in the late '70s the climate for Hair was right, what with the proliferation of films being released dealing with the '60s and the Vietnam War: Coming Home (1978), The Deer Hunter (1978), and Apocalypse Now (1979).

If one goes into Milos Forman’s Hair with any expectation of the film being a faithful adaptation of the Broadway show, watching the movie is likely to be a disappointing experience. The order of the songs has been rearranged, their intent altered, and many of songs are sung by totally different characters. I think the best and most rewarding way to view the film is to look at is as a completely different animal; an artistic expression unique unto itself. Where the play invited us “outsiders” into the world of the hippie tribe onstage, getting to know them through vignettes and pantomimes draped over a thin schematic structure. Foreman’s film maintains the perspective of the outsider and tells the story of Claude Hooper Bukowski (Savage), a naïve Oklahoma farm boy let loose in Manhattan for two days prior to his induction into the army. Depicted as an innocent adrift in a strange land, Claude is taken under the wing of a small band of hippies (their unofficial leader, Berger [Williams] first seen burning his draft card) and introduced to drugs, the girl of his dreams, and, most likely, the most fun he’s ever had.

Forman and Weller fashion a very entertaining and ultimately moving film out of what could have been just a timepiece jukebox musical. The film maintains the play's irreverent tone and captures rather well the generation gap conflicts and authority figure clashes that exemplified the era, but (and this is a big plus for me) never resorts to the kind of ageist oversimplification of that whole "don't trust anyone over 30" sensibility. Forman's Hair has an originality that far surpasses most adapted screen musicals, and a powerful and sensitively rendered final act that gets to me each and every time.

I Got Life
Berger (Williams) disrupts a dinner party to the consternation of all but an admiring Charlotte Rae (seated, dressed in pink).

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

The experience of seeing a film based on a musical you’re very familiar with can be like going over a check list. You find yourself subconsciously keeping tally of how the film measures up to what you are already know. Hair destroys all of that from the first frame. It’s one of the most ceaselessly surprising musical adaptations I’ve ever seen. Whether structurally, musically, or visually, Hair consistently goes in directions different from where you think it’s headed. Just as things seem as if they will remain rooted in realism (the film makes great use of Manhattan locations), up pops a surreal or stylized sequence that totally blows you away. And the effect is exhilarating and exciting. All of a sudden the old feels brand new and you’re actually listening and watching, not comparing.

In one of Hair's more charming examples of an unexpected twist; an anticipated violent confrontation between loitering hippies and mounted police turns into a challenge dance routine.

PERFORMANCES

In populating his cast with relative newcomers to film (Savage, Williams, D’Angelo) and those making their screen debut (Dacus, Golden, Cheryl Barnes) Milos Forman succeeds in bringing a kind of ragged freshness to the film that’s perfect for the material. The more experienced do most of the heavy lifting, although newcomer Annie Golden is surprisingly good and a standout in her scenes. John Savage, fresh from The Deer Hunter, sidesteps the obvious clichés and makes his more reactive character into someone a great deal more dimensional than I would have expected possible. Treat Williams, saddled with an unfortunate wig, does the impossible by making an otherwise insufferably smug character into someone sympathetic and likeable. I think perhaps I’m fondest though of Beverly D’Angelo who is always such an offbeat and fascinating comedienne. I always wondered how Robert Altman ever passed her up. She seemed tailor-made for his ensemble pieces.

Making her film debut, Cheryl Barnes walked away with unanimous raves for her searing rendition of "Easy to Be Hard." 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Of all the numerous delights and surprises in Hair, the film’s one true inspired stroke of genius was in getting Twyla Tharp to do the choreography. An unassailable talent and legend in the world of dance, I’ve never cared for her work either before or since; but here, with her loose-limbed, eccentric, wholly stylized flailings evocatively capturing the look (and, more importantly, the feel) of the era…her work is beyond perfect. Nothing else would have worked. Not jazz, not literal recreations of dances of the era. Tharp's choreography (and whomever was responsible for the clever staging and some of the witty visual concepts) are ideally suited.

Ellen Foley(above center) sings the virtues of "Black Boys" while below, Charlayne Woodard, Nell Carter (center), and Trudy Perkins give equal time to "White Boys." The surprise twist given this number is hilariously ingenious and thoroughly audacious.

Melba Moore and Ronnie Dyson (members of the original Broadway cast of Hair) perform "3-5-0-0" at an anti-war demonstration staged in front of the Washington Monument.

Frequently, musicals have trouble sustaining their momentum through the third act, but Hair is one of the few movie musicals that come to mind that lack any downtime. It's extremely well paced and never lags for me. Even after multiple viewings. For every sequence of note I've mentioned, there are about three others that I don't have room to go into. Suffice it to say that the "Hare Krishna" number is one of those "worth the price of admission" sequences, and that it's more fun to discover the myriad actor cameos and conceptual surprises on your own.  

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

The highest compliment I can pay Milos Forman's adaptation of Hair is that he has succeeded in excising virtually everything I never cared for in the play (chiefly its morally superior proselytizing and romanticizing of the young) and created a film of considerable heart and maturity. More even-handed than the theatrical production, I find in Forman's version of Hair to be a film that sees the past with a clarity born of distance. Sentimental, yes. Idealistic, yes. But the one thing it isn't is nostalgic. I like how it looks at the '60s: it holds both hippies and the Establishment to task, yet still finds it to be an era of optimism and hope.

THE AUTOGRAPH FILES

Nell Carter - 1980

Copyright © Ken Anderson

STARTING OVER 1979

Before Drew Barrymore, Matthew McConaughey, Katherine Heigl, and the entire Judd Apatow oeuvre conspired to sour me on the whole genre for good, I really used to love romantic comedies. To me, the absurdist roundelay that is two human souls striving to connect is marvelous fodder for films both touching and hilarious. In that vein, Two for the Road, Ball of Fire, and Sweet November (the 1968 version) are among the funniest, most engagingly romantic films I've ever seen. But I don't think they make those kinds of romantic comedies anymore.
There seems to be a post-feminist hostility embedded in romantic comedies today: a passive-aggressive assignment of all things emotional to “chick flick” dismissiveness, combined with a self-serving aggrandizement of all things boorish and sophomoric to the realm of masculinity. Maybe it’s time for me to explore what’s out there in gay-themed romantic comedies, because the heterosexual battle of the sexes seems to have grown increasingly reductive and mean-spirited. 

One particular favorite of mine from the past is Starting Over, an almost forgotten romantic comedy smash from 1979 (one of the top 20 highest-grossing films of the year) directed by Alan J. Pakula (Klute, Sophie’s Choice) and written by James L. Brooks (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Terms of Endearment). 

Jill Clayburgh as Marilyn Holmberg

Burt Reynolds as Phil Potter

Candice Bergen as Jessica Potter

Starting Over is the story of freelance journalist Phil Potter (Reynolds), struggling to adapt to single life after the dissolution of his marriage to singer/songwriter/self-realization enthusiast Jessica (Bergen). Through the touchy-feely intervention of his psychiatrist brother and sister-in-law (the always-reliable Charles Durning and Frances Sterhagen), Phil meets emotionally wounded, self-effacing grade-school teacher Marilyn Holmberg (Clayburgh), and the two embark on a tentative relationship wherein each is afraid of, yet longing for, emotional commitment and a chance to start over.

Charles Durning and Frances Sternhagen oozing well-intentioned sincerity

I don’t have a whole lot of objectivity where Starting Over is concerned. Not to the degree that I’m blind to the film’s faults, but in as such that my abiding fondness for the film seems inextricably tied to my feelings about the time in which it was made (the late '70s) and my initial response to it when I first saw it (it rivaled What's Up, Doc? as one of the funniest comedies of the time). In other words, this might be one of those films about which I rave from the housetops, yet could very likely leave those seeing it for the first time feeling a little underwhelmed.
I guess it's good for me to remember that the proper response to some films (like jokes that don't translate) can only be, “You had to have been there.” Starting Over was released at the very tail-end of the 1970s and a great deal of its humor is derived from its so perfectly capturing the zeitgeist of that particular point in time. Pop history (and especially historical motion pictures) would have us believe that eras begin and end neatly and succinctly, but in truth, time has a tendency to overlap, and trends and cultural preoccupations sort of bleed into one another.

The underutilized Mary Kay Place (Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman) is extremely funny as a particularly awkward bind date  

In 1979, the narcissism of the “Me” decade began to be co-opted by yuppies and started to transmogrify into a new kind of unashamed era of self-interest and self-realization. It was an era of encounter groups, self-help books, and a whole lot of psychoanalytical navel-gazing. Of course, all this preoccupation with self would eventually lead to the “Decade of Greed” that became the '80s; but in 1979 all this meant was that everyone was caring, sharing, and feeling feels all over the place. The drug-fueled hedonism of the swinging-singles disco era led to a post-sexual revolution ennui mixed with singles-bar aimlessness (captured the previous year in the morbidly moralizing 1978 film Looking for Mr. Goodbar) that in turn boosted divorce rates and threw male/female relationships into a tailspin.

At the urging of his brother, Phil (Reynolds) attends a divorced men's workshop. That's What's Up, Doc?'s Austin Pendleton to the right.

By the late '70s, women who had had their consciousness raised by the feminist movement had to contend with a dating landscape in which there appeared to be no rules. Men, heretofore relegated to the culture-mandated roles of provider/protector, grew commitment-phobic, sought therapy, or clung to macho traditionalism. Women were in a quandary wondering whether there was really such a thing as "having it all," or was the by-product of emancipation merely learning to live alone and liking it. What exactly was romance in the world of the zipless fuck, no-fault divorce, Plato’s Retreat, and men’s sensitivity workshops? It was a crazy time to look for love and Starting Over seemed to capture it all in a humorous lens both sharp and fuzzily sentimental.

Marilyn -  "Before I met you I'd finally gotten to the point in my life where I no longer thought some man was gonna come along and make this huge change. I'd finally gotten to the point where I liked being unattached."

After her Oscar-nominated emergence in 1978's An Unmarried Woman, Jill Clayburgh became the unofficial screen spokesperson for modern womanhood. She was a real favorite of mine and is sensational here. The progressive feminine image she presented—of a woman who wanted, not needed a man—would become fairly obsolete by 2012 thanks to the regeneration of the Disney Princess Myth and TV reality show humiliations like The Bachelor and Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

As stated, the thing I most enjoy about Starting Over (and something I’m not at all sure carries over to those discovering the film today) is how wittily the film captures the tenuous, walking-on-eggshells state of male/female relationships in the '70s. The 1970s was culturally the decade where all the dust was settling from the upheavals of the 60s, and people were these vibrating bundles of anxiety putting herculean effort behind maintaining a front of laid-back serenity. (The sale of Valium skyrocketed in the '70s; a fact inspiring one of Starting Over’s biggest and then most talked-about gags).

Phil suffers a panic attack at Bloomingdale's

Traditional gender roles, those typified by the  Rock Hudson/Doris Day comedies of the '60s, were dismantled in the '70s, necessitating a new kind of sex comedy. Ads for Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977)—the real game-changer in romantic comedies—labeled it “A Nervous Romance.” That classification goes double for Starting Over; only instead of urban singles, were invited to enjoy the amorous fumblings of the newly divorced. Individuals who perhaps married when one set of rules was in place, forced to re-enter single life ill-prepared for the cultural change-up in the game plan.

Love, American Style
(I've always loved that print that hangs above them: "Woman Reading" by Will Barnet)

PERFORMANCES

Few who weren’t around to bear witness to the painful spectacle of Burt Reynolds’ willful self-exploitation and wasting of his talents in the '70s can't appreciate what a delightful departure (and surprise) Starting Over was. The promising performer of Deliverance (1972) spent the better part of the decade ignoring his gifts as an actor, instead choosing to court dubious celebrity and fashioning himself into the male Jayne Mansfield (or the Matthew McConaughey) of the '70s. One of the biggest (if not the biggest) box-office stars of the time, Reynolds, with his myriad talk-show appearances, gleeful self-objectification, and seemingly endless stream of unwatchable, good ol’ boy redneck comedies, enthusiastically participated in turning himself into a Hollywood punchline.

Divested of his trademark pornstache and dropping his tired Dean Martin-esque "I'm so cool I don't care" indifference act; Reynolds gives perhaps his best pre-Boogie Nights performance in Starting Over. I don’t know that I've ever found Reynolds to be particularly likable before, but here he is quite appealing and quite wonderful. Underplaying marvelously, he’s one of the few male characters on screen able to convey a sweetly insecure vulnerability without slipping into wimpdom.

Alas, much in the way Eddie Murphy’s noteworthy performance in Dreamgirls failed to prevent Hollywood from remembering the hot mess that was Norbert; the career turn-around Starting Over may have signaled for Burt Reynolds was sabotaged by the two-strikes-you're-out disaster followup that was the craptacular Smokey and the Bandit II (1980) and The Cannonball Run (1981).

The ultimate sign of commitment: giving your sweetheart the key to your apartment 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Without a doubt, the biggest buzz attending Starting Over on its release was the breakout comedy performance of Candice Bergen. Never highly-regarded for her acting, but a popular screen presence due to roles capitalizing on her ice-princess beauty, Bergen had heretofore only shown her comedic side on television (she was the first female host of Saturday Night Live and appeared to great effect on The Muppet Show). As Starting Over’s self-confident, atonal singer of atrocious “empowerment” pop songs, Bergen garnered the best notices of her career and, at age 32, launched a second career of sorts as a skilled comedienne.

Candice Bergen's highlight scene, in which she attempts to seduce her ex-husband by singing her disco composition "Better Than Ever," received the loudest and longest laugh from an audience I have ever heard in a movie theater.

The songs attributed to Bergen’s character were written by then-collaborative-couple Carole Bayer Sager and Marvin Hamlisch, whose own relationship they immortalized in the Neil Simon-penned Broadway musical They’re Playing Our Song (1978). I'd always thought Bergen’s songs in Starting Over were intended to be awful, both musically and lyrically (although I can’t help liking the song “Better Than Ever.” Oddly enough, Bergen’s version more than the Stephanie Mills version heard at the end), but in truth, they sound identical to the songs from their hit Broadway show, so maybe they aren't as satiric as I once assumed.

Future Murphy Brown co-star, Charles Kimbrough, has a bit part as a salesman

 Home Alone's Daniel Stern (who would also appear in the Jill Clayburgh films I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can and It's My Turn) plays a student in Burt Reynolds' journalism class in Starting Over

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Starting Over is a terrifically funny and touching romantic comedy, but I can understand if time has diluted some of its punch. For one, the image of Burt Reynolds as a wiseguy sex machine is so dim now that no one is likely to derive much pleasure from seeing him cast against type. Seeing Burt Reynolds without his mustache in 1979 would be today akin to seeing Lady Gaga wearing Crocs.

Similarly, most people's memory of Candice Bergen today only extends back as far as Murphy Brown, so her atypically relaxed and risk-taking performance here lacks the shock value it had in 1979. The same can be said for the humor derived from her terrible singing. The idea of a no-talent pop star was riotous in 1979; folks looking at the film today might well think she sounds no worse than Katy Perry.

The Academy snubbed Reynolds, but both Clayburgh and Bergen received Oscar nods for Starting Over. Clayburgh had previously appeared with Reynolds in Semi-Tough (1977) while Bergen would re-team with the actor in the 1985 crime film Stick

I have no idea why some comedy is enduring (I Love Lucy) while other kinds of humor seem to grow less funny over time (I love the film Shampoo, but I look at it now and can't even remember why I once found it to be so hilarious). Starting Over, for better or worse, bears the stamp of its time, but in a way that I don't think dates it so much as lends its humor an authenticity and its characters a sense of existing in a real-time and place. (Starting Over, which takes place in Boston, has a great look of winter and autumn about it. The huge coats the characters wear look for once like they're actually for function, not fashion, plus, I love that people in this movie use the bus!)

Starting Over is full of '70s-era jokes about finding oneself, Accutron watches, and telephone answering machines, but its sweetly comic look at the need to take chances to find love is something I don't think can ever be labeled dated.

THE AUTOGRAPH FILES

Autograph of Candice Bergen from 1991, at the height of her Murphy Brown fame

Copyright © Ken Anderson