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SIMON Comedy. Based on character. In The Sunshine Boys, Clark, an ex-vaudevillian, tells his oldtime partner, Lewis, that a friend is dead. Lewis asks, "Where did he Variety." die?" You And see the Clark tells difference him, be "In tween gags and comedy?
A.M No.
SIMON Let me put it another way.
A.M.
Don't do me favors. If I want analysis of ingredients I can read a Quaker Oats box. I only go to the theater to have a good time, not to think. (Upon the word theater, SIMON starts home to his type writer). Wait, don't go yet.
SIMON
I have to. I haven't written a scene in 20 minutes.
A.M.
You know what Mike Nichols says about you? "Other playwrights in his sit uation would buy plenty of clothes, go to a lot of parties and elect themselves Man of the Year. This one goes back to work." Listen, Marvin—I can call you Marvin?
SIMON It's my given name. But most people call me Neil, or by my boyhood nickname, "Doc."
A.M.
Listen, Marvin, let me ask a question.
SIMON No, let me ask you one. Why do you speak with Yiddish locutions? My audience isn't exclusively Jewish. Neither are my characters. Not any more, any way. Matter of fact, I still recall a black man pointing to a figure in my first play, Come Blow Your Horn, and insisting, "That's my father."
A.M.
Would you prefer it if I spoke like a critic?
SIMON
Anything but dialect.
A.M.
Very well. Mr. Simon, have you ever considered writing a tragedy?
SIMON You know something? I liked you better Jewish.
A.M There are critics who might say the same of you.
SIMON Still, most of you have been very indulgent.
A.M.
That is your tragedy. And you took us seriously. That is ours.
SIMON You mean The Gingerbread Lady.
A.M.
Your "serious" play, about the collapse of a Judy Garland-like singer.
A.M.
People expected laughter.
AM.
Yet we called you distinguished. We took it seriously.
SIMON Why don't you take me seriously now?
A.M.
Because you consistently verge upon the profound, the revealing—and then pull back, almost in embarrassment. There is a moving line in Plaza Suite that encapsulates the Simon career—and perhaps the country's as well...
SIMON
When the businessman says, "I have it all—marriage, children, more money than I ever dreamed—and I just want to do it all over again. I would like to start the whole damn thing over from the beginning."
A.M.
...and the wife says, "Frankly, Sam, I don't think the Navy would take you again." Truth masked with a gag—excuse me, with comedy.
SIMON But Plaza Suite was a comedy.
A.M.
Perhaps Christopher Fry said it best: "In tragedy every moment is eternity; in comedy, eternity is a moment." Your comedies, all of them screamingly funny, seem to evaporate as one hears them.
SIMON
But I don't start out to write comedy. I begin by studying all the tragic aspects of my characters.
A.M.
It just comes out funny.
SIMON That's it.
A.M.