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But not all of it. It is a well-kept secret that you have written a play entitled God's Favorite—a retelling of the Job story. It is further known that Mike Nichols would be delighted to direct it and that when George C. Scott read it, he cabled, "When do we start?" And yet that play will not be seen.
SIMON
No.
A.M.
Why not?
SIMON
Maybe I don't trust "God" plays.
A.M.
Maybe you don't trust God.
SIMON
Why are you more ambitious for me than I am for myself?
A.M.
No one is more ambitious for you than you are for yourself.
SIMON
Then let me work it out my own way. My work is growing, it is more openly "serious." I couldn't write Barefoot in the Park again if you held a gun to my head.
A.M.
You're not growing fast enough. You are the finest American comic playwright of our time—perhaps of all time.
SIMON Isn't that enough?
A.M.
Perhaps. The clown has a great, fragile gift. He can write about essentially tragic topics—old age, impotence, even death—and make them truly amusing.
In a grim time we need the tonic of laughter. Yet comedy, like every other aspect of contemporary life, is in transition. How much longer can we be amused by the modest, well-made play?
Isn't there more to the age—and the stage—than that?
SIMON Yes, but comedy...
A.M.
Comedy now oscillates between two terminals: the denatured cackle of the TV sitcom and the self-conscious smirk of pornographic adventures. The middle ground of comic craftsmanship seems to be vanishing—perhaps because its creators are intimidated by the bigger, sicker joke of the contemporary world.
Enter the permanent paradox: The comic playwright is a mockingbird, not a vulture; what right has he to mock the face of war and pestilence, overcrowding and pollution? Still, when the world is too much with us, where can we turn except to the alleviating force of bright irrelevant laughter?
SIMON
Why don't we leave it to Albee or Pinter or Tennessee Williams?
A.M.
Because that's what we're doing now, and it's not enough. What happens in the next few years will fix you in Broadway history. As of now, you will be labeled a master clown. You could be remembered as a major playwright.
SIMON
Or as a clown that tried to be a major playwright. And yet—
A.M.
Precisely. "And yet." Henry James thought the two most beautiful words in the English language were "summer afternoon." But the two saddest ones in the American language are "and yet."
"They lived happily ever after—and yet." "I had a wonderful time—and yet." "Neil Simon has everything—a 19-year-old marriage to a beautiful wife, two daughters in the best schools, unlimited funds and leisure—and yet."
SIMON But suppose I do fail...?
A.M.
That's a risk we all have to take.
SIMON We? What do you mean we?
A.M.
You have to write. I have to go. (The AMORPHOUS MASS begins to vanish like the Cheshire cat.)
SIMON