Film number 29 – I Ought To Be In Pictures
I Ought to be in Pictures features a Simon regular, Walter Matthau as a disgruntled and struggling screenwriter living in L.A. After sixteen years of separation his estranged daughter, Libby decides to come to L.A. to be a star and figures that she may as well look him up for some support. She assumes living in L.A. her father has a plethora of connections that will give her a head start in the industry. Libby is disheartened when she finds out that her father has large gambling debts, drinks too much and hasn’t had work in years. From the very beginning we see that the Libby is a very quirky and strange child; she talks to her dead grandmother and is very self assured. It’s an interesting character, outspoken and full of heart, as the film progresses it becomes very clear that this child has had a skewed upbringing thanks to her mother’s overbearing parenting and distrust of men. Over time Libby moves in and the two begin to bond and form a relationship. We also find out that Libby has no real ambition to become an actress and just saw it as an excuse to come to L.A. to see her father.
I won’t give away any more of the story because the real strength is the characters; just watching Matthau makes me sad and yearn for the time when he was just one of the many great comedic actors out there. I’m always amazed at how he takes these characters that all have a very similar personalities and creates a new persona every time, he plays hopeless characters with such subtlety that makes them all individual and brutally honest. His character here is very quick witted and accepting of the rut that his life has become stuck in. he has a beautiful girlfriend (played by Ann- Margret) who somehow bears his disgruntled behavior and tries to help him be more understanding to his strange daughter.
When I think of films based on Neil Simon plays only a few highlights come to mind – The Out of Towner’s, The Odd Couple and The Sunshine Boys – when you actually look at the list of other Neil Simon works the list is quite extensive. Simon’s dialogue is primed for film it manages the rare feat of having very quick, meaningful, hilarious dialogue that can be delivered without feeling manufactured and forced. Sometimes I find when pays are adapted to the screen the dialogue has this very grandiose and unnatural feeling that can disrupt a scene very quickly. This film does sometimes suffer from being quite a literal adaptation; the scenes sometimes feel very drawn out. It’s very similar to the adaptation of the Odd Couple in that the majority of the story is contained to a few locations but unlike the Odd couple the story takes place over the course of months which can make the familiar setting of the house feel repetitive.
The daughter Libby talks to her dead Grandmother out loud; whilst this character trait is perfect for theater it doesn’t work at all in the reality of this film that shows real life hardship throughout. This sort of inner monologue really should have been changed for the film. It is not enough to simply adapt the play to film, more consideration should have been taken to decide what parts of the play actually lend itself to film and what qualities cannot be transferred to this medium. Luckily Matthau holds interest throughout and helps to hide the cracks on the surface, I just cannot praise this man enough I don’t think I have ever seen him suck in a role and I will keep looking.
The film does surprise me at times, when we see the first reconciliation between father and daughter it is not a moment of deep emotion and anger like I would expect, instead it’s a very underwhelming moment where the two are happy to see each other and are both quite calm. It’s interesting and might also be another reason why Simon is such a great writer; never appealing to the overly melodramatic expectations of the audience but rather using the mood and actions that are required for the story. The film is not a huge clusterfuck of emotions wrapped in a cheap daytime soap opera, it’s a meditation and it takes time to build, trying to show how real relationships are formed.
Libby is a very unique child, she is very naïve but this allows her to be charmingly outspoken and confident which is a nice character to have, we don’t really have to deal with her typical teenage self discovery bullshit, it is mostly all on the table all ready. Herbert Ross (The Odd Couple, California Suite) again directs Simon’s plays well.
It’s a small film as stage adaptations generally are, character driven and fun to watch. It has many faults and flaws but they are generally overshadowed by the great performances.
6 out of 10
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