Plaza Suite (1971) & California Suite (1978)

          During the ’70s, it seemed as if playwright/screenwriter Neil Simon was an industry rather an individual—every year except 1978, he unveiled a new play, and from 1970 to 1979 no fewer than 11 features were released with Simon credited as writer. When the man slept is a mystery. In fact, he even managed to crank out a quasi-sequel to one of his own hits. Plaza Suite premiered on Broadway in 1968 before hitting the big screen in 1971, and its follow-up, California Suite, debuted onstage in 1976 before becoming a movie in 1978. Neither project represents the apex of Simon’s artistry, but both are rewarding. The title of Plaza Suite is a pun, because the film comprises a “suite” of three mini-plays, each of which takes place within the same suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.

          In order of appearance, the vignettes concern a middle-aged couple breaking up when the husband’s infidelity is revealed; a tacky Hollywood producer inviting his childhood sweetheart, now married, to his room for a tryst; and another middle-aged couple going crazy when their adult daughter won’t leave the suite’s bathroom even though guests are waiting downstairs to watch her get married. The first sequence is a bittersweet dance, the second is bedroom farce with a touch of pathos, and the third is an explosion of silly slapstick. Plaza Suite grows more entertaining as it spirals toward its conclusion, finally achieving comedic liftoff during the third sequence, which is by far the most fully realized.

          Walter Matthau somewhat improbably plays the lead roles in all three sequences, and he’s terrific—chilly as the adulterous husband, smarmy as the producer, enraged as the would-be father of the bride. His primary costars are a poignant Maureen Stapleton in the first sequence, a delicately funny Barbara Harris in the second, and an entertainingly frazzled Lee Grant in the third. Plaza Suitedrags a bit, and it’s tough to get revved up for each new sequence, but the fun stuff outweighs everything else.

          California Suite wisely takes a different approach—although the play of California Suite featured four separate stories, in the style of Plaza Suite, the film version cross-cuts to create momentum. And while Matthau is back (in a new role), California Suite benefits from a larger cast and more use of exterior locations. The film is primarily set in the Beverly Hills Hotel, but Simon (who wrote the screenplays for both adaptations) includes many places beyond the hotel. One thread of the story involves a New York career woman (Jane Fonda) bickering with her estranged screenwriter husband (Alan Alda) over custody of their daughter. Another thread concerns a British actress  (Maggie Smith) in town for the Oscars, accompanied by her husband (Michael Caine), a gay man she wed in order to avoid gaining a reputation as a spinster. The silliest thread involves a Philadelphia businessman (Matthau) trying to keep his wife (Elaine May) from discovering the prostitute in their room. And the final thread depicts the deteriorating friendship between two Chicago doctors (Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor), who bicker their way through a catastrophe-filled vacation.

          Smith won an Oscar for California Suite, and her storyline benefits from the way Caine and Smith expertly volley bitchy dialogue. The Alda/Fonda scenes are more pedestrian, and they’re also the most stage-bound pieces of the movie; still, both actors attack their roles with vigor. Matthau’s vignettes are quite funny, with lots of goofy business about trying to hide the hooker behind curtains, under beds, and so forth. Plus, as they did in A New Leaf (1971), May and Matthau form a smooth comedy duo. Only the Cosby/Pryor scenes really underwhelm, not by any fault of the actors but because both men have such distinctive standup personas that it seems limiting to confine them within the light-comedy parameters of Simon’s style. Unlike its predecessor, California Suite eventually sputters—the funniest scenes occur well before the end.

          As a final note, it’s interesting to look at both pictures and see how two very different filmmakers approached the challenge of delivering Simon’s work to the screen. For Plaza Suite, Arthur Hiller simply added close-ups and camera movement to accentuate the rhythms of the stage production, and for California Suite, Herbert Ross took a more holistic path toward realizing the work as cinema. Yet in both cases, of course, Simon’s wordplay is king.

Plaza Suite: GROOVY

California Suite: GROOVY

The Wiz (1978)

          Catering a new version of The Wizard of Oz to African-American audiences was a novel idea—hence the success of the 1975 Broadway musical The Wiz, which combined funky songs and an urban milieu to draw a parallel between L. Frank Baum’s timeless Oz stories and the longing for a better life that’s experienced by many inner-city denizens. Yet one could argue that generating an all-black show marginalized African-American culture as much as, say, the lily-white casting of the beloved 1939 The Wizard of Oz movie. However, it’s probably best not to delve into thorny racial politics here. Rather, the relevant question is whether The Wiz justifies its own existence in purely aesthetic terms. Based on this lavish film adaptation (which, to be fair, involved heavy changes to the source material), the answer is no. Dull, gloomy, overwrought, and weighed down by Diana Ross’ ridiculous casting as a fresh-faced youth, The Wiz is a chore to watch.

          Improbably, the film was directed by Sidney Lumet, best known for making such gritty dramas as Dog Day Afternoon (1975), though trivia buffs may dig noting that Lumet cast his then-mother-in-law, singing legend Lena Horne, in a pivotal role. Anyway, the basic story is familiar: Dorothy (Ross) gets transported to the magical land of Oz, where she hooks up with companions for a trip down the Yellow Brick Road to see the Wiz, whom she hopes can help her get home. You know the drill—wicked witch, enchanted shoes, click your heels together, and so on. Every element is tweaked with an African-American vibe, so in addition to all of the actors being black, this movie’s version of Oz is a funhouse-mirror version of New York, complete with subway stations and urban blight.

          Ornately designed by Tony Walton, who received two Oscar nominations for his work on the picture, The Wiz is a strange hybrid of chintzy stagecraft and elaborate cinematic techniques—the costumes and sets in Oz look deliberately bogus, and the big musical numbers unfold on a proscenium facing the viewer. Therefore, notwithstanding screenwriter Joel Schumacher’s changes to the play’s dialogue, this is less an adaptation of a stage show than a filmed record of one. In a word, flat. Ross is awful on myriad levels, from being too old for the role to over-singing her endless solo ballads—star ego run amok. The supporting players generally try too hard, resulting in oppressive energy and volume, though Michael Jackson (no surprise) stands out as the loose-limbed, sweet-hearted Scarecrow. As for featured player Richard Pryor, who plays the Wiz, he comes and goes so quickly that he can’t make an impact.

          Whether the music works is of course a highly subjective matter, but to my ears, only “Ease on Down the Road” (this film’s version of “Follow the Yellow Brick Road”) and the Wicked Witch’s number, “Don’t Bring Me No Bad News,” linger—most of the songs are gimmicky or syrupy, if not both. Yet the biggest problem with The Wiz—and there are lots of big problems—is that it’s not fun. The dialogue is stilted, the mood is glum, the narrative drags, and the production design is so artificial it can’t elicit any genuine reactions. If ever, oh ever, a Wiz there was, this Wizain’t it.

The Wiz: LAME

Which Way Is Up? (1977)

          The same year their far superior collaboration Greased Lightningwas released, funnyman Richard Pryor and director Michael Schultz unveiled this peculiar project, a quasi-blaxploitation comedy that was adapted from an Italian art movie. While the source material, Lina Wertmüller’s 1972 film The Seduction of Mimi, blended left-leaning sociopolitical commentary into its satire, Which Way Is Up? features a middling combination of crude sex humor and shallow take-this-job-and-shove-it posturing. One element of the original movie, a poignant exploration of the challenges faced by a blue-collar man who’s trying to navigate a white-collar world, survives the translation more or less intact, but this worthy theme is surrounded by so much stupidity it loses much of its intended impact. And though a great deal of blame must fall on the shoddy screenplay, which is designed to showcase farcical setpieces that never achieve comedic liftoff, Pryor is a major culprit for the picture’s mediocrity, since he plays three roles and therefore dominates the movie from beginning to end.

          Pryor is best as the protagonist, Leroy Jones, a poor everyman swept up in absurd circumstances. Specifically, he’s a farm worker who inadvertently becomes a poster boy for unionizing efforts and gets exiled from his small town. Relocating to L.A. and subsequently mistaken for a labor-movement hero, Leroy starts a new life with beautiful activist Vanetta (Lonette McKee), even though he’s got a family back home. Eventually, Leroy returns to his small town for a middle-management job and tries to maintain two homes—keeping Vanetta and the child she had with Leroy secret from Leroy’s wife, Annie Mae (Margaret Avery). This balancing act works until Leroy discovers that a local preacher, Reverend Lenox Thomas (Pryor), is sleeping with Annie Mae. Despite himself being an adulterer, Leroy becomes enraged and upsets the fragile life he’s built for himself. Undercutting the promising aspects of this storyline, Schultz spends way too much time on insipid sequences like Annie Mae’s attempts to get Leroy sexually excited. (She tries everything from S&M gear to vibrators.) Similarly, Pryor’s foul-mouthed rants lose their shock value quickly, especially when he’s dressed up in old-age makeup to play Leroy’s salty father. Having said all that, Which Way Is Up? has a few small insights into the black experience, the lives of the working class, and the vicissitudes of the labor movement. Yet as a whole, the picture is as unsatisfying as its “comically” downbeat ending.

Which Way Is Up?: FUNKY

Blue Collar (1978)

          After making his name with the incendiary screenplay for Taxi Driver(1974), Paul Schrader capitalized on his Hollywood heat by setting up his directorial debut, Blue Collar. (Schrader co-wrote the script with his brother, Leonard, from source material by Sydney A. Glass.) A tough morality play about corruption worming its way through an auto company and the labor union supposedly protecting the company’s workers, Blue Collar echoes the 1954 classic On the Waterfront, but it has an unmistakably ’70s patina of drugs, racial tension, sex, and vulgarity.

          The story follows three friends whose frustration with their working conditions at an auto plant reaches a boiling point when they realize their disreputable union reps are making side deals with management. The trio breaks into the union office, hoping to steal several thousand dollars they believe is hidden there, but all they get is petty cash. And that’s when the story gets really interesting: Union officials claim tens of thousands of dollars were stolen, setting an insurance-settlement scam in motion, so the workers-turned-thieves realize they have an opportunity to blackmail their oppressors. How this bold maneuver affects the three men leads to a climax of unusual complexity and intensity.

          Considering this was his first movie, Schrader is remarkably assured behind the camera, using a classical camera style that’s neither showy nor timid; abetted by cinematographer Bobby Byrne, Schrader gives the picture a look as gritty as the assembly line on which the main characters labor every day. The blues-inflected soundtrack, including original music by the great Jack Nitzsche, suits the material perfectly, and in fact the whole movie feels like a raw soul record come to life: When characters sit around a local dive, swigging beer and bitching about their troubles, Blue Collar offers a window into a secret world.

          Yet Schrader’s two-fisted storytelling would be for naught if the movie lacked powerhouse performances, and, luckily, the three leads deliver. Yaphet Kotto, working his singular mix of blazing anger and world-weary sarcasm, is compelling in every scene. Harvey Keitel, slickly translating his Noo Yawk edge to a volatile Midwestern vibe, is equally potent as the conscience of the group. And Richard Pryor is explosive, leaving any idea that he’s merely a funnyman in the dust. Never this good in a movie before or afterward, he channels deep veins of indignation and resentment into an unforgettable characterization. (Available as part of the Universal Vault Series on Amazon.com)

Blue Collar: RIGHT ON