The Goodbye Girl, the 1977
movie that won Richard Dreyfuss
an Oscar, has been remade as a
television movie premiering at
8 p.m. Friday on TNT.
Cleveland's Patricia Heaton
stars as Paula McFadden, a New
York City dancer who keeps
falling for men who ultimately
leave her. (Marsha Mason, then
married to Goodbye Girl writer
Neil Simon, played the role in
the earlier film.)
The latest leaver has added the
indignity of subletting their
apartment to an actor, Elliott
Garfield (Jeff Daniels in the
part first played by Dreyfuss).
Paula, her daughter, Lucy (Hallie
Kate Eisenberg), and Elliot
have to work out an uneasy
truce while sharing the same
quarters.
Need I tell you that romance is
in the air?
The original movie was much
loved (and Turner Classic
Movies, a corporate sibling of
TNT, scheduled several replays,
including one at 10 p.m.
Thursday).
But Neil Simon had no qualms
about reviving it, no more than
he has fretted over revivals of
his stage plays.
The original movie, he said at
a press conference with the
cast a while back, ''was 25
years ago. So a lot of time has
gone by and I think that
there's millions of people who
haven't seen it.''
Richard Benjamin, who directed
the new Goodbye Girl as well as
playing a small role, was a bit
more uneasy at first.
Not about directing Simon's
work. Benjamin is a veteran
director and has been talking
to the Cleveland Play House
about ''something'' -- he won't
say what -- for mid-2004. He
has even directed Simon before,
with the TV production of
Laughter on the 23rd Floor. (He
also acted in Simon's The
Sunshine Boys, directed by
Herbert Ross, who also directed
the original Goodbye Girl.)
No, it was the idea of
directing a new version of a
very successful movie. ''If
you're going to remake
anything, it should be flops,
not hits,'' Benjamin said. So
he asked Simon ''Why?''
''He said, `Why not?' ''
Benjamin recalled. Simon
explained again about plays
being revived, and Benjamin
relented. Besides, he said,
''When he calls and asks, you
say yes.''
Similarly, Benjamin took on a
role as a famous director
played by Nicol Williamson in
the first film, because ''Neil
asked me to do it.''
But while Simon is considered
one of the great humorists of
the American stage, directing
him is no laughing matter.
''You cannot change anything,''
Benjamin said in a phone
interview, noting that Simon
has even worked out the beats
of each line.
In addition, Simon ''is the
best because it's funny, it's
jokes, but he's not just
writing jokes. He's writing
behavior.... It's got to be
real life.''
That meant casting people who
could make the jokes work and
play characters.
''Patty was cast first,''
Benjamin said of the Everybody
Loves Raymond star. Simon kept
urging Benjamin to watch Heaton
on Raymond, to see especially
her willingness to make her
character, Debra Barone,
unlikable at times. In The
Goodbye Girl, Paula is the
title character but not always
the audience favorite; she is
at times very wrong in her
dealings with Elliot.
In addition, Benjamin said,
''She knows her way around
comedy but you can't catch her
at that.'' She does not
telegraph punch lines but
''makes it seem like the first
time she's said it.''
Daniels, meanwhile, is a huge
physical departure from the
shorter, rounder Dreyfuss in
the earlier movie. But Benjamin
said Daniels ''was at the top
of the list of actors.
''He's unsung in many ways. He
works all the time, from Dumb
and Dumber to The Hours, but
when has he been a leading-man,
comic actor?'' Benjamin said.
The closest Daniels may have
come was in a dual role in
Woody Allen's Purple Rose of
Cairo. But Benjamin thought
Daniels could have done it far
more, since the movies are
always looking for another
comical-but-romantic leading
man.
Beyond casting, though, there
was the issue of putting
Simon's script on the TV
screen. Although it runs
slightly longer than many TV
movies, it is still a bit
shorter than the 1977 version.
Still, it looks as if all the
script is there. Benjamin said
the difference is in the
pacing, which has to be faster
for modern audiences. He urged
the cast to look at His Girl
Friday -- the famously
fast-paced romantic comedy
starring Cary Grant and
Rosalind Russell -- to get an
idea of the tempo.
The movie does feel a bit like
a period piece, recalling older
movies as well as the '70s in
which it was originally set.
Some changes in references to
actors and the like are the
only concessions to the passage
of time. Asked about updating
the script, Simon said, ''Why
change something when it works
so well?''
Benjamin said that the story of
an actor coming to New York is
a universal one, though he
admitted that the Goodbye Girl
''has a certain innocence to
it.''
But he also thinks there's
something kinder about New York
since the terrorist attacks on
Sept. 11, 2001. ''I see people
holding subway doors now,'' he
said.
And what did the actors think
of stepping into some famous
shoes?
''I jumped at the chance to do
it the minute it was offered to
me because... Neil's writing is
really special for an actor and
you don't often get a chance to
do something like that,''
Heaton said. She did have one
problem with the role: playing
a dancer.
''It was a very painful,
humiliating experience for
me,'' she said. ''I'm going to
pay the editor a lot of money
to make sure that the body
double they got is in most of
those (dancing) shots.''
Daniels faced more directly the
shadow of Dreyfuss.
''I looked at it, like, in
April,'' he said. ''I looked at
the DVD and said, `Great, well
done.' And I threw it away and
said, all right, we're going to
pretend that we've never seen
this.''
And many viewers, as Simon
said, have the same point of
view.
I remember the original very
well, especially Dreyfuss, and
it was not easy to watch
Daniels in the same role. On
the other hand, Heaton seemed
better than Mason most of the
time, although each was saddled
with too many crying scenes.
Still, I didn't hate it. And I
watched with a friend who had
never seen the original -- and
found this version pretty
entertaining.
