Neil Simon with Woody Allen in relief

I'm sure this say's more about me that I loved Neil Simon as a kid than all the drivel I've written about my Mom or Dad. "Chapter Two" was a movie that I saw when it came out at the Bruin, I'm sure making me feel very adult, and that I watched on cable everytime it came on. For some reason, I was always haunted by James Caan calling up Marsh Mason (star of "The Goodbye Girl," a poor man's "Annie Hall") with a Yankees game on TV in the background, a charming yet sane bachelor looking for love, who was described by Valerie Harper as "not being gorgeous, but having an intelligent face." It was a glimpse into an adult relationship that I saw coming my way and everyone thought "The Goodbye Girl" was one of the great romantic comedies of my childhood, considered on par with "Annie Hall," but Mel Brooks was also considered as great as Woody Allen, but no one thinks that anymore. Marsha Mason was Neil Simon's wife, kind of like Diane Keaton and Louise Lasser to Woody Allen (Mia Farrow had yet to date him). Neil Simon was often talked about in the same breath with Woody Allen but in the way that Neil Diamond was compared to Bob Dylan, or at least how the Boomers saw Neil Diamond, but not Gen X, that embraced the latter as a God. We don't embrace Neil Simon as a God and I doubt anyone ever will again because he was one of those rare breed in American letters, a popular playwright that stayed almost entirely within the realm of light melodrama. His plays hinted at heavy relationship themes, with a heavy heart rending talk always waiting in the third act, but these 'I love you, stupid" speeches were never memorable, and not what the plays were about. The "Odd Couple" was far and away Simon's best play because it transcended the mood of his day and hit on a couple of classic characters just duking it out for the ages (Barefoot does the same for newlyweds), but the rest of Simon's work as I know it wasn't this free. It seemed more like an attempt to ape the early Seventies romantic comedy mood set by Woody Allen. Simon's light touch and good ear (he's blessed with a gift for dialogue), made him a natural except that he was completely out of touch with the alienated heroes who represented the fall of the Sixties, nor did he embody a new kind of eccentric oddball like Woody Allen, who all but redefined the sex symbol. Simon was from another time when hope in the American middle class was an innocent and fresh dream, and being a popular playwright he was in no way trying to peel the curtains on the dream, like say John Cheever. Simon's characters were very happy to be living when they were and their only problems were the eternal ones between men and women. Time catches up with some artists and leaves others behind, and I thought as a kid Neil Simon was speaking for a generation, but by the early Eighties it was clear his star had fallen, and Simon couldn't fake new wave, or yuppie.

It's funny that I'm going so critical on Neil Simon but I really don't think he appealed to my generation so much, and I doubt he will to the ones coming up. I don't hear Lena Dunham talking about him (and if she's not talking about you you don't exist, baby!) I'm almost embarrassed to admit I liked him because in much the same way that punk was a reaction against the sell out of Rod 'the mod' Stewart, the same could be said of Neil Simon, even though he never really sold out to anything. It's a guilty pleasure for me to watch "California Suite," or "Chapter Two," because they were so out of touch with the zeitgeist of my generation that I would've been laughed off the bus for saying I liked them, so the little drama critic/playwright in me just shut up, and enjoyed them on my own, knowing that Simon was great at writing dialogue, even if his movies were somehow out of touch. Simon was also out of touch with L.A. in general because he was a playwright with a capital P, unlike Woody Allen, who was an auteur, not only writing movies, but making them little replications of his own soul, like a painter. Simon saw himself as part of a team in the great Broadway tradition, and he took this feeling to the movies. Simon's screenplay adaptations of his own work never really felt like a Neil Simon 'joint' in the way that Woody Allen's movies did with the Twenties jazz playing at the beginning, and his classic credits rolling down the screen. Simon really was from another time when a playwright was invisible and we weren't all thinking that we were getting a glimpse into Neil Simon's actual life by watching his movies like we did Woody Allen, because the cult of personality had yet to subsume America. Woody mixed art and life in a very 21st century way, but there was nothing 21st century about Neil Simon. He was a man very much of his depression era, with a real gift for comedy writing that few had (have), and it was undeniable Simon was a great talent, but maybe not the greatest. In our hypercritical times, not to mention egoistic times, this is the kiss of death because if you're not the greatest, or at least great in an obscure way, there is just no hope for you. I'm sure lots of Gen X snobs just sort of write Simon off as a popular artist akin to the characters of the "Big Bang Theory" and consider him awful for not tackling really deep heavy issues, or just flipping the bird at society, like a real avant garde rebel, but Simon was never trying to be these things. He was a rather middle class mirror of his times that wanted a sane world even if he recognized the topsy turvy craziness of it.

In a way, it's weird that time hasn't caught up to Neil Simon in the Sundance era, since the mood and tone he was going for would seem to fit the Sundance aesthetic to a T. They are almost all light comedies with a deep undertone, that never get too deep to make anyone in the audience too uncomfortable, but just deep enough to tickle their intelligence, and leave an indelible impression. It could be that the economic/historical perspective that Simon was writing for just has no place today, because he had a decidedly depression era sense that family was important and needed to be maintaned at any cost, but he was writing for a post WW II affluent society, that had lots of opportunity missing today. I'm sure for the boomers Simon must've seemed like that uncle who you always liked a lot, but was warning you not to get too crazy with the sex and drugs. Woody Allen had his girlfriend/leading lady personae and Neil Simon had Marsha Mason, his second wife, and was going through divorce along with his peers and those he was writing for making him oddly relevant but he was also writing for an affluent society that was still in the process of creating itself. Modern ennui will not allow for this perspective with little creativity left in the society for people to imagine particularly new lives, within the context of the whole, and thus the rise of the ego on social media (me included). Simon's hope in the Country comes off as so dated now that I cringed at the way Marsha Mason as a struggling actress in New York (think "That Girl!") was getting big part after big part in "Chapter Two,", and how James Caan was just another popular writer in New York moving to Hollywood to make a killing in the biz. I know these were thinly veiled portraits of Simon himself, but in some ways he was the ultimate depression era success story, and it just doesn't make sense nowadays. Woody Allen had real ennui and nihilism in his movies, even if he too was living out a generational archetype, and that plays much better for a society at a dead end.