"I don't know how I start a play.
I probably start it with the first sentence.
I know it's not going to be there for very long,
but I have to get — opening the door a little bit,
sticking my head in, and seeing what's in there."
Neil Simon was one of the most popular,
and perhaps the most prolific, playwright
in the history of American theater.
He redefined comedy, using humor
not simply to entertain, but to tell soulful stories
about the frictions of urban life and family intimacy.
"What are you doing?"
"What?"
"You know the doctor said you're not supposed
to smoke cigars anymore."
"Who's smoking?
Am I smoking it?
Do you see smoke coming from the cigar?"
"But you got it in your mouth."
"I'm rehearsing.
I'll do the show later."
The New York Times sat down with Simon in 2008
to talk about his work and his life.
"I started actually in the Bronx.
1927, July 4, and always thought
from then on that they were celebrating my birthday."
Simon grew up in nearby Washington Heights,
an enclave for working class Jews before the war.
But his home life was terrible,
with a father who was rarely around
and a mother who struggled to make ends meet.
"Well, my father and mother broke up so often
that after a while, it was no news to me.
We would have to take in boarders to help feed us.
They sat at the table.
My mother made dinner for them.
It was really tough for me, because I said,
my father should be here.
Not these men.
They weren't un-nice, but it was a very difficult thing
to grow up with."
Simon's way out was through his older brother Danny,
a budding comedy writer who got him started
on his future career.
Together, they landed a job writing gags
for the 1950s television legend, comedian Sid Caesar.
"What is your name?"
"John Baxter."
"John Baxter, you're fired!"
In Caesar's famous writing room,
the young Neil Simon found himself among a who's who
of the future of funny.
Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, Mel Tolkin
and a very young Woody Allen.
For Simon, it was an inspiring but tough cast of characters.
"My problem was the shyness.
I could think of the line, but I
wasn't going to say like Mel Brooks would, 'I got it.
I got it.'
That's what he would do.
I would have to sit next to Carl Reiner and whisper it.
And Carl would jump up and he says, 'Neil has it.
Neil has it.'
He says, 'The man walks in and ba-dum bum bum.'
Whatever it was.
And they liked it."
"Get someone up here right away.
Because I need them.
That's fine.
I know they are.
You tell them.
Who are you?
What are —
what are you talking about?
Let me say what I —
I told everybody that's fine.
Fine!
All right, talk to each other.
That's right!"
Like many in the writers room,
Simon aspired to do more than write jokes,
but he saw firsthand how even Caesar's most-seasoned writers
had a tough time breaking into theater.
"Mel Tolkin, who was the head writer, said,
'I got a play. I wrote it with Lucille Kallen' —
who was another writer on the show.
It closed in one night.
And so I say, why would I have the gall
to write a play when these two really seasoned people
can't get it on?
So I said, I better write about what I know."
Writing what he knew would lead Simon
to help invent a whole new genre:
the comedy of urban neuroses.
His big breakthrough play and screenplay
was based on Simon's life as a newlywed
with his wife, Joan Baim.
"It was about getting married and living together
for the first time without knowing how to do that.
And what it's like when your husband and wife have
their first fight.
And it's trauma.
It's just trauma."
"You're hysterical!"
"I am not hysterical!
I know exactly what I'm saying, Paul.
It's all over between us, and it's never gonna
be any good anymore."
"And 'Barefoot in the Park' became an easy play for me
to write, because it was a loving play.
It was about me and Joan.
She was beautiful.
She was absolutely beautiful."
Simon Says he met Joan at a softball game in the Poconos,
and it was love at first pitch.
"I'm batting, and there she is pitching at me.
So I said, I really have to get a hold of one
and show her.
So I swung — swung, swang, swing —
at her, and hit the ball as hard as I could,
which dribbled slowly to her.
And she picked up the ball with a smile,
and she just waited for me to get to first base.
And I'm saying, 'Throw it.
Throw it will you please?'
And she threw it, and she beat me out."
"Officer.
We just got married."
"We married after that first summer that we met.
All the things were real.
There was a staircase that took you up
to the top floor of the building,
and where the man who spoke a foreign language lived.
He was on the make for Joan,
who had nothing to do with him."
"Will you help me up, please?"
"Oh, with the greatest of physical pleasure."
"And we were walking one night with our dog, Chips,
in the park and it was a warm summer night.
And she took off her shoes, and she was barefoot.
And we were walking, and she said, 'Why aren't you
taking off your shoes?
Mine are?'
And I said, 'I don't feel like it.'
She said, 'No, there's something wrong with you.
You're afraid to walk barefoot in the park.'"
"Paul, you're crazy."
"And then, bingo.
You know, play title."
Inspiration for Simon's next play also came from a source
close to home:
his brother Danny, who'd recently divorced his wife
and moved in with a friend
named Roy Gerber to save money.
"Roy Gerber started having big fights with Danny,
and I just kept watching it and watching it.
I said, 'You know, Danny there's a play in this.
And he said, 'Where?
What's the play?'
I said, 'These two guys having more trouble
with themselves than they would with their wives.
Same problems.
I said, one of you is the wife, one of you
is the husband.'"
But nailing the script for "The Odd Couple"
took a lot of trial and error, as Simon and
director Mike Nichols discovered.
"There was a scene I wrote that in the rehearsal,
they laughed so hard Mike said we'd never
be able to put this on, because the audiences will
die from laughter.
So we got to that scene.
There wasn't a single laugh in it.
And I said, 'What happened. Mike?'
He said, 'It's funny, but they don't like what's happening.
They like these people, and you're
making them go in a way that is not really good for them.'
So I changed that, and we got less laughs but more cheers
for the play.
So I started to learn about it.
That it's not all about the laughter.
It's about the feelings that the audience gets.
Do they like these people?
Do they don't?
Are they living their lives well, or are they not?"
"The Odd Couple" opened on Broadway in 1965
and became Simon's most successful work.
The play spawned a movie starring Walter Matthau
as the sportswriting slob Oscar Madison, and
Jack Lemmon as neat-freak Felix Unger.
"It's all over, Felix.
The whole marriage.
We're getting an annulment.
Don't you understand?
I don't want to live with you anymore."
The movie, of course, led to a popular 1970s TV series
with Jack Klugman and Tony Randall.
Simon had signed away the rights for the TV series
to Paramount, a decision he came to regret.
But by this time, he was already perhaps
Broadway's biggest and most bankable writer.
In 1966 alone, he had four shows
running on Broadway at the same time,
an unrivaled record.
But just as Simon was topping the world of theater,
he and Joan got devastating news.
"We got up early in the morning,
went to the doctor's office.
He examined her.
Then he came back in, and he says, 'It's bad.'
'What?'
'She's got cancer.'
And then I start to feel myself rolling and rolling,
and you're reaching out to grab on to your life,
to be able to help her, and you can't.
You're just rolling and rolling."
Joan died in 1973 at the age of 39.
They had been married for 19 years.
Her death sent Neil reeling and he immediately
sought someone to fill the void, marrying four times,
twice to the same woman.
"I mean, other wives are the mistake
you made when you're married to someone for 19 years
that you hope you can be married to for 60 years.
That whole period is so dark for me."
After a number of plays about his failed marriages,
Simon returned to writing about his childhood struggles
in Jewish working-class New York.
"What did I tell you about banging the ball?
Your Aunt Blanche has a headache."
"I can't stop now.
It's a crucial moment in World Series history.
The Yanks are playing the Giants."
"Brighton Beach Memoirs" was the first of Simon's
semi-autobiographical trilogy
about a wisecracking teenager named Eugene Jerome.
"It was about growing up, idolizing
his older brother, who was going to go off to the war.
And the kid didn't want him to go off to the war."
"You always told me never to run away."
"I'm not running away.
I'm leaving.
Only kids run away."
"Biloxi Blues," part two of the trilogy,
was based on Simon's own stint in the Army,
and won him his first Tony award for best play in 1985.
"That's a mistake, Gene.
Once you start compromising your thoughts,
you're a candidate for mediocrity."
One of the most memorable scenes is based on the trip
to a brothel Simon made as an eager, yet terrified,
young virgin.
"I was on that line waiting to get in —
you know 15 guys waiting to get in
to screw this one woman.
And you say, 'You sure you want to do this?'"
"O.K. honey.
Do your stuff."
"What stuff is that?"
"And you do it.
And you come out —
all you think of is, I'm a man.
I've done it."
In "Broadway Bound," part three of the trilogy,
the mother gives a fiery speech
that channels the turmoil of Simon's own mother.
"Is that how it works?
You have an affair, and I'm left
with the choice of forgetting about it
or living alone the rest of my life?
Boy, it's so simple for you, isn't it?"
"Writing that was difficult and great,
because I was making a character who
never really spoke open, but she was not that articulate.
I mean, my mother could never come out
with a soliloquy like that and tear him apart."
But it was his play "Lost in Yonkers"
that ultimately took Simon from the realm of comedy
into serious, critically acclaimed drama.
The play and the feature film is the story
of two young boys forced to live
with their domineering grandmother and
mentally challenged aunt, a scenario similar to what
Simon faced during his own childhood exiles.
"You made it so clear.
You just didn't want to be touched with love."
"You don't just choose it and say,
'I think I'll do a serious play.'
You know, you say, 'I want it to be bigger
than what I've been writing.'
And I don't need to have it being funny all the time.
When you have the heartbeat of the play there,
you can be funny over here and you can be funny over here
as long as you don't touch the heartbeat."
"Lost in Yonkers" would be Simon's
last major Broadway hit.
It earned him the Pulitzer Prize.
"Maybe everybody else here, but not me.
You understand?"
"I never think about getting better so
that I will be a better playwright so
that I will win a Pulitzer Prize,
so that I will do this —
never think about that.
You just think, get the play there.
Maybe it'll have a life.
Maybe you've done something good for other people.
Hopefully you've done something for yourself,
the actors, whatever.
It's just, you want to get the writing out.
You want to get the things that you think
about life onto the stage."
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