FOUR WEEKS OF MAY: THE HEARTBREAK KID

Men are the worst.

It’s a thought as old as the earth itself, and the reality of that statement is something that society is still currently trying to grapple with in real time (and maybe not doing such a wonderful job at it).  But, look, it’s true.  Certainly everyone gets anxious and insecure at some points in their lives.  But there’s something about how specifically male insecurity and anxiety manifests itself that can be simultaneously interesting and infuriating.  It seems like female insecurities manifest in damage done insularly, the type done to the self.  Male insecurity tends to lead to outward damage, the type that’s done to other people.

Hilarious, right?  We all laughing yet?  

I say all this because, on rare occasion, you happen to run into a film from fifty years ago that shines a light on this concept of male insecurity so succinctly and precisely WHILE somehow managing to stay sharply, acidly funny and oddly poignant throughout its 106 minute runtime.  

Naturally, it was directed by a woman.

Let’s dive into THE HEARTBREAK KID.

THE HEARTBREAK KID (1972)

Directed by: Elaine May

Written by: Neil Simon

Starring: Charles Grodin, Cybil Shepard, Jeannie Berlin, Eddie Albert

Released: December 17, 1972

Length: 106 mins

Lenny Cantrow (Grodin) and Lila Kolodny (Berlin) are a pair of newlyweds a few days into their cross-country honeymoon.  Lenny isn’t feeling so great about it, now that the luster and shine of the wedding is starting to fade.  He’s noticing things about Lila he didn’t before.  Her sloppy way of eating egg salad, for instance.  Or the way her skin easily burns in the sun.  The reality of “til death do us part” is starting to hit him in his soul, and it’s starting to eat at him immensely not even a week in.

Once he runs into Kelly Corcoran (Shepard), a beautiful, young, leggy blonde, on a Florida beach, Lenny becomes bound and determined to woo her, in defiance of all logic or respect to his new bride.  Kelly seems to be into him, but her father (Albert) remains completely unimpressed.  THE HEARTBREAK KID becomes a long race to the altar as Lenny has to maintain his pursuit of Kelly while still keeping his honeymoon going smoothly.  The script, a Neil Simon adaptation of a Bruce Jay Friedman short story, firmly establishes its main character as an unabashed skunk, a man who only decides to talk to his wife about ending things once he has no further choice, a man who weaves lies that barely make any sense and only skate by because his bride idealizes the idea of being married to him beyond all reason (in the way only the young can).

There’s no real getting around it: Lenny is a goddamn monster who’s reckless with the heart of a woman whose only definable crime is being normal.  However, he’s nevertheless presented with honesty and wit.  Thus, you as the audience are faced with the sudden reality of, if not actively rooting for Lenny, at least sort of hoping he gets egged on so you can watch him dig himself deeper and deeper into his scheme.

This kind of duality (serious scenes presented as comedy)  is sort of typical of Neil Simon material.  Take something like BAREFOOT IN THE PARK, a play about a pair of newlyweds who are essentially fighting the entire time.  The thing about stuff like this is that the only way for it to work is for everybody involved in the production (actors, producers, the director, costume department, everybody) to be on the precise wavelength that the script demands AND have the ability to execute on it.  In the example of BAREFOOT, if the fights are played too realistically, this comedy all of a sudden becomes an unpleasant, uncomfortable drama.  Play it too over-the-top “funny”, however, and the play collapses entirely, the characters nothing more than broad and un-relatable caricatures.

So it goes with THE HEARTBREAK KID, which is threading such a small and tight needle.  The entire movie hinges on Lenny being driven almost entirely by id and the need for sexual conquest and validation WHILE still staying likable to your audience (I wouldn’t be surprised if some people feel the movie doesn’t actually thread it successfully).  His complete and total terror at staring down the barrel of forty or fifty years with his new bride and his weaving of his increasingly outrageous lies to her in order to keep spending time with Kelly should be funny, rather than reprehensible (which, of course, it is). 

This requires absolutely nailing your choice of leading man.  If he plays the nastiness too realistically, the movie becomes unwatchable.  However, if the comedy is approached as too broad, the movie flatlines.  Although we laugh at him, we ultimately have to believe and feel Lenny’s internal tension, or else there’s no reason for him to be doing what he’s doing.  It’s a pivotal casting decision.

Enter Charles Grodin.

We’ve talked about Grodin in this space a little bit before.  Specifically, I’ve previously talked about him hosting the 1978 Halloween episode of Saturday Night Live, maybe one of the greatest nights of the show ever (the whole breakdown is here, but the TL;DR version is that the whole episode hinges on a meta bit that Grodin missed dress rehearsal and now has to fumble his way through all of the night’s sketches).  He also appeared in movies that have either become cult favorites (CLIFFORD) or childhood staples (BEETHOVEN).  However, I’d argue he made the bulk of his career off of perfecting a “prickly asshole” persona on late night shows, sparring with Letterman and Conan for years.

Well, you could consider THE HEARTBREAK KID the starting point of that acidic persona.  I legitimately don’t know who else could have done this role, either now or in 1972 (I know there’s a 2007 Farrelly Brothers remake starring Ben Stiller.  I haven’t seen it; it’s possible it’s good, though I have my doubts.  But I don’t think that Stiller is quite right, as funny as he often can be).  Grodin just presented himself as so unassuming and normal, at least in relation to other movie stars at the time.  But he also knew how to express every thought and gear turn inside his head without doing much with his face at all.  This kind of thing allows him to practically get away with murder, comedically speaking.  He makes breaking a woman’s heart and bringing her to tears seem like the funniest shit you’ve ever seen.  That’s comedy magic, baby. 

Grodin as Lenny is funny in the way that Jason Alexander was funny as George Constanza.  You both simultaneously hate his guts AND eagerly await him continuing to spin plates in anticipation of everything collapsing.  Actually, I thought about George and Seinfeld a lot while watching THE HEARTBREAK KID.  Doesn’t the whole “I got into an accident last night” set of lies feel like a George bit?  Doesn’t explaining his beach tan away by explaining he had to sit on the steps of the courthouse for hours feel like something only a Constanza could have come up with?

The supporting players are also perfectly cast. Cybill Shepard I’ve long been familiar with, and she’s someone I honestly hadn’t thought much of. But she makes for a good straight woman against Grodin’s schemer. Kelly’s role is essentially to be this perfect girl for Lenny to lust after, but I think it’s crucial that the movie presents her as a real person. She goes to a good school, she’s obviously intelligent, and her sexuality is implied rather than displayed, which prevents her from just being a sex object. This is where I think May’s touch and eye becomes so crucial; the scene where Lenny and Kelly play the “no touching” game could have easily been presented as salacious and leering in a time when mainstream movies were starting to push and experiment with how sex would be displayed on camera (same year as LAST TANGO IN PARIS!). Instead, everything is cut just so that you remember more happening than there really is.

I wasn’t familiar with Jeannie Berlin at all, to the point that I didn’t know until sitting down to write this that she is in fact Elaine May’s daughter, which clarified a lot for me.  In fact, this is the only major work I’ve seen her in.  She’s great!  Again, Lila’s only real sin in Lenny’s eyes is just not being an unattainable supermodel.  She gets bad sunburns!  She’s a little messy!  (One might argue that Lenny considers her too Jewish, but I am not nearly adept enough at untangling the film’s Jewish/WASP politics; the good news is that there are plenty out there who are, and you should definitely give them a read.)

Like many in this film, the role of Lila is precise and deceptively difficult.  “Be normal” might be the single most difficult assignment a performer can get.  You’re basically telling an actor not to act.  Yes, it’s funny to see her miss a spot when she’s wiping her mouth, but the only way it remains so is if she’s nonchalant about it.  Berlin understands that so well, and plays the reality of everything so honestly that it makes Grodin’s frustration during that famous dinner scene so much funnier.  It’s no surprise she earned a Best Supporting nomination at that year’s Academy Awards.

Eddie Albert also snagged a Best Supporting nomination, eventually losing out to Joel Gray for CABARET (I mean, what are you gonna do?).  Albert’s role is equally as non-flashy as Berlin’s, and I have to imagine the Oscar nom was built off the back of the scene at the end where Mr. Corcoran tries to buy Lenny out and make him go away (“I’m a brick wall!”).  It’s a great scene, Lenny’s “final boss” of sorts, as the one guy he can’t bullshit.  Albert, of course, is probably best known from GREEN ACRES and movie work like (oh hey!) ROMAN HOLIDAY.  His veteran presence is wonderful here, too, as you keep waiting for him to take a swing at Grodin.

The thing about this movie, which is sort of a hard thing to admit, is that May and Simon’s analysis of the fragility of the male ego is so on point.  I’d venture to guess there’s a variant out there in the multiverse of every man on the planet that approaches life the exact same way that Lenny does here.  Sometimes the immediate next step of committing to a goal is dealing with the regret of having committed to it.  The only real way for men to win at life is to make sure that version of him remains in the multiverse.  Lenny makes it his prime timeline.

To that end, the movie surprises by not necessarily ending in a total collapse for Lenny (perhaps that’s the biggest difference between him and the George Constanza character).  Actually, he more or less accomplishes his goal of winning Kelly’s hand in marriage, even resisting her father’s bribery offer.  Even the presumed punchline of Lenny immediately having a panic attack about spending his life with Kelly, the allure of a lusty romance forever punctured, doesn’t quite materialize.

Instead, the dark joke of THE HEARTBREAK KID ends up being that Lenny’s success is pyhrric.  Yes, he’s secured his beautiful 22-year old bride, and he’s now a part of an elevated society that would previously have been unavailable to him.  But…now what?  He can’t exactly BS his way through the Corcoran circle of family and friends like he could with Lila and her family.  He’s not impressive in any way.  Nobody except maybe Kelly really likes him.

By the end of the movie, he’s functionally completely alone, without another card to play or bullet to fire.

As far as the “Elaine” of it all, it seems by all accounts that the production of THE HEARTBREAK KID was relatively smooth sailing, at least as compared to the trouble she had with A NEW LEAF, and the all-out chaos that would ensue with MIKEY AND NICKY and ISHTAR.  Maybe that’s why it feels so tight and efficient in comparison to her first film (which really only starts showing signs of meddling towards the very end anyway).  There’s a clarity of thought that the movie is able to see through from start to finish.  I have to wonder if this movie would have worked at all without her comedic sense at play here.  

As it stands, I loved it, and it might be a new entry in my “Favorite Movies” category.  For a couple of bucks on Youtube (or for free; there are a couple of champs who have uploaded it in full on that site), you can enjoy it as well.