Maybe I should read a more modern play. It seems that there was a lot more sexism in the late 60's. A lot more. Anyway I just read an almost great play called The Latent Heterosexual by Paddy Chayefsky. He's the only solo three time academy award winner for Best Screenplay. He wrote one of my favorite movies, Marty. This play was originally called The Accountant's Tale and that is a better title for it. I think the play is amazingly resonant of certain current affairs despite being written in 1967 but one event int the fifth scene soured the play for me. Actually it was only one line.
The play concerns John Morley. He is an eccentric, gay writer who finds himself in tax trouble. He is newly successful and has thus attracted the attention of the IRS. He owes a lot of money. His agent takes him to meet the other major player in the script, Irving Spaatz. Spaatz is an accountant of tremendous and god-like skill. He concocts a plan to save Morley a lot of money, The plan works better than anyone could have conceived.
One part of the plan is to get Morley married. Chosen as his bride is a prostitute Christine Van Damn. As soon as they are married Morley changes. No longer a mincing, flaming homosexual, he now sports a stetson, a cigar, and Texan drawl. He has embraced his new found heterosexuality. The new Mrs. Morley is even pregnant. Yet this play is more about the things that the Spaatz is doing to Morley than his wife. To better save money through tricky tax dodges, Morley is slowly transformed in a corporation of greater and greater breadth and scope. The business jargon that make up a good chunk of this text is dense, hysterical, and intense. I loved it.
As the corporation expands, Morley becomes stripped of his personality. His wife cares for him selflessly, but is caught fellating another character. Despite her selfless devotion to Morley and his professed love for her and hers for him, she is dismissed from the play, divorced with the phrase, "Get that lousy whore out of here." It's one moment in the play that rings harsh and false. My feelings for the play fell then.
Despite that, I liked the play and were I to produce it I would edit that moment somehow. Anyway I thought the play had some interesting things to say about corporate personhood, especially in the wake of the Citizen's United ruling. A man, an artist, is rendered catatonic and unfeeling about anything but his ability to make money. Once a vital interesting individual, he is consumed in corporate greed until his humanity is almost gone. Loosing his wife would be a good example of his descent, but it is handled is such a "women are such sluts and all they have to offer is their sexual fidelity" kind of way that it almost sunk the play for me. One has to adjust for the times when thing were written which is too bad.
The play concerns John Morley. He is an eccentric, gay writer who finds himself in tax trouble. He is newly successful and has thus attracted the attention of the IRS. He owes a lot of money. His agent takes him to meet the other major player in the script, Irving Spaatz. Spaatz is an accountant of tremendous and god-like skill. He concocts a plan to save Morley a lot of money, The plan works better than anyone could have conceived.
One part of the plan is to get Morley married. Chosen as his bride is a prostitute Christine Van Damn. As soon as they are married Morley changes. No longer a mincing, flaming homosexual, he now sports a stetson, a cigar, and Texan drawl. He has embraced his new found heterosexuality. The new Mrs. Morley is even pregnant. Yet this play is more about the things that the Spaatz is doing to Morley than his wife. To better save money through tricky tax dodges, Morley is slowly transformed in a corporation of greater and greater breadth and scope. The business jargon that make up a good chunk of this text is dense, hysterical, and intense. I loved it.
As the corporation expands, Morley becomes stripped of his personality. His wife cares for him selflessly, but is caught fellating another character. Despite her selfless devotion to Morley and his professed love for her and hers for him, she is dismissed from the play, divorced with the phrase, "Get that lousy whore out of here." It's one moment in the play that rings harsh and false. My feelings for the play fell then.
Despite that, I liked the play and were I to produce it I would edit that moment somehow. Anyway I thought the play had some interesting things to say about corporate personhood, especially in the wake of the Citizen's United ruling. A man, an artist, is rendered catatonic and unfeeling about anything but his ability to make money. Once a vital interesting individual, he is consumed in corporate greed until his humanity is almost gone. Loosing his wife would be a good example of his descent, but it is handled is such a "women are such sluts and all they have to offer is their sexual fidelity" kind of way that it almost sunk the play for me. One has to adjust for the times when thing were written which is too bad.
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