Main Cast: Lenny Baker, Shelley Winters, Ellen Greene, Lois Smith, Christopher Walken
Release Year: 1976
Country: US
Run Time: 111 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
An aspiring actor leaves his home in Brooklyn for adulthood in Manhattan in Paul Mazursky's loosely autobiographical comedy-drama. In 1953, would-be thesp Larry Lapinsky (Lenny Baker) flees his hysterically clinging mother (Shelley Winters) for a $25-a-month (!!) apartment in bohemian Greenwich Village. Between Method-like acting classes, a movie audition (where he meets a posturing actor played by Jeff Goldblum), and work at a juice bar, Larry hangs out with a circle of archetypal Village eccentrics, including suicidal Anita (Lois Smith), womanizing poet Robert (Christopher Walken), and flamboyantly un-closeted homosexual Bernstein (Antonio Fargas), as he negotiates the pitfalls of love and sex with liberated girlfriend Sarah (Ellen Greene). The fallout over the group's ill-fated love affairs, and the Lapinskys' inopportune surprise visits, finally lead Larry to make peace with his past as he contemplates his future in Hollywood. Mazursky looks back to the 1950s as in such other 1970s films as American Graffiti, Grease, and TV's Happy Days, but his Greenwich Village life is less a time of lost pre-'60s innocence than a precursor of things to come. Sex, Larry jokes, may be serious, but it is also an omnipresent fact of life rather than something to be feared or repressed; love is the real problem. Even as Larry's friends strike various poses, they are all out to do their own thing as best they can. Critical response to Mazursky's nostalgia trip was mixed when the film was released, but the performances, particularly Winters, were admired. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Review
Paul Mazursky's autobiographical film about his salad years in the Village is a warmly nostalgic comedy. In the decades before the sexual revolution of the '60s and '70s, the Village was famed as a magnet for those interested in sexual experimentation or simply sex without the inconvenience of marriage. Among them is Larry Lapinsky (Lenny Baker), an aspiring actor who escapes from a semi-hysterical mother (Shelley Winters) in Brooklyn to learn about life among a circle of mildly eccentric friends in the Village of 1953. Mazursky is much more interested in exploring the daisy chain of relationships among Larry and his friends than in his career, and his depiction of the way in which this narcissistic group of characters are able to help and support each another is the heart of the film. While the constant interruptions of his parents into Larry's quest to get laid are reminiscent of the borscht belt schtick, Mazursky memorializes both his youthful confusion about sex and love and the gradual progress of his sentimental education with comic precision. The director looks fondly back to a more innocent time and finds the roots of the theme of sexual sharing that would remain a constant in his work. Lenny Baker is wonderful as the earnest, aspiring actor in his last performance before his untimely death at the age of 32, and Walken and Winters stand out among a uniformly excellent cast. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
Albert Wolsky - Costume Designer, Terry Donnelly - First Assistant Director, Paul Mazursky - Director, Richard Halsey - Editor, Bill Conti - Composer (Music Score), Robert Jiras - Makeup, Philip Rosenberg - Production Designer, Arthur Ornitz - Cinematographer, Paul Mazursky - Producer, Tony Ray - Producer, Les Alexander - Producer, Edward Stewart - Set Designer, Dennis L. Maitland - Sound/Sound Designer, Paul Mazursky - Screenwriter, Peggy Farrell - Costume/Wardrobe
The film takes place in 1953. Larry Lipinsky is a young Jewish boy from Brooklyn, New York, who has dreams of stardom. He moves to Greenwich Village, much to the chagrin of his extremely overprotective mother. Larry ends up hanging out with an eccentric bunch of characters while waiting for his big break. He has group of tight-knit friends, which includes a wacky girl named Connie; Anita, an emotionally distraught young woman who constantly contemplates suicide; Robert, a young WASP who fancies himself a poet; and Bernstein, a gay black man. This band of outsiders becomes Larry's new family as he struggles as an actor and works toward a break in Hollywood.
