Professor David Peimer
Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple
Summary
An entertaining and critical scene-by-scene appreciation of the 1968 film The Odd Couple, written by acclaimed playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon, who was nominated for more Oscar and Tony awards than any writer in history.
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a Professor of Literature, Film and Theatre in the UK. He has worked for the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, New York University (Global Division) and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing in New York, UK, Berlin, EU Parliament (Brussels), Athens, Budapest, Zululand and more. He has most recently directed Dame Janet Suzman in his own play, Joanna’s Story, at London Jewish Book Week. He has published widely with books including: Armed Response: Plays from South Africa, the digital book, Theatre in the Camps. He is on the board of the Pinter Centre (London), and has been involved with the Mandela Foundation, Vaclav Havel Foundation and directed a range of plays at Mr Havel’s Prague theatre.
That’s a very interesting question. We’d need to look at so many of the other great comedy writers and actors, the much more recent ones. There is an influence on Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. In the classic comedy structure, Seinfeld is the straightforward fall guy and Larry David is the obsessive neurotic.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you say that Simon creates characters who have characteristics common to us all, whereas Groucho is working with much more physicalized and caricature. So the irony is more in the physicality and the caricature of what Groucho is doing.
Interesting, I don’t think he did. I think as far as I have researched and read, he would go and watch as a young kid in the way that Neil Simon, I think, went to what the great early comedy movies.