The Good Dr. Gelbart
is interviewed here by Emily Nussbaum. That’s Larry Gelbart, by the way, playwright, screenwriter, personal hero, talking about the revival of his play Sly Fox.
Excerpts:
“I don’t think there’s any mystery to why Jack Nicholson is so popular, because he’s kind of . . . evil. And we like that! But for all the bad stuff I’ve seen – and all the bad stuff I haven’t seen but I know takes place – I do feel that I’m writing from the standpoint of the victim. I’m like: “You guys did these things! You said, I'm not a crook'; you said, I didn’t have sex with that woman’; you said, `There were weapons of mass destruction.’ “ All this misinformation; all these lies. All of them told for the purpose of gaining something: either my confidence, or my forgiveness, or my money, or my rights. It’s very hard to be idealistic anymore. I guess I’m drawn to people who pull these kinds of scams – and people who are verbose. Where I got that idea, I leave it to my mirror to tell me.”
“NUSSBAUM There’s that great line where Foxwell justifies himself; he says, “I used the muscle of my mind.”
GELBART Yeah: “It’s not that I’m so mean, it’s that I’m so much smarter.”
