Play It As It Lays ** (1972, Tuesday Weld, Anthony Perkins, Tammy Grimes, Adam Roarke) – Classic Movie Review 7795

Director Frank Perry’s 1972 interesting and sincere but depressing and ultimately disappointing drama Play It As It Lays is based on Joan Didion’s novel, and stars Anthony Perkins, Tuesday Weld and Tammy Grimes. Deception, divorce, despair, abortion, breakdown and suicide are all on the wrist-slitting menu. Good acting redeems it.

Weld stars as Hollywood B-movie actress Maria Wyeth, who has a breakdown and ends up in a mental hospital, in Perry’s downbeat, too-jazzily filmed version of Didion’s novel of despair. The above-par acting by the always underrated Weld and Perkins as a B Z, a world-weary gay movie producer keeps it watchable, but Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne’s screenplay and Perry’s direction unfortunately let them down.

Perry directs frenziedly, as though to compensate for being worried that the public would reject the film, which, unsurprisingly, they did anyway.

Adam Roarke plays Maria’s unfaithful husband Carter Lane, a self-engrossed film director. Also in the cast are Ruth Ford, Eddie Firestone, Tyne Daly, Diana Ewing, Paul Lambert, Chuck McCann, Severn Darden, Tony Young, Richard Anderson, Roger Ewing, John Finnegan, Mitzi Hoag, Elizabeth Claman and Tracy Morgan.

Play It As It Lays is directed by Frank Perry, runs 98 minutes, is made by F P Productions and Universal Pictures, released by Universal, is written by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, based on Joan Didion’s novel, is shot in Technicolor by Jordan Cronenweth, is produced by Frank Perry and Dominick Dunne, and is designed by Pato Guzman.

The costumes by future director, Joel Schumacher.

Sam Peckinpah’s plan to direct a film of Didion’s novel did not materialise.

Weld and Perkins previously also made Pretty Poison (1968) together.

By 2018, Weld’s most recent film was made in 2001.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7795

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