"Breaking Up is Hard to Do" has a unique history with me; it was a 1979 two-parter that, when shown over Cinemax four years later, totalled three hours and fifteen minutes. I caught this showing , and I found it very absorbing and moving--when, during the final five minutes of the film, my mother should be phoning me long distance. I was PO'd as hell afterwards, and the movie vanished into obscurity until the late 80s, when its distributor released a heavily-edited version for the VHS rental crowd. The truncated tape ran something in the way of ninety minutes. I rented it out during Xmas vacation, and noticed on the packaging a medium closeup of a smiling Billy Crystal, leering at a bathing beauty about to strip. The blurb at the top of the slipcase says, "He doesn't know a thing about being single...but what he doesn't know can be wonderful."
The peculiar thing about this was that the original film was hailed as an ensemble piece, with (at that time) an all-star cast, and the plot dealt with the six male leads embroiled in personal/interpersonal matters regarding each. But the tape rental case didn't have anything about them in its synopsis, save a general description on the back. It was apparently assuming that only Crystal could sell the tape, and the others were hasbeens. The tape kept all the sub-plots involving Crystal, the others pruned away.
Now, there's a complete DVD release, issued in 2013, allowing me to finally get a better assessment of the movie's merits. The story deals with six recently-divorced men who live together during one summer in a Los Angeles beach house, rented by a supposedly neutral and level-headed father figure, played by Robert Conrad, with a fixation on a sexy neighbor. (You remember Conrad from the old Eveready battery commercials, daring you to knock one off his shoulder). In the story he and the other guys work in various capacities within the entertainment industry. They immerse themselves in the new dating scene.
The others include Crystal (who'd starred at the time in the sitcom Soap), a divorced dad and aspiring big-time screenwriter who builds his son a deluxe go-cart. There's Ted Bessell (Marlo Thomas's boyfriend in the sitcom That Girl), a cancer patient. David Ogden Stiers (Major Charles Winchester, the bad-guy in M*A*S*H) portrays here a more sympathetic character, a financier whose perfect-family world suddenly collapses. And Jeff Conaway (Bobby Wheeler from Taxi) is the real hunk of the bunch, a fledgling producer desiring to romance an aspiring writer. The only actor here I'm not familiar with is Tony Musante, who starred in the film We Own the Night; here he plays an opportunistic womanizer.
I grasped the basic plot on first viewing, but this time I was taken aback by the multi-layered, practically incomprehensible dialogue. I had to crank up the volume to about the 66 mark to begin grasping it. The DVD sounded as though it was remastered with a digital Dolby soundtrack, although I didn't find it on the disc's case. My major beef with contemporary movies is that the audio seems mastered toward the "home theater" crowd, and to hell with those of us who're more mortally endowed with cash. The average shmoe viewer with just a basic flat-screen has to put up with the soft sounds being made super-soft, and the loud sounds seem ear-splitting. Makes me long for the days of mono VCRs and Automatic Level Control, making loud and soft sounds more equal.
Among the "thrill seeking, lost adolescence" scenes is an extended and disturbing one where our boys acquire three motorbikes and break the sound barrier, whooping and cheering out onto country roads and eventually parking at a practically-deserted saloon. They get away with mayhem until a gang of Hell's Angels types step in and throw their punches; our guys entertain the notion they've got the stuff, but are no match, and are left as several crumpled heaps. Amazingly, they don't look the worse for wear in the following scene, or even in the 4th-of-July scene that comes inbetween.
Many viewers, in this day and age, will be alarmed at the swastikas gracing the regalia of a couple of our guys (Stiers, particularly). May have seemed innocent enough in those days, but....the Hell's Angels long since abandoned the use of the symbols.
Stiers is one of the more endearing of the six, gradually reentering the dating scene with a middle-age woman wonderfully played by Bonnie Franklin (the mom on One Day at a Time). At a party, their budding relationship hits a snag when Franklin sees Stiers with a cute party girl; the subplot (among dozens of subplots) is not convincingly handled.
Bessell is the other endearing character, providing much of the drama amidst all the craziness. Tears and hugs abound throughout.
The climax of the three-plus hours is when a fistfight and brawl erupts between Crystal--the "lamb" of the bunch--and Conrad, the father figure.
Now, there's a complete DVD release, issued in 2013, allowing me to finally get a better assessment of the movie's merits. The story deals with six recently-divorced men who live together during one summer in a Los Angeles beach house, rented by a supposedly neutral and level-headed father figure, played by Robert Conrad, with a fixation on a sexy neighbor. (You remember Conrad from the old Eveready battery commercials, daring you to knock one off his shoulder). In the story he and the other guys work in various capacities within the entertainment industry. They immerse themselves in the new dating scene.
The others include Crystal (who'd starred at the time in the sitcom Soap), a divorced dad and aspiring big-time screenwriter who builds his son a deluxe go-cart. There's Ted Bessell (Marlo Thomas's boyfriend in the sitcom That Girl), a cancer patient. David Ogden Stiers (Major Charles Winchester, the bad-guy in M*A*S*H) portrays here a more sympathetic character, a financier whose perfect-family world suddenly collapses. And Jeff Conaway (Bobby Wheeler from Taxi) is the real hunk of the bunch, a fledgling producer desiring to romance an aspiring writer. The only actor here I'm not familiar with is Tony Musante, who starred in the film We Own the Night; here he plays an opportunistic womanizer.
I grasped the basic plot on first viewing, but this time I was taken aback by the multi-layered, practically incomprehensible dialogue. I had to crank up the volume to about the 66 mark to begin grasping it. The DVD sounded as though it was remastered with a digital Dolby soundtrack, although I didn't find it on the disc's case. My major beef with contemporary movies is that the audio seems mastered toward the "home theater" crowd, and to hell with those of us who're more mortally endowed with cash. The average shmoe viewer with just a basic flat-screen has to put up with the soft sounds being made super-soft, and the loud sounds seem ear-splitting. Makes me long for the days of mono VCRs and Automatic Level Control, making loud and soft sounds more equal.
Among the "thrill seeking, lost adolescence" scenes is an extended and disturbing one where our boys acquire three motorbikes and break the sound barrier, whooping and cheering out onto country roads and eventually parking at a practically-deserted saloon. They get away with mayhem until a gang of Hell's Angels types step in and throw their punches; our guys entertain the notion they've got the stuff, but are no match, and are left as several crumpled heaps. Amazingly, they don't look the worse for wear in the following scene, or even in the 4th-of-July scene that comes inbetween.
Many viewers, in this day and age, will be alarmed at the swastikas gracing the regalia of a couple of our guys (Stiers, particularly). May have seemed innocent enough in those days, but....the Hell's Angels long since abandoned the use of the symbols.
Stiers is one of the more endearing of the six, gradually reentering the dating scene with a middle-age woman wonderfully played by Bonnie Franklin (the mom on One Day at a Time). At a party, their budding relationship hits a snag when Franklin sees Stiers with a cute party girl; the subplot (among dozens of subplots) is not convincingly handled.
Bessell is the other endearing character, providing much of the drama amidst all the craziness. Tears and hugs abound throughout.
The climax of the three-plus hours is when a fistfight and brawl erupts between Crystal--the "lamb" of the bunch--and Conrad, the father figure.