What: Sometimes it still feels like it could have been a dream. But no --- in the mid-'90s, we really did get a biopic about the wonderful, brittle, sharp-edged Dorothy Parker and her clever, clever friends of the Algonquin Round Table. Not only did the movie exist, it also seemed to include nearly every actor balancing at the mainstream / indie film fringe then.
A special note on the cast: I mean, really.
Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dorothy Parker
Campbell Scott as Robert Benchley
Plus
Martha Plimpton as Jane Grant
Matthew Broderick as Charles MacArthur
Lili Taylor as Edna Ferber
Chip Zien as Franklin Pierce Adams
Jane Adams as Ruth Hale
Keith Carradine as Will Rogers
Rebecca Miller as Neysa McMein
Jon Favreau as Elmer Rice
Jennifer Beals as Gertrude Benchley
Peter Gallagher as Alan Campbell
Heather Graham as Mary Kennedy Taylor
Andrew McCarthy as Edwin Pond Parker II
Gwyneth Paltrow as Paula Hunt
Wallace Shawn as Horatio Byrd
... to name a few
Representative quote: "You don't want to turn into the town drunk, Eddie. Not in Manhattan."
Bonus representative quote: "Tragedies don't kill us, Woodrow. Messes kill us."
Connections to previous Wreckage: Read about Parker in the biography What Fresh Hell Is This? (Rec. #237). Read Parker's own writings in The Portable Dorothy Parker (Personal Wreck #3).
Also, did you notice Rebecca Miller listed up there? That's the same Rebecca Miller who wrote Personal Velocity (Rec. #278).
[Originally posted 6/13/13.]
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