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STN Entertainment

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The Ifievitirite

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Ttn my own
odd couple,' "Says
playwright Neil Simon
— torn between
Neil the writer and
Neil the person.

JULIE YOLLES ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR

Pictured below
from left to right

"One year old and already at my
desk. When you write plays, you
have to start early."

"My Mafioso period. I was 16 or
so. The bag contains either my
laundry or rewrites."

Simon's (second from left)
experiences in the Air Force In
Denver, Colo., in 1945 inspired
his Biloxi Blues. In 1985, his play
won a Tony Award.

Joan and Neil Simon's wedding
photo. After a three-month
courtship, they married on Sept.
30, 1953. "That's me on the left."

Neil Simon reading his reviews to
daughters Ellen and Nancy. "it
was possible that I might one day
get a play of mine on Broadway,
but it was also a dead certainty
that I would be at the mercy of the
most feared men in my life. The
critics."

"The last picture I took of Joan,
with Ellen and Nancy."

n Oct. 15, 1957, Neil Simon
put his thick, black pen to
notebook paper and began
writing what would become
his first Broadway hit, Come

Blow Your Horn.
Easy subject. Firsthand
scoop. Jewish middle-class
New York family — mom,
dad and their two sons, 8 1/2
years apart.
Difficult process. It took one
year to write and 2 112 years to rewrite —
22 drafts by the time it opened on Broad-
way at the Brooks Atkinson Theater on Feb.
22, 1961. Orchestra seats were S6 back then.
Nearly four decades later, with 30 plays,
25 screenplays, one Pulitzer Prize, three
Tony Awards and a slew of special honors
to add to his dossier, contemporary the-
ater's most prolific playwright is still do-
ing rewrites. _
But this time, Simon's usual 120-page,
three-act script has been replaced by a
397-page, 19-chapter book. His first.

The successful scribe himself and his and humorous anecdotes about growing
new book, Rewrites: A Memoir, will take up in a Jewish family with parents who
center stage next Saturday when the cur- had a tumultuous relationship; writing
tain goes up on the 45th annual Jewish TV comedy sketches for the likes of Sid
Caesar, Phil Silvers, Red Buttons, Buddy
Book Fair.
Hackett
and Jerry Lewis; and his dream
Simon talked by phone from Los Ange-
and
creative
journey of writing for and
les where he lives with his third wife, Di-
ane Lander, to whom he dedicated the conquering Broadway.
Woven through it all is
book, and Lander's 12 112-
the
fairy-tale romance of
year old daughter, Bryn,
Alitourr
Joan
Baim and Neil Si-
whom Simon has adopted.
HOLLYWOOD:
mon,
two
Jewish 20-some-
"With words, I can take
"The
reason
I
had
turned
thing
New
Yorkers who
my time to rewrite and fix
down
doing
the
screenplay
of
met
on
a
softball
field at
them," says Simon, who's
Come Blow Your Horn was Camp Tamiment in the
wrapping up a three-month that I didn't want to get
Poconos. They married
book tour. "But I can't do sucked up in to the Holly-
three months later in
that on the stage when wood system. The money
was
their
lure,
but
once
they
1953. Simon then gave au-
speaking in public. I don't
have something you want,
diences
a peek at their
always want to be funny.
you're in their power. I didn't
newlywed
life in Barefoot
Sometimes I want to be se- want to be in the power of
(1963) — com-
in
the
Park
rious."
anyone. I was perfectly hap-
plete
with
their
tiny five-
Simon's darker, intro- py if I could write plays for
the
rest
of
my
life."
story
walk-up
with the
spective side is conveyed
leaky
skylight.
throughout the book, in
From Rewrites
"I was a Giants fan;
which he recounts somber

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