While channel surfing the other day I came across The Goodbye Girl on TCM.
I haven’t seen this film in many years and it was always a favorite of mine although I really can’t explain why. Richard Dreyfuss was on a roll then, fresh from Jaws and Close Encounters, the song was constantly on the radio. I guess the film just brings me back to seventh grade.
Seventh grade?
Now I feel old.
(I was 3 when it came out.)
I thought it was kind of cute. The odd thing is that I feel it really has a “filmed stage play” feeling to it, even though it didn’t originate as a stage play. I guess that’s just the Neil Simoniac quality I’m seeing.
I’ve never seen the movie, but I have seen two different productions of the stage musical which I quite enjoyed.
I liked it. I am a big fan of Neil Simon, who seems to have mostly dropped off the radar. But for years he ruled Broadway, and many successful films were made out of his shows. Some of them (Barefoot in the Park) are painful to watch nowadays (although I still like the play). Come B;low Your Horn, both play and film, are horribly dated. But I think The Odd Couple still holds up, as do many of his others. I saw a production of God’s Favorite a while back that was hilarious.
I’ve never seen it.
But I do know that Richard Dreyfuss is sick of the motherfucking panties hanging on the motherfucking rod.
Gosh, I haven’t even thought about it since I saw it, once, back in the day. But I remember I liked it. Guess I should look it up and watch it again.
I tend to be the type of person who watches a film only once…maybe twice. there are very few films that I see enough times to really be immersed in it to the point of remembering lines!
A nice light-weight play. Dreyfuss did an excellent job of portraying the tribulations of an actor.
I love that movie! Marsha Mason and Richard Dreyfuss were great, and Quinn Cummings was the perfect too-wise-for-her-age kid. Like kittenblue, I seldom watch movies more than once, but this one I have seen three or four times, and now I want to see it again.
I wonder what ever happened to Quinn Cummings? According to Wikipedia, invented a baby carrier and is writing her second book.
I just stumbled across this dvd on amazon last week and purchased it. It really is a classic.
I sleep in the nude. A-buff-o. Winter or summer, rain or snow, with the windows OPEN.
Now what’s this about The Goodbye Girl?
Thanks to SNL, my brain tries to treacherously replace Dreyfuss with Belushi whenever I think of The Goodbye Girl.
For a time in the '80’s I was in a fencing club with Quinn Cummings as she was going through her angry former-child-actress stage. Mostly a nice, smart girl who was never going to be Hollywood-pretty enough to make the transition.
Nobody noticed I stood on a poker table. What are you? A Critic?
I loved that movie.
Saw it for the first time a few months ago, also thanks to TCM, though I was in fifth or sixth grade when it came out. 
Enjoyed it.
I love that movie.
I follow Quinn Cummings on Twitter and not only is she a nice person, she’s funny as hell. I often find myself laughing or at least grinning at her tweets. She’s very interested in homeschooling but she talks about lots of subjects.
I loved this movie when it came out. Haven’t seen it in a while so I don’t know if it would age well for me or not. Dreyfuss and Mason did a great job playing somewhat world-weary adults fumbling around both in their careers and in their romance.
I’m so glad I opened this thread. There’s something I say whenever I really don’t like something and a few days ago I was thinking “where did I ever hear that?”. I mean I knew it wasn’t original. I could not place it at all.
And it’s from The Goodbye Girl. And it’s Richard Drefuss’ character moaning about how bad the play that Marsha Mason and her daughter had seen.
“IT WAS PUTRID! Capital “P”! Capital “U”! Capital “TRID”!”
Now I’m off to Netflix that movie up, b/c I haven’t seen it in decades!
I was 16 when this came out, and I wanted very badly to have that apartment when I turned 19 and moved to the big city.
Neither came to pass.
UT
You’re not the only one who can scream “Rape!”, ya know?
I remember seeing this movie on On-TV (boy, that’s dating me) and I thought it was hysterical. Dreyfus playing Richard III as “an Elizabethan fruit-fly” is hilarious. And he had the best chemistry with Marsha Mason. I have to watch this every couple of years.
Magic.