Little Murders
[3] Based on the stage play of the same name by Jules Feiffer, it is the story of a woman, Patsy (Rodd), who brings home her boyfriend, Alfred (Gould), to meet her severely dysfunctional family amidst a series of random shootings, garbage strikes and electrical outages ravaging their New York City neighborhood.Patsy Newquist is a 27-year-old interior designer who lives in a New York City that is rife with street crime, noise, obscene phone calls, power blackouts and unsolved homicides.When she sees a defenseless man being attacked by street thugs, she intervenes, but is surprised when the passive victim doesn't even bother to thank her.She ends up attracted to the man, Alfred Chamberlain, a photographer of excrement, but finds that he is emotionally vacant, barely able to feel pain or pleasure.Patsy's eccentric family is surprised when she announces their intention to wed, then amazed when their marriage ceremony conducted by the existential Rev.Determined to discover why her new husband is the way he is, Patsy sends Alfred to Chicago to visit his parents, who he left at 17 years of age, with a questionnaire about his childhood.Mr. Feiffer gives over the business of suggesting serious comment from inside a lazy, lunatic stance, and like a too successfully reformed gag man, goes straight.[13] This failure was followed by a successful London production by the Royal Shakespeare Company, directed by Christopher Morahan at the Aldwych Theatre.It was revived in 1969 by Circle in the Square in New York City, directed by Arkin with a cast that included Linda Lavin, Vincent Gardenia, and Fred Willard.[21] In January 1969, Elliott Gould announced he had formed his own production company with Jack Brodsky and that they would make two films: The Assistant, from a novel by Bernard Malamud, and Little Murders.He added new scenes, including new characters such as Alfred Chamberlain's parents (played by John Randolph and Doris Roberts)."[30] Richard Zanuck, head of Fox, who had made MASH and Move with Gould, agreed to finance the film for $1.4 million.[24] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a perfect four stars and wrote, "One of the reasons it works, and is indeed a definitive reflection of America's darker moods, is that it breaks audiences down into isolated individuals, vulnerable and uncertain.But 'Little Murders' usually is funny—in its great harangues and sermons, in its superlative cast, and in Arkin's direct intelligence in handling most of the dramatic moments."[38][39] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called the film "brilliantly successful" and "a remarkable debut for Arkin as a movie maker."[40] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote that the film "has good lines and bits of performance (especially by Miss Wilson and Vincent Gardenia as the elder Newquists and Don Sutherland as a hippie minister), but it doesn't have a consistent, unifying point of view.