Talk:The Sunshine Boys

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The classic version and the remake[edit]

The 1975 film with Walter Matthau and George Burns is well written, well acted, and hilarious. The 1995 version with Peter Falk and Woody Allen is an abomination.

In addition to Falk's horrendous performance, compare the following two exchanges involving the visit of Willie Clark's nephew/niece (Richard Benjamin as Ben in 1975, Sarah Jessica Parker as Nancy in 1995) to Willie's apartment during the winter (italics added):

1975
BEN: "Geez, it's cold in here. Don't they ever send up any steam?"
WILLIE: "In July. In July they send up the steam."

1995
NANCY: "Geez, it's cold in here. Don't they ever send up any steam?"
WILLIE: "In July. In July, during a heat wave, they send up the steam."

Anyone who can find this reference to add?[edit]

In the late 1980s, the magazine Dramatics, a publication of the International Thespian Society, used The Sunshine Boys as an example of well-written "high-context dialogue," in which exposition is accomplished subtly by having two characters with a long history together talk about things they know in common and letting the audience gather for itself the meaning of these things and what it tells them about the characters. I'd like to be able to cite this, but can't find the original source. Lawikitejana 19:57, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lead-in; headings[edit]

I broke up the lead in to conform to WP:LEAD. -- Ssilvers 21:00, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What a weird article; it's all lead, no article, and didn't conform to WP:LEAD. There's also no synopsis. I went back in history, and found an entire article, but merging new content to get back to that is a lot for me to take on now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:08, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See my talk page for some background. If you think this article is weird, take a look at Hello, Dolly! (musical). Almost all the text is in the lede. The table of contents is almost at the end of the article. Casey Abell 21:14, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh. I see. Well, this is way out of whack and needs to be fixed. How pervasive is it? I guess I'd better go look at some other musicals. If they're mostly written this way, no musical article will ever make FA. Hello Dolly is a mess; there's no article at all. What happened to WP:LEAD? Are there no guidelines pertaining to these articles? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:25, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at the Hello Dolly history, you can find some good information that was deleted. Hey! Maybe we can revive the WP:MUSICALS project! Best regards, -- Ssilvers 22:00, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Weird, there used to be a real article there. But merging the two now will be quite a mess; is this occurring throughout the musicals? Straight plays? Films? What's up here? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:50, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"There used to a be a real article there"??? May I suggest you compare the mess that existed at [1] to what the article is now? I don't believe anyone could think that previous jumble of information was not enhanced by my editing everything into a neat, concise, well-written article about the play and subsequent film adaptation with everything laid out in chronological order, as it should be. Sslivers is continuing to skate on very thin ice with his repeated efforts to stir up trouble. He had no interest in any of the dozens of articles I've enhanced until I worked on them. He had ample opportunity to improve them himself before I did but never made any effort to do so. Why is he so passionate about them now?

May I suggest that before you quickly take sides with him you compare [2] to [3], [4] to [5], [6] to [7], or [8] to [9]? These are just four examples of dozens of articles that were nothing until I took the time to make them Wiki-worthy. What's more valuable to the reader, style or substance? Personally, if I'm seeking info about a subject, I'm more interested in detail than how it looks. That Ssilvers continues to carp about formats instead of spending his time in a more worthwhile manner is a mystery to me. SFTVLGUY2 13:00, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see you have fine copyediting skills, SFTV, and have done good work on many articles. Having said that, I don't "take sides" with any given editor; I take sides with Wikipedia guidelines and established consensus. Unfortunately, it's pretty clear that most of the Musicals articles I've looked at don't conform with guidelines at all; none of them would be eligible in their current shape for WP:FA, much less WP:GA. Please do have a look at WP:LEAD, and compare with any number of current Good articles of Featured articles. BOTH style and substance are important to the reader; there's no need to sacrifice style for substance. Since there is much work to be done here, I won't be digging back into diffs to understand what you frame as a personal difference with SSilvers; I can see the articles and I can see that there is a lot of work ahead to bring them to the established guidelines. Please keep personal issues out of the discussion, and focus on WP:MOS, WP:LEAD and other long-established consensus on Wiki articles. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:03, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Substandard writing[edit]

If effort is being put into fixing up this article, may I suggest that a serious copy-editor be brought on board? When I see this, the second sentence, I worry:

"It focuses on aging Al Lewis and Willy Clark, a one-time vaudevillian team known as "Lewis and Clark" who, over the course of forty-odd years, not only grew to hate each other but never spoke to each other off-stage throughout the the final year of their act."

Aging someone brings to mind active measures to make them look older. Insert "the" before "aging".
"Forty-odd" is too informal; try "some 40 years", or just "four decades". MoS allows big quantities like this without "about" or "approximately".
"Vaudevillian" should be linked on first occurrence.
"Not only ... but" is grammatically "marked"; is such emphasis necessary here? Why not just "year, grew to hate one another and, in the final year of their act, refused to speak with each other off-stage"?

That's ONE sentence. This does no justice to the topic. Tony 22:22, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The plot section…[edit]

…seems to be written based on a different version of the play to that which I saw today (the Savoy Theatre production with deVito and Griffiths as Willie Clark and Al Lewis resepctively). The story isn’t of two men who grew to hate each other, it’s about one of them resenting the other. It seems quite clear that Clark built up the hate internally: unlike Lewis, he didn’t take any joy in performing comedy, he didn’t have the skills which Lewis had naturally, he didn’t know when to get out of the business, and wasn’t able to cope with life after Lewis. Lewis might be a little insensitive to Clark’s feelings, but Clark is far more insensitive to Lewis and his nephew in their efforts towards him. He takes everything as a personal slight: Clark thinks that Lewis strives to spit on him when talking, when Lewis says that it is accidental; Clark thinks that Lewis is conspiring to undermine him by placing furniture in the wrong place during their rehearsals, when he has just placed a chair slightly askew. Add to this the fact that there is no broadcast for them to have shenannigans at, as suggested in the precis, but an aborted studio run-through during which Clark has a heart attack (there is a clear indication of this as you hear the announcer of the actual show play in a recording of the sketch they performed the night that Lewsi left the act), followed by scenes showing the recuperation of Willie, and a reconcilliation with Ben and Al as he finally faces retirement – which makes me wonder if the play has been re-vamped for this London production? Jock123 (talk) 18:07, 26 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Poking[edit]

The Plot section contains this:

One of the running gags in “The Sunshine Boys” involves Albertson's resentment over having been constantly poked in the chest by his partner's all‐too‐emphatic forefinger in the course of their countless routines on stage. Albertson's Willie Clark cries, “I had a black and blue hole in my chest. He gave me the finger for 43 years!”

So, was this running gag part of the play as written by Neil Simon or was this added by actor Jack Albertson? – Tea2min (talk) 09:22, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]