You Made Me Do It Again Lyrics Elaine Ellen
Neil Simon, Broadway Master of Comedy, Is Dead at 91
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The Last Discussion: Neil Simon
Neil Simon was one of Broadway'southward most successful and bankable writers, writing such striking plays as "Barefoot in the Park" and "The Odd Couple."
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"I don't know how I start a play. I probably start it with the first sentence. I know it's not going to be there for very long, but I have to become — opening the door a little chip, sticking my head in, and seeing what'southward in in that location." Neil Simon was one of the about pop, and perhaps the almost prolific, playwright in the history of American theater. He redefined one-act, using humor not simply to entertain, just to tell soulful stories almost the frictions of urban life and family intimacy. "What are y'all doing?" "What?" "Yous know the doctor said y'all're not supposed to smoke cigars anymore." "Who's smoking? Am I smoking it? Do yous encounter smoke coming from the cigar?" "But you got it in your mouth." "I'm rehearsing. I'll do the prove later." The New York Times sat down with Simon in 2008 to talk virtually his work and his life. "I started actually in the Bronx. 1927, July 4, and always thought from and then on that they were celebrating my birthday." Simon grew up in nearby Washington Heights, an enclave for working course Jews earlier the war. But his home life was terrible, with a begetter who was rarely effectually and a female parent who struggled to make ends meet. "Well, my father and mother broke up and so oftentimes that subsequently a while, it was no news to me. We would have to take in boarders to aid feed usa. They saturday at the table. My mother made dinner for them. It was actually tough for me, because I said, my male parent should be here. Not these men. They weren't un-prissy, but it was a very difficult affair to grow up with." Simon'south mode out was through his older blood brother Danny, a budding comedy author who got him started on his hereafter career. Together, they landed a chore writing gags for the 1950s goggle box legend, comedian Sid Caesar. "What is your name?" "John Baxter." "John Baxter, you're fired!" In Caesar's famous writing room, the immature Neil Simon institute himself amidst a who's who of the future of funny. Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, Mel Tolkin and a very young Woody Allen. For Simon, it was an inspiring but tough cast of characters. "My problem was the shyness. I could think of the line, simply I wasn't going to say like Mel Brooks would, 'I got it. I got it.' That'south what he would practice. I would have to sit next to Carl Reiner and whisper it. And Carl would jump upward and he says, 'Neil has it. Neil has information technology.' He says, 'The human walks in and ba-dum bum bum.' Whatsoever it was. And they liked it." "Get someone up here right away. Considering I need them. That'south fine. I know they are. You tell them. Who are yous? What are — what are you lot talking well-nigh? Let me say what I — I told everybody that's fine. Fine! All correct, talk to each other. That's right!" Like many in the writers room, Simon aspired to exercise more write jokes, but he saw firsthand how even Caesar'due south most-seasoned writers had a tough fourth dimension breaking into theater. "Mel Tolkin, who was the caput writer, said, 'I got a play. I wrote it with Lucille Kallen' — who was another writer on the show. It closed in one night. And so I say, why would I take the gall to write a play when these two really seasoned people tin can't get information technology on? So I said, I better write about what I know." Writing what he knew would lead Simon to help invent a whole new genre: the comedy of urban neuroses. His big breakthrough play and screenplay was based on Simon's life every bit a newlywed with his wife, Joan Baim. "It was about getting married and living together for the first time without knowing how to practice that. And what it's like when your married man and wife have their offset fight. And it's trauma. It's just trauma." "You're hysterical!" "I am non hysterical! I know exactly what I'k saying, Paul. Information technology's all over between us, and it's never gonna exist any good anymore." "And 'Barefoot in the Park' became an piece of cake play for me to write, because it was a loving play. It was about me and Joan. She was beautiful. She was absolutely beautiful." Simon Says he met Joan at a softball game in the Poconos, and it was beloved at first pitch. "I'g batting, and there she is pitching at me. Then I said, I really have to get a hold of one and testify her. So I swung — swung, swang, swing — at her, and hit the ball as difficult equally I could, which dribbled slowly to her. And she picked up the ball with a smile, and she only waited for me to go to offset base. And I'm saying, 'Throw information technology. Throw it volition you lot please?' And she threw it, and she beat out me out." "Officeholder. We just got married." "We married after that first summertime that we met. All the things were existent. There was a staircase that took you upwards to the meridian flooring of the building, and where the human being who spoke a strange language lived. He was on the make for Joan, who had aught to do with him." "Will you help me upward, please?" "Oh, with the greatest of physical pleasure." "And we were walking i night with our canis familiaris, Chips, in the park and information technology was a warm summertime nighttime. And she took off her shoes, and she was barefoot. And we were walking, and she said, 'Why aren't you taking off your shoes? Mine are?' And I said, 'I don't experience like it.' She said, 'No, there's something wrong with you. Y'all're agape to walk barefoot in the park.'" "Paul, you're crazy." "Then, bingo. You know, play title." Inspiration for Simon'due south next play also came from a source close to dwelling: his brother Danny, who'd recently divorced his wife and moved in with a friend named Roy Gerber to salve money. "Roy Gerber started having big fights with Danny, and I just kept watching it and watching information technology. I said, 'You know, Danny there's a play in this. And he said, 'Where? What's the play?' I said, 'These two guys having more problem with themselves than they would with their wives. Same problems. I said, one of you is the wife, ane of you is the husband.'" But nailing the script for "The Odd Couple" took a lot of trial and mistake, as Simon and director Mike Nichols discovered. "There was a scene I wrote that in the rehearsal, they laughed so hard Mike said we'd never be able to put this on, considering the audiences will die from laughter. And so we got to that scene. There wasn't a unmarried laugh in information technology. And I said, 'What happened. Mike?' He said, 'It'southward funny, just they don't similar what'southward happening. They like these people, and you're making them go in a way that is non really good for them.' And so I changed that, and we got less laughs but more cheers for the play. So I started to learn well-nigh information technology. That it's not all about the laughter. It's most the feelings that the audition gets. Do they similar these people? Practice they don't? Are they living their lives well, or are they not?" "The Odd Couple" opened on Broadway in 1965 and became Simon's most successful piece of work. The play spawned a movie starring Walter Matthau every bit the sportswriting slob Oscar Madison, and Jack Lemmon as neat-freak Felix Unger. "It's all over, Felix. The whole wedlock. Nosotros're getting an annulment. Don't y'all empathize? I don't desire to live with you lot anymore." The movie, of form, led to a popular 1970s TV serial with Jack Klugman and Tony Randall. Simon had signed away the rights for the TV series to Paramount, a decision he came to regret. But by this time, he was already perhaps Broadway'due south biggest and most bankable author. In 1966 alone, he had four shows running on Broadway at the same fourth dimension, an unrivaled record. But just as Simon was topping the earth of theater, he and Joan got devastating news. "We got up early in the morning time, went to the physician's office. He examined her. So he came back in, and he says, 'It's bad.' 'What?' 'She's got cancer.' And then I start to experience myself rolling and rolling, and you're reaching out to grab on to your life, to exist able to help her, and yous can't. You're just rolling and rolling." Joan died in 1973 at the historic period of 39. They had been married for 19 years. Her death sent Neil reeling and he immediately sought someone to make full the void, marrying four times, twice to the same woman. "I mean, other wives are the mistake you made when you're married to someone for 19 years that you promise you can be married to for sixty years. That whole period is so nighttime for me." Afterwards a number of plays about his failed marriages, Simon returned to writing about his childhood struggles in Jewish working-form New York. "What did I tell you about banging the ball? Your Aunt Blanche has a headache." "I can't stop now. It'southward a crucial moment in World Series history. The Yanks are playing the Giants." "Brighton Beach Memoirs" was the first of Simon's semi-autobiographical trilogy about a wisecracking teenager named Eugene Jerome. "It was most growing up, idolizing his older blood brother, who was going to go off to the war. And the kid didn't want him to go off to the state of war." "You always told me never to run away." "I'thousand non running away. I'm leaving. Just kids run away." "Biloxi Blues," role two of the trilogy, was based on Simon'due south own stint in the Ground forces, and won him his starting time Tony award for all-time play in 1985. "That's a mistake, Factor. Once you commencement compromising your thoughts, you're a candidate for mediocrity." One of the most memorable scenes is based on the trip to a brothel Simon made as an eager, nonetheless terrified, young virgin. "I was on that line waiting to go far — you know 15 guys waiting to get in to spiral this one adult female. And you say, 'You sure you desire to do this?'" "O.K. honey. Do your stuff." "What stuff is that?" "And you practice it. And yous come up out — all y'all think of is, I'thousand a man. I've done it." In "Broadway Leap," office three of the trilogy, the mother gives a peppery voice communication that channels the turmoil of Simon's own mother. "Is that how it works? Yous take an affair, and I'm left with the selection of forgetting virtually it or living alone the rest of my life? Male child, it's then elementary for you, isn't it?" "Writing that was hard and neat, considering I was making a character who never really spoke open, only she was not that clear. I mean, my mother could never come out with a soliloquy like that and tear him apart." Merely information technology was his play "Lost in Yonkers" that ultimately took Simon from the realm of comedy into serious, critically acclaimed drama. The play and the feature movie is the story of two young boys forced to alive with their domineering grandmother and mentally challenged aunt, a scenario similar to what Simon faced during his ain childhood exiles. "You made information technology so clear. You just didn't want to be touched with love." "You don't only choose information technology and say, 'I think I'll do a serious play.' You know, you say, 'I want information technology to be bigger than what I've been writing.' And I don't demand to have it being funny all the time. When you have the heartbeat of the play there, you tin can be funny over here and you tin exist funny over hither every bit long equally you don't bear upon the heartbeat." "Lost in Yonkers" would exist Simon's final major Broadway hit. It earned him the Pulitzer Prize. "Possibly everybody else here, merely not me. You empathise?" "I never retrieve about getting better and then that I volition exist a better playwright so that I will win a Pulitzer Prize, then that I will practice this — never recollect well-nigh that. You but think, get the play in that location. Maybe it'll have a life. Possibly you've done something adept for other people. Hopefully you've done something for yourself, the actors, whatsoever. It's only, you desire to get the writing out. You want to get the things that you remember almost life onto the stage."
Neil Simon, the playwright whose name was synonymous with Broadway one-act and commercial success in the theater for decades, and who helped redefine popular American humor with an emphasis on the frictions of urban living and the agonizing conflicts of family intimacy, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 91.
His death, at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, was announced by his publicist, Neb Evans. The cause was complications of pneumonia, he said. Mr. Simon was besides reported to have had Alzheimer'due south affliction.
Early in his career, Mr. Simon wrote for television greats, including Phil Silvers and Sid Caesar. Later he wrote for the movies, likewise. But it was as a playwright that he earned his lasting fame, with a long series of expertly tooled laugh machines that kept his proper name on Broadway marquees nearly nonstop throughout the late 1960s and '70s.
Beginning with the breakthrough hits "Barefoot in the Park" (1963) and "The Odd Couple" (1965) and continuing with popular successes like "Plaza Suite" (1968), "The Prisoner of 2d Artery" (1971) and "The Sunshine Boys" (1974), Mr. Simon ruled Broadway when Broadway was still worth ruling.
From 1965 to 1980, his plays and musicals racked up more nine,000 performances, a record not even remotely touched by whatever other playwright of the era. In 1966 alone, he had four Broadway shows running simultaneously.
He too owned a Broadway theater for a spell in the 1960s, the Eugene O'Neill, and in 1983 had a unlike Broadway theater named afterwards him, a rare award for a living playwright.
For all their popularity with audiences, Mr. Simon'south peachy successes in the first years of his fame rarely earned wide critical acclaim, and Broadway revivals of "The Odd Couple" in 2005 and "Barefoot in the Park" in 2006 did little to change the general view that his early on work was most notable for its surefire conceits and snappy dial lines. In the introduction to one of his play collections, Mr. Simon quoted the critic Clive Barnes as once writing, "Neil Simon is destined to remain rich, successful and underrated."
Merely Mr. Simon gained a firmer purchase on disquisitional respect in the 1980s with his darker-hued semi-autobiographical trilogy, "Brighton Beach Memoirs" (1983), "Biloxi Blues" (1985) and "Broadway Leap" (1986). These comedy-dramas were admired for the mode they explored the tangle of love, acrimony and desperation that bound together — and drove autonomously — a Jewish working-class family unit, equally viewed from the perspective of the youngest son, a restless wisecracker with an heart on showbiz fame.
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"The writer at final begins to examine himself honestly, without compromises," Frank Rich wrote of "Biloxi Blues" in The New York Times, "and the upshot is his most persuasively serious effort to engagement — not to mention his funniest play since the golden age" of his offset decade.
In 1991, Mr. Simon won a Tony Award as well every bit the ultimate American playwriting award, the Pulitzer Prize, for "Lost in Yonkers," some other autobiographical comedy, this i nigh a fiercely withholding mother and her emotionally and intellectually underdeveloped daughter. It was also his last major success on Broadway.
Mr. Simon and Woody Allen, who both worked in the 1950s writing for Mr. Caesar (along with Mel Brooks, Larry Gelbart and Carl Reiner, amidst others), were probably as significant in shaping the currents of American comedy in the 1960s and '70s, although their styles, their favored mediums and the critical reception of their piece of work diverged mightily.
Mr. Simon was the populist whose accessible, joke-packed plays about the anxieties of everyday characters could tickle funny bones in theaters across the country also as in 1,200-seat Broadway houses. Mr. Allen was the darling of the urban art-house cinema and the critical classes who created one-act from the minutiae of his own angst.
But together they helped make the one-act of urban neurosis — distinctly Jewish-inflected — as American as the homespun humor of "Leave It to Beaver." Mr. Simon's early on plays, often centered on an combative couple of one kind or another wielding cutting one-liners in a New York apartment, helped fix the template for the explosion of sitcoms on network television receiver in the 1970s. (The long-running goggle box prove based on his "Odd Couple" was one of the best, although a bum business deal meant that Mr. Simon earned little coin from it.)
A line can be drawn between the taut plot threads of Mr. Simon's early comedies — a slob and a neatnik form an irascible all-male wedlock in "The Odd Couple," newlyweds bicker in a new apartment in "Barefoot in the Park," a laid-off fellow has a meltdown in "The Prisoner of 2d Avenue" — and the "nothing"-inspired, kvetching-character-based comedy of the seminal 1990s sitcom "Seinfeld."
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Mr. Allen and Mr. Simon, who shared roots in the urban Jewish lower centre classes, were also united by the archetype funnyman'southward ability to inspire abdomen laughs by the millions in other people while managing to find the dark clouds hovering insistently over their ain fates, however apparently successful they might seem.
Mr. Simon once wrote of budgeted Mr. Allen in a restaurant when both men were at the pinnacle of their success to offer congratulations on Mr. Allen's "Manhattan." How was he feeling? "Oh, all right," Mr. Allen answered. Mr. Simon wrote, "When I saw his bleak expression, I saw my own reflected agony." This, when Mr. Simon himself had two hit shows on Broadway, some other play set up for rehearsals and two movies fix for production. (Plus an ulcer, of course.)
Agony is at the root of comedy, and for Mr. Simon it was the agony of an unhappy Depression-era childhood that inspired much of his finest work. And it was the agony of living in Los Angeles that drove his conclusion to break free from the grind of cranking out jokes for Jerry Lewis on television and make his ain name. As he wrote in his 1996 autobiography, "Rewrites" (the first of ii volumes), the plush comforts of Hollywood living might extend your life span, but "the take hold of was when you lot eventually did die, information technology surely wouldn't be from laughing."
Family unit Tension
Born on July 4, 1927, in the Bronx, Marvin Neil Simon was the son of a garment industry salesman, Irving Simon, who abandoned the family more than once during his childhood, leaving Mr. Simon'southward female parent, May, to take care of Neil and his older brother, Danny. When the family was intact, the mood was darkened by constant battles betwixt the parents.
The tensions of the family unit, which moved to Washington Heights when Mr. Simon was 5, would notice their way into many of his plays, notably the tardily trilogy simply also the early on comedies, including his first play, "Come Blow Your Horn" (1961), about a swain leaving home to join his older brother, a bachelor and ladies' human being. And when the family finally broke up for proficient, the immature Mr. Simon went to live with cousins while his brother was sent to live with an aunt, circumstances reflected in "Lost in Yonkers."
"When an audience laughed, I felt fulfilled," Mr. Simon wrote in "Rewrites." "It was a sign of approval, of being accepted. Coming as I did from a babyhood where laughter in the firm meant security, but was seldom heard as often every bit a door slamming every time my father took another yr's absence from us, the laughter that came my way in the theater was nourishment."
Danny Simon, older by eight years, was the signal influence on Neil's career. "The fact is, I probably never would have been a author if it were not for Danny," Mr. Simon wrote. "Once, when I was xv years erstwhile, he said to me, 'You lot're going to be the funniest comedy writer in America.' Why? Based on what? How funny could I be at fifteen?"
Mr. Simon graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx and attended New York University as an enlistee in the Army Air Forces Air Reserve training plan. He continued his studies at the University of Denver while assigned to a base nearby. (His military experience inspired the second play in his late trilogy, "Biloxi Dejection.")
At the time, Danny had begun working in publicity at Warner Bros. in New York. Neil joined him there as a clerk after his belch from the Air Forcefulness. Together they began writing boob tube and radio scripts, eventually making $1,600 a week providing gags and sketches for Mr. Silvers, Jerry Lester, Jackie Gleason and Mr. Caesar on "Your Show of Shows" and later on "Caesar'southward 60 minutes."
Epitome
"It was a existent learning process," Mr. Simon said of his days among the Caesarians, a group that has become a boob tube fable and inspired Mr. Simon's 1993 comedy "Laughter on the 23rd Floor," starring Nathan Lane. "We were wearied," he said, adding, "On Monday, y'all would come in knowing you had six new skits to do."
The Simon brothers also wrote weekly revues for Camp Tamiment, the summer resort in the Poconos. Information technology was there that Neil Simon fell in dearest with Joan Baim, a dancer and advisor. Past the cease of the summer, they were married.
A Broadway Proper name
"Come Accident Your Horn," the play Mr. Simon wrote to escape the slavery of gag writing for television comics, ran for 677 performances and gained him connections and discover. But information technology was with "Barefoot in the Park," a comedy inspired by his and his young married woman'southward experiences living in a fifth-floor walk-up in Greenwich Village, that Mr. Simon became a Broadway name.
It was the outset Broadway show directed past Mike Nichols, so best known for his one-act work with Elaine May.
Mr. Nichols would go along to become one of Mr. Simon's most frequent collaborators, credited past Mr. Simon with helping to shape his early plays through the tryouts and rehearsals. Mr. Nichols won his first Tony Laurels for directing "The Odd Couple." He also directed "Plaza Suite," with George C. Scott and Maureen Stapleton, and "The Prisoner of 2nd Avenue," with Peter Falk and Lee Grant. Mr. Nichols died in 2014.
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"Barefoot in the Park" made a star of Robert Redford, who was cast aslope Elizabeth Ashley. It played for shut to 4 years and made a hot commodity of Mr. Simon in Hollywood. His agent, Irving Lazar, better known as Swifty, sold the picture show rights for $400,000. (Mr. Lazar asked Mr. Simon whether he'd be willing to sell the play for $300,000. Mr. Simon jumped at the offering, and Mr. Lazar kept the rest.)
The film, with a screenplay by Mr. Simon, and with Mr. Redford and Jane Fonda in the starring roles, became a hit when it was released in 1967 at Radio Metropolis Music Hall, breaking the box-office record. That record would be smashed past the movie version of "The Odd Couple." Both movies were directed by Gene Saks, who would direct many of Simon'due south later plays, including the "Brighton Embankment" trilogy and "Lost in Yonkers." (Mr. Saks died in 2015.)
Mr. Simon's screenwriting career included dozens of titles, among them many adaptations of his plays. In add-on to "Barefoot in the Park" and "The Odd Couple" (with the original stage star, Walter Matthau, and Jack Lemmon replacing Art Carney), he wrote the screenplays for "The Prisoner of Second Avenue," with Mr. Lemmon and Anne Bancroft, and "The Sunshine Boys," with Mr. Matthau and George Burns, every bit well as "Brighton Embankment Memoirs," "Biloxi Blues" and "Lost in Yonkers," amidst others.
He also wrote original movies, including, "The Out-of-Towners," the period spoof "Murder by Death," "The Good day Girl," "The Cheap Detective," "Max Dugan Returns," "The Slugger'southward Married woman," "Merely When I Laugh," based on his play "The Gingerbread Lady," and most notably "The Heartbreak Kid," a black comedy, based on a story by Bruce Jay Friedman, directed past Elaine May and starring Charles Grodin and Cybill Shepherd.
Richard Dreyfuss won an Oscar for his functioning in "The Goodbye Girl" as an impish, irritating thespian with whom an unemployed dancer played by Marsha Stonemason moves in. The movie received a full of nine Academy Award nominations, including one for Mr. Simon'southward screenplay. (He received iv Oscar screenplay nominations in his career only never won.)
Ms. Stonemason was Mr. Simon's wife at the fourth dimension. His get-go wife, Joan, died of cancer in 1973. He met Ms. Bricklayer at an audition, and they were married four months later. He wrote about their relationship in the play "Chapter Two," which was made into a pic starring Ms. Mason and James Caan.
"It'southward my favorite play for many reasons," Mr. Simon one time said of "Chapter Ii." "It was cathartic for me. In the 2 years Marsha and I were married, I gave her a rough fourth dimension — still trying to concur on to my relationship with Joan. Marsha is beautiful and talented, and I plant means to observe fault with her. One night in California, everything erupted into a terrible fight. I realized then what I was doing. That's how I wrote the play."
Mr. Simon, who lived in Manhattan, was married five times. Afterward his divorce from Ms. Mason, he married the extra Diane Lander in 1987. They divorced a year later but remarried in 1990, then divorced again. Mr. Simon married the actress Elaine Joyce in 1999. She survives him, forth with his daughters Ellen Simon and Nancy Simon from his first marriage and his daughter Bryn Lander Simon from his marriage to Ms. Lander. He is also survived past three grandchildren and i bully-grandson. Danny Simon died in 2005.
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Mr. Simon wrote the book for three successful Broadway musicals in the 1960s. "Little Me" (1962), with music by Cy Coleman and lyrics past Carolyn Leigh, was directed past Cy Feuer and Bob Fosse, choreographed by Mr. Fosse and featured Mr. Simon's sometime boss Sid Caesar playing the multiple loves of an adventuress named Belle Poitrine. "Sweet Charity" (1966) reunited Mr. Simon with Mr. Fosse for a musical based on Federico Fellini'south "Nights of Cabiria," with music by Mr. Coleman and lyrics past Dorothy Fields. "Promises, Promises," based on the movie "The Apartment," featured music past Burt Bacharach and lyrics by Hal David.
"Promises, Promises" was Mr. Simon'south biggest musical success, running 1,281 performances. It was revived on Broadway in 2010.
Mr. Simon returned to musicals in 1981 with "They're Playing Our Song," featuring music by Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics past Carole Bayer Sager. His last musical book was for an unsuccessful stage accommodation of "The Goodbye Daughter" in 1993.
In his most productive period, Mr. Simon wrote plays at the charge per unit of almost one a year and produced almost 30 over his career. Many of the later works, from the 1990s and beyond, were tepidly received and had cursory Broadway runs. "Proposals" (1997), a quasi-Chekhovian comedy, and "45 Seconds From Broadway" (2001), his last new play on Broadway, a tribute to a fabled Rialto coffee shop, were quick flops. But "The Dinner Party" (2000) ran for virtually a year.
Mr. Simon made headlines in 2003 when Mary Tyler Moore abruptly left his play "Rose'southward Dilemma" (2003) at Manhattan Theater Club. That turned out to exist his last produced play. He too made news with the announcement of a kidney transplant in 2004. The donor was Mr. Evans, his longtime press amanuensis and friend.
Fighting for Respect
Most recently, in the autumn of 2009, Mr. Simon expressed surprise and dismay at the quick closing of a much-anticipated Broadway revival of his "Brighton Beach Memoirs." It was intended to run in repertory with "Broadway Leap" but airtight in a week when it received mixed reviews. "I'm dumbfounded," he said. "After all these years, I still don't go how Broadway works or what to make of our culture."
It was a poignant comment from the man who more than or less defined Broadway achievement for a couple of decades. Merely while quick flops were relatively rare in his career, Mr. Simon e'er fought to gain disquisitional respect. Although he was nominated for 17 Tony Awards, he won just 3: for author of "The Odd Couple," and twice for best play, for "Biloxi Dejection" and "Lost in Yonkers."
"I know how the public sees me, because people are ever coming up to me and saying, 'Thanks for the expert times,'" Mr. Simon told The Times in 1991. "But all the success has demeaned me in a style. Critically, the thinking seems to be that if you write too many hits, they can't be that good."
Paradigm
Looking back, Mr. Simon wrote with a however starry-eyed joy of his determination to commence on a playwriting career: "For a human who wants to be his ain principal, to depend on no one else, to brand life conform to his own visions rather than to follow the blueprints of others, playwriting is the perfect occupation. To sit in a room alone for six or seven or 10 hours, sharing the fourth dimension with characters that you created, is sheer heaven.
"And if not heaven," that chief craftsman of the well-timed joke added, "it's at to the lowest degree an escape from hell."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/26/obituaries/neil-simon-dead.html
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