A-Z GUIDE TO MOVIES AND TV SHOWS PARODIED BY MAD, CRACKED, CRAZY, ETC. UP TO 1996. THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS. SPOILERS AND OTHER NON-SEQUITURS, TOO. SOMETIMES THESE THINGS HAVE WORDS OR SITUATIONS WE DON'T USE ANYMORE. YOU KNOW, 'CAUSE THEY'RE OLD.
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Tuesday, January 11, 2022
THE HEARTBURN KID
THE HEARTBREAK KID (1972)
dir: Elaine May
THE HEARTBURN KID
MAD #162, October 1973
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker
The movie begins at the wedding of Lenny (Charles Grodin) and Lila (Jeannie Berlin). In the opening panel one of the guests at the wedding is director Elaine May. After they get married, Lila and Lennie drive on their honeymoon from New York to Miami, stopping over for a hotel stay on the way.
After being married, Lenny realizes he's not into it. The first sign he sees of it not working out is his seeing her eat. Jeannie Berlin was Elaine May's daughter.
They're on the beach and Lenny meets Kelly Corcoran (Cybill Shepherd), a midwestern shiksa, and immediately falls for her. The way they meet and fall in love here is different than in the movie. In the movie, Lila is taking too long to get ready, Lenny goes downstairs without her, and meets Kelly in those ten minutes, when he's lying on the beach and she says he's on her spot (what they're referring to in the fourth panel), then Lila comes down and the newlyweds spend the rest of the day together. Lila's sunburn comes first, then the affair. Since Lila's too burnt to leave her hotel room, Lenny sees this an opportunity to spend time with Kelly.
Lenny lies and says he's going to meet an old army buddy but instead sees Kelly's family at the bar of the hotel where they're staying. Kelly's father (Eddie Albert) immediately doesn't like him. He keeps promising Lila he's going to take her out to dinner, but he always makes up excuses. Kelly invites Lenny to go with her family on their yacht and the father tries to ditch him.
Lenny tries to sell himself to Kelly's family and the father hates him even more when he confesses that he's already married. That night he finally goes out to dinner with Lila and lets her down. She goes back to New York and he moves to Minneapolis to be with Kelly. He goes to her house and then tracks her down at the college she's attending. She just saw it all as a fling while vacationing, but he keeps persisting.
Lenny has dinner with the Corcorans and the father still hates him. Mr. Corcoran brings Lenny to his den after dinner and tells him he sees through his talk about how Midwesterners are down-to-earth and will pay him off to leave them alone. He refuses the money in the real version, but in this version the punchline is he marries into the Corleone family from The Godfather. Pictured in the last panel are Marlon Brando, Morgana King, Talia Shire, James Caan, John Cazale, Robert Duvall, and Al Pacino.
A remake was made in 2007 by the Farrelly Brothers after they jumped the shark.
Charles Grodin/Elaine May week continues tomorrow with three Heaven Can Wait parodies... No, just kidding about the commemoration part. It's only a coincidence this movie and the one I'm posting tomorrow happen to have both those names associated and are next to each other in the alphabet. I don't think there was ever a parody of Ishtar.
Elaine May pops up in the splash panel; she's the one asking about the "strange interruption". (The likeness comes from the poster for her earlier film, A New Leaf.)
Unfun fact: this movie is not commercially available anywhere, because the studio that made it got bought by pharmaceutical company Bristol-Meyers Squibb, which not long thereafter abandoned its foray into show biz; they've been sitting on this (and a bunch of other films they own) ever since.
On page 4, panel 1, is beach bum Henry Kissinger.
Finally, I've got a mystery. There's a random guy on page 6, panel 5. I don't know who he is. But I did notice that he pops up again a year later in Mad's parody of Serpico (last page, panel 3). I can't think of anything that might link the two films. Maybe it's someone on Mad's staff?
Elaine May pops up in the splash panel; she's the one asking about the "strange interruption". (The likeness comes from the poster for her earlier film, A New Leaf.)
ReplyDeleteUnfun fact: this movie is not commercially available anywhere, because the studio that made it got bought by pharmaceutical company Bristol-Meyers Squibb, which not long thereafter abandoned its foray into show biz; they've been sitting on this (and a bunch of other films they own) ever since.
On page 4, panel 1, is beach bum Henry Kissinger.
Finally, I've got a mystery. There's a random guy on page 6, panel 5. I don't know who he is. But I did notice that he pops up again a year later in Mad's parody of Serpico (last page, panel 3). I can't think of anything that might link the two films. Maybe it's someone on Mad's staff?