February 22, 2020 – Out & About

Heartburn Starts With a Happy Marriage

The review:

Mike Nichols gives us a happy marriage that suddenly slams on its breaks in Heartburn.* I’m not a fan of Jack Nicholson** and was surprised to find him a chilled-out, easier-to-watch dude who nicely offset Meryl Streep’s performance, plus I enjoyed that darling red-headed baby.*** This is full of great lines and a great selection of 1986-era clothing, plus Kevin Spacey’s first film role, and various 80s-style ridiculous situations.

The verdict: Good

Cost: Free via Kanopy, the library’s streaming service.
Where watched: at home

Consider also watching:

When Harry Met Sally
Sleepless in Seattle
Sleeping With Other People
Marriage Story

Further sentences:

*I was under the mistaken impression that this movie was all divorce, all the time, but it begins with with the couple meeting at a wedding.
**”Are you watching The Shining?” the boyfriend asked as he caught a glimpse of Nicholson on the screen.”
“Nope,” I replied, “I’m watching a movie with the cutest baby ever!”
***Later in the film, looking at the way Meryl Streep was looking at that baby, I thought, “Is that Meryl Streep’s baby?” And it was. That’s Mamie Gummer.

Questions:

Knowing that this was based on the Nora Ephron/Carl Bernstein marriage, what do you think about Bernstein being a ladies’ man/lech?
Have you read this book?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

In Everything Is Copy (2015), Jacob Bernstein’s documentary about his mother Nora Ephron’s life and career, he reveals that contentious negotiations over the movie adaptation of her novel Heartburn extended his parents’ divorce for several years longer than most divorces take. Eventually, their divorce agreement included a stipulation that the movie was not allowed to depict the “Mark Forman” (Carl Bernstein) character as anything but a good, loving, and conscientious father (whatever his failings as a faithful husband were), and Mike Nichols had to be named as a legal signatory to the divorce.

Random bit of me trivia:

The Carly Simon song featured on this soundtrack “Coming Around Again” was played ad infinitum on the radio station my parents listened to.

Out of context, this quote sounds dirty. Jack Nicholson was talking about some food that Meryl Streep had cooked.

Space made for drivers walking but not for walkers walking

Sometimes I get off the MAX train early and walk across the Broadway Bridge to get to work. In the last few years, this situation has evolved. There used to be parking spaces that weren’t very well signaged, then the bike lane, then the car lane. Things have been rearranged into bike lane, then a space for walking, then the parking spaces, then the lane for cars. You can even see the bit of crosswalk that has been added.

So why does this bug me? Because that place for walking was made for the people who have driven their cars and parked. It is not for people walking who want to continue to the Broadway Bridge. You can see what happens here:

At the last parking space, the bike lane takes over where the walking space was. As a pedestrian, I am forced to either walk in the bike lane until I hit that crosswalk you can barely see in the distance or cross the bike line and walk in the grass.

While there are probably not a ton of people walking on this street, I think it’s important to include all modes of transportation, not just some.

Watergate. Now a board game.

Matt introduced me to Watergate, where one of us worked to expose the scandal, while the other was Nixon trying to stay in office and avoid resignation.