He is not acclaimed for his comedies. But after you see the great Lumet dramas (my favorites are 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, The Verdict and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead), don't forget he made the subversive comedy Just Tell Me What You Want (1980), starring Alan King as a Ray Stark-like media baron and Ali McGraw as his mistress. Every time I watch it I laugh till my ribs ache. For a director who loved New York, warts, carbuncles and all, this movie shows a city just emerging from the caterpillar ignominy of financial ruin to the butterfly beauty of the go-go 1980s. The comedy in the fight scene between McGraw and King is wonderfully choreographed. As McGraw once said:" Two-three-kick, four-five-six-slap, seven-eight-nine-raincoat ? it was as specific as a dance sequence."
It's the liveliest performance McGraw ever gave, raucous and game (slapstick unlocked an energy in her that had been champing at the bit), and what a supporting cast--Myrna Loy (!), Dina Merrill, Tony Roberts, Peter Weller, Judy Kaye. Yet it never turns up on TV, just as Lumet's equally uncharacteristic* Garbo Talks (and what a supporting cast that one has) never does.
But in a career as prolific as his, some aspect is bound to be short-changed, and the more important thing is that Lumet lived a rich, long life, was productive up to the end, and of how many directors can that be said? Of how many writers, playwrights, choreographers, anybody? But with his death another link to the rough asphalt scrape and squawk of New York from the fifties to seventies is lost.
*It's as if a script intended for Herbert Ross somehow ended up in his in-tray.
Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2011/04/reading-the-tributes-to-director.html
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