Episode 293: PLAY IT AS IT LAYS (1972) with Kelly Krantz

Trylove

With Trylonteer and Perkins superfan Kelly Krantz (@kransekage_)!

PLAY IT AS IT LAYS is a 1972 drama film directed by Frank Perry from a novel and screenplay by Joan Didion. The movie stars Tuesday Weld as Maria Wyeth, a depressed actress stuck in an unhappy separated marriage with director Carter Lang (played by Adam Roarke), and Anthony Perkins as BZ, a gay movie producer and friend of Maria’s who’s also unhappily married as cover for his homosexuality to a woman named Helene (played by Tammy Grimes).

Maria and Carter have decided to institutionalize their daughter, Kate, who suffers from an unspecified issue with her brain. It’s implied it was more of Carter’s decision than Maria’s — one of many things that create friction between them, along with Carter’s frequent affairs and attempts to control her, Maria’s own mental decline, his avoidance of Maria’s growing resentment with the West Coast bourgeois lifestyle in which she feels trapped. The movie follows Maria through an increasingly depressed journey as she seeks to escape Carter’s orbit, define herself, and pursue a life with her daughter on the way to being institutionalized herself.

The movie was critically divisive due to its general malaise and frenetic pacing and editing, with praise directed at Weld and Perkins’s performances (Weld won Best Actress at the Italian Film Critics Awards and was nominated for Golden Globe for her performance). It’s gone on to be recognized as a cult classic of American drama in the vein of New Hollywood, as well as an exemplary adaptation of Didion’s New Journalism style and the Californian culture of the 1970s.

**References: **

• “Killer Smile” by MH Rowe for Perisphere, the Trylon blog
• Check the calendar, preview upcoming series, and buy tickets at https://www.trylon.org/
• Contribute to Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/perisphere-blog-post-guidelines/

Find Kelly…

• On Twitter at @kransekage_
• On Letterboxd at @luckyhoss
• On Trylove episodes: WINGS OF DESIRE (1987), ARREBATO (1979), and PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE (1974), REVOLVER (1973), THE DOOM GENERATION (1995), THE NIGHT PORTER (1974), REMEMBER MY NAME (1978)

#TuesdayWeldAndAnthonyPerkins #35mm

Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music: “Heart Is Like A Wheel” by McKendree Spring.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 293: PLAY IT AS IT LAYS (1972) with Kelly Krantz

3:58 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary (under exclusive license from AG Enterprises, Ltd.)

6:13 - Kelly’s thoughts, Weld & Perkins, and what made this a “bucket list screening”

17:06 - “Life feels very fragmented” into moments both manic and tender

22:25 - As an adaptation and where its visual ambition lies

31:42 - The scene with the abortion doctor’s assistant in the Camaro

36:54 - Maria’s search for an answer paralleled in the filmic experience

49:29 - The disaffected and the affected

57:26 - The final tragic (or hopeful?) scenes

1:01:01 - Is Maria in a better place in an asylum?

1:05:44 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1972

1:06:53 - The Junk Drawer

1:13:36 - Cody’s Noteys: Play It As It Lay’s (potato chip-tangent trivia)