📚 NeMLA 2024 Presentation: Thoughts 

In March, I presented a paper called "'Isn't that a little excessive?: The Problem of Reworking The Heartbreak Kid" on the NeMLA panel titled "Adaptation, Genre, and Excess." It is rather fitting that this paper was "adapted" from my earlier presentation at LCLC. I hope that, with feedback from LCLC, this paper was much-improved before this presentation. While at LCLC I focused on Lenny and how he was changed for the remake, this paper focused on Lila and the changes made to her character instead. Together, I hope that feedback on both these presentations will make my future submission to a journal the best it can be. 

     Elaine May’s The Heartbreak Kid (1972) was a success, even earning a handful of award nominations. Though the film was a success, and now cult hit, it certainly has its flaws. Audiences today might be appalled at the main character Lenny’s behavior as he takes his wife Lila on a honeymoon and abandons her in the hotel room to chase after another woman, Kelly, and eventually marry her instead. The initial film was telling a rather complicated story about Jewishness, one of rejecting and accepting a heritage (a Jewish lead chasing after a “shiksa,” a non-Jewish, WASPish woman), one of heartbreak and the failings of ceaselessly chasing after satisfaction; but Lenny was undoubtedly mean, sexist, and creepy. While the film does not ask the audience to side with Lenny, Bobby and Peter Farrelly feared this might be the case when remaking the film in 2007, 35 years later. In an effort to allow the audience to go with their instinct to side with Ben Stiller’s version of the character and make it a more traditional romantic comedy, they ripped the story of all of its nuance: they renamed him Eddie and removed the Jewish themes, eliminated all aspects of Lenny’s character that made him complex, and worse, they made his wife, Lila, instead of a kind, gentle, innocent victim of Lenny’s choices, into a violent maniac that pushes him to make those choices. These changes speak to shifting cultural values, and some values (particularly the film’s treatment of women) that had not shifted all that much. In this presentation, I will examine what each film brings to the table in hopes of understanding what the original film is trying to say and why altering it to this extent leaves the audience wondering, among other things: “isn’t that a little excessive?”

Date and Time: March 8, 4:45-6:15

The panel I was on, which featured Shane Weathers, a good though recent friend of mine, was fascinating. Shane spoke about the Scream franchise and how it blends genres, others spoke about adapting Shakespeare and adapting the Bluebeard myths. It was a pleasure and an honor to be on this NeMLA panel!