To Absent Friends - Tony Roberts

Tony Roberts

1939-2025

The news arrived yesterday that actor Tony Roberts had died at the age of 85.  As his New York Times obituary pointed out, Roberts is best known for his roles in six Woody Allen films, usually playing Allen's best friend who tries to keep all of Woody's characters' various neuroses in check.  He also had an accomplished career on stage in New York, which is how he met Allen in the first place.  The two became fast friends well beyond their professional relationship.  Roberts' IMDB profile lists 68 acting credits in both feature films and television.

Perhaps his most notable role came in "Annie Hall" when he played the best friend of Allen's Alvy Singer.  He played an actor who moved on to Hollywood and was constantly trying to get Alvy to abandon New York City and come to California.  Alvy, of course, resisted, and it led to this great piece of dialog:

ALVY:  You're an actor.  You should be doing Shakespeare in the Park.

ROB: I did Shakespeare in the Park, Max.  I got mugged.  I was playing Richard the Second and two guys in leather jackets stole my leotard.

( I tried to find a clip of that scene on YouTube, but was unsuccessful.)

And it was Roberts' character in that movie who also introduced the acronym "VPL" when observing certain facets of how women were dressed at at Hollywood party.

I can also remember Roberts playing the Deputy Mayor of New York City in the original version of "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three".  He was terrific in the part.

I always hate to it see when someone like this leaves us.

RIP Tony Roberts

Roberts, Allen, and Diane Keaton

"Annie Hall"

"The Sequel" by Jean Hanff Korelitz

 

Back in July, 2021 (was it really that one ago?) I wrote THIS REVIEW of Jean Hanff Korelitz' novel "The Plot".  As you may remember, or will see if you click on the link, I thought it was terrific book, and I gave it a full Four Star Grandstander rating.  Three years later, Ms Korelitz has cranked out a follow-up to that great book, and it is called, fittingly, "The Sequel".

This in indeed a sequel, although it includes a whole new cast of characters. It takes place several years after the time setting of "The Plot", and the main character from that novel, Jake Bonner, is now dead, a suicide victim, and the protagonist in this one is his widow, Anna Williams-Bonner.   

Living the good life off of the earnings from Jake's blockbuster best-seller, Anna decides to write a novel of her own, and THAT novel becomes a best-seller, but not just a best-seller.  It is a literary best-seller.  And guess what happens, Anna starts receiving threatening anonymous messages just like Jake did.  Could it involve something about the story Jake used to pen his best-seller, and could Anna herself have played a part in the events surrounding that story?  How could she?  She didn't even know Jake back then, right?

I wish that I could say that I liked "The Sequel" as much as I did "The Plot", but, alas, I cannot.  I thought this one was a bit too convoluted as Korelitz wound through the stories within the stories of this particular Story.   The notes on the dust jacket of the book tells us that Korelitz "gives the readers an antihero to root for while illuminating and satirizing the world of publishing."  As to the first part of that, I am not sure that Anna is someone that you want to "root for"; you can draw your own conclusions if you read this.

As to the second part, as I read this, I wondered of the main point of the novel was to skewer the world of book publishing, and taking shots at the snobbery among writers and publishers concerning works of so-called "literary fiction" versus "genre fiction", and I'm still not totally sure upon which side Korelitz sits.

A disappointing Two Stars from The Grandstander.