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Rewrites: A Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Neil Simon
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 717983
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 1
ISBN: 0684835622
Dewey Decimal Number: 812.54
EAN: 9780684835624
ASIN: 0684835622
Publication Date: April 1, 1998
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Condition: Cover wear and may contain some marks or writing. Keen Northwest ships in 2 business days or less. Refunds for any reason if item returned within 30 days of shipment.
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Amazon.com Review
After serving an apprenticeship under Sid Caesar and Phil Silvers in Los Angeles, Neil Simon returned to New York at age 30 to embark on a career as a playwright. Some 35 years and three dozen plays later, the most successful comedy writer in the history of the American stage is still at it. In Rewrites, Simon reflects on his career, his relationship with his older brother and mentor Danny, and the loss of his wife Joan to cancer. Along the way, he reveals the price he has paid for his achievements: "I felt like I had stopped relating to people as friends, relatives, acquaintances.... Instead they turned into my victims, as I ripped their private souls from their being, feeding my hunger, my insatiable desire to use them in my writings, in my plays, in my thoughts."
Product Description
The playwright recounts his painful childhood, his many influences, anecdotes from his career, and the devastating death of his wife.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 16 more reviews...
 It's probably just me, but I didn't like it. November 30, 2007
I couldn't finish this book. I'm sure Mr. Simon meant well by sharing the passing of his first wife...but it was too sad for my ears. Betty White also described the passing of her husband in her autobiography, but she was kind to her readers. Mr. Simon had raw emotions associated with the loss of his first wife and I felt it was too personal. The rest of the book was somewhat interesting but unclear. For example Simon uses a negative tone when describing Jerry Lewis. But Jerry Lewis was patient with Simon as a boss and J.L. was generous. Maybe Simon is too deep for me...I didn't like his writing style and I thought he seemed depressed.
 Footlight Serenade May 22, 2007
It is taken as fact by some that Neil Simon is like a Woody Allen with slightly less talent. I think rather Woody Allen is like a Neil Simon with a lot less heart.
"Rewrites", published in 1996, is Simon's memoir of his early days as a playwright; from the late 1950s when he took advantage of some downtime between sketchwriting gigs to sit down at a typewriter and hammer out a three-act comedy, to 1973 when he was the toast of Broadway. It's not a straightforward autobio; Simon doesn't dwell much on his upbringing except in snippets. He doesn't rub sores or surprise you with his candor. But if you ever wondered what it was like to be a hitmaker, this is the book for you.
One reason Simon was such a success was his fear of failure stayed with him always. "I still hated opening night because it was such a public event," he writes. "Something like getting a letter of response from the girl you asked to marry you, only it's to be shown publicly on television or on the first page of the arts section of every newspaper in town."
Another reason? Because he is so funny. "Rewrites" brings this out, too, even when writing about the pain of writing. On a dead spot in "Little Me": "We hit a dry patch so arid you could lay a beach blanket on it." During a struggle to come up with a workable third act for "The Odd Couple": "Why don't we just do the first two acts and reduce the ticket prices by a third?" About working out a similar problem in "Prisoner Of Second Avenue: "We envied each other's abilities. He [director Mike Nichols] hated me for thinking of it and I hated him for making me think of it."
But "Rewrites", like the best Simon comedies, also carries a lot of heart, much of it in the form of his first wife, Joan. Marrying him before he was anyone, Joan foregoes an engagement ring and makes Neil buy a dog instead. Later, her unusual, slightly manic personality gave him inspiration for his first breakout success, "Barefoot In The Park" and then kept Simon from becoming another casualty of success. His description of Joan is reverent but playful, showing us a woman of quiet strength and inner beauty happy to share her husband's success but adverse to the spotlight, even of being photographed.
Usually when a memoir turns to love I skim the pages, but Simon makes it hard here, whether he's writing about wooing Joan at a summer resort or losing her to cancer. However painful or earnest his subject, Simon never loses his sense of humor. It's a surprisingly adept balancing act to observe even if you've seen his "Biloxi Blues."
Even if you aren't a big fan of his plays, and there's a few I don't care for, Simon makes his run of successes interesting by discussing the problems he encountered in their composition and staging. He also discusses movies he scripted in the 1960s and early 1970s, and the famous characters he met. Jerry Lewis pelted him with red cashmere giveaways while teaching him the value of writing tight, while Peter Sellers amazed him with his talent for wearing personalities and his out-of-left-field suspicion Simon was having an affair with his wife. No one really gets hammered, except maybe Simon himself writing about a rare flop, "The Star-Spangled Girl."
"Neil Simon didn't have an idea for a play this year but he wrote it anyway," Walter Kerr of the New York Times opines, a putdown Simon likes so much he repeats it twice.
Simon's attention to the words of his critics is an interesting revelation, as is his explaining various secrets to his successes. So loaded up are you, on that and Simon's vicarious ride along the Great White Way, you feel like you could go out and write a hit play yourself. That may be "Rewrites" greatest show of Simon's immersive mastery.
a love letter April 3, 2005
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is Neil Simon's humorous, touching, and overall delightful memoir. I was impressed at how he is able to describe his amazing success as a playright with modesty--he never boasts, he merely reports. His voice in this book is self-deprecatory and he is quick to point out his faults and mistakes, which is very endearing. He also lets us in on the struggles of writing for theater with a detailed account of writing and rewriting the 20-some drafts of his first play, and the many, many attempts to perfect the final act in the Odd Couple under intense pressure. His annecdotes are fascinating, and as an added bonus, they often include such prominent artists as Bob Fosse, Mike Nicholls, Walter Matheau, and Robert Redford, to name a few.
This book has so much heart. In part it's a love letter addressed to his beloved wife Joan. But this is also Neil Simon's love letter to the theater, and to New York City. And man, you read this book and he'll convince you that the theater is magic and that NYC is absolutely the place to be.
A life, from comedy to tragedy August 19, 2004
Born in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, growing up poor, without a book in the house, and beset by the insecurities of his father's frequent unpredictable abandonments, Neil Simon went on to be America's most popular and prolific playwright, winner of numerous Tony Awards and other honors for his touching and hilarious comedies.
The first three quarters of his memoir "Rewrites," leaves readers with much the same warm feeling as his plays. While he never deprecates his own talent, Simon is generous in giving credit to others - producers, directors, actors, even critics.
He never lost his wide-eyed joy and amazement at success and shares with readers the often arduous paths of plays that evolved in rewrite after rewrite, some requiring frantic writing stints after opening night.
It was his older brother Danny (himself a successful Hollywood writer) who started him writing routines for comics as a teenager and who prophesied, " 'You're going to be the best comedy writer in America.' "
This support was complicated by sibling rivalry and the younger brother's struggle for autonomy, which Simon does not dwell on although it was clearly painful. But Danny was also an inspiration for some of his brother's most famous characters - from his first play (and first success) to Felix in "The Odd Couple," a play based on his newly divorced brother's roomate relationship with another newly divorced friend.
Many, if not all, of Simon's plays found their inspiration in family situations or incidents among friends. "The Star Spangled Girl" grew out of an argument at a party between Paddy Chayefsky and an astronaut's wife. Simon, a liberal himself, had difficulty doing justice to the conservative woman. "I found I disliked her politics so much, I made her disagreeable."
Unhappy with the play, he persisted, encouraged by his longtime producer "Saint" Subber. "When you write something you like, the pages fly by. When you know it's not good, each key on the typewriter weighs about ten pounds and you need to see a chiropractor every morning."
But the play was a hit. Afterwards, Simon got drunk at the cast party and later, "I threw up everything I had eaten since the first day I started writing "The Star Spangled Girl." Nothing connected to that play stayed in my mind or my body." He vowed to his wife Joan that he would never again stage a play he didn't like.
Simon's memoir revolves around his marriage as much as his work. Joan was a quirky, stalwart presence unimpressed by money or fame but wholly supportive. Her dislike of Los Angeles and glitz kept Simon grounded in reality and she fiercely guarded the integrity of family life.
Simon's description of their first apartment and Joan's efforts with it are funny, heartwarming and illuminating. No wonder it lead to his smash hit "Barefoot In the Park." Joan was also an inspiration for "Jake's Women," and her amazing reaction to Simon's momentary bout with mid-life crisis became the impetus for "The Last of the Red Hot Lovers."
The book is colorfully studded with anecdotes of the eccentric, even bizarre behavior of show business people - Mike Nichols, who directed several of Simon's plays but never stopped requiring ego massages, George C. Scott, who briefly walked out on "Plaza Suite" because he was afraid of jinxing its success, Maureen Stapleton, Simon's favorite actress.
Simon is an affectionate writer with scarcely a bad word to say about anyone. The worst behavior is transformed into amusing foibles or at least balanced by praise for more attractive traits. Yet Simon seems honest, about himself as well as others.
Along with Simon's talent for humourous story-telling and the fascinating behind-the-scenes exploration of play evolution, part of this book's charm is Simon's awareness of his luck, his joy in his family and his career. But all this comes to a crashing halt with his wife's illness and death at age 40 which ends the book.
The last 50 or so pages are dark, confused and desperate, such a drastic change in tone, it leaves the reader floundering. Simon obviously felt this was a natural place to conclude but many readers will wish he had gone on to show how he emerged from that bleak time, how he healed and went on to forge a renewed life for himself and his young daughters.
As Good as Moss Hart's January 8, 2004
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
and that is very high praise, since Hart's autobio is generally considered a stellar achievement. (I just loved it.)I had had "Rewrites" on my bookshelf for a number of years, and just somehow never got around to it. Finally, one snowy weekend last month, I took it off the shelf and started reading. I loved it from the get-go -- it's simply one of the best memoirs ever written, IMO. (I've read a lot of autobios/memoirs, especially in my younger years, so I write with some knowledge in this area.) I'll always remember that snowy weekend I spent "with Neil," and I'll also always remember how I ran to get the sequel, "The Play Goes On," on Monday. (That was also top-notch, but "Rewrites" was just a smidge better.) Don't miss "Rewrites." It's a winner, it's a keeper, it's pure reading delight!
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