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The Scroll

No. 89: My Favorite Year

An homage to the golden age of the small screen

By Jody Rosen|December 5, 2011|1comment
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No. 88: Cocoon → ← No. 90: Hungry Hearts

1982, dir. Richard Benjamin. The rompingest big-screen homage to the golden age of the small screen, this comedy features Peter O’Toole as a debauched former matinee idol and Mark Linn-Baker as the nebbish charged with keeping him from drinking and whoring himself into oblivion before an appearance on a Sid Caesar-like variety show. O’Toole is delightful as swashbuckling star gone to seed, but it’s the period feel—the backstage glimpse at network television when it was just a step removed from vaudeville—that gives the movie its color. Linn-Baker gets the best line: “Jews know two things: suffering and where to find great Chinese food.”

 

 
No. 88: Cocoon → ← No. 90: Hungry Hearts
  • Ben Kaufman

    Okay,someone has to be the first to complain, and I volunteer!
    Have you not seen My Favorite Year at least 50 times and not thought it’s absolutely everything a Jewish movie would want to say? How, in anyone’s mind, can this film be this far down on the list?? And to think: the comments didn’t even mention Lou Jacobi (his great lines: “Did you schtup her?”) or the should-have-been Academy Award winning role of Laine Kazan as Benji’s mother.(“Welcome to our lovely chapeau.”) With money and a studio behind it – and with this cast, this should have been a hit movie – but it’s one that got lost.
    People, get this movie – find it, and watch it – over and over. It’s Jewish, it’s New York, it’s the 1950′s – it’s the best!

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No. 89: My Favorite Year

An homage to the golden age of the small screen