Movies - #1590 - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

I've been neglecting this blog. Naughty, naughty me. In the time since my last entry I've seen Reds, Heaven Can Wait, and Iron Man 2. I liked all of them. Will you get to hear about them in greater detail? Maybe, if you're very good and you ask nicely. So there. (Though, on the subject of Reds I will say this: Jack Nicholson as Eugene O'Neill = awesome.)

Then, yesterday, I decided it was time to stop letting the same two Netflix DVDs sit on my coffee table endlessly, so I sat down and watched Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).




I loved the play when I read it and I loved the movie too. Aside from the usual sort of changes one makes in an adaptation like this to make it seem more like a movie than a play (IE. sometimes having characters walk into another room and stand around talking in there for a while) it's very faithful to the source material.

It's sometimes interesting to watch movies from this era, because there were certain stylistic shifts happening in film. In the fifties and early sixties, even if people were being nasty and despicable, they would do so glamorously. There is nothing glamorous about anybody in this movie. Which is striking because I generally think of Elizabeth Taylor in particular as one of those glamorous actresses. And yet there she is, drinking and braying and hiding plates of food in her nightstand.

For about half of the movie I kept thinking to myself "Man, the younger actor in this is really familiar somehow". For the record, if you see it, you'll know who I mean. It has a cast of four. I'm talking about the guy who isn't Richard Burton. "Where else," My brain continued "Have I seen him?" Then something clicked and I realized: it's George Segal, that guy from Just Shoot Me.



I wonder if he'd rather be remembered as "The guy in Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf" or "The guy from Just Shoot Me". Either way, the answer is probably "The guy from Just Shoot Me."