{"id":91292,"date":"2015-10-26T15:20:12","date_gmt":"2015-10-26T19:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=91292"},"modified":"2015-10-26T19:04:19","modified_gmt":"2015-10-26T23:04:19","slug":"existentially-im-getting-a-hamburger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/26\/existentially-im-getting-a-hamburger\/","title":{"rendered":"Existentially, I\u2019m Getting a Hamburger"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UfRkecpJ9Ew\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I watched the 1972 film adaptation of\u00a0<em>Play It As It Lays\u00a0<\/em>the other day; the whole movie is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=UfRkecpJ9Ew\" target=\"_blank\">streaming on YouTube for free now<\/a>. I wanted to reject it outright because its mood was not\u00a0<em>exactly<\/em>\u00a0the same as the novel\u2019s\u2014the quality of the bleakness was different.\u00a0But, I mean, when you think about it, what would you\u00a0<em>want<\/em>\u00a0a movie of\u00a0<em>Play It As It Lays\u00a0<\/em>to look like? \u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne cowrote the screenplay, and the film is well cast, with Tuesday Weld as Maria Wyeth Lang and Anthony Perkins as B. Z.; Frank Perry\u2014who had a few years earlier <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0063663\/?ref_=nm_knf_t2\" target=\"_blank\">presided over a bizarre adaptation of Cheever\u2019s \u201cThe Swimmer\u201d<\/a><em>\u2014<\/em>directed.\u00a0It\u2019s chic and slick, with high production values and assured\u00a0photography. It is, in short, a pretty faithful tribute to the novel, and in the line \u201cExistentially, I\u2019m getting a hamburger\u201d it has at least one piece of Grade A dialogue absent from the book. And yet I couldn\u2019t escape the reader\u2019s prejudice that it\u2019s a period piece in a way the book is not. What feels, in Didion\u2019s prose, like a glimpse into a full-fledged world manages to feel painfully dated on celluloid; it simply can\u2019t be as up-to-the-minute as it wants to be. Or maybe, watching the film, you just can\u2019t suspend your disbelief as easily, or give the author(s) certain credit you desperately want to.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, there\u2019s also the possibility that people really were as different in 1972 as <em>Play It As It Lays <\/em>makes them seem. Maybe they really did go around saying\u00a0\u201cChrist!\u201d\u00a0all the time, in spirit if not in fact. Yes, maybe that\u2019s it. It\u2019s good to be reminded that something\u2014or someone\u2014doesn\u2019t really belong to us at all. That we can\u2019t just project onto them, no matter how many tote bags we carry or how many Pinterest boards we make. Well, maybe we can.<\/p>\n<p><em>Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review<em>, and the <\/em>Daily<em>\u2019s correspondent<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I watched the 1972 film adaptation of\u00a0Play It As It Lays\u00a0the other day; the whole movie is streaming on YouTube for free now. I wanted to reject it outright because its mood was not\u00a0exactly\u00a0the same as the novel\u2019s\u2014the quality of the bleakness was different.\u00a0But, I mean, when you think about it, what would you\u00a0want\u00a0a movie [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[12488,5563,8705,19946,1362,19948,81,19947],"class_list":["post-91292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-12488","tag-adaptations","tag-films","tag-frank-perry","tag-joan-didion","tag-john-gregory-dunne","tag-movies","tag-play-it-as-it-lays"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Watch the 1972 Movie of \u201cPlay It As It Lays\u201d in Full<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Frank Perry\u2019s adaptation, with a script by Didion herself, in online for free in its entirety.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/26\/existentially-im-getting-a-hamburger\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Existentially, I\u2019m Getting a Hamburger by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"October 26, 2015 \u2013 I watched the 1972 film adaptation of\u00a0Play It As It Lays\u00a0the other day; the whole movie is streaming on YouTube for free now. I wanted to reject it\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/26\/existentially-im-getting-a-hamburger\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-10-26T19:20:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-10-26T23:04:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-1.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sadie Stein\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/26\/existentially-im-getting-a-hamburger\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/26\/existentially-im-getting-a-hamburger\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Sadie Stein\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/a1aef49f81bfc540a37e03590f3bb4d9\"},\"headline\":\"Existentially, I\u2019m Getting a Hamburger\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-10-26T19:20:12+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-10-26T23:04:19+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/26\/existentially-im-getting-a-hamburger\/\"},\"wordCount\":356,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"1972\",\"adaptations\",\"Films\",\"Frank Perry\",\"Joan Didion\",\"John Gregory Dunne\",\"movies\",\"Play It As It Lays\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Our Daily Correspondent\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/26\/existentially-im-getting-a-hamburger\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/26\/existentially-im-getting-a-hamburger\/\",\"name\":\"Watch the 1972 Movie of \u201cPlay It As It Lays\u201d in Full\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2015-10-26T19:20:12+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-10-26T23:04:19+00:00\",\"description\":\"Frank Perry\u2019s adaptation, with a script by Didion herself, in online for free in its entirety.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/26\/existentially-im-getting-a-hamburger\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/26\/existentially-im-getting-a-hamburger\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/26\/existentially-im-getting-a-hamburger\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Existentially, I\u2019m Getting a Hamburger\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. 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