Just Tell Me What You Want (1980) Online

In the late 1990s I attended a public ceremony in Bryant Park that Mayor Giuliani spoke at. The guests included Joan Rivers (who came late), and Alan King. It was the only time in my life that I saw King live. He was amusing, but I cannot recall his jokes or monologue. I do recall that every now and then, while the audience was laughing, King glanced at his wristwatch. Obviously he must have had other appointments that day, and he did leave fairly early. But I did see him once.

King was always in demand. A very funny monologist (and perceptive critic of social mores), he had gained national attention by his appearances on the Gary Moore Show, the Tonight Show, and other television programs. He actually was quite studious about comedy. In his later years he did a cable television show called INSIDE THE COMEDY MIND, where he interviewed fellow comics and discussed technique and approach to comedy. He was also an occasional movie and television performer - and not a bad one.

Most people recall King's role as Billy Crystal's father in MEMORIES OF ME as his best performance. It certainly is one of his two best performances. But there were others. His M.P. in HIT THE DECK (an early role) was pretty good. So was his hapless, but honest rabbi in BYE BYE BRAVERMANN. And (closer to his satiric view on certain professions) his psychiatrist leading a panel investigating Dudley Moore's "unprofessional behavior" (he was doing work for free) in LOVE SICK was good. But these were small supporting roles.

JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT is King's best performance. He is Max Herschel, the immensely rich, smart, and cynical, head of a corporate empire, who is finding his love affair with Bones Burton (Aly McGraw) is collapsing. The comedy's basically looking at the way the world revolves around money - it is impossible for any really altruistic people to thrive in this film. McGraw is disillusioned by the conclusion of the film, as every attempt on her part to avoid Max is thwarted by the corruption of whomever she turns to. But Max too finds his use of money is not always foolproof. He is taken in by his rival Keenan Wynn (a nice performance too) and Wynn's grandson Tony Roberts. He finds that his wife (Dina Merrill) has been doing more at her rest home than recovering from a nervous breakdown. And he finds that his attempts at maintaining a perfect media blackout over his business empire is not as perfect as he thought.

The scene in the film everyone recalls, of course, is in the department store where Bones beats the hell out of Max (who has been punishing her for abandoning him for another man), basically smacking King on the head with her purse, but also kicking him where it hurts. It is a very funny sequence, but it is not the only good in the film.

Max does have one person with a bit a leeway (but not much) regarding him: his secretary Stella (Myrna Loy in one of her last good roles) Stella tries to keep King from unleashing his full anger at Bones at their split, but even she is warned not to get too deeply involved for her good. Yet Max is human, and at the end he and Bones do negotiate a fair settlement of their differences.

Watching King's effortlessly good performance as Max, and keeping in mind his similarly good work in MEMORIES OF ME, one can wonder if King could have made a real go at full time lead parts in film. His physical appearance worked against him (both parts did not require him to look like an Adonis, fortunately), and...truth to tell...his ethnicity. But looking at MEMORIES OF ME and JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT one believes that if Hollywood was not so hung up on glamor and romantic types Alan King might have made more films in the lead and carried them off well. That he did not get that chance is our loss.

I have seen this movie several times, and the interplay between Alan King and Ali McGraw never fails to make me smile. There is no confusion as to which genre this movie was meant to be or in how it turned out. It's clearly a romantic comedy, and a funny one. Some younger viewers may have a hard time understanding the humor, because none of it involves body fluids, toilet humor, eating disgusting things or other gross-outs. We know that love and war are sometimes the same thing. This time, it's business, too!

King shines as a hard-nosed business tycoon who is romantically involved with his executive assistant, Bones (McGraw). He likes the informal arrangement just fine, but Bones is to the point where she either wants marriage or to move on. When she seems to fall for a young writer and moves in with him, it's not clear if she is truly in love with him, or if she is using him as leverage to make King jealous enough to propose. King, of course, retaliates. The war between the two, using under-handed business tactics is very funny, with each trying to top the other. The winner can either move on in triumph or dictate the terms of their reconciliation. King is probably best known for his stand-up comedy, but this movie shows him to be a fine comedic actor as well.

This movie became one of my favorites the instant I saw it and I didn't even like Ali MacGraw! But I like her just fine now. This is an absolutely top-notch production from start to finish and the performances are outstanding -- without exception. I mean here you have Alan King, with Keenan Wynn, and Myrna Loy as supporting actors! MacGraw and Peter Weller are very appealing as young lovers and MacGraw gives her perhaps only great performance. She pulls out all the stops in this one and couldn't be better. I just love this movie and can't understand why it wasn't a big hit. Well, I can, actually. It doesn't appeal to immature adolescent boys (including most Hollywood producers).

Alan King is absolutely terrific as a vulgar, sharp, overbearing millionaire who is keeping Ali Mc Graw as his mistress. She can't take anymore of him so she starts seeing a young playwright (Peter Weller). Since King is the driven type who HATES to lose, he does everything he can to win her back. This is a highly cynical but also highly enjoyable comedy with some great one liners and a stark sense of amorality throughout(The final scene just shows that everyone has their price). Even McGraw is less lockjawed than normal.Directed by the king of New York movies, Sidney Lumet.

A real find. Who would have thought that the teaming of Ali McGraw and Alan King would bring out the best in these two dubious acting talents. King is a lunatic millionaire unable to let mistress McGraw go despite their unbelievably rocky (and downright violent) love/hate relationship. Sharply directed by Sidney Lumet from a wicked, albeit over-plotted, script by Jay Presson Allen. The acting is all first-rate, with McGraw giving a truly funny performance. Like some other 70s beauties (Candice Bergen, Raquel Welch) it's clear her forte was comedy. Although she didn't have a career anywhere near the length of those two, she's never been more relaxed than she is here. She almost never flares her nostrils (see THE GETAWAY). King, who usually played hoods or Mafiosos in his few film roles, is a hoot. As King's perpetually infirm wife, Dina Merrill brings just the right regal presence to bear and Myrna Loy is great as his caustic-tongued secretary. The supporting cast includes Peter Weller, Tony Roberts and Joseph Maher (very funny as Merrill's lecherous doctor).

This under-rated movie that no one ever saw is worth a look. Alan King and Ali McGraw make a great couple, believe it or not. Dina Merrill is hysterically funny as Alan's wife, Connie. She is out of her mind and his affair is not helping. Myrna Loy, a screen legend, does not disappoint with her small part as Alan's right arm/valuable assistant. Also along for the ride are Keenan Wynn, Peter Weller and Tony Roberts.

King is a really great comedian, virtually unknown to audiences in Europe. In this „late screwball" comedy he plays a tycoon, and for this kind of movie part he sets a mark nobody has surpassed. He brings the right mix of competence and freakishness to the role. He is a ladies man, a hypochondriac (goes well together), is cunning and can be utterly ruthless and cruel. Of course, the character has a great egotistical mind - and yet he is oddly likable. There's more: The movie also includes great performances by Keenan Wynn as competing tycoon and also by Myrna Loy, famous screen beauty of the Golden Age of Hollywood. She plays King's loyal secretary and surrogate mom. Ali McGraw is kind of beautiful but seems to be made of granite (the set design of her ritzy apartment is beautiful and interesting, though), Peter Weller's talents are wasted here.

This movie really boasts many, many memorable lines. The character played by Wynn tries to convince the tycoon that he should donate for a wing for special diseases of a hospital. This makes King quip „I can't wait to see those poor guys die of special diseases in my wing!" Also great are the final sequences in which the main character stays in hospital because of an imaginary heart attack. His little, stumpy body lies in a white shroud on an examining bed while he berates the high priced specialists standing around him, telling them in a choked voice that he knows exactly what's wrong with him and they should better read the „f***ing literature"! People are like that! Life is like that! It's great to be able to laugh about it sometimes.

This slightly jaded look at the film industry, and at love, is the work of Jay Presson Allen, who also wrote "Marnie", "Cabaret", and "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie". You will find her trademarks: fascinating characters and witty, insightful rapid-fire dialog.

Her 20th Century women lack sugar-coating. But here, a lot of the action concerns the close ties of an unconventional family. This, along with the heroine's ironic first-person narration, give the story a lighter, less distant feel. However, the direction and pacing are uneven and the picture has been overlooked.

A year after this film was released, Jay Presson Allen and Sidney Lumet wrote and produced Prince of the City, a much darker film about police corruption. It found a far warmer reception. And Alan King has a cameo, playing himself.

Saw this years ago when it came out. Now seeing it again through older eyes makes it even better. While the relationships depicted are predatory--eat or be eaten--they still have a certain sweetness to them. It's a uniquely well-done commentary on the rich. Fitzgerald was right: they're different.

Can't understand why there's no "memorable quotes" part of this entry.

Allen King is one of the richest and most powerful men in the USA, with a finger in everything -- real estate, television, movies, art collections, tax-deductible charities -- and he can have any woman he wants. It isn't just that he CAN have them; he HAS them.

He has Ali MacGraw on his staff, as a producer of a TV talk show, and she's been his main squeeze for some time now. He has her set up in her own lavish apartment and she wears more jewels than Cleopatra.

Two problems. First, he's too busy to really pay much attention to her. He's always on the phone, threatening people, sometimes for millions of dollars, sometimes for pennies. He calls Hollywood. He calls Switzerland and makes a demand on a Swiss bank that they must observe, otherwise he's going to withdraw his funds -- "Fermez les JAMBS" -- and put the bank out of business.

The second problem, not counting King's mentally ill wife who is conveniently stashed away in an upscale "loony bin" in Minnesota, is that Ali MacGraw is a little tired of playing a fiddle in the orchestra and wants to be her own concert master for a change. On top of that she falls in love with a playwright, Peter Weller, and marries him.

This distresses Alan King but he's not the kind of guy who's willing to show that he's been beaten. When she gives him the bad news in his office, he tries to talk MacGraw out of the marriage. "We can have it annulled," he says with a smile. But, no. Weller and MacGraw are in love and she'll stick with her decision. She leaves the office when King tells her, okay, whatever she wants, and says that he must now make some important calls. Bye-bye and, really, the best of luck. This leads to the funniest scene in this good-natured comedy.

When MacGraw is gone, King's smile fades. The office is utterly silent and King deliberately replaces the phone. He walks to his desk, carefully extracts his contact lenses and put them away in their case. Then he sits down, put his face in his hands, and cries out in an excess of agony, "I'm a DEAD JEW!" He sobs loudly and all his secretaries run in, thinking he's had a stroke or something.

He finally recovers and begins snapping out orders that will knee-cap MacGraw and her playwright husband -- canceling her credit cards, doing something nasty with her fancy apartment, reclaiming all his furniture and the millions of dollars of paintings on the wall. "What about my douche bag?", MacGraw demands of the security guards. "Personal effects, okay, but not the furniture or paintings." It leads to the second funniest scene in the movie, in which MacGraw accidentally runs into King in Bergdorff-Goodman's and begins to beat the hell out of him with her purse and her shoes, demolishing half the shop in the process. He manages to shove her away and dashes out the door. And, just when you think the fight is over, you find it isn't. She rushes outside, catches him holding on to his limousine -- "Open the Goddam DOOR!" -- and continues belaboring him, kicking, punching, and pounding while he lies screaming for help on the pavement. When he finally escapes the crowd applauds.

In between these very funny moments, it's not so funny. There are moments of tragedy. King's batty wife dies and though he gets over it quickly it's clear that he's been hurt. King's not a bad guy. He's a materialist of course, the kind of man to whom "success" and "money" mean the same thing. But he's sentimental, too, and not uncaring. Most of the humor comes from King's character, authoritarian, demanding, wheedling, sharp as a tack -- as when he's courting a new secretary in a fancy restaurant and describing how he'll send her back to college and get her teeth capped. In the hospital after fainting, he's terrified. Against the advice of his doctors he whispers a demand for a pacemaker, and he gives them the name of a manufacturer of the most expensive devices, as if he were ordering a new Mercedes. He's keenly perceptive too. About Hollywood, he tells MacGraw, "Girls don't get laid after they're twenty-one. Middle age starts at twenty-four."

We don't ordinarily think of the director, Sidney Lumet, as a professional who is given whole-heartedly to comedy, and this story has some sharp edges to it. It's confusing too, unless you understand the movie business and some other shenanigans that King is involved in. It's sufficiently confusing that at the end, with King in a hospital bed and the already-married MacGraw demanding that King admits he loves her, I wasn't at all sure which man she wound up with.

Alan King's world falls apart when long time mistress Ali Macgrue breaks up with him and marries much younger Peter Weller. Snobby comedy isn't for all taste, but is expertly performed and is very, very funny, especially the scene in the department store. Alan King is displayed at his absolute as is Loy in a quite performance. Terrific entertainment. 9 out 10.

I enjoyed watching this film because the styles and look of the city made me feel nostalgic for that time.

It's a puzzle how the plot of the movie could tie together romance with the character that Alan King plays. Romantic? Not. Even dashing or handsome? Not. Rich. Yes. But once you realize the person you're dealing with, there's just not enough money... OK, you'll find a goofy 21-year-old who will think there is enough money to make this guy attractive. But then: you don't need that much money to impress that young girl.

Which is what Alan King's character ends ups with, and you are happy for him. It's quite fitting for someone that shallow to share feelings with someone just out of her teenage years. Then the movie winds to its close and you're shocked.

Shocked! There's no accounting for taste.

I much enjoyed a part of the movie that takes place in Bergdorf's - a scene in which Ali McGraw's character tried to beat the crap of the old lecher. It was too too short. But very satisfying.