![]() ![]() ![]() The comedy veteran clicked with Schiff immediately and offered to help refine her pitch for Touchstone, which distributed the more “adult” titles under the Walt Disney Studios banner. Barry Kemp-creator of Newhart and Coach, among other classic sitcoms-came on to produce the 1992 production of Ladies’ Room in San Francisco that caught Schwartz's attention. “They Tried to Fire Me, and They Were Successful”īefore deciding to frame her script around a high school reunion, Schiff toyed with a few other concepts (Romy and Michele Go to College, Romy and Michele Go to Japan, etc). ![]() Plus, I knew the characters so well that I really thought I could channel them. I wasn’t sure they could support a feature, but I said I’d think about it because I was mostly a TV writer and this was an opportunity. Robin Schiff: Alex thought a Romy and Michele movie could be a female Wayne’s World. I went to see the play up in San Francisco, and there were two supporting characters who would occasionally come in and do something hilarious. of feature development at Touchstone Pictures: Ladies’ Room got sent to me as a writing sample and I asked to meet with Robin, who I thought was hysterical. Now, one sees its DNA everywhere from Broad City’s central slackers to the gleefully over-the-top antics in Barb and Starr Go to Vista Del Mar.Īlex Schwartz, then-senior V.P. Based on two ancillary characters in a play by Robin Schiff, Romy and Michele trudged through half a decade of script overhauls, studio interference, disastrous test screenings, a director who threatened to take his name off of the film, and more before becoming one of the most influential comedies of its time. Released 25 years ago this week, it’s something of a miracle that the film even made it to theaters. Instead, it ended up being the first Romy and Michele: a sweetly daffy ode to female friendship, bedazzled heels, interpretative dance, and businesswoman specials. Starring Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino as two ditzy best friends who concoct a lie to impress their classmates at a 10-year reunion, the film was pitched to its leads as an estrogen-fueled Beavis and Butt-Head. The ’90s in particular had this genre in spades, with buddy comedies like Wayne’s World and Dumb & Dumber among the era’s biggest moneymakers.īut when Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion came out in 1997, it went where few other major studio comedies had dared. Since Abbott and Costello first met Frankenstein, it’s been a grand cinematic tradition to place dim-witted duos in absurd scenarios, wind them up, and watch them go. ![]()
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