“Being the Ricardos”: Aaron Sorkin’s layered retrospect of how the “I Love Lucy” show almost got taken down
I remember “I Love Lucy” as a child. I remember especially the episode where she tried to make wine with her feet on a trip to Italy. And when she tried to work on an assembly line. I also watched “Amos ‘n’ Andy“, which would be very controversial to bring up now (like, “There is no legal marriage between George Stevens and Sapphire Smith”).
I also remember the film “The Long, Long, Long Trailer” where she fell in the mud. I thought that was so funny then.
Aaron Sorkin (“The Social Network”, 2010) writes a period piece biographical drama about comedy, or comedians, in “Being the Ricardos”, already VOD on Amazon.
The main plot concerns one critical week sometime in the early 1950s (the show ran 1951-1957 with a successor to 1960, after which the Ricardos divorced). A supermarket tabloid accuses Desi of philandering, but worse, Walter Winchell releases the rumor of Lucy’s accidental ties to the Communist Party in the past, which she separated herself from.
(above official trailer.)
The mainline story starts with a table reading of the next week’s show, as the news about the couple breaks. But Lucy (Nicole Kidman) is more concerned about the illogic of her reaction to hearing the New York apartment door open behind her (that she really wouldn’t recognize her husband) than anything else. The table reading scene gives a feel for what sitcom writing was like for a career then.
(Best moments)
The scandal progresses through the workweek, but the film is punctuated with modern day commentary, and with backstories about Lucille’s firing by RKO and suggestion that she do radio (a well crafted scene). The screenplay structure sometimes makes it hard to keep track of which plot thread it is in. (“The Social Network”, by comparison, was much more linear). It was the reaction of the studio audience to her radio show that brought the idea of a TV sitcom into focus. I wasn’t aware that the show, set in NYC, was taped in Los Angeles.
Desi (Javier Bardem) rescues her at a public setting with a call from J Edgar Hoover (presumably faked). The movie, however, doesn’t really show the progress of their marriage (compare to “Scenes from a Marriage”, Dec. 22).
The most stereotyped marriage of all, of course, was Fred and Ethel (J. K. Simmons [“Whiplash”]) as William Frawley and Nina Arianda as Vivian Vance), next door.
The scene at home showing the Zenith radio (my parents had one) with the record changer looked sharp. Did it play 33rpm-LP’s?
Name: “Being the Ricardos“
Director, writer: Aaron Sorkin
Released: 2021/12
Format: 2.39:1
When and how viewed: Amazon Prime
Length: 130
Rating: R
Companies: Amazon Studios
Link: Guilds
Stars: ****_
(Posted: Sunday, December 26, 2021 at 11 AM EST)