Flashback, Irreconcilable Differences circa 1984. For those of you who don't know, don't remember, don't care to remember, etc. etc., Irreconcilable Differences is an 80's Comedy-Drama starring Ryan O'Neal, Shelley Long, and Drew Barrymore. The film was a minor box office success, making over $12 million. For their performances, both Shelley Long and Drew Barrymore were nominated for Golden Globe Awards. The film is supposedly based in part on the divorce of collaborators Polly Platt and Peter Bogdanovich over actress Cybill Shepherd who Bogdanovich runs off with and makes the disastrous musical They All Laughed. How ironic!!!
The Plot: Meeting on the road, amateur writer Lucy (Shelley Long) and film professor Albert (Ryan O'Neal) fell in love, married, and had a daughter Casey(Drew Barrymore). When Albert's career shifts into overdrive as an acclaimed film director,his attentions are drawn to young starlet Blake Chandler (Sharon Stone), their marriage is strained to the breaking point and Albert takes all the credit for his work and leaves none to Lucy, who helped him write the scripts to his hit films. After their divorce, Lucy channels her frustrations with their old union into a bestselling book He Said It Would Be Forever, making her the toast of the town on the literati circuit. But what the two of them fail to realize is that in all of their egotism, selfishness and complete focus on their careers, their relationship sours with their precocious daughter. Emotionally browbeaten after the years of neglect, the independent Casey makes the ultimate decision: to divorce her parents, which comes as a complete surprise to both her folks. NOT!!!
The 80's, like most modern times, was a decade plagued with extremely high divorce rates. Divorce was and continues to run rampant everywhere; it seemingly does NOT discriminate. Families on both the BIG screen and the REAL screen were/are drifting apart. This phenomenon can/does take toil on all parties involved, but the most innocent of victims is the child. So what does this have to do with me and the price of milk? This movie brings back lots of memories for me as I am a child of divorce during the 80's and as a newly engaged Stay@Home Fiancé'. My parents divorced when I when I was 5 years old (1981) and some of things that happened in this movie happened to me. Divorce for a couple is hard; divorce for a child is harder!!! That' being said, I have resolved that come hell or high water, job or no job, Stay@Home or stay anywhere, that mine will be FOREVER!!!
I can no longer subscribe to the sentiments of a child (i.e., Casey Brodsky: "I'm just a kid, and I don't know what I'm doing sometimes. But I think you should know better when you're all grown up. I think you should know how to act, and how to treat people. And I think if you once loved someone enough to marry them, you should at least be nice to them, even if you don't love 'em any more. And I think if you have a child, you should treat that child like a human being and not like a pet. Not like you treat your dog or somethin'. You know, when you have a dog sometimes you forget he's there, and then when you get lonely suddenly you remember him, and you remember how cute he is and stuff, and you kiss him a lot, but then the next day when you're busy again you don't notice him. That's how I've been treated for the past 4 years, and you don't treat your kid like your dog. It's not right."
And like Blake Chandler: [singing] "This Civil War ain't gonna get me down. I'm taking my act to a brand new town. This belle rings in old Atlanta. I'm gonna find myself a brand new Santa!"
I will NOT be a victim like Lucy Van Patten Brodsky: "That bimbo stole my husband! They drank their lover's wine in glasses I stood in line to buy!"
CONFESSION...I am scared. Why? This is what I know. Praise God, My G. knows differently. His parents have been married for 40+ years and his maternal grandparents have been married for 60+ years!!!
But like Oprah, "What I Know For Sure..." is He Said It Would Be Forever, and mine WILL!!!
