DURANG FINDS FILM BEYOND HIS PLAY

Just seeing Christopher Durang’s play “Beyond Therapy,� his madcap assault on hypocritical psychoanalysts and their confused patients, one suspects that the playwright highly values candor.

How highly he values it becomes clear when he talks about director Robert Altman’s film version of “Beyond Therapy.�

“I wasn’t happy with it,� said Durang, whose original stage version is playing through May 24 at South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa.

“It’s very much his version and not mine. Some of the line rhythms are changed,� Durang said in a recent interview from his Manhattan apartment. “I just don’t think the film was very funny.�

Chalk up one more bad Hollywood experience for a playwright whose infatuation with the movies--he had an abortive Broadway success with a 1977 play entitled “A History of the American Film�--has led to unproduced scripts and bouts with writer’s anguish. He only hopes the 2-month-old film is forgotten and theaters continue giving a home to the stage version of “Beyond Therapy,� as South Coast Repertory is doing with its production that opened Friday.

One example Durang cites of the director’s embellishments is of a key detail in the play in which a central character, Bruce, a bisexual lawyer whose therapist prescribes unbridled spontaneity, cries openly during his first date with Prudence, a writer he meets through a personal ad in the New York Review of Books.

“In the movie, he doesn’t cry, but puts eye drops in his eyes,� Durang said with a groan.

“I know it’s supposed to be far out, but it’s not psychologically right. Altman and I have a joint screenplay credit . . . but he just stopped talking to me at one point. . . . If I had known how this was going to come out, I would have said ‘No’ to it, but I did sort of need the money when the offer came in.�

Altman, director of the films “MASH� and “Nashville,� who has been critically acclaimed for his other film-from-play credits, including “Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,� could not be reached for comment. The film version of “Beyond Therapy,� with Tom Conti and Glenda Jackson as a pair of psychiatrists, was not widely distributed after opening to mixed reviews two months ago.

The New Jersey-born Durang, 38, said the Altman episode wouldn’t be so painful for him if movies weren’t one of his abiding passions--and didn’t attract him professionally.

“Growing up, I found the movies kind of magical,� he said. “I really watched movies from the ‘30s and ‘40s on TV while I was growing up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and grew up with my parents’ societal references. . . . I watched a lot of films in college.

“I went to a film every day for four years. I made two films in college. One was an hourlong, joking version of ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ with an eight-millimeter camera. Also an hourlong joking version of “The Prophet� by Kahlil Gibran, in a sort of Monty Python style. I filmed a friend in a monk’s robe and a beard at the beach telling ghastly flowery stories.�

Despite his love of movies, he turned professionally to theater, co-writing a dramatic twist on Dostoevsky called “The Idiots Karamazov� with a classmate at the Yale School of Drama. Fellow student Meryl Streep played one of the roles.

“There is something about the presentness of theater that is exciting--the immediate response of the audience,� he explained.

But translating his theatrical talents into a mass cinematic commodity has been difficult, he says, partly because films today are more visually oriented than were the classic movies on which he was raised, such as “The Lady Eve� and “Sullivan’s Travels� by screenwriter/director Preston Sturges, whom he particularly admired.

It has not been for lack of trying.

In 1980, Durang and playwright Wendy Wasserstein co-authored a script called “House of Husbands,� which he described as “a combination of the John Updike adultery-in-the-suburbs stories with surreal Donald Barthelme touches.� In the following five years, working alone, he wrote a film that he calls “a comedy about Catholicism, but not ‘Sister Mary.’ �

He was referring to “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You,� his savagely funny look at the Catholic Church that was an off-Broadway success in 1981. Afterward, he also wrote a movie based directly on that play.

All the scripts were paid for; none became films.

It has left him feeling discouraged about his future in film writing. But on the other hand, he said, “I’ve been feeling very discouraged about theater these days . . . about the things that seem to run. You get spectacles and Neil Simon once in a while and nothing else.�

Still, three of his one-act plays may be on the boards off-Broadway next season. Grouped under the title “Laughing Wild,� the trio will include two monologues that he declined to discuss in further detail.

Nor has he completely lost hope on Hollywood.

“I haven’t given up,� Durang said. “I hope to create an alignment with people in power with whom I can have an understanding about what I want to do. I just haven’t found the right person.�