T.R. Baskin

I saw T. R. BASKIN at the cinema in Colorado when I was a college student several times. I recommended it to everyone. I thought it was on a par with FIVE EASY PIECES or THE LAST PICTURE SHOW. I don't think Candace Bergen was ever better and (the now late) Peter Boyle was great as was James Caan. Many years later in New York I had the opportunity to tell Candace Bergen how much I liked that film and she said, "Oh, they hated it. They all hated it." I thought it was very well written, with many very funny and clever lines. There is a heartbreaking misunderstanding in it that makes for fine drama. I recall it had a subtle touching depth to it and I would love to see it again all these years later to see how it holds up.

T.R. Baskin was a favorite of mine. I have been trying to find it for years. With a cast as strong as this, I wonder why it has never been released in DVD or video. I would love having some help finding this!! What resonated with me was a line Bergen had - How do you know when you are accepting too little for yourself or expecting too much? I have been trying to answer this my whole life.

I didn't remember that it was shot in Chicago, and I would love to see the 1971 shots of that as well.

And I remember the music too was excellent. Please re-release it!

Candace Bergen stood out as a performer in this. I knew of her acting before this - but she really stood out in this role.

This film is in some ways a guilty pleasure--it's occasionally hokey--but I like it because it reminds me of the wonder I felt on my first few visits to Chicago (I'm a small-town girl too). I eventually moved there, staying more than a decade

before moving on to L.A.; my experience was, on the whole, much more positive than T.R.'s, but I can relate to her and to what she's going through. That's a good deal of this movie's appeal--the characters and the situations all have the ring of truth. Kudos to writer Peter Hyams and director Herbert Ross. T.R. may be lonely and lacking in direction, but she's also intelligent, feisty, and nobody's fool, and it's easy to understand how she feels as she tries to build an independent life and find personal and professional satisfaction. Candice Bergen's delivery of her lines is sometimes a bit stilted, but her performance is largely praiseworthy; so are those of the supporting cast, especially Marcia Rodd, James Caan, Peter Boyle, and Howard Platt (very convincing as a real jerk). The filmmakers also make good use of the Chicago setting, with shots of Carson's State Street store, the el, and other landmarks, and the movie's full of early-'70s atmosphere--the clothes, the music, the singles bars, and the fact that the modern women's

movement had a lot of work to do.

Having watched director Herbert Ross's "T. R. Baskin" twice now, I still have no idea why the filmmaker was drawn to the material or why Paramount gave it the green light. Written by the otherwise-astute Peter Hyams, our titular heroine is rather the antithesis of TV's Mary Richards: she's not about to turn the world on with her smile. An escapee from a small town in Ohio, T. R. arrives in Chicago and is immediately taken advantage of by her cab driver from the airport (but nothing is built upon this--it's just shrugged off). She finds a boring job and a boring apartment, she goes out on a boring blind date--the only thing missing is a boring cat. Played by Candice Bergen, T. R. Baskin isn't pithy or wise: she's deadpan nearly throughout. I assume Hyams meant her cynicism to be blunt and amusing, but Ross doesn't ask Bergen to deliver anything more than a sketch of the character (we get nothing about her background save for a phone call home to mom). The film's framing device is deadly: an ex-Army man (a young James Caan), who insulted T. R. after a roll in the hay, sets up her with a married man in Chicago on business. This plot device makes absolutely no sense, and Ross skitters over it, perhaps shamefacedly. Fortunately, the married man is played Peter Boyle, and he emerges as the star of the picture. With his pearly-pink skin, shy smile and alert eyes, it's obvious the movie should have centered on Boyle's would-be philanderer rather than on Bergen's squinting/suspicious working girl. T. R. Is disappointed by life; she finds the Windy City an alienating place, she's in danger of being swallowed up by the anonymity of city living, but will she fight her predicament or simply surrender to it? We don't know because Ross and Hyams want to keep T. R. a floating question-mark. Had T. R. been a tough little nut, we might have had something to respond to; instead, she only comes to life with a case of the giggles in bed, and even then we don't really know why she's laughing. ** from ****

. . . to get this movie released on DVD? I too am among those who saw it on television years ago and who remember bits and pieces of the dialog (like, to paraphrase, "It's like admiring someone from a distance and when you get up close to him you notice he has bad skin." If I recall correctly Candace Bergman speaks this line while looking down on Michigan Avenue from a high-rise apartment, perhaps in the John Hancock building, and it served as a metaphor for what she found out about life in the big city). Its soundtrack was also liable to turn up frequently in the 98 cent bargain bins and this is how I happened to recognize it when it showed up on the CBS late movie in the late 1970s. The Chicago location was unusual for a 1971 film -- well before pictures like "The Blues Brothers," "Ordinary People," and "Risky Business." Candace Bergman's performance, and way of delivering lines, was indeed mesmerizing, and this film's unavailability and obscurity makes unavailable and obscure a certain moment in 20th century American history that we don't think too much about; it is rather like the dark side of the Mary Tyler Moore show, a snapshot of a lost generation. Please, someone bring it back.