Beyond Therapy began life as Christopher Durang’s 1981 stage play, a blackly comic look at modern neuroses. When Robert Altman signed on to adapt and direct the film version — released in 1987 — the collaboration quickly dissolved into a creative clash: Durang and Altman each produced separate screenplays, and Altman ultimately substantially rewrote Durang’s script. Durang later summed up the experience bluntly as "a very unhappy experience and outcome," a terse public rebuke that signaled a bitter artistic rift between playwright and auteur. The production was shot in Paris where Altman was living at the time, a physical and cultural distance that only underscored the sense that the finished film had drifted far from its theatrical origins.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1980s
Christopher Durang’s Adaptation Nightmares: Robert Altman’s Heavy Rewrite Turned Broadway Hit into a Critical Misfire
Beyond Therapy (film) / 1980s
Beyond Therapy began life as Christopher Durang’s 1981 stage play, a blackly comic look at modern neuroses. When Robert Altman signed on to adapt and direct the film version — released in 1987 — the collaboration quickly dissolved into a creative clash: Durang and Altman each produced separate screenplays, and Altman ultimately substantially rewrote Durang’s script. Durang later summed up the experience bluntly as "a very unhappy experience and outcome," a terse public rebuke that signaled a bitter artistic rift between playwright and auteur. The production was shot in Paris where Altman was living at the time, a physical and cultural distance that only underscored the sense that the finished film had drifted far from its theatrical origins.
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