Product Description

Larry Lapinsky (Lenny Baker) is a young man seeking fame and discovering independence in Paul Mazursky's bittersweet comedy set in the 1950's. His mother (Shelley Winters) is distraught when he leaves his traditional family home in Brooklyn and moves to bohemian Greenwich Vilage. As a struggling actor, he gets entangled with a group of free spirits, discovers adult romance and, hardest of all, copes with his overbearing Jewish mother.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21920 in DVD
• Brand: BAKER,LENNY
• Released on: 2005-12-13
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 111 minutes

Amazon.com
Writer-director Paul Mazursky's transparently autobiographical Next Stop, Greenwich Village is a film of considerable charm and appeal. His alter ego in this case is Larry Lapinsky (Lenny Baker), an aspiring actor in his early twenties who leaves his Brooklyn home, kvetching mother (Shelley Winters), and hen-pecked pop (Mike Kellin) and moves to Greenwich Village, a few subway stops and several worlds away. This is the Village of the mid-'50s; Dylan and the folkies wouldn't take root there for years, and even the beat poet scene wasn't yet in full bloom. But it was the hippest place in town, filled with counter-culture artist types, and Larry, an aspiring actor, settles right in, hooking up with a gang of pals and a foxy girlfriend Sarah (Ellen Greene) almost immediately and then dealing with life's various triumphs and vicissitudes. Baker, who made only a couple more films before dying of cancer in 1982 (Greenwich Village was released in '76), is fine in the central role; an actor playing an actor, he has a field day with the rapid-fire repartee and shtick Mazursky writes for him (Greene would go on to play Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors, but it's the young supporting actors, notably Chris Walken, Jeff Goldblum, and Lois Smith, who would have the more stellar careers). Overall, the film is smart and well-observed, with ample humor and warmth, along with an improvisational feel. It also tends to play very real, especially the scenes involving the two young lovers; only Winters's scenery-chewing Jewish stereotype gets tiresome. The sole bonus feature is a commentary track with Mazursky and Greene. --Sam Graham

Customer Reviews

Overlooked gem.
It's hard to explain the lack of public response to this charming comedy in 1976. Perhaps because it was released when all cities, especially New York City, were having such hard times. Or maybe it was the casting of mostly unknowns that sank it.

For whatever reason, Paul Mazursky's NEXT STOP GREENWICH VILLAGE is a classic movie about youthful ambition, betrayal, tragedy, and never-ending surplus of hope. While most directors ultimately wind up knee-deep in schlock when making a movie about their youths, Mazursky keeps his focus on honesty. There's an integrity in his examination of these young characters, as they support and/or abuse each other in pursuit of their aspirations.

The performances are sparklers. The late Lenny Baker contributes just the right amounts of comedy, self-doubt and, ultimately, self-confidence the role demands. And, as others have mentioned, Shelley Winters is totally priceless! NEXT STOP GREENWICH VILLAGE should be your next purchase.

PS--When will the dvd version come out?

A Little-Known Masterpiece
This is an autobiographical film by Mazursky featuring young, then unknown New York actors like Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum, and Bill Murray, and it gives us one of Shelly Winter's best performances (it's unforgettable). Greenwich Village in the 50s, the Bohemian era with its cafes, rent parties, and blossoming sexual freedoms. Lenny Baker promised to be our own Jean-Paul Belmondo--he died young--and this is his best performance: sensible, yearning, funny, and blossoming with talent and ambition, he catches it perfectly. The remaining cast is surprisingly powerful, and the mood that Mazursky catches is memorable: freedom and youth, humor and youthful hypocrisy in an era cracking at the seams to reinvent the world and still have it all.

"The Mother Behind The Throne"
This early Paul Mazursky film could well be his finest achievement. Wonderfully mixing irony and affection, it examines bohemian New York in the 50's, its scenes generously filled with the assorted types - from fragile to vicious - who then flocked to Greenwich Village, seeking personal freedom and frequently a career in the arts. Mazursky's knowledge of that time and place is unerring; the pubs, the street life and the character types he presents are accurately, hilariously and, often, movingly drawn. From the frequenters of the San Remo to the Brando imitators at the Actor's Studio, he recreates the aspiring young people of a time long since gone but still fresh in the memories of some persons who were part of it.
A nostalgic invocation of the past, however, is not the film's sole or even chief strength. That honor goes instead to the amazing part of the actor hero's mother brilliantly portrayed by Shelley Winters, clearly in the role of her career. She is the Jewish Mother On Film for all time. Not just a stereotypical devotee of the classic formula - control guilt feelings and you control the child - she is also, surprisingly and freshly, herself a frustrated artist. When she weeps over the radio singing of Jussi Bjorling, vowing to hear him in person at the Met, or unconventionally jitterbugs, mad glint in her eye, with a black gay guy at a Greenwich Village party she crashes, we feel affection for her despite her cluelessness and manipulations. Hers is an unfulfilled life in Brooklyn, for she's bursting with an artist's energy which has no outlet. This becomes the ground of her aspiring actor son's and then our eventual respect and affection for her despite her meddling as the would-be power behind the son's throne. "Next Stop Greenwich Village," all told, is a film of considerable distinction, and it deserves to be far better known.