Irving often popped heart pills and collapsed outside mayor's house, so it looked like a pretty advanced condition in a relatively young man.
Does Mel Weiberg (real Irving) also suffer from heart disease? If so, how did he survive this long (89 and counting)?
And do those magic pills exist where as soon as you swallow them you feel better? There was another film with that too. I forget which one. Oh yeah. Two for the Money with Pacino and McCoughney.
shareMagic pills? Jesus get out of the house! Nitro glycerin pills...
shareUmm...like the post above this one already stated, those pills were probably Nitro pills and yes, they work that quickly. Have some thought or do some research before you post.
I gotta go feed that thing in Room 33.
That was the most powerful scene in the movie- with amy adams, Irving with all his weak points the hair, the health, family and the fed on his back is doing is best to stay on top of the game.
Try to understand the characters then the story otherwise you won't enjoy any movie.
I thought the heart condition helped show how strong Irv was in his spirit and intellect. It also showed that Syd really did love him for who he was inside. I love that aspect of this film. She was beautiful and hot and yet she loved and wanted Irv.
shareMini spoilers below. Just watched it last week for the first time.
Okay, first I'll say that this movie did not have as much "twist" to it as I was expecting from all the reviews. I kept assuming the big reveal would be something like a setup for Rosalyn to run off with Richie at the end, and that they were playing Irving in order to get him out of the picture somehow (like, Rosalyn was trying to irritate him into a divorce so she could run off).
That said, of course I figured Irving was wise to them, or at least suspected something. It seemed like he was faking all the heart condition stuff, maybe popping a Tic-Tac, for the sympathy, to throw Rosalyn and Richie off, and confuse people. (It certainly confused me!)
And I also didn't think, uh, Amy Adams, whatever the hell her character's name was, I did not think she was in on this particular scam of Irving's. Seemed like she genuinely believed he had a heart condition.
WHat makes you think he was faking the heart condition?
shareBecause I expected more of a twist in the plot.
shareOh I see, gotcha.
A friend and I in college used to critique everything we watched. (We were like Mystery Science Theater 3000 - only funnier.) One thing we picked up on very quickly was that any extra shot in a TV show, especially a sitcom, always meant something.
For example, if a character dropped something on the floor, or there was a close-up of an object -- or worse still --- if a character dropped something on the floor then it was zoomed in on, that object would always come back into play later. So the viewer gets used to this and just waits for the object to come back into play.
I like that they didn't blow Bale's heart condition into a heart attack and just let it be a detail of the character. He had a bad heart. He certainly looked unhealthy!
That's referred to as 'Chekhov's Gun,' from the playwright Anton Chekhov's "rule" about writers who show things early on and fail to follow up with them. He said that anything shown early on needs to be used, referred to, etc., or else take the early thing out of the script.
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