Lucky Guy (play)

Originally conceived as a television film in 1999, the play spent years under revision before finally opening on Broadway in 2013. Regarded as an elegy, the story harkens back to the days of tabloid journalism prior to the 24-hour news reporting cycle. The production received six nominations for Tony Awards, winning two, including Courtney B. Vance for Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. The play received considerable critical comment, partly because it was Ephron's last play and partly because of Hanks's debut. Critical reaction was generally warm to mixed, and the limited Broadway run was profitable.

Background and composition[edit]

Ephron first conceived of this story in 1999 as an HBO movie.^[1] Ephron focused the story on the career of New York City tabloid columnist Mike McAlary from his early beginnings to his rise to stardom, when he received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for exposing police brutality against a Haitian immigrant named Abner Louima in Brooklyn's 70th precinct, and his death, eight months later, of cancer.^[2][3][4] Ephron, who had been a New York Post reporter, had previously written about her own career in journalism in the novel I Remember Nothing.^[5] She once wrote, "I can’t remember which came first—wanting to be a journalist or wanting to date a journalist"; she had a thing for journalists like McAlary.^[6] Since McAlary died of cancer and Ephron had spent her six years with cancer by directing a film and as well as writing two plays, Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune speculates that Ephron chose this subject because she shared a bond with a journalist who "also did some of his best writing while battling cancer".^[7]


Ephron began background interviews with McAlary's colleagues such as Jim Dwyer, in the months after McAlary's Christmas 1998 death.^[8] In 2005, the film idea was floated again, but Ephron claimed she could not get her preferred leading actor.^[8] It was not until 2011 that Ephron succeeded in attracting Hanks to the project.^[9] Hanks had previously starred in Ephron's popular films, Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail,^[10] but he had last performed live in the theatre in 1979 for Riverside Shakespeare Company's production of The Mandrake.^[11] The play is the final and posthumous work of Ephron, who died the year before its production.^[2]


Gabriel Rotello blogged about McAlary in The Huffington Post after hearing about the play. He noted that McAlary represented a lot of things to a lot of people, but as the first openly gay columnist, Rotello viewed McAlary unfavorably. According to Rotello, McAlary was an aggressive journalist who had a reputation for reporting on corrupt cops and miscreants in New York City's crack era. He relied heavily on police sources, hanging out with then-New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton and his mouthpiece, John Miller. His career was built on high-level access rather than using street sources and fact-corroboration. He became prominent in the public eye in Spring 1994 when a black lesbian reported that she had been raped in broad daylight in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. The headline on McAlary's story read "Rape Hoax the Real Crime", with a story alleging that the woman had concocted the story for political purposes such as speaking at lesbian rallies. At the time, New York had recently endured the Tawana Brawley rape allegations, and gaybashing was at its apex. The police then revealed substantial evidence in support of the story and began investigating McAlary's source. Two weeks later McAlary affirmed his story, and the police backed off the investigation. Rotello, who was then with New York Newsday, got Miller on tape confirming that McAlary was begging his police contacts to back him up. McAlary lost credibility with the police and the gay community. Rotello concedes, however, that McAlary later had major success.^[12]

Themes[edit]

According to David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter, the play is an "elegy for an already remote era in journalism" that predates the current 24-hour news cycle and the "decimation of the newspaper business".^[14] Joe Dziemianowicz of the New York Daily News wrote that the play is a "love letter to scruffy and scrappy New York City tabloids"^[4] Nikhil Kumar of The Independent says that the play depicts "the heyday of the New York tabloids in the 80s, when the Daily News, the Post and the upstart Newsday lined up against each other".^[13]


According to Richard Zoglin of Time, "Lucky Guy captures the hard-drinking, boys-club camaraderie, gets into the weeds of how reporters actually get people to talk, and shows us the rivalries and egos and dubious ethics that are all part of the package". In the end it is "a celebration of old-fashioned tabloid journalism in the heart of the city’s other great indigenous and endangered industry, Broadway theater."^[15] When the play closed, its run was described by Mike Lupica as a "New York Story" in addition to being a sentimental depiction of newspaper journalism.^[16]