THERE was enough superstar bickering behind the scenes of The Marrying Man (Pearl, 9.30pm) to do justice to any married couple.
Stars Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin, at the time an off-screen item, agreed to star together in the movie. Having done so they filled thousands of newspaper column centimetres spitting vitriol in the direction of production company Disney (they of the famous mouse) and at scriptwriter Neil Simon. They did so because the film turned out to be exceedingly average and as every star knows, when you make an average film, the accepted thing to do is to blame it on somebody else.
Disney and Simon were obvious targets, although what Baldwin and Basinger could tell Simon about scriptwriting would fit on the back of a small postage stamp.
In the end just about everyone down to the key grip and the gaffer disowned The Marrying Man, a film which died en route from Simon's brain to the movie theatre.
It is a shame because Simon's screenplay was based on a decent idea: shortly after they meet a young man, who is engaged to someone else, and a young woman, the mistress of a short-tempered mobster, are making mad, heedless love, although it's not love, it's just sex.
As is said more than once in the movie, they have the hots for each other, hence the film's alternative title outside America, Too Hot To Handle.
