It's My Turn (1980)

Director:

Claudia Weill

Writer:

Eleanor Bergstein (written by)

Release Date:

6 March 1981 (West Germany)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Tagline:

Just when she thought she had everything right...in stepped Mr. Wrong.

Plot:

A successful but stressed mathematics professor (Clayburgh) goes to her father's wedding and falls in love with her father's bride's son (Douglas)...

Plot Keywords:

Mathematics | Baseball | Wedding | New York City | Mathematical Equation

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Jill Clayburgh	...	Kate Gunzinger
Michael Douglas	...	Ben Lewin
Charles Grodin	...	Homer
Beverly Garland	...	Emma
Steven Hill	...	Jacob
Teresa Baxter	...	Maryanne
Joan Copeland	...	Rita
John Gabriel	...	Hunter
Charles Kimbrough	...	Jerome
Roger Robinson	...	Flicker
Jennifer Salt	...	Maisie
Daniel Stern	...	Cooperman
Dianne Wiest	...	Gail (as Diane Wiest)
Ron Frazier	...	Professor (as Ronald C. Frazier)
Edwin McDonough	...	Professor (as Edwin J. McDonough)

Also Known As:

A Perfect Circle

Runtime:

Spain:91 min | USA:91 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Canada:PG (Ontario) | Iceland:L | Australia:PG | Finland:S | USA:R

Filming Locations:

New York City, New York, USA

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

Jill Clayburgh's proof of the "Snake Lemma" at the very beginning of the movie is technically perfect. In Charles A. Weibel's book, "An Introduction to Homological Algebra" (Cambridge U. Press, 1994), there appears the following: "We will not print the proof (of the Snake Lemma) in these notes, because it is best done visually. In fact, a clear proof is given by Jill Clayburgh at the beginning of the movie 'It's My Turn.'"

Quotes:

[First lines.]
Kate Gunzinger: Let me just show you how to *construct* the map S, which is the fun of the lemma anyhow, okay? So you assume you have an element in the kernel of gamma, that is, an element in C, such that gamma takes you to 0 in C-prime. You pull it back to B, via map g, which is surjective...
Cooperman: Hold it, hold it, hold it. That's -- that's not unique.
Kate Gunzinger: Yes, it is unique, Mr. Cooperman. Up to an element of the image of f, all right? So we've pulled it back to a fixed B here. Then you take beta of B, which takes you to 0 in C-prime, by the commutivity of the diagram. It's therefore in the kernel of the map g-prime, hence is in the image of the map f-prime, by the exactness of the lower sequence...
Cooperman: No.
Kate Gunzinger: ...so we can pull it back...
Cooperman: No.
Kate Gunzinger: ...to an element in A-prime...
Cooperman: It's not well defined!
Kate Gunzinger: ...which it turns out is *well* defined *modulo* the image of alpha. And thus defines the element in the co-kernel of alpha...
[...]

Soundtrack:

This Is My Love

Stock feminist values...

Before "Wall Street" and "Fatal Attraction" put him on Hollywood's A-list, Michael Douglas kicked around with secondary roles in an assortment of comedies and dramas, and he was usually miscast. Either playing the smartass cameraman in "The China Syndrome" or the judge in "The Star Chamber", Douglas exuded confidence but no star-wattage. In "It's My Turn", a sort-of feminist comedy-drama second-biller for "An Unmarried Woman", Douglas is an ex-pro ballplayer with a scruffy beard who dates teacher Jill Clayburgh--who apparently didn't use up all her feminist angst as the "Unmarried Woman". Written and directed by women (Eleanor Bergstein and Claudia Weill, respectively), the movie wobbles around from scene to scene without a hope in hell of satisfying an audience of either sex. Clayburgh tries out different bits of shtick, but this persona (a brilliant-but-klutzy gal on the go) isn't funny or very interesting. Poor Charles Grodin is stuck yet again playing third fiddle, while Douglas is amiable and rascally and livens things up briefly (you can feel the movie come to life when he's on-screen). The theme song, sung by Diana Ross and co-written by Carole Bayer Sager, is pretty yet filled with claptrap rhetoric and fantasy delusions ("I've given up the truth/To those I've tried to please"). "It's My Turn" ends up pleasing nobody. *1/2 from ****