It's My Turn (1980)

A successful but stressed mathematics professor goes to her father's wedding and falls in love with her father's bride's son, a prematurely retired pro baseball player. She must choose ... See full summary »

Director:

Claudia Weill

Writer:

Eleanor Bergstein

Stars:

Jill Clayburgh, Michael Douglas, Charles Grodin

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
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)

Storyline

A successful but stressed mathematics professor goes to her father's wedding and falls in love with her father's bride's son, a prematurely retired pro baseball player. She must choose between him and her current boyfriend, between Chicago and New York, and between research and administration.

---

Plot Keywords:

title directed by female | title written by female | wedding | new york city | mathematics | 

---

Taglines:

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

---

Genres:

Comedy | Drama

---

Certificate:

R

Details

Official Sites:

Sony Movie Channel [United States]

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

5 February 1981 (Argentina)

Also Known As:

A Perfect Circle

Filming Locations:

The Burbank Studios, Burbank, California, USA

Box Office

Gross USA:

$11,000,000

Company Credits

Production Co:

Rastar Films

Technical Specs

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Director Claudia Weill first became acquainted with writer Eleanor Bergstein from the latter's American politics novel "Advancing Paul Newman" (1973) which had the feminist tagline of: "A story of two liberated women looking for love". Weill originally asked Bergstein about writing the screenplay for Weill's previous picture Girlfriends (1978) but Bergstein declined as she wanted to work on another novel. However, about four years later, Weillwas able to interest Bergstein in writing the script for this filmed production.

---

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, ...
[...]

---

Connections

Featured in Sneak Previews: Hopscotch/It's My Turn/Loving Couples/The Elephant Man/Motel Hell (1980)

---

Soundtracks

This Is My Love
Performed by Tony Travalini
Courtesy of Motown Records

User Reviews

SWF, professional,liberated, 30s, seeks "the real thing"

The final chapter in Jill Clayburgh's unplanned "independent woman" trilogy (the first two were "An Unmarried Woman" and "Starting Over"). This one is from the same writer as "Dirty Dancing," which probably explains why the main character in each is a Jewish woman who is very much "daddy's little girl."

Here, the protagonist is perhaps the most glamorous mathematics professor ever (she wears stilettos to class, but earthy gal that she is, removes them while solving equations at the blackboard). She's got relationship issues with her widowed dad who's remarrying, and with her divorced live-in boyfriend, plus she's conflicted about whether to take a new job in a new city that pays much more, but won't allow her to continue her research. She breezily describes her various complications as "modern problems," which tells you that the creators here felt they were at the very cutting edge of portraying the quintessential "liberated" woman. Laura Linney's character in "You Can Count On Me" had a similarly complicated life, but that film didn't feel the need for its characters to be so self-aware.

Michael Douglas enters the picture to help her figure out where/how to get the healthy, giving relationship that everyone around her seems to have, and that therefore is "her turn" to get (get it?)

This is a decent movie that actually doesn't feel particularly dated, (save for Clayburgh's Oscar-bait "big scene" towards the end) despite its obvious 70's era feminist overtones. But perhaps because of its agenda, the romance doesn't exactly sweep you off your feet.

As with most movies from the 80s, part of the fun is seeing what stars/faces of the future show up. Here, we get a young Daniel Stern, almost unrecognizable as Clayburgh's star pupil, and future "Law and Order" District Attorneys Steven Hill and Dianne Wiest.