Up the Sandbox

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Up the Sandbox
Upthesandbox.jpg
VHS cover artwork, circa. 1980s
Directed byIrvin Kershner
Screenplay byPaul Zindel
Based onUp the Sandbox
by Anne Roiphe
Produced byRobert Chartoff
Irwin Winkler
StarringBarbra Streisand
David Selby
CinematographyGordon Willis
Edited byRobert Lawrence
Music byBilly Goldenberg
Production
companies
Barwood Films
First Artists
Distributed byNational General Pictures
Release date
  • December 21, 1972 (1972-12-21)
Running time
97 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$2,926,000[1]
Box office$3,500,000 (rentals)[2]

Up the Sandbox is a 1972 American comedy-drama film directed by Irvin Kershner and starring Barbra Streisand.

Paul Zindel's screenplay, based on the novel by Anne Roiphe, focuses on Margaret Reynolds, a bored young New York City wife and mother who slips into increasingly bizarre fantasies.

The cast includes David Selby, Paul Benedict, George S. Irving, Conrad Bain, Isabel Sanford, Lois Smith, Jacobo Morales playing a character who closely resembles Fidel Castro, and Stockard Channing in her film debut.

Plot[]

Margaret Reynolds, a young wife and mother of two, severely bored with her day-to-day life in New York City and neglected by her husband (David Selby), discovers that she is pregnant again. She does not tell her husband at first, instead finding refuge in her outrageous fantasies: being sexually pursued by a Central American dictator modeled on Fidel Castro, imagined confrontations with her husband and mother, an anthropological visit to an African tribe that promises a ritual of pain-free childbirth, and a terrorist mission to plant explosives in the Statue of Liberty. After one final fantasy of first visiting and then fleeing an abortion clinic, Margaret finally tells her husband about the pregnancy and then leaves in a taxi to enjoy a day off of parenting responsibilities.

Production[]

Director Irvin Kershner reportedly told Barbra Streisand's biographer, James Spada, that he was originally unhappy with the script, but also that he was advised not to express his dissatisfaction to Streisand. Several days into filming, when Streisand went to Kershner and asked him why they were having so much trouble, he told her that they had started shooting with a weak script. Kershner said, "Your people warned me not to tell you." To that, Streisand said, laughing as she did, "That's ridiculous! If a script isn't good enough, let's work to improve it."[3]

Kershner actually took his crew on location to remote East Africa, but he had originally planned to have them shoot in a backlot at MGM. When Streisand convinced him it would be better for the film to shoot on location, he agreed and so convinced the team of producers, Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler. Kershner used Samburu tribesmen as extras, portraying the fabled Masai tribe.[4]

Streisand remembered Kenya as "quite beautiful...I remember it being so hot. We had no air conditioner or anything, so I had a little, dinky trailer filled with flies. Flies everywhere. But I loved the people, the Samburu people, and I made very good friends with a woman of the tribe. We didn’t speak the same language, obviously, but she understood what I was trying to say to her. She showed me how to dress. Everything was held together with safety pins so nobody had to sew anything. I had the greatest outfits. You rip the fabric and you safety pin in where you want it. And then jewelry made out of telephone wires, little beads. She taught me how they put makeup on their eyes with the ground stone, blue..."[5]

Kershner's hopes of working with Streisand again were stymied when she rejected the title role in Eyes of Laura Mars; Faye Dunaway eventually took the part.

Reception[]

Up the Sandbox was one of the first films to explore women's changing roles during the sexual revolution of the early 1970s, and critics praised Streisand's performance. According to Pauline Kael, Streisand "never seemed so radiant as in this joyful mess, taken from the Anne Richardson Roiphe novel and directed by Irvin Kershner. The picture is full of knockabout urban humor".[6]

Roger Ebert, who gave the film three out of four stars, also had nothing but praise for her in his review: "This is a Barbra Streisand movie, and so we know the central character won't (can't) be stereotyped; nothing even remotely like Streisand has existed in movies before... She does not give us a liberated woman, or even a woman working in some organized way toward liberation. Instead, she gives us a woman who feels free to be herself, no matter what anyone thinks. This is a kind of woman, come to think of it, who is rare in American movies".[7]

But audiences avoided Up The Sandbox and it proved to be one of Streisand's lowest-grossing films.

Home media[]

Up The Sandbox was released in a Region 1 DVD on October 5, 2004, as a part of the Barbra Streisand Collection.

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ Murphy, A.D. (October 11, 1972). "Hoffman Tie With First Artists Prod. Unveils Four Stars' Internal Setup; Ali McGraw Got 300G For 'Getaway'". Variety. p. 3.
  2. ^ "Big Rental Films of 1973", Variety, 9 January 1974, pg 19.
  3. ^ "Up the Sandbox (1972) : Trivia". IMDb.com. Retrieved 2017-04-02.
  4. ^ Winkler, Irwin (2019). A Life in Movies: Stories from Fifty Years in Hollywood (Kindle ed.). Abrams Press. pp. 932–979/3917.
  5. ^ "Barbra Streisand Archives | Films | Up the Sandbox (1972)". Barbra-archives.com. 1972-12-21. Retrieved 2017-04-02.
  6. ^ "Pauline Kael". Geocities.ws. Retrieved 2017-04-02.
  7. ^ Ebert, Roger (1972-01-01). "Up the Sandbox Movie Review & Film Summary (1972) | Roger Ebert". Rogerebert.suntimes.com. Retrieved 2017-04-02.

External links[]

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