Dr. Leo Marvin (played by Richard Dreyfuss) (waving a gun): “You understand, right? There's no other solution. You won't go away.”Bob Willy (his obsessive-compulsive patient, played by Bill Murray) “Yes, I will.”
Leo: “No, you won't. You're just saying you will, so that when I don't kill you, you'll show up again and make everyone else in my life think you are wonderful and I'm a schmuck. But I'm not a schmuck, Bob, and I'm not going to let you breeze into town and steal my family away just because you're crazy enough to be fun.”—What About Bob? (1991), directed by Frank Oz, story by Alvin Sargent and Laura Ziskin, screenplay by Tom Schulman
Sadly, writer-producer Laura Ziskin, co-creator of this comedy with future husband Alvin Sargent, died of breast cancer just a few days from the 20th-anniversary of the release of this hilarious film. If you’re in the helping profession, you’ll find this a comic vision of a familiar problem: a patient left adrift when a psychiatrist—a lifeline—leaves the city for a much-needed summer vacation.
But if you’ve visited a psychiatrist, you might find the film positively therapeutic, as the good doctor Marvin, author of bestselling self-help books (immortal sample advice: “Baby steps!”), is revealed as far less well-adjusted than the patient he calls “human Crazy Glue.” Dr. Marvin, so pompous that he makes Frasier Crane look unpretentious, comes unglued himself, in a nice bit of role reversal.
Takeaway: If you have a choice at a family barbeque between the self-important psychiatrist and “crazy enough to be fun” Bob, it’s not even a contest.
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