Neil Simon: I wouldn't know how to take a year off and do nothing.
John Cheever: I’d get up and sit on the edge of the bathtub and chain-smoke until three or four in the morning.
Simon: You just think of some wild situation that sounds interesting.
Cheever: You might as well give up.
Simon: But they'll always come to you and say, "I'm having trouble with this line. Can you think if there's another way of me saying it that makes it more comfortable?"
•••
Cheever: One learns to skip the crowd scene, the portentous door, the banal irony of zooming into the beauty’s crow’s-feet.
Simon: Others just unfold themselves. None of them come easy.
Cheever: I went to Hollywood to make money.
Simon: Most farces are about wealthy people.
Cheever: To diminish shock I throw high dice, get sauced, go to Egypt, scythe a field, screw.
•••
Simon: And then the second act just hits them so hard.
Cheever: It’s like looking over your shoulder to see where you’ve run.
Simon: People have to be in jeopardy constantly; the minute the jeopardy stops and they can sit back and relax, it's like a train that runs out of steam.
Cheever: This table seems real, the fruit basket belonged to my grandmother, but a madwoman could come in the door any moment.
Simon: Well, in a glacier-like way.