In 1982, writer/director Barry Levinson made one of the great feature debuts of all time with “Diner,” a critically acclaimed and Oscar-nominated gem about a group of guys struggling to understand and communicate with women in 1959 Baltimore. That film showcased a terrific collection of up-and-coming talent that included Kevin Bacon, Paul Reiser, Mickey Rourke, Ellen Barkin, Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, and Tim Daly — but Levinson had an equally impressive cast set for another “Diner“-related project that never had a chance to build an audience.
In 1983, Levinson wrote and directed a pilot for a “Diner” TV series intended for CBS — if only the network picked it up. “It was a very good pilot, I thought,” Levinson told IndieWire, noting that he had found excellent replacements for the actors in the film. Paul Reiser returned to play his role, but James Spader stepped in to fill Kevin Bacon’s shoes and Michael Madsen was cast in the part played by Mickey Rourke. “They were absolutely terrific,” Levinson said.
As Levinson prepares his latest film, “The Alto Knights,” for release, he’s philosophical about CBS’ refusal to order “Diner” to series. “I’ve done various pilots over the years, and some get through, and some don’t,” he said. “‘Homicide’ got through, ‘Oz’ got through, but others never hit the screen.” Levinson takes some solace in a story he heard about CBS chairman Bill Paley admitting later that letting “Diner” die was a mistake. “Supposedly he said, ‘We should have picked that up.’ Is that for real, or did somebody make it up and tell me that? I don’t know, but I find it sort of amusing.”
Levinson credits the existence of “Diner” the movie to an unlikely source: comedy legend Mel Brooks, with whom Levinson worked as a writer on “Silent Movie” and “High Anxiety” in the late 1970s. “We worked together for a little over three years,” Levinson said. “I would tell him stories about the diner guys at lunch, and one day he said to me, ‘You should write that as a film.’ I had never thought about it. I said, ‘Really?’”
Brooks recommended that Levinson look to Federico Fellini’s “I Vitelloni” as a model, but Levinson hadn’t seen it and couldn’t find a copy. “Back then it wasn’t like you could pull it up on streamers,” Levinson said. “I never did get to see it, but that idea got put in my head and I just started writing.” Long after he finished the script, Levinson realized he had been influenced by another film: Paddy Chayefsky’s “Marty,” both the 1953 television version and the 1955 feature film that won the Oscar for Best Picture.
“The line, ‘What do you want to do tonight, Marty?’ ‘I don’t know Ang, what do you want to do?’ I thought was amazing,” Levinson said. “The most ordinary line I’ve ever heard, but to me it might as well have been Shakespeare. Basically, they’re two lonely guys but they didn’t talk about being lonely. And I didn’t think about it at the time, but when I wrote ‘Diner,’ that’s what I was trying to do. I was trying to make it the most ordinary thing I could, about the inability of males to understand females, and to understand their sensibility and frustration and where they’re going with their lives.”
The combination of Mel Brooks and Chayefsky was clearly instrumental, but Levinson says he didn’t realize it until years later. “You don’t necessarily recognize the influences in your life as they’re happening,” he said. “You don’t go, ‘Oh yeah, I’m gonna remember this.’ It just stuck there.”
