Friday Film Noir
The Lonely Guy (1984) is a romantic comedy directed by Arthur Hiller and written by Ed. Weinberger and Stan Daniels, with an adaptation credited to Neil Simon. The film follows Larry Hubbard (Steve Martin), an affable greeting card writer living in New York City. Larry is instantly cast into the woeful ranks of the "lonely guys" after he finds his long-time girlfriend in bed with another man and is forced to begin a new single life. He befriends veteran lonely guy Warren Evans (Charles Grodin), who provides advice on navigating the isolating rituals of bachelorhood. In his despair, Larry writes a successful self-help book, A Guide for the Lonely Guy, which makes him rich and famous. This newfound status gives him access to the women he desires, but his fame complicates his genuine connection with Iris (Judith Ivey), who has her own history with "lonely guys."
The film was shot in New York City. The screenplay was based on the 1978 book The Lonely Guy’s Book of Life by Bruce Jay Friedman. On set, Steve Martin kept a small leather notebook labeled “Lonely Thoughts,” where he jotted awkward one-liners about isolation between takes—some made it into the dialogue verbatim. Martin and Grodin improvised nearly 30% of their scenes, giving their friendship an unpolished, conversational ease. Universal’s publicity team briefly considered selling The Lonely Guy as a “male answer to An Unmarried Woman,” but Steve Martin vetoed the tagline, arguing it cheapened the tone. One planned gag in a restaurant scene involved a waiter cutting the table in half with a chainsaw—but the prop chainsaw was forgotten, and the bit had to be adjusted. Steve Martin ran the full span of the Queensboro Bridge in a single take, weaving through traffic from Manhattan to Astoria.
