Matinee Idle

After young playwright, David Shayne obtains funding for his play from gangster Nick Valenti, Nick's girlfriend Olive miraculously lands the role of a psychiatrist—but not only is she a bimbo who could never pass for a psychiatrist—she's a dreadful actress. David puts up with the leading man who is a compulsive eater, the grand dame who wants her part jazzed up, and Olive's interfering hitman/bodyguard—but, eventually he must decide whether art or life is more important.

Eddie Tayloe's grandfather leaves him six thousand dollars and the money belt it came in, freeing Tayloe to leave his dull newspaper job in Texas and move to New York to become a playwright. Along the way, his car breaks down and a girl walking along the highway asks for a lift. It turns out she's a nice girl, named Perry, running away from a job at a gasoline station. Soon they're off to New York together, but part ways once they arrive. Time passes and Eddie is failing to sell his play; Perry is failing to find a job. Odd circumstances, involving an old pickpocket named Mandy, bring them together again.

A conniving Broadway producer and his meek accountant plan to profit from charming wealthy old biddies to invest in an overbudget production, and then put on a sure-fire disaster, so nobody will ask for their money back — and what's more disastrous than a tasteless musical celebrating Adolf Hitler.

A Broadway playwright puts murder in his plan to take credit for a student's script.

Three penniless artists become friends in modern-day Paris: Rodolfo, an Albanian painter with no visa, Marcel, a playwright and magazine editor with no publisher, and Schaunard, a post-modernist composer of execrable noise.

Aspiring actor Edward undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance. But his new dream face quickly turns into a nightmare, as he loses out on the role he was born to play and becomes obsessed with reclaiming what was lost.

Desperate for a breakthrough as she nears the big 4-0, struggling New York City playwright Radha finds inspiration by reinventing herself as a rapper.

In a sleepy Louisiana parish, a group of lifelong friends stage a rather unorthodox intervention to help a young playwright unravel the truth about her complicated mother and let go of her painful past.

When perpetually single, aging music industry exec Harry Sanborn, and his latest trophy girlfriend, Marin, arrive at her mother's beach house in the Hamptons, they find that her mother, playwright Erica Barry, also plans to stay for the weekend. Erica is scandalized by the relationship and Harry's sexist ways. But when Harry has a heart attack while there, and the doctor prescribes bedrest, his only option is to stay at the Barry home. Left in the care of Erica and his doctor, a love triangle starts to take shape.

Molière, a down-and-out actor-cum-playwright up to his ears in debt. When the wealthy Jourdain offers to cover that debt so that Molière's theatrical talents might help Jourdain win the heart of a certain widowed marquise, hilarity ensues.

Starving playwright Judith Wells meets playboy writer of musicals, George Macrae, over a plate of stolen spaghetti. He persuades producer Sam Gordon to buy her ridiculous play "North Winds" just to improve his romantic chances, and even persuades her to sing in the sort of show she pretends to despise. But just when their romance is going well, Gordon's former flame Lulu reveals the ace up her sleeve...

A spiritualist medium holds a seance for a writer suffering from writers block but accidentally summons the spirit of his deceased first wife which leads to an increasingly complex love triangle with his current wife of five years.

A tough girl raised in the streets finds that her dialect and manners are helpful as source material for a playwright.

It's the start of the 20th century, and Tuccio, resident playwright of a theatre repertory company offers the owners of the company his new play, "Illuminata". They reject it, saying it's not finished, and intrigue starts that involves influential critic Bevalaqua, theatre star Celimene, young lead actors and other theatre residents

An unsuccessful playwright faces trials and tribulations as he seeks to find himself in New York City.

A broadway playwright is burning the candle at both ends. He is dealing with pressure from a production nearing premiere, a wife who is leaving him, and 5 children 4 of which belong to her.

In the 16th century, poet, playwright and part-time actor Miguel de Cervantes has been arrested, together with his manservant, by the Spanish Inquisition. They're accused of presenting an entertainment offensive to the Inquisition. Inside the huge dungeon into which they have been cast, the other inmates gang up on Cervantes and his manservant, staging a mock trial, with the intention of stealing or burning his possessions. Cervantes wishes to desperately save a manuscript he carries with him and stages, with costumes, makeup, and the participation of the other prisoners, an unusual defense—the story of Don Quixote.

Ella Peterson works in the basement office of Susanswerphone, a telephone answering service. She listens in on others' lives and adds some interest to her own humdrum existence by adopting different identities for her clients. They include an out-of-work Method actor, a dentist with musical yearnings, and in particular playwright Jeffrey Moss, who is suffering from writer's block and desperately needs a muse.

A descendant of Shakespeare tries to restore his plays in a world rebuilding itself after the Chernobyl catastrophe obliterates most of human civilization.

A Broadway playwright wants to keep on writing plays for his wife to star in, but all she wants is to retire to Connecticut and, following a few 'worlds-apart" discussion of the issue, they get a divorce. The actress marries a banker in a fit of pique only to quickly discover the divorce was not valid. She communicates this information to her not-yet ex-husband and he, to prevent consummation of the invalid marriage rescues her by sending plumbers, waiters, porters, chambermaids, bellhops, desk clerks, exterminators and, finally, a crowd of roistering conventioneers to the suite to ensure no bedtime story would take place there