Diner: The Stellar Cast List And Subtle Story That Changed Movies

By | July 9, 2019

test article image
Mickey Rourke, Paul Reiser, and Steve Guttenberg in Diner. Source: (imdb)

Barry Levinson's 1982 coming-of-age movie Diner was a small movie with a nothing cast that was only modestly successful -- but its actors went on to become big stars, and it influenced movies and TV in the decades that followed. Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Paul Reiser, Steve Guttenberg, Ellen Barkin, Tim Daly, and Daniel Stern were more or less unknowns when they signed on to do Levinson's sentimental project, based on the director's youth as a guy who sat in a Baltimore coffee shop shooting the breeze with his buddies, pondering life's minutiae and (indirectly) its complexities. And if that setup seems familiar, it's because characters have been having trivial conversations in diners ever since, whether they're the neurotic New Yorkers of Seinfeld or the cranky killers in Tarantino movies. Diner does have a plot -- but it's odd and almost incidental. This movie is all about characters and their relationships.

A Cast of Real Characters in a Realistic Situation

test article image
The diner from the set of Levinson's film. Source: (imdb)

Barry Levinson had started out as a comedy writer, developing sketches and scripts for TV shows including The Carol Burnett Show and The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine. He made the jump to movies as a collaborator with Mel Brooks on Silent Movie (1976) and High Anxiety (1977) and earned an Academy Award nomination for the screenplay he co-wrote for the Al Pacino film ...And Justice For All (1979).

He had his directorial debut with Diner, for which he also wrote the screenplay. The movie, set in Baltimore, Maryland in 1959, arose from Mel Brooks’ suggestion that he write a screenplay based on some conversations they had that were very similar to the eventual conversations in Diner. Since the movie focused on characters rather than plot, Levinson was concerned with the characters’ chemistry as a group rather than their individual resumes. Indeed, most of them had few credits prior to the film. As the actors got to know each other, they developed a rapport that made the story of men growing up together more believable.