9 Questions for Character Analysis

1: Who Am I? All the details about your character including name, age, address, relatives, likes, dislikes, hobbies, career, description of physical traits, opinions, beliefs, religion, education, origins, enemies, loved ones, sociological influences, etc

2. What Time Is It? Century, season, year, day, minute, significance of  time

3. Where Am I? Country, City, neighborhood, home, room, area of room

4. What Surrounds Me? Animate and inanimate objects - complete details of environment

5. What are the Given Circumstances? Past, present, and future of all relevant events

6. What is my Relationship? Relation to total events, other characters, and to things

7. What do I Want?  Character's need. The immediate and main objective

8. What is in My Way?  The obstacles which prevent character from fulfilling need. 

9. What do I do to Get What I Want? The action: physical and verbal. Action verbs

Walter Matthau (Oscar) and Art Carney (Felix)

Walter Matthau Art Carney The Odd Couple Broadway 1965" by Photographer-Henry Grossman, New York

Original Broadway Production

Link to information (and a little bit of period context) about the original Broadway production of The Odd Couple.

An interesting interview,

If you have Amazon Prime, this is an interview with Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane from 2005 about their then-upcoming revival of The Odd Couple.

Surprisingly, they don't focus too much on the actual production or script, but there are some insightful moments. It ends up being more about the actors than the show. Some thoughts I found significant are embedded below:

October 3, 2005

Discussion with Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Joe Mantello, and Patrick Pancheco

History:

Play inspired by events in life of Danny Simon, who during divorce moved in and lived with Roy Gerber.

Simon had nothing to do with the TV version of the show

Discussion:

19:00 Lane: There is a musicality to the dialogue... It should seem very natural dialogue... and it's also funny... but it always have to come from just a guy talking... trying to express something... the danger is to play into "oh it's funny dialogue" and trying to make it funny... you can't... you always have to make it real...

22:00 Broderick: [Neil Simon] is an individual, and his writing has it's own idiosyncrasies...

26:45 Lane: It's like Felix, they talk about you for 20 minutes and then you have to come on and fulfill that...

36:30 Pancheco: There was a Spanish version where they played it gay and it ended up being a disaster...

39:30 Broderick: The joke is that I'm treating my buddy like my wife, if they were actually gay the joke wouldn't work....

Thanks to Julianna for sending this our way!

The Odd Couple Movie

The Odd Couple movie, 1968 

Jack Lemmon as Felix Ungar 

and 

Walter Matthau as Oscar Madison

This is a magnificent movie and you will see, nearly identical to the stage script. 

This movie is also available on Netflix, without the strange angle. 

Please do not watch this at the very beginning of your research and character development process, but feel free to once you have started to answer questions on your own.

Original Review

Review for the original production on Broadway, dated March 11, 1965, written by Walter Kerr, published by the New York Times

"Mr. Matthau is a divorced man, which is why he is able to have all his friends in on Friday nights and also why the eight room apartment looks like one of those village bazaars at which underprivileged citizens can exchange their old refuse."