Voice From `The Simpsons' Turns Up In `Forget Paris'

The voice of Marge Simpson, sometimes better-known as Julie Kavner, was on the line.

She was talking not about "The Simpsons" but her role in writer-actor-director Billy Crystal's new romantic comedy, "Forget Paris," which goes into national release tomorrow.

She plays Richard Masur's wife, Lucy, who helps him tell the story of the Crystal character's difficult marriage at a restaurant dinner. There's a competitive yet comfortable feeling about Lucy's relationship with her husband. She just wants to make sure that he "tell it good" when he takes over the storytelling.

"It wasn't that much of a stretch," said Kavner by phone from a friend's home in upper Michigan. "I thought I had some great lines, I like the device of the narration, and I thought the script was really funny."

This is the season for romantic comedies - "French Kiss" and "While You Were Sleeping" are both doing better at the box office than expected - and Kavner is hoping this one will click, too. At the same time, she recognizes there's a major difference.

"Someone made the point that this movie starts where the other two wind up. It's about what happens after the initial meeting, after falling in love." Crystal plays a basketball referee who spends so much time on the road that his wife (Debra Winger) can't deal with it.

The script is based partly on the experiences of Crystal, who has been married for 25 years, and his co-writers, although Kavner knows of only one episode in the completed film that is literally true.

"It's the one about the pigeon getting stuck with sticky paper to Debra Winger's head. That really happened to one of the writers' wives."

As for the Crystal character's profession: "Billy's an athlete himself. He's an avid basketball fan. He'd love to have been a professional basketball player himself, and if he'd been a little taller . . ."

Two decades ago, Kavner played Masur's girlfriend, Brenda, on the television series, "Rhoda," for which she won an Emmy.

"I don't know if Billy knew that Richard and I had played a couple before," she said. "This wasn't done with that in mind. Anyway, that was 20 years ago, and Richard was playing such a different character. There was no real correlation."

She became involved as part of a read-through of the script with Masur and Joe Mantegna, who had already been cast, and Winger, who was Crystal's first choice to play his independent wife.

"The producers, who are also the writers, wanted us to help out at this read-through," said Kavner. "Evidently I did well because I got the part."

The script, by Crystal and his "City Slickers" co-writers, Babaloo Mandel and Lowell Ganz, didn't change much after that read-through. But Masur and Kavner worked on the relationship between their characters.

"We didn't want it to be just a group of narrators," she said. "You got into everybody's life a little bit. Basically everything you see was on paper, but through the process it got a little more filled out."

Kavner shot her scenes last fall, while she was completing the latest season of "The Simpsons."

"I think it was four or five weeks total. The restaurant stuff was done in one block. We were just about finished with `The Simpsons,' which we record from March through November. I think we had a couple more shows to go. It didn't become a problem. The restaurant was a set they built in a studio in L.A., and we record `The Simpsons' in L.A. too."

This is Crystal's second film as a director. His first, "Mr. Saturday Night," got mixed reviews and bombed at the box office, although it earned an Oscar nomination for David Paymer. Kavner found him easy to work with.

"He loves this movie, he loved directing it, writing it," she said. "He would come to the set one day, and just out of the blue say, `Who loves this movie? I do!' It's just a pleasure to work with someone who has that much joy in his work."

She said he's quite different from Woody Allen, who has cast her in several roles in his movies.

"I played his mother in `Radio Days' in a sense, although Seth Green played the little Woody," she said. "I've also been his girlfriend (in `New York Stories'), his wife in `Don't Drink the Water' (his recent TV movie), his ex-fiancee in `Shadows and Fog,' and his co-worker in `Hannah'. What other relationships could I have with him? But I don't even mind repeating. I love working for that guy so much."

Allen's casting director, Juliet Taylor, suggested her for the "Hannah" role a decade ago.

"When she called me up, I thought it was like a joke. The first time I met the man was the first day on the set of `Hannah and Her Sisters.' We waved and that was how we met. He's more low-key, subdued, than Billy. He's very friendly but keeps more to himself. They're very different people."

Born in 1951 in Los Angeles, Kavner majored in theater at San Diego State. After making the transition from television and TV movies ("Katherine," "No Other Love") to the big screen, she's played key roles in Penny Marshall's "Awakenings," Nora Ephron's "This Is My Life," James L. Brooks' "I'll Do Anything" and another Woody Allen film, "Alice."

One film encyclopedia describes her as an "urban everywoman." Does she see herself that way?

"Yeah, that's because of the New York stuff," she said. "I haven't done rural. But in fact I'd rather live in a rural part of the country. We have a lovely place to stay here in Michigan. I'd love to find a place like this."