It's different from Alvin Sargent's screenplay, the dialogue is slightly different, and it has the song lyrics interposed. Still, the movie script differs slightly from the lines that the actors actually deliver. That is, the lines as delivered differ slightly from what the actors were supposed to say. One crucial difference is something that I never understood from watching and listening to the movie, and reading the captions:
Franklin Roosevelt wishes he was 21? I never understood what that meant.
Ryan O'Neal blew the line, that’s what it meant. From the movie script:
Bet old Frank wishes you was 21 .
Ah! That makes much more sense.
That is a critical mistake that nobody, most of all Bogdanovich, caught. Bogdanovich and Ryan O’Neal bitched for 50 years that the “long car ride” scene (not this one) had to be filmed 41 times because Tatum kept “fucking up” her lines. Here, Ryan’s “fuck up” renders the line unintelligible, and undercuts a significant undercurrent theme of the movie.
As this short scene unfolds the third voice of song lyrics comes in. "Flirtation Walk" plays on the radio.
# l always knew some day
l'd accompany you
# Along Flirtation Walk
One reviewer recently said that there was "sexual innuendo" in the movie. Really? From Flirtation Walk? I thought it was just a daughter's innocent crush on her dad. From the later vamping scene in the bathroom mirror? I didn't interpret that that way either: just a young girl playing grown-up. Bogdanovich said that in the act where Addie sabotages Moze's sexual relationship with Trixie Delight, "Addie does what women do to get their man back." I saw that when I heard Bogdanovich. That was an elaborate plan by Addie. It was sabotage. Now, reading the movie script, FDR wishing Addie was 21, I see the sexual innuendo. FDR wishing he was 21 was a major "fuck up".
