Taking Names

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Stars shine for Simon

Neil Simon couldn't stop rewriting his material, even with the Mark Twain Prize for humor firmly in hand.

The playwright, 79, stopped several times Sunday during his acceptance speech for the comedy honor -- once to explain why he prefers writing to performing and later to say he was editing out some comments that didn't seem important.

The actors who bring Mr. Simon's plays to life know the multiple Tony Award winner will tweak his writing all the way up to opening night -- and then some. Before the show, "Seinfeld" alumnus Jason Alexander said Mr. Simon can be cruel when it comes to editing his own work.

"He keeps cutting. It's not just rewriting," said Mr. Alexander, who appeared in Mr. Simon's "Broadway Bound" as well as the screen version of "Brighton Beach Memoirs."

"If it's not an 'A' he doesn't want it on the stage."

Mr. Simon's "A" material has been making audiences laugh until they cry for more than five decades, from his earliest days as a writer for Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows" to his years penning Broadway smashes such as "Lost in Yonkers."

Sunday's program, scheduled to air Nov. 20 on WETA-TV (Channel 26), let the stars whose careers have burned brighter thanks to Mr. Simon's prose offer their gratitude. Robert Redford, who memorably starred on both stage and screen in "Barefoot in the Park," reminded the audience that Mr. Simon is the first Mark Twain recipient "to win the prize for the power of the pen alone."

Matthew Broderick said he may not be Jewish or from New York, but he had the same reaction to Mr. Simon's protagonists as everyone else had: "That's me."

The assembled stars also performed snippets of Mr. Simon's plays, from Christina Applegate belting out "Big Spender" (from "Sweet Charity") to Lucie Arnaz and Robert Klein re-creating a scene from "They're Playing Our Song."