Oscars and omelets: A Conversation with Patrick Marber

By Susan Thea Posnock

One aspect of being a writer is to dream of immortality through words.

For a screenwriter, an Academy Award is the ultimate way to achieve this. But, as I discovered over a recent chat with Best Adapted Screenplay nominee Patrick Marber--the comedian-turned-playwright-turned-screen scribe of Notes on a Scandal--restaurant menus offer another way to grasp that “Holy Grail.”

Sitting in the lobby of Manhattan’s famed Algonquin Hotel, our conversation veered off on a tangent about one of its most notable regulars, Dorothy Parker.

“You can buy a Dorothy Parker burger here,” he pointed out. “In London there’s a hotel where there’s a Virginia Woolf burger. I’ve always thought that was hilarious.”

Throwing good taste to the wind I wondered aloud, “Do you dip it in water?”

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