, the film stars Richard Dreyfuss
, Marsha Mason
, Quinn Cummings
, and Paul Benedict
. The original screenplay
by Neil Simon
centers on an odd trio—a struggling actor who has sublet a Manhattan
apartment from a friend, the current occupant (his friend's ex-girlfriend, who has just been abandoned) and her precocious young daughter.
Richard Dreyfuss won a Best Actor
Oscar
for his performance as Elliot Garfield.
Paula McFadden (Marsha Mason
) learns she has been dumped by her married boyfriend Tony DeForrest and that he has sublet her and her ten-year-old daughter Lucy's (Quinn Cummings
) Manhattan
apartment.
I will bring home anyone or anything I chose including a one-eyed Episcopalian Kangaroo if that happens to be kinky inclination. 
If you were a Broadway musical, people would be humming your face.
"It never occurred to us that William Shakespeare wrote the Wizard of Oz. However, Elliot Garfield makes a splended Wicked Witch of the North." Tacky. Tacky. Well, if they're gonna kill me. Let 'em kill me with panache.
Miss McFadden, today I begin rehearsals for my first New York play. It will be the most important day of my life. Am I nervous? No, I am not nervous. For I have meditated. I am relaxed. I am calm. I am confident. You, on the other hand, have not meditated, and therefore you are a pain in the ass.
My careereth is over. I am making a horseth asseth of myselfeth. Mark, I'm begging you. I'm BEGGING you. You want this kind of performance? Let me play Lady Anne.
What is it about you that makes a man with a hundred forty-seven I.Q. feel like a dribbling idiot?
You know I liked you from the first time I met you when you answered the door. I said to myself, "This is the best half-a-face I ever saw!"
You know I love listening to you talk. I hate living with you but your conversation is first rate.