John and Mary begins the morning after John and Mary meet in a bar, during a conversation about Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend, and go home with each other. The story unfolds during the day as they belatedly get to know each other over breakfast, lunch and dinner. Flashbacks of their previous bad relationships are interspersed throughout when something in their conversation brings the thought up.
The film premiered at the Sutton Theatre in New York City on Sunday, December 14, 1969, and opened the following day.[4][5] It received an R rating upon its original release, but was re-rated PG in 1973.[citation needed]
In February 1969, before the release of the film, both Hoffman and Farrow made the cover of Time, with the headline: "The Young Actors: Stars and Anti-Stars". This marked and celebrated new actors like Hoffman and Farrow (both hot off their successes in The Graduate and Rosemary's Baby, respectively) as significant to their generation.[6][7]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "John and Mary is supposed to be a contemporary movie, I guess, and yet it's curiously out of touch. John and Mary shadow box uneasily with the American language, trying to sound like all people their age without sounding too much like any particular person."[8]
Vincent CanbyofThe New York Times wrote, "There is nothing wrong with the idea of 'John and Mary,' just with its execution. John Mortimer's screenplay is short-focused, its action confined mostly to John's apartment where John and Mary eat, talk and lie about with such dreary verisimilitude that you eventually find yourself less interested in John and Mary than in the settings, clothes and objects that surround them."[9]
According to Fox records, the film required $6,300,000 in rentals to break even, and by December 11, 1970, it had made $8,150,000, resulting in a profit to the studio.[11]
The film score was composed, arranged and conducted by Quincy Jones, and the soundtrack, featuring vocalists Evie Sands, The Strange Things, Jeff Bridges, The Morgan Ames Singers and four classical pieces performed by a brass ensemble, was released on the A&M label in 1970.[15][16]
^"Big Rental Films of 1970". Variety. January 6, 1971. p. 11.
^Solomon, Aubrey (1989). Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. p. 232. ISBN978-0-8108-4244-1.
^"John & Mary (Lindsay) No-Show at Fox Film - And 'Twas Made in N.Y.". Variety. December 17, 1969. p. 5.
^"Pre-Yule Slows B'way; 15 Pix Due This Wk.; 'Charlie Brown' Huge 290G; 'Cuckoo' Big 15G, 8, 'Z' Record 41G". Variety. December 17, 1969. p. 9.
^"Cover". Time. February 7, 1969. Retrieved June 17, 2023.
^Silverman, Stephen M. (1988). The Fox that got away : the last days of the Zanuck dynasty at Twentieth Century-Fox. L. Stuart. p. 328. ISBN978-0818404856.
