dullsville

To fall into Rice’s world was to become besotted by the gruesomely wonderful act of transformation, lured out of dullness by a like-minded soul with a toothy grin, a black turtleneck and a brocade vest; coming out for the wild night, and then retreating back to dullsville at dawn.

She had a chair on the set but didn’t use it much because she found the endless takes “dullsville.”

So it is significant that Merkin’s profile allows Previn and Allen to push back at the idea of their marriage as an unsettling daddy-daughter analog — which has contributed to some level of ambient suspicion of Allen throughout the years — painting them instead as just another dullsville married couple whose 35-year age difference has collapsed over the decades into a comfortable and affectionate routine of “parallel play.”

Never mind its reputation as dullsville.

“We’ve been accustomed over the years to having so many exotic creatures, we always felt possums would be dullsville,” Fanny Phillips told a reporter from the Evening Star in 1977.