Star 80 (1983, Bob Fosse)

It's a testament to the intensity and visceral impact of Bob Fosse's final film Star 80, that a few days after re-watching it, Star 80-inspired dreams (nightmares?) were waking me up at all hours of the night. The recent Warner Archive-issued DVD of the film is its first-ever widescreen release on home video, at least in Region 1 land, and it has been long overdue.  The reality-based drama is not an easy watch by any means, due to its very upsetting, sordid subject matter--it dramatizes the rapid rise of Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten (played by Mariel Hemingway) and her tragic murder at the hands of her estranged husband Paul Snider (Eric Roberts).  It's almost unbearably dour and I debate with myself whether we really needed Fosse to turn his considerable gifts towards such a painful, relentlessly downbeat storyline.  All that said, large swaths of the film are eminently watchable due to the dexterity and fluidity with which former dancer and choreographer Fosse moves the narrative; it's a master-class in the "based on a true story" film, seamlessly weaving in and out from harrowing crime scene re-enactments, flashbacks to happier times, talking head-style interview segments, and some propulsive, entertaining montage sequences. Music--source cues and a period-specific, pop score by Ralph Burns--is expertly spotted throughout the picture and is an important part of Fosse's storytelling.  It's a shame that Burns' excellent music, which includes several original songs, was never released on a soundtrack LP so that it could have a life outside of the film.

After undergoing rigorous training to get in shape for her role as an Olympic athlete in Robert Towne's Personal Best, Hemingway transformed her looks again, including breast implant surgery, for the part of Dorothy Stratten in Star 80.  Where Eric Roberts was far prettier than the man he was playing, Paul Snider, Hemingway faced unfair criticism in some quarters for not being pretty enough to play Stratten.

Cliff Robertson is a very convincing Hef, though Hef himself was not so pleased with the depiction and sued the production because he did not like how he was portrayed.

Based on Teresa Carpenter's Pulitzer Prize-winning story in the Village Voice, Star 80 is one of the grimmest major studio films I can recall, which is saying something considering the film was made and released at a time when serious, cynical dramas were rapidly going out of fashion.  Like Cutter's Way or Mike's Murder, Star 80 is a "'70s movie" that somehow got made in the '80s.  As mentioned, it's a downer and, on top of that, it's a damning critique of Tinseltown and the star-making machinery. With those things in mind, it's not surprising that it was made by Alan Ladd Jr.'s Ladd Company, which, along with Orion Pictures, was one of the beacons of adventurous and uncompromising films in '80s Hollywood.  That such a film was financed and released at the time is also indicative of Fosse's clout, following three Best Director nominations and one win in the previous decade.

Longtime Playboy photographer Mario Casilli (whose subjects included Dorothy Stratten) was responsible for re-creating Stratten's Playboy layouts for the film. 

Star 80 is one of a handful of movies that I remember watching on late night network television when I was an 8 or 9 year-old kid in the guest room at my grandparents' house.  Obviously this is not a children's film and I could not appreciate or comprehend it wholly at that young age.  That said, as with Class of 1984, another film I discovered in much the same way, I watched Star 80 with rapt attention, and I point to it as a formative film for me, one that I think directly led to my longterm interests in character-based drama, more generally, and true crime stories in a more specific sense.

Hef's brother Keith Hefner portrays the photographer who takes the shots that get Dorothy into the Mansion. 

Although Hemingway is top-billed, it's Roberts' Snider that takes center stage and is the film's prime focus.  It's the kind of big, Method-y performance people usually go crazy for and for which awards are handed out...except for the fact that the character he's playing is such a piece of a shit.  Roberts would have other quality leading roles following this film, but I don't know that he could ever totally get out from under the shadow of having played Paul Snider.  

Mariel Hemingway with Lisa Gordon, playing Dorothy's kid sister Louise, called "Eileen" in the film.  When she was 20, Louise Stratten married Bogdanovich and they remained a couple for 13 years.

Much like Hemingway's prior film, Personal Best, Star 80 is based on very recent events, and both films benefit from the fact that they were made so soon after said events, before their respective milieus had changed too much.  Had Star 80 been made just a couple years later, I think it would've been considerably more difficult to re-create the period-specific details that the film revels in.  At the very least, it would probably have required a significantly higher budget for the art department (which included Academy Award-winner and previous Fosse collaborator Tony Walton). Even if one is not taken too much with the narrative of Star 80, I maintain that anyone with even a fleeting interest in disco-era Hollywood will find the film's textures and pop-culture content (apart from some legally-mandated name changes) riveting.  The art direction is specific enough that I caught a barely-visible (on the standard definition DVD-R, anyway) The In-Laws poster in the background of a 1979 LA street scene.

Hemingway's role in Star 80 has parallels with her previous star vehicle, Robert Towne's Personal Best, in that in both films she plays naive characters not developed or confident enough to extricate themselves from problematic relationships. 

Fosse and his music department (the aforementioned Burns) use Rod Stewart's (and Jorge Ben's) "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy" to perfect effect (I suspect the song was an inspiration to the real-life Snider), as well as the Billy Joel catalog ("Big Shot" and "Just the Way You Are"); the latter artist is also featured prominently and similarly effectively on the Personal Best soundtrack ("Rosalinda's Eyes").

In an inspired bit of casting, Fosse brought in Carroll Baker, whose starring role in Elia Kazan's Baby Doll had made her a sex symbol in the '50s, as Dorothy's "take no bullshit" mother.  Seen here refusing to sign necessary release forms for Dorothy, she is ultimately the film's most redeeming character.

Was the real Dorothy as sweetly naive and innocent and easily manipulated as Hemingway's Dorothy? She was a far from fully formed 20 year-old when she was murdered, so it may not be so far off from reality, but it doesn't completely jibe with other accounts I've seen and heard.  In Fosse's film, she is constantly acted upon, whether by Snider, Hefner (Cliff Robertson), or "Aram Nicholas" (Roger Rees). The film would have been stronger and less one-sided if Fosse had followed Dorothy to New York and shown her growth as an actress, her developing independence, and her love affair with Nicholas (Bogdanovich); however, this would have taken away from his thesis that everyone--Snider, Hefner, Bogdanovich, Playboy, Hollywood--exploited her, benefited from her, and deserved some share of the blame for her demise.  Instead, Fosse stays on Snider to the bitter end, while Dorothy remains a cipher throughout, and the film takes on an increasingly numbing inevitability and ugliness.  To be fair, I'm not sure this material could ever really be terribly revelatory or profound...it just would've been better--and more affecting--if Fosse had any interest in making Dorothy a three-dimensional character with agency.

In his feature film debut, the late British actor Roger Rees plays Aram Nicholas, the fictional character meant to represent filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich.  Bogdanovich's They All Laughed is dubbed "Tinsel Time" for legal purposes in Star 80.

Roberts has related that Fosse told him that Snider was Fosse, if Fosse had not become a success.  So I think it's apt that my favorite section of the movie--and which I think Fosse probably had the most fun doing--encompasses the scenes that depict the constantly-scheming Snider in his element in Vancouver, before he ever met Stratten.  I'd have rather seen Fosse keep on that track, making a movie about that disco-era scoundrel, who's plenty interesting and unpredictable, without veering down the road to murder.  

"Nutritional value."

Much as I love Dorothy Stratten, I never had any desire to see Galaxina until I saw this production still.

They All Laughed (1981, Peter Bogdanovich)

I finally got around to seeing Peter Bogdanovich's They All Laughed after my friend Brian raved about it and I found it in a bargain DVD store for $6. I'd read quite a few reviews critiquing the film as being too light and insubstantial. I tempered my expectations going in and found myself most pleasantly surprised when all was said and done.

After viewing the film with and without Bogdanovich's commentary, as well as the interview between Bogdanovich and Wes Anderson, I'm left wondering how this movie might have played if star Dorothy Stratten hadn't been murdered just after production wrapped. For such a sweet little confection, They All Laughed becomes incredibly poignant and bittersweet with the knowledge of Stratten's tragic demise (told in Bob Fosse's Star 80 and a 1981 telefilm starring Jamie Lee Curtis). In fact, the initial failure of They All Laughed with filmgoers and critics is attributed, in large part, to the close proximity between Stratten's death and the film's release. It was too soon for audiences to see and enjoy a film starring Stratten just as the talented beauty was coming into her prime...a shame because she is so utterly charming and lovely here. When one considers the premature death of star John Ritter in 2003, that the film would contain the last starring feature role for Audrey Hepburn, the film's attention to many vanished or radically altered New York landmarks, and its positioning at the end of the '70s golden age of American cinema, it becomes even more sad. Obviously, this isn't the best thing for a comedy, but it makes for a rich viewing experience.

Leaving aside the real-life drama of They All Laughed, the film has a lot going for it. The story follows New York private detectives Ben Gazzara and Ritter as they follow and quickly fall for their client's wives, Hepburn and Stratten. They are accompanied along the way by fellow detective and stoner Blaine Novak, cabbie Patti Hansen, and country singer Colleen Camp. Bogdanovich explains in the supplements that he wrote all of the roles specifically for the actors who filled them and the proof is in the sublime performances by Gazzara, Hepburn, Stratten, Ritter, Novak, Camp, Hansen, Sean Ferrer, and the rest of the cast.

Gazzara and Hepburn had had an affair after meeting on the set of their previous film Bloodline. Both were in the midst of the collapses of their respective marriages when they got together, but their affair had already ended by the time of filming of They All Laughed. Without giving away the specifics of their onscreen relationship in They All Laughed, it's fair to say that Bogdanovich's knowledge of their offscreen relationship betters the film and adds another layer of complexity to the storyline, which is, admittedly, pretty thin on its own. Both actors do so much with looks and body language--it's a more than respectable ending to Hepburn's legendary film career; not having seen too much of Gazzara before, I was really impressed with his seemingly effortless cool and look forward to watching him in his work for Cassavetes and Bogdanovich's Saint Jack.

Ritter, playing a younger variation on director Bogdanovich, complete with trademark big glasses, shows himself to have been a gifted physical comic, one of the best of his generation to be sure. I never watched too much of Three's Company or the actor's few other feature roles, so his performance here was a real revelation for me. His absence from screens, big and small, is a huge loss. I'd seen Star 80 several times over the years and leafed through her Playboy layouts, but I'd never viewed any of Stratten's film or television performances. From what I understand, none of the other ones offer the glimpse of her burgeoning talent that They All Laughed does. She is as gorgeous as one would expect, but she possessed a comic timing and screen presence that belie her youth and inexperience.

Patti Hansen, a supermodel who would become Mrs. Keith Richards, is as beautiful as Stratten and has a spunkiness that I would have loved to have seen grace more films. Blaine Novak, who helped write and produce the film and worked for years in film distribution, is a really unique-looking and sounding performer. His hilarious onscreen lingo and dialect that lends itself so well to Bogdanovich's fast-moving, Screwball throwback dialogue, is apparently how he really talked. His "Is it dark yet?" line should be adopted by pot smokers in much the same way "It's 12:00 somewhere" has become a guideline for beer drinkers everywhere.

Colleen Camp never had any great starring opportunities, but she's a dynamo here whether she's convincingly belting out country tunes or aggressively pursuing Ritter or Hepburn's son Sean Ferrer. Bogdanovich made a brilliant decision to change Camp's character Christy from a jazz singer to a country singer and Camp's as good a performer as Jeff Bridges nearly 30 years later in Crazy Heart. This is a quintessential New York movie in so many ways, but the decision to go country is refreshingly unpredictable and atypical and the juxtaposition of country and city is one of the best parts of the film. I wish the real country nightclubs depicted in the film still existed.

I really enjoy Bogdanovich's portrayal of the kids in the film--growing up across the river in New Jersey, I always fantasized about being a "city kid," riding the subway, sans parents, to school and, in general, living a less sheltered, more independent life than we suburban kids did. My vision was no doubt shaped by films like this one, Rich Kids, Fame, Jeremy, and others. Here, Bogdanovich's daughters play Gazzara's and their banter and the way they carry themselves seem, to me, to be unique to kids growing up in a city like New York.

Keeping with the family, "company," vibe of the film, Hepburn's son Sean Ferrer humorously plays Jose, suitor to Stratten and Camp, and Linda MacEwen, Bogdanovich's assistant at the time plays secretary to George Morfogen's detective agency boss. Morfogen co-produced and co-wrote the film and had come up as an actor with Bogdanovich in the '50s.

My friend Brian tells me that he caught They All Laughed on television as a kid growing up in Ohio who hadn't spent any time in New York. Years later he'd end up living and working in New York and They All Laughed was the film that made him want to be there. Bogdanovich intended the film as a love letter to the city so I'm sure he'd be thrilled by Brian's reaction to the film. As much as it showcases well-known landmarks like the Plaza Hotel, the Algonquin Hotel, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Twin Towers, the film spotlights a lot of downtown locales I haven't noticed too often in film--the foot of the Manhattan Bridge, the South Street heliport, a long vanished roller disco, and the since shuttered City Limits country-western bar come readily to mind. The use of country music, the stylized, profanity-free dialogue, and the characters' dependence on elaborate signals to communicate combine to create the effect of a fantasyland New York that's appealing to me now and I can only imagine would have left me as spellbound as it did Brian, if I'd seen it as a child.