Word: biz
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...strike every emotional chord known to junky movie melodrama. Even when she comes up flat, it is hard to look away. Midler does not make the mistake of begging for attention, like her cabaret colleague Liza Minnelli; she retains a sense of humor about herself. By mixing outrageous show-biz posturing with low-key self-effacement, she is a mastermind at getting the audience on her side...
...almost nothing to do with the '60s or the counterculture. The movie's true setting is the timeless never-never land of Hollywood kitsch; The Rose is a definitive catalogue of A Star Is Born clichés. The heroine battles with booze and men and show-biz tycoons, but somehow always manages to get out onstage and give a hell of a show. She has only two temperaments, childlike vulnerability and childish tempestuousness. The howler-ridden script makes little effort to tie these bromides to a plot or flesh them out with psychological insights. We are asked...
...Basically, show business is politics. And politics, with its media blitz, is very much show biz. The big difference is that politics is real, very real, and that show business is a fantasy world...
...vanity of the overlords but also to satisfy the human craving for symbolic ceremonials. The politician's own requirements in a democracy carried things a step further. To win a constituency, the politician must first gather a crowd and turn it into an audience. Enter show biz. In the old days the string band on the courthouse square became as indispensable for that purpose as are the musical groups and superstars in this day of mass culture. Says Joanne Woodward of theatrical personalities who get drawn into campaigns: "Let's face it, we're shills...
Money, to be sure, lies alongside, and sometimes above, other factors at the roots of the politics-show biz alliance. Impressive sums, $75,000 here, $100,000 there, were added to campaign treasuries in 1976 out of the proceeds of concerts by celebrated musical performers. Singer Linda Ronstadt was producing bucks for Governor Jerry Brown long before the two of them had become a hot gossip-column item. The Allman Brothers and Johnny Cash similarly helped out Jimmy Carter. This fund-raising mode was facilitated by a financing law that allowed concert receipts to be considered as donations...