Word: downbeater
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Social-issue movies have always been good for a network's prestige; now they seem to be good for its profit-and-loss sheet as well. Advertisers who once shied away from controversial or downbeat programs (like ABC's nuclear-war movie The Day After) are increasingly willing, even eager, to sponsor them. Moreover, in the face of growing competition from cable, social-issue dramas take on a new programming significance. Explains Perry Lafferty, a senior vice president at NBC: "How do the networks fight back against cable? We can't do it by putting on more violence...
...obsession with glamour seems a throwback to the glittery fantasy worlds that Hollywood created in the 1930s, '40s and '50s, then largely abandoned for social relevance and downbeat realism in the '60s and '70s. "I think the public has been starved for glamour for a long time," says Joan Collins, 51, who was a well-traveled but undistinguished movie actress before achieving superstardom on Dynasty (and posing in the nude for Playboy last year). "I grew up watching beautiful actresses like Ava Gardner, Hedy Lamarr and Elizabeth Taylor. Getting away from one's mundane existence...
...downbeat shot of Walter Mondale and Running Mate Geraldine Ferraro trudging down New York City streets that are almost eerily empty. Smiles fixed, they wave energetically at no one in particular. CBS describes the Labor Day parade crowd as "puny." Poor timing is blamed: the 9 a.m. start on a holiday is too early for most New Yorkers. On to Merrill, Wis., where Congressman David Obey warms up the crowd by exclaiming, "When the sun comes out in Merrill, the Democrats are going to win!" Intermittent rain begins to fall. Mondale gamely pushes on to Long Beach, Calif; the sound...
...York City, the call is for a movie that many of the auditioners in line view as an anthem to their lives: A Chorus Line, a film version of the Pulitzer-prizewinning musical play that last year became the longest-running show in Broadway history. A sort of downbeat reworking of Busby Berkeley's 1933 movie 42nd Street, in which a member of the ensemble suddenly becomes a star, Chorus Line depicts the ruthless process of casting a Broadway musical; it evolved from the actual experiences of its first performers. Although even weeknight tickets to the show cost...
...other tricks, he has mastered the techniques of fusing his life with what is thought to be his image. This results in some arresting and deeply intriguing paradoxes: the thin young man, with bones as fragile as the veins in an autumn leaf, suddenly igniting on the downbeat and burning his way through to the hot, angry heart of Billie Jean; the boy who has an uncanny sense of what his audience wants and how to go about the hard and profitable business of giving it to them; the gentle, slightly self-mocking teen-ager in Thriller...