Word: hollywoodized
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Such defiantly unglamorous physical attributes might hamper the career of an aspiring stewardess on any regularly scheduled airline, but they have helped make Karen Black, 32, the busiest actress in Hollywood. She has just finished her sixth movie in the past two years, and last week she began work on her seventh, Alfred Hitchcock's Deceit. She has not sought out safe, sympathetic parts. She has played the teasing Faye Greener in The Day of the Locust, the honky-tonk waitress Rayette Dipesto in Five Easy Pieces, the low-down and libidinous Myrtle Wilson in The Great Gatsby...
...Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, have all shared the brooding yet tempestuous personality often associated with fallen angels. The modern heir of these model wetheads is the submarine captain, particularly the German U-boat commander of World War II. With his beard, shabby sweater, and a little help from Hollywood, he cuts a theatrical figure that falls somewhere between cruel, cynical buccaneer and psychiatrist on summer vacation...
Schlesinger's first mistake was to attempt to induce a plot line into a novel which has no story. West's book is less a novel than a series of sketches of the seamier side of life in Hollywood which he combines into a collage of circus-like characters, aggressively pursuing empty dreams, turning vicious at the earliest opportunity to express their frustration and disillusionment...
...that Schlesinger didn't have the courage to be a little bit more adventurous with his material, because there are many things intrinsic to the novel that he does well. What he is particularly good at is capturing the character of the Hollywood hangers-on, those people who come to funerals and sit in the back row nervously tapping their autograph books with their pens, their eyes gazing mindlessly into space, nervous smiles on their faces, waiting for some big star to arrive and inject some excitement into their lives. Their relationship with the film idols is a symbiotic...
...CONVINCED that it was impossible to adapt West's novel into an effective movie. What would have been required was a little more daring, a little more imagination on Schlesinger's part. He might have forsaken the gaudy, lush colors with which he chose to evoke Hollywood for something simpler, more barren, might even have filmed it in black and white, thereby allowing his excellent cast to draw their weird, surrcal characters against a stark background instead of having them clash confusingly with their environment. He would have done well to have completely eliminated Tod and had more confidence...