Word: starlet
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Arriving for the showing of his new film, O Lucky Man!, at the Cannes Film Festival last May, Director Lindsay Anderson was incensed by the typical Cannes display of bared bosoms and battling paparazzi clamoring in front of the theater. He confronted one giggling "starlet" posing for photographers in the doorway and slapped her resoundingly on the bottom. "Get on inside and see the film," he told her, and then turned his wrath on Cannes' organizer. "This is a degenerate festival," he said. "I remember when it was fine. Now it's cheap and disgusting...
...starlet did go inside to see the film, she would have found that Anderson the director reveals as much of his dour, sardonic Scots heritage as Anderson the man does. O Lucky Man!, now on view across the U.S. (TIME, June 18), presents the audience with visions of itself as it might be seen in fun-house mirrors, reality reflected as grotesque fantasy: Big Business in blue suits calmly watching a colleague throw himself from a skyscraper window; Inhuman Science manipulating evolution by transplanting a man's head onto the heaving hulk of a hairy hog. Critics have called...
Anderson rages in his films at the state of modern humanity, deadened by conformity and isolated in a world gone ludicrously amuck. His job, he seems to feel, is to jolt his viewers awake the same way he did the starlet: with a sound moral thwacking. "The artist must always aim beyond the limits of tolerance," he once wrote. "His duty is to be a monster...
Nevertheless, some of the performances are fun to watch. Dyan Cannon plays a brassy, bitchy manager, joyfully screwing Coburn and half the crew. You never know whether to toss Cannon off as the sexy starlet "dumb broad" type, or look for intelligence behind her unabashed flattery. She manages to maintain this tension in her role throughout the film, and Ross uses her well as a counterpoint to more mundane dialogue. Richard Benjamin is the sliding writer, questioning and confused about the cruise and its purposes; Joan Hackett plays his clinging wife; and Mason plays the washed up director with...
...that is why Henry the K. likes to spend evenings in the company of Jill St. John, Mario Thomas, Raquel Welch, Samantha Eggar, Sally Kellerman, et al. What bothers Kissinger is the ladies' motivations. "Is there no end to my naiveté?" he asked after discovering that one starlet was boasting about her dates with him. "I forget that they are actresses. They are only attracted to my power-but what happens when that power ends? They're not going to sit around and play chess with...