Word: streisands
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion had the clever notion of resetting this story in the rock world, where heady glamour and careening careers furnish the closest contemporary equivalent of the Hollywood flush years. Barbra Streisand and her inamorato Jon Peters weighed into the project as Dunne and Didion drifted away. Batteries of writers and directors were exhausted before the present version was put together under-or perhaps around-Director Frank Pierson (The Looking Glass War). Yet, what the serious quarterlies call "the authorship" of A Star Is Born is unclear. Responsibility must surely rest with Streisand and Peters...
Hostile Audience. Streisand appears as Esther (here surnamed Hoffman), an overnight rock sensation. This is a reckless casting choice. Streisand is a showboater, a sort of one-woman Hippodrome whose roots are in the brassiest tradition of the American musical theater. Hearing her light into a rock song is like listening to Al Jolson sing Leadbelly. In partial anticipation of this problem, Streisand, who gives herself a credit for "Musical Concepts," has laid on a score that is only supposed to give the impression of rock 'n' roll. Instead, it will probably put off her fans and cause...
Well, at least Esther and John Norman get to put up an adobe house in the Arizona desert together before the sad end. They do it with the aid of a tractor and a cement mixer, in about half the screen time it takes Streisand to get through her everlasting final song. It must be said that, for all concerned, the song is harder work...
...salesgirl at Tiffany. In those days, and even when she attended the Mannes College of Music, she was more interested in the theater than in opera. "Give me Broadway any day," she said after her first visit to the Met, and she still appreciates the artistry of Barbra Streisand, Billie Holiday and Peggy...
Perhaps the most successful of Dino's last-minute improvisations was the casting of Jessica Lange in the old Fay Wray role. Streisand almost signed on, then backed away. Cher would have been acceptable, but was visibly pregnant when production started. Then began a search for an unknown, which followed another mythical pattern: the fashion model flown out from Manhattan for a test; a first meeting with an unimpressed producer; the discovery by the director that she had one of those faces the camera loves; the producer's quick reversal of opinion; a hasty contract signing...