Nicely done skewering of Hollywood in the 1930s. Well, maybe more than just Hollywood bites the dust. In sociology, "Hollywood" is simply a more intense expression of what goes on in everyday life, as the nose is a prominent feature but is still part of the face.
The movie preserves Nathaniel West's distinction between the performers and the audience, though they meld towards the end. Among the more obvious of the actors is Karen Black as a flirtatious movie extra, and her father, Burgess Meredith, a salesman selling a bag of tricks. The observers include William Atherton as the viewer's proxy, a recent graduate of Yale summoned to Hollywood as an art director; and Donald Sutherland as Homer Simpson (great name), a pathologically inhibited accountant from the Midwest who has "come to California to die." They all live in the San Bernardino bungalow courts or garden apartments or whatever they are. The architecture of Southern California is a marvel, with fake mission style, fake Southern plantation, fake thatch-roofed English cottage, fake Arabian Nights apartments. Robert Benchley lived in The Ali Baba bungalows, which may, in itself, have been enough to drive him to drink. I recently stayed at the Taj Mahal Motel, which vaguely resembled a miniature of its namesake, only painted Day-Glo purple -- unless the whole thing was some Arabian apparition induced by the toxic atmosphere. But, in any case, nothing is what it seems to be made of. The huge, hammered-metal hinges on the doors of the Medieval castle turn out to be of insubstantial tin.
All the characters are pathetic but the one I found most nearly sympathetic is Homer Simpson, Sutherland, who wants only to be left alone until he drops, like the over-ripe oranges on his back yard tree. But he's swept up by incidents into coming to adore and house Karen Black's fake slut. She acts like a floozy and, until she needs the money, she may actually be the seventeen-year-old virgin she claims to be. But Sutherland is to Black what a Handiwipe is to us.
Characters come and go, and their relationships become complicated. William Atherton, for instance, the sophisticated artist from the East, falls for Karen Black and becomes embittered when she dumps him for someone she can get more out of. He's blandly handsome and a little innocent. Karen Black is sadly miscast. She's big and strong and her eyes are close together, making her manipulativeness obvious. What was needed was a beautiful young teen-ager whose narcissism is justified and who could lie convincingly to herself and others. Burgess Meredith dies and leaves a lovely pink-cheeked corpse. One expects someone to walk up to the casket and remark, "My, doesn't he look natural." Except he doesn't. He looks more beautiful than ever, the handiwork of an expensive undertaker who knows exactly how to make death mimic life.
There are a couple of action scenes. The armies of Napoleon and Wellington fall from a fake wooden hillside that collapses. It's difficult not to chuckle as one absurdly clad soldier after another charges into the widening crater.
At the end, there is a self-destructive riot built around the premier of a Major Motion Picture and Sutherland's finally popping like a zit and stomping a noxious child to death as Mr. Hyde did. The letting loose of the built-up tension in frenzied hysteria lasts maybe a little too long but it successfully projects the empty, thumotic restlessness that animates the everyday masquerade.
The movie preserves Nathaniel West's distinction between the performers and the audience, though they meld towards the end. Among the more obvious of the actors is Karen Black as a flirtatious movie extra, and her father, Burgess Meredith, a salesman selling a bag of tricks. The observers include William Atherton as the viewer's proxy, a recent graduate of Yale summoned to Hollywood as an art director; and Donald Sutherland as Homer Simpson (great name), a pathologically inhibited accountant from the Midwest who has "come to California to die." They all live in the San Bernardino bungalow courts or garden apartments or whatever they are. The architecture of Southern California is a marvel, with fake mission style, fake Southern plantation, fake thatch-roofed English cottage, fake Arabian Nights apartments. Robert Benchley lived in The Ali Baba bungalows, which may, in itself, have been enough to drive him to drink. I recently stayed at the Taj Mahal Motel, which vaguely resembled a miniature of its namesake, only painted Day-Glo purple -- unless the whole thing was some Arabian apparition induced by the toxic atmosphere. But, in any case, nothing is what it seems to be made of. The huge, hammered-metal hinges on the doors of the Medieval castle turn out to be of insubstantial tin.
All the characters are pathetic but the one I found most nearly sympathetic is Homer Simpson, Sutherland, who wants only to be left alone until he drops, like the over-ripe oranges on his back yard tree. But he's swept up by incidents into coming to adore and house Karen Black's fake slut. She acts like a floozy and, until she needs the money, she may actually be the seventeen-year-old virgin she claims to be. But Sutherland is to Black what a Handiwipe is to us.
Characters come and go, and their relationships become complicated. William Atherton, for instance, the sophisticated artist from the East, falls for Karen Black and becomes embittered when she dumps him for someone she can get more out of. He's blandly handsome and a little innocent. Karen Black is sadly miscast. She's big and strong and her eyes are close together, making her manipulativeness obvious. What was needed was a beautiful young teen-ager whose narcissism is justified and who could lie convincingly to herself and others. Burgess Meredith dies and leaves a lovely pink-cheeked corpse. One expects someone to walk up to the casket and remark, "My, doesn't he look natural." Except he doesn't. He looks more beautiful than ever, the handiwork of an expensive undertaker who knows exactly how to make death mimic life.
There are a couple of action scenes. The armies of Napoleon and Wellington fall from a fake wooden hillside that collapses. It's difficult not to chuckle as one absurdly clad soldier after another charges into the widening crater.
At the end, there is a self-destructive riot built around the premier of a Major Motion Picture and Sutherland's finally popping like a zit and stomping a noxious child to death as Mr. Hyde did. The letting loose of the built-up tension in frenzied hysteria lasts maybe a little too long but it successfully projects the empty, thumotic restlessness that animates the everyday masquerade.