It's ironic that when Donald Sutherland walks onto the MGM lot in this weird little arthouse film that there is a banner for the musical remake of MGM's "Goodbye Mr. Chips", and while he's having a conversation with one of his daughters, there is a Jean Harlow movie on in the background. It's a metaphor for the fall of glamour and rise of grunge as he meets with the head of the studio, a short little man with a Beatles haircut and wardrobe resembling something you'd see some beachcomber wearing, strange for the man in power of Louis B. Mayer's old empire.
Sutherland is a novice director who has one picture under his belt (not yet released) and he's struggling, like the hero of Fellini's "8 1/2", to come up with a new idea. Sutherland, talented but overexposed along with "Mash" costar Elliot Gould in the early 70's, tries to install charm into his avant garde character, but he's rather sick in the head with the types of conversations that he brings up, bothering director Fellini (seen in a cameo) and Jeanne Moreau (utilized in a sequence that seems to be more in his mind than really happening) by posing hypothetical questions to them. Sutherland is obviously emulating the film's director Paul Mazursky here, and it's not a favorable comparison.
Hollywood was trying too hard to come up with different ways of presenting ideas at this time, and this film takes on various social issues in its efforts to create something profound. What results is a confirmation that these new ideas weren't really working, instantly dated and and often ridiculously obscene. Ellen Burstyn is completely wasted as Sutherland's wife, and the supporting cast covering every bizarre archetype to come out of the hippy era. To see Sutherland driving down the glamorous streets of Beverly Hills (and even meeting with a real estate agent to hopefully buy a mansion) gives the ghosts of the film history to rise up and declare, "Uh oh. There goes the neighborhood."
Sutherland is a novice director who has one picture under his belt (not yet released) and he's struggling, like the hero of Fellini's "8 1/2", to come up with a new idea. Sutherland, talented but overexposed along with "Mash" costar Elliot Gould in the early 70's, tries to install charm into his avant garde character, but he's rather sick in the head with the types of conversations that he brings up, bothering director Fellini (seen in a cameo) and Jeanne Moreau (utilized in a sequence that seems to be more in his mind than really happening) by posing hypothetical questions to them. Sutherland is obviously emulating the film's director Paul Mazursky here, and it's not a favorable comparison.
Hollywood was trying too hard to come up with different ways of presenting ideas at this time, and this film takes on various social issues in its efforts to create something profound. What results is a confirmation that these new ideas weren't really working, instantly dated and and often ridiculously obscene. Ellen Burstyn is completely wasted as Sutherland's wife, and the supporting cast covering every bizarre archetype to come out of the hippy era. To see Sutherland driving down the glamorous streets of Beverly Hills (and even meeting with a real estate agent to hopefully buy a mansion) gives the ghosts of the film history to rise up and declare, "Uh oh. There goes the neighborhood."