Andrew reviews Star 80, the story of Dorothy Stratten.
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| "Honey, I just love your sexy knees!!!" |
The final film of Academy Award winning director and
famed musical choreographer Bob Fosse tells the tragic true story of the murder
of Playboy Playmate of the Year, Dorothy Stratten (Mariel Hemingway). And yet Star
80 is less about the late starlet than it is about the man who ended her
life, her husband, Paul Snider (Eric Roberts).
Loosely based on the Pulitzer Prize winning article Death of a Playmate, the film is told through a series of
recollections from colleagues, friends and relatives of Stratten’s and how all
could smell trouble from miles away in Snider. Cutting between Snider’s past as a small time scam artist manufacturing
weight lifting machines, part time pimp, and eventual founder of the male strip
club Chippendale’s, the film notifies us immediately of Stratten’s death as a
manic and murderous Snider looms over her lifeless body. Soon we are drawn into the story of how
Snider saw a star in Stratten and brought her to the attention of Hugh Hefner
(Cliff Robertson). As Stratten begins
to realize Snider is a drag on both her professional and personal life, so too
does Snider’s violent anger, jealousy and self-loathing boil over into a
volatile explosion.
Not completely
unlike an E-True Hollywood Story
(inevitably one was made), Star 80 isn’t
so much about what happened as why. How
could the budding career of an up and coming film starlet end so
violently? Why didn’t Stratten see the
writing on the wall everyone else she knew saw so clearly in Snider? Perhaps the question can best be answered by
Eric Roberts’ portrayal of Snider, in a spectacular performance that begs the
question: why wasn’t he nominated for an Academy Award? Few actors portray characters with this many
demons so completely without making it feel forced or phony. With Roberts, you really could meet this man
in passing before thinking of the nearest escape route. Take for instance a scene where Snider is in
Hugh Hefner’s mansion and is mingling with Hollywood screenwriters and other
top names. Wearing a clean cut suit,
smiles and a firm handshake, Snider’s desperate bluff clearly comes across as
no different than a con man. But
Roberts’ Snider goes beyond desperation and reveals a truly pathetic human
being beneath the façade. This is the
kind of acting that should be studied as an example to learn from and
respect! Newcomer and eventual Academy
Award winning actress Mariel Hemingway is equally powerful as the naïve,
voluptuous beauty who just nearly approaches the prowess and maturity of a
professional business woman before her life is sadly cut short.
Star 80
is also not completely focused on Snider’s exploitation, but the collective
commodification within the Hollywood system. Stratten is bounced back and forth between Snider, executives, and
eventually a film director (Peter Bogdanovich, though the name was changed for
the film), each man taking advantage of the woman to some degree or another
before she too begins to play the game of using people to climb the social
ladder. No one is completely innocent
here, and next to David Lynch’s Mulholland
Drive and Bernard Rose’s ivansxtc, this
is one of the most actively anti-Hollywood films ever produced. With pristine cinematography by Ingmar
Bergman’s director of photography Sven Nykvist and a brooding electronic score
by Ralph Burns, Bob Fosse’s Star 80 is
a downbeat yet powerful, unforgettable masterpiece, a deeply sad meditation on
the sordid underbelly of the entertainment industry from one of cinema’s most
beloved entertainers.
8/10 -Andrew Kotwicki