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Storyline
Life's flotsam and jetsam turn up at late 1930's Holloywoodland's door, once more, in this insightful tale of wannabes and desperadoes. Tod Hackett, artist, has inspirations to become noticed until he meets Faye Greener, blonde bombshell, and is immediately smitten. She has other ideas. She has Homer Simpson, victim, in her sights and cruelty and loneliness takes new meaning as all three are slowly sucked into the Hollywood system of sycophants, liggers and parasites, sucking the life from others as the life, and soul, is slowly sucked from them. Written by
Cinema_Fan
Plot Summary
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Plot Synopsis
Taglines:
By train. By car. By bus. They came to Hollywood... In search of a dream.
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Did You Know?
Goofs
In the first few minutes of the movie there is a drive up a road to the Hollywoodland sign. The road ends at a sightseeing/tourist spot and parking area at the foot of the "H." In reality the road passes behind the sign and above it on the hill. The hillside at the "H" is too steep for a road/parking area and there are no traces of one ever having been there.
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Quotes
[
first lines]
Mrs. Odlesh:
It isn't as splashy as some other places, but we pride ourselves on being a little classier.
Tod Hackett:
[
referring to a large crack in the plaster wall]
Hmmm, the crack's real.
Mrs. Odlesh:
Oh yes. We call this our earthquake cottage. Mrs. Porter had occupancy then. During the big one in '33. Property damage ran into the millions.
Tod Hackett:
Will you fix it if I stayed for a while?
Mrs. Odlesh:
Oh no! No! This is our showplace. Mrs. Porter wouldn't let us touch that wall. She worked that sampler herself to cover over the hole. ...
[...]
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Soundtracks
"Lonely Hearts"
(uncredited)
Lyrics by
Paul Williams See more »
The Day of The Locust is an adaptation of the highly powerful novel from Nathanael West, it focuses on the seamy underbelly of Hollywood in the 1930s. Pot boiling with pacey precision, director John Schlesinger crafts what is still to this day one of the hidden pieces of art from the 1970s.
We are witness to an assortment of odd characters on the outskirts Hollywood and it's big shiny star, fringe characters driven on by less than stellar ideals. The centre of it all is Karen Black's sexy but untalented actress, Faye, she lives with her father, Harry {a fabulous Burgess Meredith}, who was once a fine stage performer but now is old and dying and forced to peddle potions on door steps. Faye realises that her limitations are getting in the way of her starry ambitions, so thus she becomes the assembly line hump on the casting couch, she believes it's a small price to pay for the price of fame.
Caught up in Faye's maelstrom of shallow conniving worthlessness is William Atherton's art director, Tod, and Donald Sutherland's sympathetic dolt, Homer Simpson {Sutherland stunning and Atherton a career best}. All three of them will come crashing together as the story reaches it's cynical and terrifying conclusion. The Day Of The Locust failed at the box office, mid seventies audiences were clearly not ready for this unsavoury and stark look at the flip side of the industry we all follow with relish. Many of the characters featured in the piece are believed to be based on real life Hollywood figures, now here in this modern age the public embrace such titillation with glee, back then they clearly wasn't ready for it.
Conrad Hall's cinematography was rightly nominated for an Academy Award, as was Burgess Meredith in the Best Supporting Actor category, but Sutherland, John Lloyd {Art} and Ann Roth {Costumes} were criminally ignored, but it matters not for now this film can be viewed by a wider more open thinking audience, and hopefully as the finale grips you round the throat {and it should do}, you will be forced to think about it for some time after. 9/10