Star 80 (1983)

More often than not, stories based on tragic but intriguing actual events make easy sells for Hollywood screenplays. However, when these screenplays get made into movies by filmmakers who are a bit too anxious to make a true story juicier than it already is, it really shows in the film's final cut. Acting on the urge to sensationalize truly makes what could be a great movie into . . . well, one that is just okay.As sad a story as the savage murder of 1979 Playboy Playmate of the Year Dorothy Strattan is, its details almost beg to be seen on the big screen. She was shot and killed by her own husband, who actually discovered her and played a big part in her rise to fame through Playboy. Such a story is obviously captivating, but there is also a lot of complexity to it. Unfortunately, in ignoring any complexity this story had to have had, the filmmakers made a mediocre biopic that has not stood the test of time very well.Eric Roberts plays Paul Snider, the small time hustler who discovers, weds, and eventually murders Dorothy Strattan, with so much sleaziness that his performance becomes distracting and difficult to take seriously. In a way, such sordid qualities in his character made him interesting. For instance, in the beginning of the film, you see Roberts lifting weights, then flexing his muscles in front of a mirror. He's in great shape, but somehow manages to reflect a lack of self confidence through his vanity. His straight hair and pencil-thick mustache are too slick for his own good.There are also scenes where he's in the Playboy mansion, and knows a great deal about the people who are at the party, particularly Hugh Hefner (Cliff Robertson). Snider can quote Hefner verbatim, and does right in front of the pajama-clad CEO himself. Robertson, as Hefner, looks unimpressed, and you don't blame him for feeling that way.All these insecurities are well and good for these scenes, but they fly in the face of logic when Dorothy Strattan (Mariel Hemingway) comes into the picture. Hemingway is very good in her performance as the naive but sweet girl from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, who rises to fame without letting it or Playboy's occasional notoriety corrupt her.However, I kept asking myself why a woman as beguiling and radiant as her would ever date, let alone marry, someone as sleazy and execrable as Paul Snider. I'm not saying that the real life Paul Snider had no redeemable qualities whatsoever. He may have. It's just that Eric Roberts portrays him without the slightest bit of charm whatsoever, as if he's the evil stranger in children's books that your parents warn you never to talk to.For a movie like this to assume audience members will suspend such disbelief made the climax of the film so contrived and void of any believability whatsoever. Instead of seeing a complex man pushed to murder the woman he loves through inner turmoil fueled by his own pride, lust, and wrath, you see a creep acting like you would expect a creep to act, and a woman who doesn't know any better.Director Bob Fosse also made the dangerous assumption that the climax was its own reward, and no resolution was needed. Although the on-screen murder did make me flinch, the cutaway scenes throughout the film already gave it away.What I wanted to see was what happened after the climax: how Hugh Hefner reacted to the murders, or Strattan's family, or the film director (Roger Rees) with whom she was having an affair. Unfortunately, the movie made the same mistake "Looking For Mr. Goodbar" (1977) did: the climax is assumed to be its own reward, and the end credits suffice. I would give this film a C- if I was allowed to submit letter grades, but a grade of I for Incomplete seems more appropriate.

A small-time promoter, Paul Snider (Roberts) of low-taste runs across a shy, nice-looking waitress, Dorothy Stratten (Hemingway), in Vancouver and decides she'd make a good property, so he does what small-time promoters do. He takes Stratten to Los Angeles, the Cardo and Decumanus of good taste, and promotes her.After having her glossed up like an actress in a skin flick, he insinuates her into the Playboy mansion by means of photo images alone. Hefner (Robertson) is impressed by her, as who wouldn't be? Hefner is impressed with her figure and her utterly guileless personality. He's less impressed with Paul Snider who, unlike Hef himself, sophisticated in the most bourgeois way imaginable, has the aesthetics of a pimp -- overdressed, fawning, boasting of his talent and his property.At this point the American Dream begins to hit some chuck holes. Stratten is like an empty vessel waiting to be filled. Snider has been doing a fine job of animating her but, the more time Stratten spends at the mansion, the more she begins to reflect the values (and repeat the phrases) of Hefner, who strolls around with his pipe and bathrobe, Master of Playgirls, embodiment of 1950s' radical conformity.It gets worse. While roller skating as part of a horde of guests, she's spotted by a movie director, Aram Nicholas (Rees), whose name in real life as Peter Bogdanovitch. Nicholas whisks her off to make a movie in New York, leaving Snider behind in L.A. dreaming of small triumphs, like a Dorothy Stratten Gymnasium. The inevitable happens, with the loving couple, now married, drawing farther apart and Stratten beginning to repeat the phrases of Nicholas instead of Hefner.This is all driving Snider nuts back in L.A. It DOES drive him nuts. The ending is tragic.The writer and director, Bob Fosse, uses a technique similar to the one he used in "Lennie," a series of interviews with people who knew Snider and Stratten. (All are actors, not the actual persons.) Eric Roberts gives a splendid performance as the ambitious and possessive "manager" and husband. The guy is pathetic. When he meets Stratten for the last time, he tells her, "Boy, am I nervous. I must have combed my hair a dozen times." He's mercurial. He can change in a moment from sobbing out apologies to screaming in a murderous rage. He chews the scenery. He chews the carpets. He chews everything. And he does a great job of suggesting the despair beneath the bravado.Marial Hemingway as Stratten does a good job as well. She's presented as sweet, normal, a little dumb. And Hemingway gives her a little-girl voice that invites nurturance leavened with lust.The dynamics we see, social and psychological, are absolutely believable, if one word were to be used. All of us have felt something of what we see on the screen. Stratten was a victim, no question, but Snider was something more than a snarling villain.Bogdanovitch, who was in love with Stratten, hated the movie. Hemingway was too big and gawky. Snider didn't deserve to have his side of the story shown. And the actor who plays Bogdanovitch had no grasp of the real character. Bogdanovitch wrote a book about the whole affair and donated the royalties to Stratten's family.There really isn't much TO celebrity, as the film shows. Fickle food on a shifting plate, as Emily Dickenson put it. After the murder, Hefner is seen eagerly picking over slides for the next Playmate of the Month. If she had lived, Stratten today would have been one of the footnote people of history, but she might have had a life no less satisfying than those of the rest of us.

Although many find the subject matter of Star 80 distasteful, there is no getting away from the fact that this is a brilliant piece of film making. The low rating this film has on IMDb is due to the uncompromising and macabre story concerning the murder of playmate Dorothy Stratten by her ex-lover Paul Snider yet on a technical level, Star 80 is an example of bravura filmmaking.Eric Roberts gives a powerhouse performance, which should have been highly rewarded and Mariel Hemmingway has never been better. The continuing neglect of Bob Fosse's disturbing classic is reflected in the fact that no DVD version is available in Europe or America. As a director Bob Fosse was uncompromising and Star 80 is an uncompromising interpretation of the desire for fame. This desire for fame can make people do sick things. This idea in itself is the reason Star 80 is so neglected and rejected. This is the last film by Bob Fosse and clearly shows what a master of the medium he had become. In fact Bob Fosse, with only five films to his credit, can arguably be regarded as one of the greatest film Director's the movie industry has ever seen. Highly recommended and due for reevaluation.

STAR 80 is Bob Fosse's dark recreation of the relationship between PLAYBOY centerfold/starlet Dorothy Stratten and her Svengali/husband Paul Snider, who ended up murdering her out of resentment, bitterness, and jealousy. Fosse's unique eye with a camera lends itself quite admirably to this dark tale about the teenage dairy queen employee (Mariel Hemingway) who meets a charismatic but sleazy player named Paul Snider (Eric Roberts)and according to this screenplay, somehow manages to get her to let him be her date for her senior prom and pose nude for pictures in the privacy of his bedroom, which he ends up submitting to PLAYBOY and from there becomes her manager as he takes her from Vancouver to Hollywood, but as Dorothy becomes famous, she clearly doesn't need Paul in her life and the more she attempts to wrest herself from his iron grip, the more unhinged he becomes. The fact that this story is a true one just makes it all the more depressing to watch and Fosse has a way of giving the whole film a very voyeuristic feel...as if we're watching private scenes we are not supposed to see. Roberts gives the performance of his career as the slimy Snider, the player who is in denial about what a loser he truly is and how Dorothy comes to not need him anymore, which he will have none of. Roberts is electrifying here, in a performance that should have earned him an Oscar nomination and Mariel Hemingway is lovely and fragile as the tragic Dorothy, caught in a web she can't escape from. Cliff Robertson is effective as Hugh Hefner and 60's starlet Carroll Baker is surprisingly good as Dorothy's mother. Roger Rees plays Aram Nicholas, the movie director Dorothy becomes involved with. This is really a thinly disguised Peter Bogdanovich, whom Dorothy had a relationship with. This is a dark and sobering drama, made all the more harrowing because it's a true story, masterfully directed by Bob Fosse.