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Blake Edwards cleans house—Hollywood is an assembly of jackals and hustlers, cinema itself is the veteran expiring unnoticed on the beach next to the bacchanalia. The aftermath of a studio mega-flop finds the shell-shocked producer (Richard Mulligan) in a suicidal daze, rescued from death to wander about sybaritic Malibu and get struck by a bolt of inspiration: "Sex!" The project bombed, it's up to seasoned pros to roll with the times, thus the saccharine musical re-imagined as a salacious inferno. "America's G-rated darling" (Julie Andrews) is the virginal lamb to be sacrificed on the altar of Tinseltown's prurient Moloch, from Disney to softcore is a matter of choreography. "We sold them schmaltz, they prefer sadomasochism!" Honor in the nest of vipers means being honest about your meretriciousness, the sensualist filmmaker (William Holden), the tippling Dr. Feelgood (Robert Preston) and the splenetic press agent (Robert Webber) are practically musketeers compared to the venal honchos and mag wags running the town. The graying movie troupers are given a gallantry missing from the slick and shrill television stalwarts (Robert Vaughn, Loretta Swit, Larry Hagman), they're familiar with compromise as a fact of life in the wake of Heaven's Gate. (Holden's metteur en scène knows his place in the era of Standard Operational Bullshit and passes the creative torch to Mulligan's producer, who's snuffed out for his trouble.) "A sweet soul adrift in a sea of sour grapes. Think about it." The artist's extinction, eulogy and Viking funeral in an analysis at once furious, dapper, coarse, cynical, sad, lecherous, hopeful, and full of appreciation for the characters' shared humanity and madness. How else to survive the Eighties, says Edwards, than sticking with friends and making art? With Marisa Berenson, Robert Loggia, Shelley Winters, Stuart Margolin, Craig Stevens, Larry Storch, Jennifer Edwards, and Rosanna Arquette.
--- Fernando F. Croce |