Review—Star 80 (1980, dir. Bob Fosse)
On Aug 14, 1980, Paul Snider shot and killed 20-year-old Dorothy Stratten. He then turned the shotgun on himself.
The murder-suicide did not go unnoticed; Stratten was Playboy’s Playmate of the Year for 1980.
Two movies were spun from the tragedy—a TV-movie starring Jamie Lee Curtis, and Star 80 (in 1983).
As part of my ’80s movies retrospective, Star 80 was a logical next step following The Pope of Greenwich Village (watched earlier this week, but which I haven’t had a chance to blog about). Both feature star-making performances by Eric Roberts (brother of Julia).
In Star 80, he stars as Paul Snider opposite Mariel Hemingway as Stratten. It’s another great performance as Roberts gets under the skin of the oily Snider, but also finds the thin wire of humanity that still exists in his grasping frame.
Hemingway too is wonderful, but in a Mariel Hemingway-esque way—she brings the same vulnerability to the role as she did to her character in Woody Allen‘s Manhattan. With Hemingway, you’re never sure if she’s acting acting, or just acting. Probably both (or neither).
In fact, Hemingway is brilliantly cast as the Vancouver-born-and-raised beauty. Her Dorothy is a lot more sympathetic than the Stratten who appears in this clip from The Tonight Show:
Vancouver plays itself
One of the things that I really enjoyed about Star 80 was the Vancouver references. When I first saw the movie on its release 30 years ago, the city meant nothing to me—I was 18 years old and living in Winnipeg. Now that I live in Vancouver, though, it came alive for me in a whole new way, from the title card reading “Vancouver, B.C.” that introduces the first part of the story, to scenes shot in the city. These include a scene where “business associates” dangle Snider outside a top-floor window of the Blue Horizon Hotel (on Robson St.; it’s probably not there anymore). Another scene shows Snider visiting the PNE (Pacific National Exhibition, with rides and such) with Stratten’s sister.
There’s also a line in the movie: “You know what, you’re not that girl from Vancouver anymore.” As my girlfriend pointed out, this took place pre-Expo 86, when the city was still a town, or regarded as such.
The movie was partly based on “Death of a Playmate”, a story that ran in the Village Voice in Nov 1980. Written by Teresa Carpenter, the story is the worst kind of yellow journalism. It uses conjecture (no sources are cited) to fill in gaps between facts and has a self-serving, judgmental tone.
Teresa Carpenter’s Death of a Playmate
Even worse, Carpenter gets facts wrong. It’s obvious she never came to Vancouver to research the story. Here’s this farcical statement: “Snider grew up in Vancouver’s East End, a tough area steeped in machismo.” Well, for starters, it’s the “East Side”, and unless he grew up around Main and Hastings, lady, you’re just talking out of your ass.
Carpenter also quotes an unnamed source who is apparently one of a gang called the “Rounder Crowd”: “‘He never touched [the drug trade],’ said one Rounder who knew him then.” Give me a break.
Unbelievably, Carpenter wasn’t bounced out of the publishing industry after this piece of s*** writing. In fact, she won a Pulitzer Prize. Check out her Wiki page if you don’t believe me.
However, Star 80 is an affecting film. For his last movie, writer/director Bob Fosse (All That Jazz, Cabaret) turned a sensational story into a sympathetic portrait of both Stratten and even of Snider, without ever letting the latter off the hook. In Star 80, Snider has no back-story; with Roberts in the role, he doesn’t need one.
After Star 80
The story doesn’t end there, quite.
Director Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon; also an actor, a psychologist in The Sopranos, among other roles) cast Stratten in his movie They All Laughed (1981). During filming he hooked up with her, and after her death The Killing of the Unicorn (“a bizarre, unclassifiable book,” according to one goodreads.com reviewer). He went on to marry Dorothy’s younger sister, Louise Stratten. A sometime-actress, Louise’s most recent role was as a saloon girl in Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained.
While researching this story, I also dug up some interesting info on one of the photographers whose pics attracted Hugh Hefner‘s attention. Vancouver photog Alex Waterhouse-Hayward wrote this 2011 blog post about Ken Honey. Honey was basically the Vancouver stringer for Playboy and helped discover Pamela Anderson and future Mrs. Hefner, Kimberley Conrad. In Waterhouse-Hayward’s post, you can see a photo of Stratten with Vancouver music potentate Bruce Allen (Bryan Adams‘ manager).
[…] It’s never clear, either, just how much of the quotes Brady uses are from interviews he conducted with Hefner, or were overheard in other contexts. Some notes about sources would definitely go towards the book’s credibility. (Coincidentally, or not, I also recently had problems about the lack of credible sources in Teresa Carpenter‘s wretched piece of yellow journalism about murdered Vancouver Playmate Dorothy Stratten, which I touch on here.) […]
“Her Dorothy is a lot more sympathetic than the Stratten who appears in this clip from The Tonight Show”
What is that supposed to even mean? Why would the real Dorothy appear at all “sympathetic” when being interviewed by Johnny Carson? The crux of Dorothy’s Tonight Show appearance was her involvement with Playboy, and being named Playmate of the Year. Hardly a discussion that would elicit any kind of emotional response from the audience. She was, of course, having issues in her marriage, but she made no reference to them.
An appearance with Johnny Carson was pretty much the official launch of a career back then. If you were a comic, and he called you over to sit down after your stand up turn, you’d arrived. If you were a new actress, or model, and Johnny Carson had you on the Tonight Show, it meant your career was about to skyrocket. Here Johnny was basically introducing Dorothy to the world outside of Playboy. She was the beautiful ingenue. Having first seen this interview several years ago, I thought she came off as sweet, genuine, and slightly overwhelmed by all the attention.
When Mariel appeared in Star 80 as Dorothy, we already knew what was going to happen. We knew that Snider murdered Dorothy in a fit of jealous rage, and that was going to be the penultimate scene of the film. So of course, her performance was going to garner sympathy.
Mariel Hemingway’s portrayal of Dorothy was acceptable, but hardly what I would call wonderful. She didn’t capture the essence of who Dorothy was in the last few years of her life. She made her appear as a complete pushover. Dorothy had grown quite a lot in the time since she arrived in California. She’d found her inner strength, and became much more assertive. She had definite plans on where she wanted her life to go. She wanted to be taken seriously as an actress, and was working diligently to hone her craft. And she’d not only outgrown her husband, she finally saw what he was. A user.
I will agree that Eric Roberts gave an incredible performance. But taken as a whole, Star 80 does not do Dorothy justice.
[…] Another problem is that it’s never clear how much of the book’s quotes are from interviews the author conducted with Hefner, or from other sources. Some notes about sources would definitely help with the book’s credibility. (I also recently had problems about the lack of credible sources in Teresa Carpenter‘s story about murdered Vancouver Playmate Dorothy Stratten, which I touch on in my review of the movie Star 80.) […]
This was probably Eric Roberts best movie. He steals the show as the sleazy, small-time hustler Paul Snider. Snider aches to be the big-shot, the real Star 80 but is a failure at everything he tries—except when he gets Dorothy Stratten recognized by Playboy. Then, just as things might break through for them, Dorothy dumps him for a film director (in real life, Peter Bogdanovich). Of course we know the rest—sleazeball Snider kills Dorothy and himself. Bogdanovich wrote a scathing book about the case, Death of the Unicorn in which he lam basts Hugh Hefner (no more invitations to the mansion for him). What is really weird is that Bogdanovich later married Dorothy Stratten s younger sister, who was in junior high when Dorothy was killed.