Star 80 (1983)

Legendary director/dancer/choreographer Bob Fosse may have been a consummate entertainer, responsible for popular productions on the Broadway stage, but he was also an uncompromising filmmaker who wasn't afraid to explore the dark side of humanity. After the autobiographical intensity of All That Jazz, Fosse's final film was this honest and painfully authentic biography about Dorothy Stratten, who was Playboy's Playmate of the Year for 1979 and had just begun a promising film career when her jealous boyfriend took a shotgun to her head. Fosse tackles this brutal reality head on, opening the film with the aftermath of murder and telling the story in flashback, beginning in Vancouver when slick charmer Paul Snider (Eric Roberts, in a chilling performance) discovers Dorothy (Mariel Hemingway) and makes her his ticket to fame and unearned glory. He's a loser and a user, and when Dorothy rises to success and glamour at the Playboy mansion, Hugh Hefner (Cliff Robertson, perfectly cast) urges the blonde beauty to drop her troublesome boyfriend. Jealousy and rejection push Paul over the edge, but Star 80 (the title is taken from Snider's vanity license plates) is no simple tale of male ego gone bad. Fosse explores the chasm between fame and obscurity, and the self-destructive lengths to which some people will go to bridge that gap. The film is a darker telling of the kind of story Boogie Nights would tell nearly 15 years later--both films are set in the late '70s and early '80s, and both deal with the inevitable loss of innocence in a world where innocence cannot survive. In a bleak but fascinating way, Star 80 is masterful in its refusal to look away from the tragedy of its true story. It's a farewell statement from a director who clearly understood the high cost of stardom. --Jeff Shannon Amazon.com

NOT IN WIDESCREEN YET

Why is this great movie not in widescreen? Its the age of HD. Why are not all movies 16X9? October 15, 2008

Sad Story

Hollywood in the late 70's and early 80's was apparently about the same as Hollywood today,drugs, sleaze- women making a living from their looks and bodies and men making a living from womens looks and bodies. When Vancouver car show promoter Paul Snider (Eric Roberts) "discovered" Dorothy Stratten (Mariel Hemingway) working behind the counter at a fast food joint, he thought he'd hit paydirt. Snider, aside from his pimpishly tasteless 70's duds and lack of sophistication had a good eye for them, Stratten was a beautiful girl and Playboy and Hollywood were quick to recognize that. And quick to get her away from the man who brought her to the "big dance".

Eric Roberts received much deserved acclaim for his role as the sleazy desperate hustler Snider who see's his little star began to blossom into something better. Hemingway, while not bad, plays a pretty empty role and doesn't exude sexiness or really any lovable innocence as Stratten was said to possess. The film is dark, and the depression and loss for Snider builds into a sad crescendo that while not unexpected is very shocking and depressing in itself.

The writers present a moral equivalence with Hugh Hefner and Paul Snider, the former the worlds best known peddler of girlie mags, the latter a cheap wannabe who nonetheless lived in the same world.One can argue that both men are employed in similar exploitation, and can hypothesise that Hefner might not find his Playmates without the bartenders, strip-club and wet T-shirt promoters like Snider. It's a stretch, as Hefner surely never committed the atrocity of murder-suicide as Snider does. But, if you want to provoke a little thought and look into Showbiz in general, you can't paint Snider merely a domestic abuser when his anger came from losing his wife, but his "ticket" to bigger and brighter things. Drugs and adultry were also major facets of this case, but are hardly mentioned... July 10, 2008

It's all been said about movie and I agree, it's at least 4 Star.

Five Stars? Well the movie is, or at least a 4 as you can see from most of the reviews. But, what we should actually be reviewing here is the product. I wish Amazon would revamp their rating system though so as not to toss all reviews for all versions of a movie into one basket. Or better yet a system that takes into account the transfer quality and format of the movie. The product in question here is a poorly transfered 4:3 standard tv format DVD which is apparently all that exists at this point. It's a 1 star product of a 4 or 5 star movie, there's no getting around that. Time for the studios to wake up, I'm tired of paying for this garbage that deserves better treatment. Even before I had a widescreen HDTV I preferred to have widescreen movies because it's more important to see ALL of the movie than to fill the screen of a 4:3 standard format TV. July 3, 2008

STAR 80

The film is well produced, well directed and extremely well acted. I use the film in a college class on the "Theories of Intimate Violence." The final physically violent ending notwithstanding, all of the events leading up to the tragic finale represents an excellent example of a subtle form of intimate violence that frequently goes unrecognized by the general public (and the victims who get trapped in it). March 30, 2008

TALL SCREEN!!!

Ditto, all the 5-star reviews. The film is fan-f**king-tastic!
But the star-rating asks "How do you rate this ITEM?"

This "item" violates director Fosse's original widescreen film by presenting it in "NORMAL" format... you know, chopped off at the sides to fit into those old, square-screen, heavy, glass, cathode ray tube TVs... remember those? No widescreen version of this DVD even exists.
WTF, Warner Brothers???!! March 15, 2008

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