Intersting true story
Added 9/18/2009
Acting may have been over the top. Interesting to think that this was a true story. Eric Roberts is great!
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Eric Robert's work in Star 80 probably the best acting I have ever seen, bar none.
The film is about Paul Snider, Roberts, and Dorthey Stratton, played by Merrial Hemmingway. Dorthey is the girl next door in Vancover, 1978. She meets Snider in a Dairy Queen. They date, have sex, and Paul soon takes pictures of her and sends them to Playboy, where they are soon published. She is flown to Heffner's mansion and introduced into the stardom and money of Playboy's world.
Stratton makes a great impression, but Paul, a horrible one. Fuzzy mirror dice, bad fur coats and a dollar sign on a neck chain may work on teenagers, but not in the Playboy circle. Paul is a slimey, repulsive little hustler. He cannot disguise this, and his attempts to only reveal him. He can never fit into the big shoes he seeks--made evident when he is dangled from a hotel window by a loan shark who finanaced one of Paul's wet t-shirt contests.
Stratton soon becomes rich and famous and is courted by sophistacated artists and players who sourrounds Heffner. Ironically, she knows how to play the game better then Paul. He tries his Vancover player act on the Playboy people, and it is like a little boy pitching in the majors. He is seen as the small time greaseball he is, and is shut out of Dorthey's new world. Eventually, Dorthey leaves him, but wants to do right. Paul uses this, manipulating her and then almost raping her when she comes to give him money, and then, he kills both her and himself.
"They did this," he says, pulling the trigger.
Roberts works on two condradictory impulses of the audiance in his portrayal of Paul. Paul envokes disgust and pity at the same time. Roberts shows Paul to have no insight into how he destroys everything positive around him by his own posessiveness. Had he said and done nothing, and just enjoyed the ride, what he and Dorthey built might have still been intact.
The process of his ruining everything is slow and painful. Another person may have been able to turn it around at any time. Paul is to consummed with narcisism to see that HE is his own problem. You want to shake the poor fool to give him the answer, but you also want to run as far as you can, fast, from this slimeball.
You can't stand to look at him, but can't look away. Your body actually tenses up seeing Paul on screen. This is master acting by Roberts, and makes what could have been a soap opera a classic movie.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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sad ending to a beautiful life
Added 3/19/2009
This movie has the emotion to look inside the world of a young beautiful woman gone before her time. I recommend it as a study in what not to do with your life.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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NOT IN WIDESCREEN YET
Added 10/15/2008
Why is this great movie not in widescreen? Its the age of HD. Why are not all movies 16X9?
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Sad Story
Added 7/10/2008
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...
2 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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Intersting true story
Added 9/18/2009
Acting may have been over the top. Interesting to think that this was a true story. Eric Roberts is great!
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Eric Robert's work in Star 80 probably the best acting I have ever seen, bar none.
The film is about Paul Snider, Roberts, and Dorthey Stratton, played by Merrial Hemmingway. Dorthey is the girl next door in Vancover, 1978. She meets Snider in a Dairy Queen. They date, have sex, and Paul soon takes pictures of her and sends them to Playboy, where they are soon published. She is flown to Heffner's mansion and introduced into the stardom and money of Playboy's world.
Stratton makes a great impression, but Paul, a horrible one. Fuzzy mirror dice, bad fur coats and a dollar sign on a neck chain may work on teenagers, but not in the Playboy circle. Paul is a slimey, repulsive little hustler. He cannot disguise this, and his attempts to only reveal him. He can never fit into the big shoes he seeks--made evident when he is dangled from a hotel window by a loan shark who finanaced one of Paul's wet t-shirt contests.
Stratton soon becomes rich and famous and is courted by sophistacated artists and players who sourrounds Heffner. Ironically, she knows how to play the game better then Paul. He tries his Vancover player act on the Playboy people, and it is like a little boy pitching in the majors. He is seen as the small time greaseball he is, and is shut out of Dorthey's new world. Eventually, Dorthey leaves him, but wants to do right. Paul uses this, manipulating her and then almost raping her when she comes to give him money, and then, he kills both her and himself.
"They did this," he says, pulling the trigger.
Roberts works on two condradictory impulses of the audiance in his portrayal of Paul. Paul envokes disgust and pity at the same time. Roberts shows Paul to have no insight into how he destroys everything positive around him by his own posessiveness. Had he said and done nothing, and just enjoyed the ride, what he and Dorthey built might have still been intact.
The process of his ruining everything is slow and painful. Another person may have been able to turn it around at any time. Paul is to consummed with narcisism to see that HE is his own problem. You want to shake the poor fool to give him the answer, but you also want to run as far as you can, fast, from this slimeball.
You can't stand to look at him, but can't look away. Your body actually tenses up seeing Paul on screen. This is master acting by Roberts, and makes what could have been a soap opera a classic movie.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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sad ending to a beautiful life
Added 3/19/2009
This movie has the emotion to look inside the world of a young beautiful woman gone before her time. I recommend it as a study in what not to do with your life.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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