Looking for Mr. Goodbar- Page 2

[WOSQ]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 2:43pm

I think William Atherton is headquartered in DC these days and is still acting. I think he was in Strange Interlude at the Shakespeare Theatre a few seasons back.

"August" refers to the month that NY therapists often take off. It is another novel completely.

Emmaline is the novel where a woman meets the son she gave up for adoption when she was seduced and abandoned years before. It was made into an opera that was performed at City Opera and on PBS to a good reception. This one is worth reading. Check out used book sites or stores. Like Mr. Goodbar, it is (supposedly) based on fact.

In the 1970s, the "Mr. Goodbar" murder got huge press. Judith Rossner took the story and went with fiction. Another writer (Lacey Fosburgh?) who first wrote a long feature published in NY Magazine, expanded the article into a book called "Closing Time". It wasn't nearly as successful as Looking For Mr. Goodbar, but sold a bit and was well reviewed. It is also probably available on used book sites.

The best used book site I have found in www.abebooks.com

And wasn't Richard Gere a piece in his jock? It made one believe in God after all.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 3:41pm

Athereton's right that the film doesn't capture NY bars, yet the bars that should be captured are not Maxwell's Plum. The bar on 72nd Street where Quinn met her murderer was a smoky den a few steps below street level that served greasy burgers. It was the old pre-Yup Upper West Side, very alive (I moved to NYC in '79) and it stayed through the mid-90s at least. The kind of place a teacher might actually walk to late at night from a cheap(er) West Side studio in the 70s. Atherton invoking the tony Maxwell's Plum at the very least suggests he didn't get the book, its milieu or the style of life (I'm avoiding those words assembled in the offensive way) the teacher experienced freely and rather easily.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 5:07pm

Not knowing anything about bars there--it did seem (at least in terms of the movie,) odd that he thought she would be hanging out at rather swanky sounding bars. I think you may give Atherton too much credit though--I doubt he even read the book. I think his comment that the book was big (which of course it was,) was not connected to the later thought in the interview and just that he knew it was a hot title when he was offered, or auditioned for, the movie.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 5:28pm

I thought it was odd that she was reading in a bar. I've never seen a person reading a book in a bar. Maybe she wanted to get out of suffocating studio apartment, but it just seemed odd to be reading when you were "looking for Mr...."

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 5:37pm

..and then she was reading THE GODFATHER (of all things) and when Gere's character tells her he loved the movie and that he loved Pacino in it...well you just have to laugh at that inside joke because Keaton was in the film as Pacino's wife.

[SNAFU]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 7:12pm

Hey, I used to read in bars! People who want to drink, are lonely and are uncomfortable being alone or in crowds of strangers do stuff like that from time to time.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 8:23pm

So I watched it again after all this discussion and it really is a movie that works better in memory than in actuality. It could have been a masterpiece if it had been handed to someone like Fassbinder or Frank and Eleanor Perry. The scenes are clunky and the movie has a kind of clammy almost TV movie reserve. And those cheesy fantasy sequences! Richard Brooks was in his sixties at the time and probably thought these Boomer women were just a bunch of pampered head cases.

Random Thoughts:

What college has a schoolbell at the end of class?

Brian Dennehy shows up for a brief bit as a surgeon and looking kind of sexy.

Richard Gere is hot but he gives exactly the kind of performance that made people turn against Method acting.

Tuesday Weld at one point says she's going to get an abortion in Puerto Rico. Uh...Roe v. Wade had happened a while back, Mr. Brooks.

I kind of agree with Judith Rossner that the portrayal of the heroine was "too happy". Keaton doesn't seem like the type who would scream "Do it!" while being stabbed.

The opening credits may be the best thing in the movie.

[east side story]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 10:17pm

Ordered the book on Amazon, and it arrived today. Very excited to get started.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 10:19pm

According to a nutty fanboy website, the character in the novel reads The Godfather in the bar and you know, you don't mess with Judith Rossner book details when you're translating to the cinema.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 10:45pm

"Richard Brooks was in his sixties at the time and probably thought these Boomer women were just a bunch of pampered head cases. "

As I said, I think this was one of Brooks' problems in general. He seemed to think (as many others do,) that he was very liberal, and yet...

Wasn't there gossip that Jean Simmons and he end their marriage because she disliked his obsession with themes from the movie?

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 3/25/15 at 5:55am

According to a nutty fanboy website, the character in the novel reads The Godfather in the bar and you know, you don't mess with Judith Rossner book details when you're translating to the cinema.

Interesting. I haven't read the novel. I still think the scene comes off as silly in the movie. So there ya go.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 3/25/15 at 9:41am

Yeah, I, too, noted it (above) and thought it patently ridiculous that they didn't substitute another novel. As a selection of fiction it says zero about the character, and the association with Keaton invites the audience to forget to suspend disbelief. It's a clunky literal use of a novel's details to no telling effect.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 3/25/15 at 10:05am

Jill Clayburgh didn't read a book in An Unmarried Woman and Kelly Bishop would have slapped it out of her hands if she did.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 3/26/15 at 9:52am

"..and then she was reading THE GODFATHER (of all things) and when Gere's character tells her he loved the movie and that he loved Pacino in it...well you just have to laugh at that inside joke because Keaton was in the film as Pacino's wife."

Even more of a meta-reference in Annie Hall (same year as Goodbar) when Keaton pulls up in a cab to meet Allen, surrounded by wise guy types, in front of a movie house and Allen says "I'm standing here with the cast of The Godfather."

[sondheimboy2]

Posted: 3/30/15 at 11:49pm

I remember Rex Reed said in a review that if Diane Keaton didn't win the Oscar for it that there was no God. But that was the year that she won for "Annie Hall."
So, I guess the existence of God is still up in the air...