Looking for Mr. Goodbar

[east side story]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 9:05am

A film that supposedly helped define an era, and has yet to ever be released on DVD, has been uploaded onto Youtube. The quality is actually quite good. What ever rights issues they have with the music featured in the film needs to be resolved. This film needs to be seen. Very much a product of it's era, but still excellent. Diane Keaton, you are outstanding in an impossibly unlikable role.

And that ending? Oy.


Full film. Updated On: 3/23/15 at 09:05 AM

[Randyk2]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 9:08am

I have this on a DVD which was copied from a VHS. Diane Keaton is great in this movie; as is my fave, Tuesday Weld in supporting role(Oscar nominee for Best Supporting Actress).

















Updated On: 3/24/15 at 09:08 AM

[Gothampc]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 10:29am

It's actually been on YouTube for awhile. Maybe it was posted and taken down, but I watched it on YouTube in 2012.

I never liked the movie. I never saw the universal purpose of the movie. Was it "cautionary tale to women" or "look how far society has fallen" or "it takes a village to help a woman"?

It seems to be in that grouping of 1970s movies that says "Look how gritty we can be." I don't think Keaton's performance rose to the level of Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo or De Niro's Travis Bickle or any of Dunaway's 70s work. Even "An Unmarried Woman" seemed a better movie.

I think part of the problem with the movie is that they really didn't know what to do with the plot. It rambles on for over two hours when the story could have been told in 90 minutes.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 10:46am

It's disco Gothic! Judith Rossner was a terrific writer of dangerous women, check out her novel PERFIDIA.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 11:03am

Roseann Quinn--the inspiration for LFMG

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 11:38am

Weird to see Fred Ebb's name pop up in the story of Quinn's murder.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 3:54pm

Oddly enough, Diane Keaton airbrushed the movie out of her own autobiographical writings, skipping over it entirely. It's almost never mentioned anymore, despite having a really first-rate cast. Tuesday Weld is terrific and got an Oscar nomination. I agree, it does take far too long to tell its story. One problem I have is its failure to zero in on a city. It seems to take place in EveryCity USA (you see parts of Chicago and NYC) whereas the book was very much about NYC. I used to live near the real bar where it happened (72nd between B'way and West End). The movie is full of oddities, like Keaton's character reading THE GODFATHER in the bar. It's just stupid to remind us that the actress was in the film version, yanking us out of the milieu. Richard Brooks did a lot of inventive things, and the use of the strobe in the ending is harrowing and kind of brilliant. But it lacked drive and we kept losing where we were supposed to be in Keaton's emotional descent. She sort of falls far, and then stays there until she vows to give it all up one night too late.

Updated On: 3/23/15 at 03:54 PM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 4:23pm

I love that it's a time capsule but it's TOTALLY anti-feminist and anti-sex. This is not to say the four high school friends and I who saw it together on opening night weren't completely spooked for days afterwards.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 5:20pm

Oh, GAWD. It may be the most anti-sex movie ever made.

Funny, Keaton also airbrushed SHOOT THE MOON out of her memoirs as well, I seem to remember.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 5:23pm

Also, it freaked us all out that Tim from One Life To Live was so stabby.

[Luscious]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 10:43pm

One of my all-time dark movie favorites. Been waiting forever for it to be released on DVD or Blu-ray. Nice to know that it's available for viewing on Youtube, and in HD, albeit 720p. I consider it to be a near-perfect time capsule of late 70s New York. Unlike Auggie, I don't think of any other city when I watch it. Maybe that's because I'm from NY. Although, I can see how it could echo a few other large metropolitan cities, if that's your frame of reference.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 10:51pm

I still remember being freaked out, seeing it on a cold Friday afternoon, in my cold Friday afternoon-driven 20's. It was seriously disturbing, whatever its shortcomings. Frankly, if I had a choice between a cable showing of "Goodbar" and "House Hunters International" and "Chopped" (even "Chopped Canada") I wouldn't want to sit through a lot of it again. Yeah, bring on "Chopped Canada," come to think of it.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 11:37pm

And how about the homophobia? It wasn't even 10 years after Stonewall but still.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/23/15 at 11:55pm

And in a link from another thread, Bruce LaBruce picked this as one of his fave Homo Horror movies.

I found the movie fascinating (and, yeah, terrifying) as a young teenager. Of course I also thought I was sure to catch AIDS and die (and of course I wasn't close to having sex, but,) so I'm sure it connected on some level even if I wasn't hanging out at bars.

Rewatching it more recently I did find it effective--at least in the end (which really is hard to watch,) but also saw all the weird ideas that at least partly I think Richard Brooks imposed on the story. Reading what co-workers have said about him he comes across to me as a filmmaker who on the surface seems pretty progressive--movies dealing with antisemitism, disadvantaged youth, sexuality, etc--but if you examine his films they all are essentially conservative in their message. Ie, while some of the changes had to be made for movie censors, the screenplays he wrote for his adaptations of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth really show this. The films are filled with great performances and Cat works on its own terms as a 50s movie melodrama (Sweet Bird is saved by the brilliant lead performers from the stage version, but the new ending is ludicrous even for this kind of movie.) But in both cases he essentially completely "normalizes" any of Williams' more subversive ideas, and both films stress the need to restore contemporary social order.

I think Goodbar does the same. Still--I find the film fascinating, and I prob would pick it up if it ever got a DVD release. A long time back I got the soundtrack in a thrift shop on vinyl--of course the soundtrack apparently is one thing holding up a release. I know it was reportedly a massive best seller for the time--so it always struck me as kinda funny that the soundtrack, filled with early Donna Summer cuts like Could it Be Magic and Diana Ross' Love Hangover which essentially represent mainstream disco at its most hedonistic, was enjoyed I assume by people who were about to or wish they were about to go to some bar and get lucky...

Updated On: 3/24/15 at 11:55 PM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 12:01am

Seems progressive, actually conservative. BINGO!

I had forgotten how much The O'Jays "Back Stabbers" was used in the bar scene. We can't say the foreshadowing was subtle.

[HorseTears]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 3:13am

So, I actually saw this film when I was 7. Friend and I were nosing around in his parents bedroom and found a VHS of the film. Apparently, his mother was not a helicopter parent. Best of all, we had a choice of Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Big and a couple of animated Disney films. I don't know how many of you have 7 year old queer kids, but if you do, get a VHS copy off of Ebay for them. I was truly riveted by the whole thing. My friend got bored 20 or 30 mins in and went to play with some action figures in his room. I stayed and watched the whole damn thing. I don't recall too much now beyond a lot of scenes in bars and apartments, that rather effective strobe light scene and, of course, Richard Gere in all his naked peaches & cream glory. Late 70s/early 80s was vintage Gere, wasn't it?

For several weeks after, I had a recurring dream in which Richard Gere, who was now apparently my older brother, would pick me up from school each afternoon and walk hand-in-hand with me all the way home as I told him knock-knock jokes. I'm pretty sure he didn't stab me in any of the dreams.

So, bottom line, the VHS will make a great present for a kid's birthday, bat mitzvah, whatever. Ur welcome.

[CarlosAlberto]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 5:59am

The film is anything but subtle. Brooks foreshadowing was intentional.








Here is an absolutely spot on review of the film written by Ken Anderson over at DREAMS ARE WHAT LE CINEMA IS FOR... Updated On: 3/24/15 at 05:59 AM

[Auggie27]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 6:55am

Atherton. I'd forgotten. Speaking of homophobia: who can forget the crises of William Atherton.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 11:21am

What happened with William Atherton? I loved his ****trilogy from the eighties: GHOSTBUSTERS, DIE HARD, and his cvnty tour-de-force in REAL GENIUS.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 11:57am

He was part of the Aesthetic Realism cult/non-cult controversy, in which gay identity was programmed out, much like the Scientology model. People debated it, NY Magazine was sued I believe (don't hold me to that) and Atherton was a key public figure/face of the cult for a while. Today, with the internet it would be much more hotly debated in public. But it was plenty hot for the times (late 70s?). I'm sure some expert on this matters will post. Some people thought Atherton lost work because of it.

There's a prominent mention in "Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo," by Michael Schiavi, about a 1976 party when Atherton supposedly claimed AR "cured" him of his homosexuality, and in response Russo kissed six press agents, emptying the room. Check it out:



Aesthetic Realism’s attempts to "cure" gays

Updated On: 3/24/15 at 11:57 AM

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 12:13pm

Talk about a blast from the past. I haven't thought about Aesthetic Realism in decades!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 12:59pm

I think the novel might stand up better than the movie, less anti-feminist and less anti-sex. She also wrote a novel about conjoined male twins who get married to two different women (and the novel had sex scenes!) and another one about a woman who falls in love with a younger man who turns out to be her long-lost son.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 1:34pm

I remember trying to read her novel "August" in 1983 and not being able to get past the author's note at the beginning. It made no grammatical sense to me!

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/24/15 at 2:02pm

Carlos, thanks for that review. It's an interesting read--even though I deeply disagree with the jist of it, lol--that said, I did find it thought provoking. But, as I implied above, I do think Brooks in the film at least (the novel before he adapted it could have a very different implication,_ is ultimately not saying something new or revelatory but rather conservative.

Speaking of Atherton (and I had never heard of the gay controversy,) when asked about Mr Goodbar by AVClub, he also felt it didn't feel like real New York:

"Looking For Mr. Goodbar (1977)—“James”

WA: Looking For Mr. Goodbar was a big book, and it was based on a big story. I have criticisms of the movie, not of anybody in it, but I always felt that the movie was… you know, the bars weren’t right. All the bars in New York—Maxwell’s Plum and all the singles bars—they were beautiful places, absolutely beautiful places. Weird stuff happened when you went home, but the bars were beautiful. So that was my criticism of that. It was ’70s singles New York. That world doesn’t exist anymore. Culture’s moved on, I guess. It wasn’t shot in New York, either. They tried to make Metropolis out of it, so you didn’t have that New York feeling, and it was such a New York story, and it was such a New York ambience, that it really didn’t hold up if you were trying to make it into Everycity, USA. They shot it at New York Street at Paramount before it burned down."

http://www.avclub.com/article/william-atherton-40332

Updated On: 3/24/15 at 02:02 PM

[PalJoey]

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

August was the one about the woman falling in love with her son.