The Day Of The Locust

In the first scene of The Day Of The Locust Tod Hackett takes a look at his new courtyard apartment in Hollywood. There is a crack running in one wall from an earthquake. The previous tenant covered it with a sampler, but he exposes it, and instead inserts a rose into it. This is the metaphor for the film--Hollywood is an ugly crack with a beautiful flower adorning it.

Released in 1975, directed by John Schlesinger, and based on the novel by Nathanael West, The Day Of The Locust lifts the glamorous rock of 1930s Hollywood to expose the creepy crawlies beneath. Hackett (William Atherton) works in the art department at Paramount, while a neighbor (Karen Black) is an extra hoping to be a star. Her father (Burgess Meredith) is an ex-vaudevillian now selling snake oil door-to-door. One of his customers is a meek accountant, Homer Simpson (yes, that is his name) played by Donald Sutherland.

These characters will interact amid the sunshine and decadence of Hollywood. Atherton is in love with Black, but she plays hard to get (her own father describes her as a "C.T.") and she ends up moving in with Sutherland, but the relationship is nonsexual. Meanwhile, we see cockfights, the collapse of a set on a sound stage, and Billy Barty playing an extremely vulgar dwarf. The movie ends at a premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theater in which savagery breaks out, and the announcer at the event mistakes a violent riot for the enthusiasm of fans seeing their favorite stars.

The film is uneven and was a box office failure. Meredith did get nominated for an Oscar, as did cinematographer Conrad Hall, but it is so dipped in bile it can be very unpleasant to watch. Acid baths like this are more easy to digest in print that actually having to watch them. Also, the movie is an ungainly 144 minutes, which could have been easily trimmed.

A film like Paper Moon was very sentimental about the '30s, but The Day Of The Locust has no sentiment whatsoever, nor even any nostalgia. There are a few interesting touches, such as how tourists could drive right up to the Hollywood sign (it's a challenge now to get close to it, taking residential streets). A tour guide describes the death of a woman jumping off the sign, and it's clear he's talking about Peg Entwhistle, but the name has been changed for some reason.

Sutherland is amazing, and of course he plays a very weird guy, a Sutherland specialty. As for the name Homer Simpson, of course West's novel pre-dates The Simpsons by several decades. I do know that Matt Groening, who created the characters, had a father named Homer, but where he got Simpson I don't know--did he get it unconsciously, if he read the book or saw the movie? For anyone seeing the movie now, when Sutherland says his name, it creates a laugh where there wasn't one before.

Meredith is also terrific, while Atherton is stuck playing the bland guy. I'll never be able to watch him in anything without thinking of the smarmy Walter Peck in Ghostbusters. In a startling bit of coincidence, I ended up watching two films with Karen Black yesterday--the other was an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, riffing on a film she made with Lee Majors called Killer Fish, released just three years after this one. Clearly her career was on the down slope at the time.