The Day of the Locust

The Day of the Locust is anything but a cheerful, light look at Hollywood in the '30s. It recreates both the town as well as the filmmaking world around which much of the town revolved with devastating accuracy. The movie tells the twin tales of talentless wannabe actress Faye Greener (Karen Black) ...more

Scripted by Waldo Salt from Nathaniel West's scalding 1930s Hollywood novel, John Schlesinger's lavish adaptation of The Day of the Locust (1975) is a wrenching, if imperfect, indictment of America's Tinseltown mindset. Recreating Golden Age Hollywood with seedy realism and film fantasy artificiality, Schlesinger and Salt punctuate the downward spiral of William Atherton's aspiring art director, Karen Black's talentless actress, and Donald Sutherland's wealthy rube with flashes of the decadent ...more