The Talkies / Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Julia
Everitt, David
"The Talkies / Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Julia" almost entirely organic: food processors, cattle feedlots, parts of the pulp and paper industry, etc. Although the CED argument against a mixed system of both fees and regulations is appealing, the...
...The treacherous, savage, and senseless raid by German commandos on the Lufthansa jetliner is a chilling reminder of things about the German past I would rather forget, except that they keep cropping up in the American present...
...A scar at the base of her back does not seem to warrant her sleeping with every lower form of manhood...
...A reaction to the spate of films about male camaraderie, these new films put female characters back in the forefront, reflecting new outlooks that demand something more than faded flower heroines...
...Their style combines a tight-knit pacing in the best Old-Hollywood tradition with a careful attention to character...
...None of this is to argue that designing and administering an effective fee system will be easy...
...Both of the films are big-budget approaches to intimate subjects...
...Bishop Episcopal Diocese of New York Dear Bishop Moore: Admirably put, and it surprises me that Congress has not taken action...
...The central issue, and certainly a source of bitter political controversy, is just how big the fee should be...
...Nor will fees be an unmitigated blessing for every businessman...
...As matters presently stand, the industrial engineer who between now and 1983 discovers an effective, but expensive, pollution control device would surely be fired by his employer and would probably be unemployable within his industry...
...The National Commission on Water Quality has recommended deferring application of the 1983 standards and scrapping the 1985 "zero discharge" goal altogether...
...However, I am more concerned with the state of personal liberty amongst the Huns, specifically the repression of Irmgard Moller, the 30-year-old chinless beauty whose attempted suicide at Stammheim prison was thwarted by the German authorities' refusal to give her a sharp butter knife...
...The choice between the two is a very simple one...
...In practice, all plans for environmental protection, like those dealing with other great problems, will be flawed...
...The people in the film are developed in graceful, economical ways and the portrayals are all vivid...
...Epitomizing this background is her father, played by Richard Kiley...
...The makers of this film were faced with the problem of converting Lillian Hellman's poignant fifty-page sketch into a full-length feature, running the risk of overextending the content and losing its effect...
...How they do miss Congressperson Abzug...
...Dear Dr...
...The inspector, instead of reporting to a prosecutor who may never get around to prosecuting, will report to a tax collector, who will certainly get around to collecting...
...These sequences are incorporated into the Julia story from other Hellman memoirs and they enrich the picture of the personal life of this controversial woman...
...As Hellman, Jane Fonda gives an engaging, fully rounded performance...
...The present practice of allowing municipalities and local air and water districts to impose more stringent standards (or higher fees) to meet special situations should be continued...
...Perhaps the best performance in the movie is Jason Robards' in the role of Dashiell Hammett...
...Their ultimate workability depends on the same factors: reliable information, administrative flexibility, and political restraint...
...His first novel, Raven Bravo, will be published by Popular Library next spring...
...As for timing, the Carter administration should ask Congress to authorize replacing the 1983 "best available technology" water regulations with a fee system, at least for major pollutants...
...Screenwriter Alvin Sargent and director Fred Zinnemann string these parts into a fluid narrative line...
...Considering that she literally brings all these semi-humans upon herself, there seems little reason to care about Theresa, even when she is played by an actress as appealing as Diane Keaton...
...In the case of one of her lovers, it's hard even to conceive of the guy walking upright...
...The story is sordid enough without lurid embellishments...
...The saddest aspects of the incident, of course, were the storming of the plane, the killing of the plane's peaceful demonstrators, and the brave yet curious suicides of the Stuttgart prisoners...
...He is self-centered, arrogant, two-timing, and cruel...
...Through the entire service not one prayer was offered up for the Palestinians...
...As long as standards are based on the "best available technology," essentially without regard tocost, incentives to improve the state of the art are not merely lacking, but perverse...
...THE TALKIES by David Everitt Looking for Mr...
...That will be a gain for evenhanded justice, but not everyone will find that comforting...
...Kiley is a fine actor, but he has little opportunity to do anything but spout middle-class inanities...
...He is not merely a narrow-minded man, he is a rampaging Catholic superego, parading about the house in a Notre Dame warm-up jacket for no apparent reason other than to provide a setup for a wisecrack from his daughter...
...Julia is another glossy picture, but an accomplished professionalism makes it a moving story of lost friendships...
...Her effectiveness is no small feat in light of thefact that she looks about as much like Lillian Hellman as I do...
...He is capable of saying much with very little, hinting at a depth of feeling behind the great detective writer's sardonic humor that is all the more affecting for never being explicitly defined...
...By day she is a conscientious teacher of deaf children and by night a total hedonist...
...The American Spectator December 1977 21 The other side of the coin, the world of temptation, is just as heavy-handed...
...A good deal of the debate over existing standards turns on whether the available control technology is, as the EPA contends, reliable and attainably priced...
...But then there was the chilling scene at the Frankfurt airportwhere the so-called hostages landed and took part in a memorial service for the Lufthansa pilot, whose death we so glibly assign to the Palestinian freedom fighters...
...One hopes that the EPA is quietly examining the data which bear on these questions...
...As a single example of the possible consequences of not doing so, consider that tax accountants, like midge larvae and lawyers, are also part of the seamless web of our ecosystem, and their effects must be considered even if there is no desire to protect them...
...Complementing her is Vanessa Redgrave, superbly understated as the magnetic Julia, the rich girl who sends for Hellman to smuggle money to her in Berlin where she is resisting the Hitler regime...
...She prowls the singles bars, smokes pot, drinks heavily, snorts cocaine, takes pills, and brings home one-night stands...
...There are similar arguments over water pollution control technology...
...It manages to be both obvious and confused...
...Goodbar Diane Keaton plays the role of Theresa Dunn, a David Everitt is a writer living in New York City...
...Address all correspondence to The Bootblack Stand c/o The American Spectator...
...When she makes a connection for cocaine, the dealer's name is none other than Jesus...
...But despite the need for subtlety, writer-director Richard Brooks abandons the restraint of the best-selling novel and opts for something like a sledgehammer approach...
...Her first love is a college professor...
...The movie weaves together Hellman's struggle for literary success, her relationship with Dashiell Hammett, and her friendship with the title character that spans from childhood to a tense reunion in Nazi Germany...
...woman bearing a scar from an early bout with polio who ends up a casualty of the sexual revolution...
...The looming icons continue to butt in even when Theresa leaves home and turns away from what she's been taught...
...Of all the caricatures in the film, this is probably the most blatant...
...Cordially, Paul Moore, Jr...
...For all this simplification, the movie is in no way lucid...
...How soon we forget...
...GWP 22 The American Spectator December 1977...
...Without much of a core of empathy, Goodbar becomes an oppressive two-hour procession of nastiness, never real enough to become anything but glossy sensationalism...
...Like the rest of the film, this relationship is played with perception and mature compassion...
...George Washington Plunkitt, our prize-winning political analyst, has accepted a staff position with the House Ethics Committee, but he has graciously consented to continue advising American statesmen in these times of trouble...
...THE BOOTBLACK STAND Dr...
...The chief advantage of a fee system in this respect is that it would not merely represent a deferral or abandonment of unreasonable goals, but would create a continuing incentive for action by polluters...
...and various types of smokestack scrubbers to remove sulphur dioxide are still technically controversial...
...In Looking for Mr...
...It is hard to fathom what makes Theresa take up this desperate life...
...With such hysterical exercises as Goodbar on the loose, thoughtful filmmaking like this is a refreshing respite...
...Although the CED argument against a mixed system of both fees and regulations is appealing, the environmentalists also have a point—that at least some minimum limits on discharges should remain, even for those substances for which the fee system is intended to provide most of the cleanup incentive...
...What is so satisfying about Julia is that it succeeds in maintaining the sharp emotional focus of a short story...
...If BOD, suspended solids, and the rest seeped into our nation's waters in no greater concentrations than these virtues circulate within our body politic, we could right now drink safely from the Potomac...
...These points were hotly disputed in the case of catalytic converters for automobiles...
...Her self-destructiveness eventually leads to a grisly finish...
...And should it be high from the start, or increased gradually...
...The Commission concluded that the extra measure of pollution control over point sources was not worth the cost, especially since non-point sources are so much harder to control...
...There will still be records to be kept and inspectors to be suffered...
...A major issue in the film is Theresa'sCatholic upbringing...
...The scenes between Hellman and Hammett are intriguing glimpses into a well-known, long-standing affair...
...When a man bumps into Theresa on the bus, the magazine he's reading is Hustler (Penthouse wouldn't have been enough, we might have missed the point), and when Theresa walks down a street at night, both sides are always glittering with neon-lit sex shops...
...I say let us call the UN Security Council together and see to it that there are sharp butter knives available to the terrorists of Stammheim who aspire to them...
...She projects both the strength and vulnerability of a woman realizing precarious professional ambitions while pursuing a personal life that is no less uncertain...
...As with Goodbar, Julia is a translation from print to screen...
...Plunkitt: I write at a moment of anguish for me and decent people everywhere...
...What are your suggestions...
...Goodbar and Julia Hollywood has recently offered two important movies that fit generally into the category of the latter-day woman's picture...
...Wouldn't it be moving if the American Congress were to proclaim a day of mourning for the deceased—all deceased, even the pilot...
...From there it is all downhill...
...One can imagine a firm deciding, for tax reasons, to crowd as many of its pollution fee expenses as possible into one fiscal year and flushing out its holding ponds in July, when the streams are too low to dilute the load...
Vol. 11 • December 1977 • No. 2
