Hollywood is mostly depicted as a land where dreams are made. The movies cranked out at the studios go around the world. They create superstars out of simple folks from small towns. Every day people show up in the town eager to strike it big in showbiz. Many of them have a dream. Quite a few also possess very expensive film degrees and their award-winning student video. But there’s only so many films being produced, or TV shows being broadcast. It’s a grinding process. While working on a project on the lot at Universal Studios, I took a break from rewriting my script and walked down the hallway. I found myself in front of a giant recycling dumpster that overflowing with discarded scripts. It was a rather disheartening to know that each script was someone’s dream that was supposed to make them the new star of Tinseltown. How was I supposed to go back and hope that my epic script was different? I still believed my project was going to get a premiere at Mann’s Chinese Theater. It didn’t. The Day of the Locust is a film about people who are hustling on the fringes of the studio and not the stars that are born.
Tod Hackett (Ghostbusters‘ William Atherton) has arrived Los Angeles with a job at Paramount in the Art Department. He’s a Yale guy who expects to move up the ladder fast. He rents a bungalow in San Bernadino even though one wall has a serious crack from a recent earthquake. The new guy quickly meets his neighbors that aspire to get on the lot. First there’s Adore Loomis (The Watchmen‘s Jackie Earle Haley) a wannabe and annoying child performer. Tod finds himself allured by Faye Greener (Five Easy Pieces‘ Karen Black). She’s a steady extra at Paramount. Her career seems to be elevating as she gets a minor speaking role in a movie. She invites him to see the movie and brings along her cowboy friend (The Wild Bunch‘s Bo Hopkins). It’s a strange date as the Ivy Leaguer and the Cowboy compete to be her beau. She gets upset that her big moment on the screen isn’t quite as big, but she appears in a promotional photo. He does get along with Faye’s husband Harry (Rocky‘s Burgess Meredith), an old burlesque performer who does door-to-door sales. This isn’t quite the Hollywood crowd that will get him places. When Tod makes a college connection with the head of the art department, he gets invited out to a naughty Hollywood party. The studio folks watch a stag film while hanging out with call girls. Things get even more out of control back home when Faye hooks up with a dull accountant (M*A*S*H*‘s Donald Sutherland), but won’t give up her party girl lifestyle. This includes a wild party that involves her hooking up with a guy who fights roosters. Tod gets to experience the nasty underbelly of Hollywood including a premiere at the Chinese Theater that becomes a disaster zone. Will he escape the nightmare or get sucked into the vortex?
Director John Schlesinger and screenplay Waldo Salt delivered a bleak vision of New York City with Midnight Cowboy. With The Day of the Locust, they presented Los Angeles as an equally perverse nightmare. They were gave an adaptation of author Nathanael West’s original novel without lightening it up. They made the movie more personal with the fictional National Films being replaced by the very real Paramount Pictures. They stripped away the glamour of old Hollywood on every level. There are no amazing dance numbers to make you ignore the heart of the movie. The most “amazing” studio moment is when a hill set collapses during the shooting of a French war scene under the director of William Castle (the real director of The Tingler). Even with actors and crew seriously hurt, the studio head is more concerned about the insurance payoff. It’s cold blooded. We get a sense that the dream factory has a slaughterhouse element in the back. The Studio head knows there’s more people arriving to take the place of the fallen.
Not to completely give away the ending, but the riot at the movie premiere is the best disaster scene created in the ’70s. Forget the Irwin Allen classics, John Schlesinger turns a happy promotional event into a terrifying moment. The Day of the Locust is better than Earthquake, Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure. Schlesinger takes it up a notch by having Tod relate to the horrors with elements of his art he’s been working on. Hollywood is transformed into a circle of Hell.
The Day of the Locust was not a box office hit. Besides the bleak nature of the movie, the audience might have avoided buying a ticket because of the rooster fighting scene involving Billy Barty (Sigmund and the Sea Monsters) coaching his feathery killer. Even Roger Corman couldn’t get a hit out of rooster fighting flick. The movie going public just isn’t into watching roosters slice each other up. Maybe this was the moment that John Schlesinger went too far for the average moviegoer who wanted a throwback the glory days of Hollywood? But that’s not what the book was about. The Day of the Locust is honest to the novel and the Hollywood experience for so many dreamers that arrive in Los Angeles every day and even today.
The Video is 1.85:1 anamorphic. The 2K remaster is from the original negative. You get a sense of the recaptured times. The Audio is DTS-MA Mono of the original theatrical release. There are also DTS-MA 5.1 and 2.0 mixes to widen out the mix. The movie is subtitled in English.
Oral History Audio Commentary conducted by writer and film historian Lee Gambin, featuring assistant directors Leslie Asplund and Charles Ziarko, production associate Michael Childers, actors Grainger Hines and Pepe Serna, title designer Dan Perri, costume designer Ann Roth, assistant editor Alan L. Shefland and assistant camera operator Ron Vidor. There are dozens of great tales of what happened during the production. Dan Perri has a great tale of how he grabbed the title design gig. There is talk of the massive Santa Monica Beach scene that ended up deleted. John Schlesinger had a meltdown over a cruise ship and an airplane that ended up delaying a shot.
Welcome to West Hollywood (24:38) has critic Glenn Kenny get into the film starting with the background on Nathaniel West and his novel. He reads the segment from S.J. Perelman’s book that deals with West. He gets into how studio head Robert Evans didn’t want the movie made, but other executives at Paramount wanted John Schlesinger and Waldo Salt on the lot after their success with Midnight Cowboy. He points out how Schlesinger tied the film into Paramount. We also get what attracted Waldo Salt to the book when it came out and drove him to write the script.
Days of the Golden Age (17:55) has costume historian and film historian Elissa Rose discusses Ann Roth’s work on the film’s costumes. She compares the outfits to The Sting. Rose had interviewed Roth about the film and we hear the audio. Roth says the designs were based on 1938 designs. She gets into her relationship with cinematographer Conrad Hall on the film. The two-time Oscar winner has a cameo in last summer’s Barbie movie. We also hear how Adore’s wardrobe came about.
Jeepers Creepers, Where’d You Get Those Peepers? (23:55) is a visual essay on film historian Lee Gambin on the themes in the film.
Image Galleries has 41 promotional photos, posters and lobby cards. There are also exclusive behind-the-scenes photographs from the archives of production associate Michael Childers and assistant camera operator Ron Vidor that give us a sense of how big they recreated old Hollywood.
Radio Spots (2:00) has two of the spots that lured you off the road and into the theater. They use the movie premiere opening in the film to spice it up.
Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Pamela Hutchinson
Arrow Video presents The Day of the Locust. Directed by John Schlesinger. Screenplay by Waldo Salt. Starring William Atherton, Karen Black, Donald Sutherland, Burgess Meredith, Geraldine Page, Richard Dysart, Bo Hopkins, Pepe Serna, Billy Barty, Jackie Earle Haley, Natalie Schafer, Nita Talbot, John Hillerman and William Castle. Running Time: 144 minutes. Rating: Rated R, Release Date: December 5, 2023,
