MovieChat Forums > Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) Discussion > God, this can't be a drama

God, this can't be a drama

posted 10 years ago by snagletooth
7 replies | jump to latest

It reads (views) like a satirical farce with every tired neurotic cliche checked off. It's the stuff they snipped out of Annie Hall.

Edgy...tragic....gaawwwdddd. Like a Qualude.

[–] crooked_spoons 8 years ago

I agree. It's really not something that translates well to a modern viewer. It was just wacky, weird and totally unrealistic. Idk, maybe because I didn't watch this under the influence of whatever drugs people were into to make this sort of thing palatable back then.

__________
Everybody needs love. Have you held your hostage today?

[–] disinterested_spectator 8 years ago

My favorite cliché: "This is my last night cruising bars," she said to the bartender, which is like a pilot saying, "This is my last flight before I retire," or a bank robber saying, "This is my last job, and then I'm going to quit."

[–] BartlebyScrivner 8 years ago

You all realize that this is a pretty faithful retelling of a true story? Even the "last night" part? The real woman's name was Roseanne Quinn, she really did get into the swinging scene at the height of the 70s sexual revolution, and really was murdered by the man she intended to be the "end of the line" amidst some circumstances even more bizarre than what's shown in the movie.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

[–] disinterested_spectator 8 years ago

Did the newspaper accounts quote the bartender to whom she made this remark in the movie?

[–] BartlebyScrivner 8 years ago

IIRC, in the aftermath of the murder, a friend of hers recalled a conversation with Quinn shortly before her death in which she said that she felt her own life was getting out of hand and that she was going to try and straighten up-- not a quote, just paraphrasing to the best of my abilities. There used to be a wonderful writeup of the real case on Court TV's website, but it appears to have gone offline. I read it back in about '08 or so.

[–] disinterested_spectator 8 years ago

Thanks for the information. Of course, I can't help but think of all the vices people have decided to swear off as a New Year's resolution, only to relapse by the following weekend. Still, it is good to know that the author didn't just make this part up.

I decided to put this under the auspices of "spoiler," since I am getting a scary message about violations of terms and conditions and punishments pertaining to such.

[–] BartlebyScrivner 8 years ago

Whoah. Bummer about the spoiler warnings... FWIW I haven't gotten anything similar myself, at least not from this thread.

Though it seems cliche, most cliches start off from a place of truth. Newspapers wanted to sensationalize Quinn's murder as the story of a good girl gone bad, but she was living a lifestyle pretty similar to a lot of other people at the time. The upper-middle-class sex culture that Teresa's sister gets involved in was a very real thing, and it was something approaching a societal norm for "straight" folks to sexually experiment on the weekend and live the nine-to-five lifestyle Monday through Friday. I'm sure plenty of other women met very similar ends to Ms. Quinn, but her murder was just the perfect storm of bizarre circumstances to capture public attention: She had an almost Mother Teresa-like reputation for her work with the deaf, the particular "scene" she was interested in (BDSM) was still taboo even in light of the larger sexual revolution, and her father was a wealthy New Jersey executive. On top of that was the killer's bisexuality (again, something still taboo at the time) and eventual suicide, which proved to be the frosting on the cake of sensationalism and morbidity.