Looking for Mr. Goodbar (film)
| Looking for Mr. Goodbar | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Richard Brooks |
| Produced by | Freddie Fields |
| Screenplay by | Richard Brooks |
| Based on |
Looking for Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner |
| Starring |
Diane Keaton Tuesday Weld William Atherton Richard Kiley Richard Gere |
| Music by | Artie Kane |
| Cinematography | William A. Fraker |
| Edited by | George Grenville |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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136 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $22,512,655 |
Looking for Mr. Goodbar is a 1977 American drama film, based on the acclaimed, best-selling novel of the same name by Judith Rossner, which was inspired by the 1973 murder of New York City schoolteacher Roseann Quinn. The film was written and directed by Richard Brooks. It stars Diane Keaton, Tuesday Weld, William Atherton, and Richard Gere.
The film was a commercial success, earning $22.5 million, but received wildly mixed reviews. Author Rossner, for one, "detested" it, although she praised Diane Keaton's performance. The film did garner Academy Award nominations for supporting actress Tuesday Weld and for the cinematography by William Fraker.
Set in the mid-1970s, the film traces the sexual awakening of Theresa Dunn (Keaton), a young Irish-American teacher searching for excitement outside her ordered life. While in college, Theresa lives with her repressive Polish-Irish Catholic parents, and suffers from severe body image issues following a childhood surgery for scoliosis that left a large scar on her back. Theresa later finds out that her scoliosis is congenital and that her aunt had the same condition and committed suicide; as a result, Theresa is reluctant to have children of her own. Meanwhile, her beautiful "perfect" older sister, Katherine (Weld), has left her husband and embarked on a wild lifestyle involving multiple affairs, a secret abortion, recreational drug use, and a short-lived marriage to a Jewish man. Theresa finds first love and loses her virginity with her much older, married college professor Martin (Alan Feinstein), who ends the affair just before her graduation, leaving Theresa feeling used and lonely.
Theresa takes a job teaching deaf children, and proves to be a gifted and caring teacher. With Katherine's encouragement, she moves out of her parents' home into her own apartment in the city. She begins to go clubbing at night and picks up men for one-night stands as a way of getting excitement and sexual fulfilment without commitment, always insisting that the men leave before morning. An encounter with a street hustler named Tony (Gere) develops into them being sex buddies, and the two begin regularly meeting for increasingly rough and dangerous sex, involving a switchblade knife and drugs. At one point he gives her a Quaalude pill which causes her to oversleep and arrive very late for work the next day, angering her employer and students. Tony eventually becomes controlling and abusive, and Theresa breaks up with him. He then stalks and harasses her at the school where she works and makes threatening phone calls to her at night.
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Wikipedia