The Star is a 1952 film directed by Stuart Heisler and starring Bette Davis, Sterling Hayden and Natalie Wood. The plot tells the story of a washed up actress who tries anything to restart her career, even at the risk of alienating her husband and daughter. Bette Davis received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Oscar Award winning star Margaret "Maggie" Elliot (Bette Davis) is a bankrupt actress unwilling to accept her new non-wealthy reality. She is in denial, and confident she can build herself up again and somehow fix her career. After she gets another big deception striving to get that last one good role, she gets drunk, is arrested for DUI, and spends a night in jail. She is bailed out by Jim Johannsen (Sterling Hayden), a young actor whom she helped in the past. Jim loves her and, helped by Margaret’s daughter Gretchen (Natalie Wood), tries to make Margaret see that her big screen days as a famous actress are already over. She manages to get a screen test for a role in a film she’d always wanted to play, being offered a supporting role which she accepts, trusting that if she plays that character as a sexy young woman she might be able to get the best part, but it does not work out.
They promised her the leading part in the best movie of all time...
Plot
An aspiring actress and an aging cowboy arrive in the small border town of Del Rio, Texas each with a different pursuit. But when things don't go exactly as planned for either of them--the actress slowly begins to realize that the film she came to town for is not at all what she expected (the 'director' is nowhere to be found, the set is run by a group of teenagers), and the associate that the cowboy was supposed to meet had to leave town unexpectedly--the two are forced to wait out their time, exploring the town, and its people. A Latino tale of mysticism, tradition, and the dream of celebrity.
Plot
Four filmmakers discover they've 'blown' almost all the money they'd borrowed (from a local loan shark) to produce a film. Desperate, they come up with a plan to film anyway - using the audition tape footage as the actual movie. With each audition they must con the actors into doing more and more in order to succeed at putting together a feature that their gangster benefactor will appreciate.
Keywords: actor, anxiety, audition, bankruptcy, bare-breasts, boyfriend-girlfriend-relationship, brother-brother-relationship, cameo-appearance, cameraman, casting-call
The amazingly true (and increasingly familiar) story of one independent film actor's first day on a big studio movie.
Plot
Buffalo Bill plans to put on his own Wild West sideshow, and Chief Sitting Bull has agreed to appear in it. However, Sitting Bull has his own hidden agenda, involving the President and General Custer.
Keywords: american-indian, annie-oakley, based-on-play, buffalo-bill-cody, character-name-in-title, circus-tent, cynicism, entertainment, general-custer, grover-cleveland
William F. 'Buffalo Bill' Cody: My daddy was killed trying to keep slavery out of Kansas.::Oswald Dart: How did he do that?::William F. 'Buffalo Bill' Cody: Well, my daddy hated slavery with such a passion that rather than let the coloreds get in as slaves, he just fought to keep 'em out of the state.
William F. 'Buffalo Bill' Cody: Where were ya?::William Halsey: It's the first of the moon.::Nate Salisbury: That's not what Buffalo Bill asked ya! Now where in the hell have you been?::William Halsey: During the first day of the first moon, Sitting Bull visits the sun in the mountains while his squaws move the teepees to the moon path.::Nate Salisbury: Damn it, Halsey! Stop sunning and mooning us! Now where the hell have you been?
President Grover Cleveland: Where will you sleep, Buffalo Bill?::Ed Goodman: You can sleep with me, Uncle Will.::William F. 'Buffalo Bill' Cody: No, Ed, I will sleep out on the prairie underneath the moon and listen to the lullaby of the coyotes. You see, I ain't always been a comfortable man.::President Grover Cleveland: You know, it's a man like that that made this country what it is today!
Maj. John M. Burke: Don't worry about how you feel about where you ought to be... just come on over here where you should be.
William Halsey: Great Father, Sitting Bull has waited to ask you a very simple thing for his people.::President Grover Cleveland: Mr. Halsey, I remind you that in government, nothing is simple.
[explaining why Sitting Bull should be in Buffalo Bill's show]::Ned Buntline: A rock ain't a rock once it becomes gravel.
William F. 'Buffalo Bill' Cody: The difference between a white man and an injun in all situations is that an injun is red. And an injun is red for a very good reason. So we can tell us apart.
Crutch: Come here, Mr. Buntline! Come over here and look at Sitting Bull! The son-of-a-bitch must be seven feet tall!::Ned Buntline: He's getting smaller every year.
Ned Buntline: I bring up this dream business because, well, because things are beginning to take on an unreal shape. Now I was thinking about Sitting Bull. Just put yourself in that Injun's place. You sit in your tepee and dream. And then yu go to wherever the dream may take you... it might come true. And you wait for real life to catch up.
Ned Buntline: Injuns gear their lives to dreams. And what an injun dreams, no matter how farfetched, will wait until he dies to come true. The white men - they're different. The only time they dream is when things are going their way. I'm no expert on the subject, but it seems to me that what Sitting Bull does is a hell of a lot cheaper than mounting a wild west show... which is dreaming out loud.
Plot
This short experimental film tells the story of a man who comes to Hollywood to become a star, only to fail and be dehumanized (he is identified by the number 9314 written on his forehead), after which he dies and goes on to Heaven where the number is removed.
Keywords: avant-garde, number-in-title
My head in the clouds, I can't conceal, conceit.
I try to justify your looked, bewitched eye.
Am I shining brightly on falsified sky?
Chous:
And I try so hard to be like you.
And I'm just a star, and I'll fade away too...
Like you.
You'll see me as I am but I'm empty inside.
We'll suck each other in the blackhole that
is life.
I can be a fallen star, not fallen from grace.
One plane, one world, one sky, so me don't alientate.
(Chorus)
Blind, you will see.
Twinkle twinkle Christmas star
And the way you're going
Up above the world so high
You're like a diamond glowing
We have traveled from the east
To the star we're going
Gold and frankincense and myrrh
On him we'll be bestowing
If the clouds should fill the sky
We'd surely find our way
Baby Jesus sleeping where he lay
He's the star, the star, the star
He's the star, the star, the star
Would you be a wise one too
And follow the star as we do
And he will surely guide your way
Through this life and the next he'll lead you
If the clouds should fill the sky
You'll surely find your way
With Jesus king of all that he surveys
He's the star, the star, the star
The star (the star), the star (the star), the star
He's the star (the star), the star (the star), the star (will you follow)
The star (the star), the star (the star), the star (will you follow)
He's the star (the star), the star (the star), the star (will you follow)
The star (the star), the star (the star), the star (will you follow)