À la recherche de Mr. Goodbar

I saw this movie when it came out in the '70's. Living in Marin County, we were all experimenting with our new freedom of sexuality, (Hot Tubs included). This movie should have been a wakeup call. But naive as I was, the night I saw the movie, my friend and I went to a local pub afterwards. I met a handsome fellow and he invited me to his home nearby, where he said he had a warm fire going. I told him of the movie and made him swear he wasn't a Mr. Goodbar (in a joking, yet serious way). But dummy me, I believed he was OK, and the man turned out to be someone you'd rather not go home with. Nothing too drastic happened, but I didn't go home with strangers again. I also became a "poster child" or should I say the voice of reason regarding the fact that "free love" was really not what we were looking for. Women are usually looking to be loved, and although we now had choices, this choice was a poor example of what we really needed.

Tonight my boyfriend and I were listening to Could It Be Magic by Barry Manilow, and I could picture the ending with that music playing and the lights flashing, and the rest of it which as you already know is unforgettable. So much so, that it's something I wouldn't want to see again. At my age now, it just might be a little too much for my heart to handle, LOL

Few viewers can deny the impact of this film – on the '77 crowd and generations afterwards. As a curious 8-year-old up late watching HBO, I never forgot the story or the lesson. Based on a true story, Richard Brooks astutely translated Judith Rossner's best-selling novel to screen, choosing a luminous Diane Keaton, hot off `Annie Hall' and `The Godfather' to play Theresa Dunn, an up-and-coming Richard Gere, a quirky Tuesday Weld , and amazing Richard Kiley as Dunn, the overbearing Irish-Catholic father. The misogynistic Richard Atherton and an ominous Tom Berenger rounds out the solid cast.

Neither traditionally beautiful like her stewardess sister, Katherine or a baby factory like her other sister living at home with her, Theresa is the odd one out, the sister who is searching for approval from a father who barely acknowledges her existence. Childhood traumas mold her and make the fact that Theresa allows herself to be strong and fallible all the more powerful and endearing.

Tired of her father's unyielding rule, Theresa moves into the apartment building owned by Katherine's next attempt at a husband. As the women's freedom movement is underway, Theresa is caught in the position of questioning the traditional roles for women, roles against a new woman in control of her body and her sexuality. By day she teaches at a school for the deaf. By night her nightly jaunts into New York's seamier nightlife scene, expose the dichotomy of being a professional woman by day who must maintain credibility and responsibility, especially with young children while trying to be sexually active, experimental and suffering the stigma attached to both – as whore and as a free woman – wanting purely physical experiences much the same as men, yet realizing the label is different.

Throughout this film, Brooks explores Theresa's perpetual search for acceptance by men but a need to maintain her own identity. From a failed affair with a Prof. she was a TA to, to her fling with Tony, a local hustler, Theresa is perpetually in question of her sexuality and her allure for men, making poor choices in her partners only to endure their violence and possessiveness - much like her father. That she meets up with a homicidal drifter the New Year's Eve night she has decided to quit drugs and cruising, is the irony of her self-discovery.

The only positive male in her life appears to be is LaVar Burton's character, Cap Jackson, –the sullen brother of one of Theresa's students. He is the only male presence in the movie that is not malevolent or trying to extract something from Theresa and during her altercation with Tony at the school, he is the only person to defend and protect her.

While the scare of AIDS stole later generations' promiscuity, this tale still resonates for viewers, especially for women on their own, looking for intimacy yet craving isolation.

While the ending tends to drag with one too many drug scenes the movie still packs a wallop for a finale.

The movie really gets the whole 1970s drug sniffing, gay liberation, pro swinger pre aids lifestyle down, and then closes with what may be one of the most depressing endings ever shot for a movie. As we all know, Diane Keaton is the straight laced teacher by day, and bar hopper by night. Her Catholic background and domineering father all contribute to her rampant promiscuity, and she ends up paying for it in the end. Sad, because the sexual revolution of the time gave women the right to do what she does in the film without being called whores, and then she had to pay for it. Such a good flick though, although it could have used a little editing for time. See it, and decide for yourself. Highly recommended, and perfect depiction of a life that really is impossible to imagine in this day and age.

It was searching for a copy of this that led me to a source of otherwise unavailable films but the lengthy running time has put me off watching it, for some time. Also, I cannot now remember what got me intrigued by the title anyway. In any event the thing is now watched. It seems to me there is a bit too much of everything here, certainly Richard Gere and Tuesday Weld who are well over the top. Keaton is fine but her character begins to irritate halfway through, what with all her neediness and simultaneously thrusting of people aside, her wonderfully virtuous deaf classes, adding nothing whatsoever and the growing tedium of the shadowy scenes of sex and drugs. Brave of Keaton to take the role but if only Brooks could have kept it to something more like 90 minutes we would surely have had a much more succinct and effective movie. Too many characters to little effect and too many downers and not enough uppers.

This was an interesting movie and it shows how the world has changed in the last 30 years. The attitudes (between men and women, gays and straights), the language used back then, the social atmosphere (bar scene) of the late 1970s, even the financial differences--she's able to afford an apartment in Manhattan on a teachers salary! (even though it has roaches this still isn't possible in 2006). All of these things made the movie interesting for me. I also imagine it must have been a very shocking movie back then. I was 8 years old when it came out so I didn't see it in the theater but I would have liked to see it in a theater just to see how people took it back then. I would have liked to walk out of the theater and hear the conversations going on as people walked to their cars. Did people like it back then? Did they think it was shocking? Did they think it accurately portrayed a type of person they maybe knew or were themselves back then? Also, Diane Keaton was very good in it and it's very interesting to see a young Richard Gere and Tom Berenger when their careers were just beginning.