New Year. New Review. Who dis? Ninety-nine percent of humans resort to some kind of New Year Resolution each December and forget about the whole thing within the first chugging week of January. It’s a vicious circle Old Academy Anew will not try to break if it works for you. Now, if it doesn’t work— we have a simple solution: find one good thing about yourself and exploit the hell out of it. Your appreciation will be appreciated in both the comment section and my Venmo. DM me for details. Back to our monthly scheduled programing. This is Sunset Boulevard (1950).
BENDING YOUR TRUTH FOR THE BREAD.
Out-of-work screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) needs money to pay his bills. He escaped Ohio for the glam of Hollywood only to discover life ain’t a picture. Typing away in his apartment, he summarizes his body of work and why it is not smashing Tinsel Town: “Maybe they weren’t original enough. Maybe they were too original.”
We come face to face with his troubles when two repo/finance guys come to take his car. These two look more like mob enforcers than average collectors, but what can one expect from the mean streets of Hollywood. Joe gives them the slip, saying some friend borrowed the car— a total fib just to keep it a few more days.
Remember, Sunset Boulevard is a “Hollywood Story” narrated as a 1940s private dick film noir.
So we’re going to hear names and places that will have little meaning for us today. But back then, were as clear and shine as saying: Silicon Valley, Julia Roberts, or Martin Scorsese.
Joe goes to talk to a producer friend at Paramount Studios to see if one of his stories can be used and get some dough. The story is about a baseball player and several names are thrown as possible main leads. Did I google those names? I did not. The screenplay is brought by a reader, Betty Schaefer (Nancy Olson), who has a lot of comments on it. She says the thing’s crap before realizing the writer is in the room.
When she sees Joe, she’s not ashamed of her comments and explains that’s her opinion about that screenplay because she’s read better things from him and has high regard for his work. Joe and Betty have a cool banter here until the producer dismisses her. Regardless of Betty’s opinion, the producer thinks the script has been done before but muses about the idea of making it with women, obviously prophesying A League of Their Own (1992).
Nothing comes out of that meeting, and Joe goes in search of other sources of assistance.
He spends the whole day making phone calls (in a pharmacy’s phone booth) and finally tracks his golf-playing agent, who’s not going to give him the money he needs because “The finest things in the world have been written on an empty stomach.”
Joe drives home, almost defeated, ready to go back to Ohio’s Dayton Evening Post and see the smirking faces of his former colleagues. On the way, the repo guys spot him and turn around to grab the car. A high-speed chase ensues. Joe loses a tire but luckily veers into a deserted driveway. The goons fly by thinking he’s still on the road. Our hero takes a deep breath, thanking his lately absent stars. And those stars seem to be fully awakened now because the driveway leads to a seemingly abandoned mansion with a huge ass garage where he can hide the car until it gets fixed.
As Joe steps out of the garage, a woman calls, “You there. Why are you so late? Why have you kept me waiting so long?”
Those are the first words Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) tells Joe, and by the end of the movie, you understand they were a fukken omen. If you’ve ever heard that maxim of theater where “one must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off,” you’ll understand why this film is effing genius. Even the slightest thing, something you might miss if you blink, has later repercussions.
Norma’s manservant/right hand/creepy-twist-later, Max (Erich von Stroheim), brings Joe into the house and sends him up to his mistress chamber. Apprehensively, Joe enters the room to discover the corpse of a monkey awaiting a coffin he was supposed to deliver. Phew. Just a case of mistaken identity (or is it?). Before leaving the room, Joe asks Norma if she’s an actress because her face seems familiar. “You used to be big,” he remarks.
“I am big,” Norma answers angrily, crazy eyes and dramatic voice included. “It’s the pictures that got small.”
Joe gets cheeky with her for a bit to end up saying he’ll bring his autographs book next time or even better a block of cement for her prints. To make a long story short, Norma has finished writing a screenplay and wants Joe to read it. “So you’re planning a comeback,” asks Joe. Her angry retort is, “I hate that word. It’s not a comeback. IT’S A RETURN.”
The people in 1950, Joe, and I roll our collective eyes, but since food and drink are promised, our down-on-his-luck playwright decides to stay and take a gander at the several thousand pages script.
“Sometimes is interesting just to see how bad ‘bad writing’ can be,” Joe reflects. “This promises to go the limit.”
We’ve all been there, Joe. We feel you. Still, he continues, while perusing the pages, “I wonder what a handwriting expert would make of that childish scroll of hers.”
Stuffed with champagne and caviar, Joe remains until almost midnight.
He tells Norma he could come back tomorrow to continue his revision or take the script with him and bring it to a later date. She refuses because she doesn’t have faith in people, but asks for his zodiac sign. Joe doesn’t know about those things but in turn, reveals he was born in December. “Sagittarius,” Norma exclaims. “I like Sagittarius. You can trust them.”
Sagittarius here. That’s not how it works. Not all Sagittarius’ are born in December either, some are born in November. And we can be real jerks too.
By this time, Joe has plotted to get the money he needs from the crazy-eyed lady. He has fixed worse manifestos. Never mind her script is about Salome— a scorned woman who gets a holy man killed after he rejects her… Staying the night hasn’t crossed his mind, but what did he have to go back to? It’s just one night in that grandiose decrepit house with its haunting empty pool and broken tennis court, creepy manservant, dead monkey awaiting a coffin, and whizzing organ thanks to messy windowpanes. What could go wrong?
COMFORTS WHILE BEING UNCOMFORTABLE
The next morning, Joe wakes up to find all his belongings inside the little room about the garage where he spent the night. He gets upset and throws a hissy fit. One of the very few things I don’t like about this film. I understand the reaction; Holden’s performance portraying the reaction, not so much. It was unnecessarily over the top, completely out of character for a man as suave as Joe Gillis.
Norma easily dismisses him. She has a big house, and there’s no reason for him to go back to a place where he’s already three months late with the rent. Joe tries to save face, saying that he can pay that rent with the advance she should give him. “What’s money between us?” Norma asks with a tsk and a puff of smoke. “And I canceled your debt when I moved your things.”
Joe tries to keep the hissy fit-up, but yeah, what’s the point, dude? Remember your lucky stars?
Them bitches working overtime for you now. So shut it and stay in the creepy mansion with your three meals and lots of spirits to lubricate your poor brain cells dealing with that monstrosity of biblical re-imagining.
Time passes as it does in movies. Joe types away, now in a more ornate setting, while Norma hovers over him, not letting him prune the hefty volume of nonsense but chastising him for cutting scenes and trying to add more dialogue. Something Norma has no clue about because she was a silent movie-leading lady. Speaking was not a thing for her. She was all eyes and gestures. She’s still all eyes and gestures but now paired with an imperious voice that won’t quit. Screenplay fights during the day turn into home-movie nights (always her films, of course) and Joe acting as a companion when other silent movies stars come to play cards with Norma.
On one of these gaming nights, the repo guys appear to take the car. Joe asks Norma for a moment.
Busy with her friends, she brushes him off. When she finally decides to pay attention to him the car is already hooked to the tow truck. “Now, you’re being silly. We don’t need two cars. We have a car,” Norma states in her extravagant way.
The next scene finds them in said gas-chugging car on the highway. Norma comments on Joe’s clothes, saying he needs a new wardrobe. Joe halfheartedly tries to divert the conversation, but as usual caves, and they proceed to a high-end store. The moment gets to the crucial point of the situation when the assistant tells Joe to get the expensive stuff if the lady is the one paying for it.
The first rains arrive the last day of December, and there’s a hole in the ceiling of the little garage room, conveniently over Joe’s bed.
This prompts him to be moved into the main house— to the suite next to the mistress of the house chambers. As Joe explores, he learns this has been the place for the husbands (yes, plural). He asks why the bathroom does not have a lock. Max informs him that there are no locks in that house because madam’s mind is fragile and it shouldn’t be an option for her to lock others out and prevent them from helping her if the need arises. No razors, knives, or any other implement that could be used to harm herself or others is allowed within the house.
I call bull hookie here because Joe has been around the mansion for several months now, and there’s no way he hadn’t noticed the lack of locks. Intrigued by this notion, I went back to re-check and, interestingly, every time Joe crosses a doorway the door is already open, so technically there’s no real reason for him (or us) to notice the lack of locks until that exact moment.
Dang it. Sunset Boulevard is all kinds of sneaky.
New Year’s Eve arrives, and our hero dons his recently purchased coattails to receive his patron’s guests. Another steaming heap of crazy is served when Joe discovers there are no guests— that the orchestra and all the food and drinks are just for two. They have an argument, where Normal slaps Joe and dramatically exits towards her room. Joe says fuck it and goes out in search of a place with normal people, people his age, where he can share some happiness and laughter. He’s done with Norma’s fantasies of grand movie returns and being a kept man.
The movie tries to make us believe that Norma hasn’t tried to grab the goods she’s been handsomely paying for, but I’ll get there in a moment.
Joe’s friend Artie always has a good shindig, and that’s where he finds his safe happy harbor. Crowded and loud, the party embraces Joe’s prodigal son return since he’s been cooped up and basically AWOL thanks to the former silent movies star. After only minutes surrounded by life and laughter, Joe asks Artie if he can crash there for a couple of days. Artie enthusiastically welcomes him to the apartment’s couch.
But there’s that loaded rifle again, and wouldn’t you know it, that opinionated reader Betty from Paramount Studios happens to be Artie’s girlfriend. She tells Joe she’s been trying to find him. A portion of one of his screenplays has potential if they develop it together, and she’s been hyping the producer to the idea of their collaboration.
Excited by this prospect and a place to crash, Joe goes to make the phone call to finish his living arrangement with Norma. Alas, some girl is already glued to the phone.
At this point, the party is in full Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) Holly Golightly’s party shenanigans. Betty, who wants to be a writer, not just a reader, grabs Joe and sits him in the bathroom with her. They talk about the project and end up enacting lines of dialog from I guess a movie or a play in a cute moment that is there to endear us to the idea of them becoming more than just writing partners. Shame on you, Hollywood for perpetuating the myth that hot people cannot work closely together without ending up bumping uglies. Shame. Phone girl stumbles to the bathroom to tell Joe she’s done. He makes the call only to discover that cray-cray has used his razor to cut her wrists.
Joe leaves the party without saying goodbye to anyone. He finds Norma, wrists wrapped and dramatically posed over her boat of a bed. I mean, can it get more dramatic than cutting your wrist while an orchestra plays in your mansion’s ballroom? I think not, but Norma will probably find a way to do it before the movie is over. Nevertheless, Joe chastises her for being silly to what she answers, “I’ll do it again. I’ll do it again!”
Lost for words, Joe goes away from the bed to sit on a nearby chaise, clearly feeling annoyed but responsible for the events.
In the ballroom, the orchestra starts playing “Auld Lang Syne.” He slowly goes back to the bed and removes the arms covering Norma’s tear-stained face. “Happy new year, Norma,” he says, his voice deep and forgiving. Norma turns to face Joe almost reluctantly and, after a hitched breath, whispers, “Happy new year, darling.” She pulls him towards her, and the scene fades to black as they kiss.
I have twenty thousand jokes and barbs to unleash here, but I’m not gonna do it. Frankly, if I was in Joe’s shoes and George Hamilton wanted to be my sugar daddy I wouldn’t say no. A lot of people do worse things for less, and Norma ain’t a troll.
THE RECYCLING OF HUMAN INSECURITIES
One of the other very few things I didn’t enjoy in Sunset Boulevard was its confusing timeframe. As I said before, Joe narrates the movie not just in full 1940s private dick film noir mode but also of the “This is the story of how I die” shtick. The movie begins with the police arriving at 10086 Sunset Boulevard at about 5:00 am. That might have been the California of the year 1949, but to my knowledge, you don’t get sun at that hour until about May, and Joe tells us to go back six months to watch the beginning of his end. This would put the first proper scene somewhere (somewhen?) in November.
Remember how Joe said he was born in December? In the way they had that conversation, nothing indicates that the month is close. Furthermore, there’s no mention of any holiday until we go straight to New Year’s Eve. No Halloween, no Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, or Christmas. Worst of all, self-centered Norma never acknowledged Joe’s birthday during the last month of the year. I don’t know why, but this bothers me. This movie seems so meticulously calculated that little things like that feel like huge oversights. Some might say that it was a way to show that she only cared about what was important to her.
It might be so, but I’m pretty sure had the dead monkey been alive, there would have been a birthday party for the grandchild of King Kong (Joe’s words, not mine).
By the time the story of Salome is ready for legendary director C.B. DeMille, the pool is filled with crystalline water and life appears to be good for Joe and Norma. One sunny day, she comments how her astrologer has made hers and DeMille’s charts and the time is ripe for them to work together once more. As she expands on this, Max comes to inform them someone from the studio wants to talk to her, but because the caller is not DeMille himself, she refuses to answer the call.
After more calls from the studio, Norma decides to go in person and find out from DeMille’s own lips why hasn’t HE called her. This action unleashes several plot twists but more importantly puts Joe and Betty in proximity again. They reconnect and decide to work on the script together since Artie is in Arizona doing a movie, leaving Betty able to let loose her creativity at night.
Weeks later, after Joe’s been disappearing every night, Norma finds some texts and the blog where the writing team has been uploading their progress. Ha-ha, not in 1949.
Still, Norma does what any hot-blooded woman would do today after finding on social media her man has been spending time with some floosie: she calls her to put some poison in their merry-merry. Damn. That DM would have been fire in 2022.
It all goes to hell from there. Joe ends up floating in the pool he always wanted since he was a boy. He didn’t drown, though. He got shot.
TIME, TECHNOLOGY, AND TALENT
If there is one thing we are universally afraid of it is time. And why not? The fact that we do have an expiration date could be equally terrifying or freeing, depending on your view of life in general and the afterlife in particular. That’s the beauty of movies— as a matter of fact, of all intellectual creation. We leave something for those that come after us. There’s a legacy for understanding who we were and where we came from. Those sketches into the psyche we create today are windows into our past tomorrow.
Sunset Boulevard has a line that resonated with me to depths I was not aware I needed to explore.
No. It isn’t “I am ready for my close-up.” It’s this, “There’s nothing wrong with being 50 unless you’re trying to be 25.” Accept what you have and work it. There’s no point in trying to reach/recreate the past if it’s not going to improve your present.
I am from a time when to be able to secure a sexual encounter you needed to have at least a minimum of charm, not just the ability to type an eggplant emoji and a number of inches. We actually had to introduce ourselves and interact with someone before doing the nasty— something inconceivable in this catfishing day and age.
Norma didn’t have to speak in her movies to make the viewers fall in love with her, basically what’s happening today.
You apparently just need to look a certain way and success it’s a given. But then, to Norma’s dismay actors needed voices; in today’s terms, it’s not enough to have a nice page with pretty pictures, now you need to make stupid little videos…
Technology is all about cycles and algorithms. Sadly, humans create technology but do not evolve with it. Like Norma Desmond, we tend to get stuck in our comfort zone until it becomes a fantasy realm so out of sync with reality, we become monsters— not scary monsters but scared monsters. Problem is, even scared monsters can be dangerous and hurt others. We lash because we are afraid because we feel misunderstood. Sometimes we feel voiceless in a world where everybody is yelling at once to impose their opinion, disregarding those who disagree with them.
Can we learn something from a masterpiece like Sunset Boulevard? I frigging hope so.
I’m giving it 9 out of 10 because Joe’s hissy fit and the time frame shenanigans really bothered me.
Cheers.
Sunset Boulevard is currently available for streaming at The Internet Archive.