BLOG POST #3

Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, William Faulkner’s “The Golden Land”, and Budd Schulberg’s “A Table at Ciro’s” all have a similar attitude when they describe Hollywood in that it is just a city full of illusions. Within these three stories, the director or writer chooses to look at the city through a negative lens. In a town where fame and riches defines who you are to everyone else, people who live there are constantly looking for their chance at the top. This competition creates a dangerous environment of backstabbing, double crossing, and immorality. This Hollywood culture obviously resonated with Billy Wilder, the Director of Sunset Boulevard. Norma Desmond is an old time silent film star who is introduced in the movie far past her glory days. In the movie she is still obsessed with being in the Hollywood spotlight, and her only concern is finding a way back to the top. But LA is a ruthless place, and even the biggest of stars aren’t safe. Norma is an example of that. The city betrayed her because she was thrown into the spotlight as a little girl, and she grew up in a place where your beauty and fame determined worth, rather than your morals or character. In this way I do have a place of sympathy for Norma. Although she is pompous, and unapologetic for her rude behavior, that is the only way that she was taught to act. She has been in the business for so long that it has corrupted her mind and there is no turning back. By the end of the film, life for Norma has clearly become some sort of lucid dream, she forever thinks that the cameras are rolling and she is ready for her close up. In William Faulkner’s “Golden Land” Ira is taken by the city in the same way that Norma was. He has found success in LA but while doing so he has lost all sense of his morality. He hates it here but the city is keeping him tapped, forever blinded by the wealth that he has achieved. And in “A Table at Ciro’s” The staff are stuck working the same jobs because Hollywood’s competitiveness has doomed them. “But he had been in Hollywood too long. Which means that no matter how good a head waiter he was, he was no longer satisfied to be one.” (Schulberg 274).