The Day of the Locust

Biblical references aside, who's the Locust? Being mostly a relationship writer I assumed it was Faye and her locust like ability to cause a plauge upon the intelligence of men who were after her. This reflects the plague effect that Hollywood has on it's inhabitants, both those making movies and money, and those wishing to be in movie creation to earn money.

The outward appearance of both the book and the money promise a thing much more fun then what you actually get. "Day of the Locust" sounds like it's a great scifi movie with awful special effects and monsters towering over buildings. No such thing. Mercifully the book is the 'quicker' read, despite taking much longer to time-wise consume, because it doesn't take such a long look at Tod Hacket's real-life realisation of his artwork Hollywood burning down to hell.

The movie doesn't give long enough time nor development to the already undeveloped storyline of the book, nor are the characters anything but more real - I viewed Faye Greener with a level of "somewhat idiot, but I could get her if I knew her type" and as the horrible female plague upon the male characters, but watching the movie I rewrote it all in one succinct word: cunt.

Terrible Woman, Pathetic Men would've been a better name for this movie which is trying to be many things at once. It's a history piece focusing on Hollywood in 1930s, it's a character work of Homer Simpson and his hands and utter complete lack of self-realised known purpose, it's a relationship tragedy between Tod and Faye as well as being an expose on the way life was back then.

It doesn't deliver on any of these so much so that any one aspect takes the lead and pushes the whole business. You could argue that the 1930s Hollywood lifestyle does so but the attention and amount of energy put into Faye's horrish behavior and Tod's pathetic attempts after detract from it being purely a "location" piece.

The best scene is the very last, when, after the riot at the opening of Bucanneer, Faye returns to the old house in which Tod Hacker rented, and finds it empty. She enters, sees the shadowed baron room, smiles and leaves. The crack in the wall still holds a rose that Tod put there when he moved in.

A triumphant amount of effort was put into the making of this film, but to say it's good for it's ability to match bad acting for what is meant to be a movie about bad acting (and bad living in general) is too easy, shooting fish in a barrel. Anyone can make a movie or book and say "It's meant to be shit, so the actors/writing is to match." That's no excuse, look at what Kevin Spacey did with "middle age crisis white guy" in American Beauty.

At times the movie strikes a horror note, such as when Homer attacks Adore and then later in the same riot scene when Tod is seeing figures from his mural as the people involved in the riot. The best bit there is the visuals, they are haunting figures.

Probably the best thing about the movie is indeed the appearance of things, as it all looks very good. Despite the characters being cliched. A well dressed cliche is still a cliche. Had someone else had the acting of it, or the directing of it, or the loop-voiced recording of it, we might've seen a movie that damn well deserves to be loved and adored and showed to everyone, but as it stands it appears most people, in it's defense, point at it's relevance as a snapshot of Hollywood life in the 1930s, yes the Depression as well, and saying "Look, that's historically relevant."

It's problem, as a book, is it raises no ultimate point, urges no moral upon it's reader. "Here lies stuff, look upon it" is about as deep as it gets, exampling rather than provoking thought. "And then... and then... and then..." is a bad way to write any movie other than an action, and this isn't an action movie nor book.

The cock fight scene is probably going to make a few people cringe away, but once again brings up the topic of males fighting over this one female who drives them all ga-ga. Two cockerols fighting for the win, two (or more) males fighting for Faye.

Mostly it's a practice in self control before all is lost and you break that which you sought to keep anyway. Homer wanted to be liked, and is torn to shreds after boot-jumping little Adore's lungs out all over the pavement. Tod finally grows his own set of balls and get's himself a "win" against Faye, instead of her always having the way of things, but this leads to further setting off Homer in the following scenes. Faye finally gets the boot up her arse she needs, that is to have to put effort into looking after herself, but we never see anything beyond the movies end so she could very well have gone back to prostitution, or merely started over with another perfectly beautiful sap. And finally Faye's father dies after happily talking to Tod about his daughter and wife's promiscuity, or lack there of. Here he's finally spotted a boy who'll look after her, if she'll have him, which, considering her character, is all he could realistically hope for.

Maybe Locust is alike Sambuca, in that once people hear the name spoken they either demand you put it away, or put more into their cup. Eitherway a strong reaction. Unlike Sambuca however this always generates a bad response, or a defensive response who's main aim is "just look at the historic relevance, would you?"

It's place in the Top 100 doesn't seem confusing, considering I've only seen and read the book once and written all of the above, so I'm sure it's relevance far extends beind a mere defense of the book's inherit worth. It is very thought provoking and a fantastic study in human relations, especially concerning those of the dogs (plural) chasing the bitch (singular).

The original title for the book was The Cheated, which I think would've made a more realistic title. Not so many people would've been disappointed when they didn't get the scifi and guns and stuff.

-FM