Eric Roberts still isn’t sure how to get through it Star 80.
Appears in the last episode of It happened in Hollywoodthe actor recalled his experience making the film in 1983 with director Bob Fosse — a process that was as methodical as it was at times deeply unsettling. One moment in particular stayed with him.
During production, Fosse insisted that Roberts spend the night in the actual apartment where Dorothy Stratten, the real-life Playboy Playmate of the Year from 1980, was murdered by her husband and manager, Paul Snyder, the role Roberts was playing.
“I didn’t want to go,” Roberts says on the podcast. I told him: I don’t want that. He said: No, you will spend the night there. Let’s go.”
The apartment, located off a busy highway, was noisy and impossible to ignore. Roberts says he didn’t sleep. The next day, he filmed one of the film’s most difficult scenes.
“That was Bob,” he says. “He wanted you to feel what it was like.”
Roberts Road to Star 80 It was far from clear. The year before production, he was involved in a serious car accident that left him in a coma and caused permanent problems with memory and coordination. At the time, he thought his acting career might be over. Then his manager passed him a script for Fosse’s next project, which had not yet been widely distributed.
“It didn’t appeal to me right away,” Roberts admits. “It felt very black and white. But it said ‘Bob Fosse’ on it, and that was enough.”
He went to the audition again and again. Roberts estimates he read for Fosse five or six times before he got a live offer. “He never raised his hand,” Roberts says. “Then one day he asked me if I wanted to make a movie.”
Once cast, Roberts entered into what he described as an unusually immersive preparation process.
For about three months, Fosse accompanied him through key locations associated with the infamous true story, including the Vancouver Dairy Queen where Snyder first met Stratten, her childhood home, and the Playboy Mansion. Rehearsals were held at a church on Highland Avenue in Los Angeles, with Fosse recording the full set’s charts on the floor.
“He knew exactly what he was going to shoot,” Roberts says. “Every movement, every piece of furniture, everything.” Roberts adds that Fosse’s focus was to avoid a one-dimensional portrayal of Snyder.
“He didn’t want a cartoon,” Roberts says. “He wanted someone real. The truth is, people like that are all around us.”
Later in the podcast, Roberts also shared a story from pre-production that he says he rarely tells.
While staying at a hotel with Foss in West Los Angeles, he received a phone call that Foss encouraged him to take. On the other side was the late director Peter Bogdanovich, also a previous guest It happened in Hollywoodwho had his own relationship with Stratten.
Bogdanovic had chosen her in the 1980s They all laughedher leap into mainstream filmmaking, leading to an affair between the director and his muse.
The obsessed Snyder hired a private investigator to follow Stratten. When he discovered that she planned to divorce Snyder and marry Bogdanovich, Snyder killed Stratten and committed suicide. Bogdanovic was photographed in Star 80renamed Aram Nicholas and played by Roger Rees.
To add strange and dramatic surrealism to the real-life tragedy, on December 30, 1988, 49-year-old Bogdanovich married 20-year-old Louise Stratten, Dorothy’s younger sister, sparking a tabloid frenzy.
“He asked me how much I was getting paid and how I got this role,” Roberts recalls. “Then he suggested that I leave the film and that he might consider my version.”
Bogdanovich was developing his own version of the murder, which became a memoir The killing of a rhinocerosdetails the relationship between their love affair, making They all laughed And he killed her.
Roberts describes Budanovich’s tone as “condescending.” Meanwhile, Voss, who was sitting nearby, urged him to continue the conversation.
“I kept talking,” Roberts says. “I told him I would call him back. “
He never did that.
When the call ended, Roberts said Voss was “rolling on the floor laughing.”
when Star 80 It was released in November 1983, and Roberts says the response from within the industry was noticeably weak.
“They didn’t know how to react,” he says. “They were afraid to like it because it might say something negative about Hollywood. They were afraid to hate it because it was a great movie.”
The film received strong reviews but awards were limited. Roberts received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama, but was not nominated for an Academy Award — something he admits he did not fully register until years later.
“I didn’t think about it at the time,” he says. “Then someone mentioned it, and I thought: ‘Oh. “Maybe I should have done that.”
Fosse died in 1987, four years after the film’s release, without ever directing another film. Looking back, Roberts Places Star 80 side by side All that jazz As a business definition.
“These are perfect films,” he says. “Working with him, you realize that true geniuses are rare. That they don’t work the way everyone else does.”
You can listen to the full conversation on It happened in Hollywood.
