I realize that a 35-year-old film
is not exactly breaking news, but this one is
special. It's not only one of the worst films ever
made, but I had never seen it before in Blu-Ray
quality. You are thinking, "So what?". Two words:
Pia Zadora!
The early 80's were the era of Zadoramania! For a
couple of years there, she was Johnny Carson's
favorite punchline.
Pia was chosen as the "worst actress of the
eighties" by the Razzie voters, and that was an
amazing accomplishment because she did not achieve
that dishonor through a spate of consistently awful
performances throughout the decade, nor did she
achieve it with an eleventh hour 1989 stinker that
was still fresh in the voters' memories. She did it
all with two performances from early in the decade:
her jailbait/incest performance in Butterfly, and
her incredible "I fucked my way to the top" speech
in The Lonely Lady. She basically disappeared from
view after The Lonely lady, but that speech, this
performance, and this movie were all so bad that
even her seven years in hiding were not sufficient
time for the Razzie voters to forget her by the end
of the decade.
The Lonely Lady was nominated for eleven Razzies in
1983. That represented 110% of the highest possible
number, because they only had ten categories. It won
six Razzies, a record at the time, including all the
important ones: worst film, worst director, and
worst screenplay. Two decades later it was still
regarded highly (lowly) enough to be entered into
the elite group nominated as the Razzie's "worst
drama of our first 25 years." Battlefield Earth was
the winner, and the other nominees were Mommie
Dearest, Showgirls, and Swept Away. Impressive
company, indeed.
The Lonely Lady begins outside a Hollywood awards
show, as broadcast by "TV." This is not NBC-TV or
CBS-TV or any other brand, but just generic TV.
There's even a logo for the powerful "TV" network!
As for the actual award show, it's also unbranded.
You can tell it's not the Oscars because: (1) they
didn't call it that; (2) it takes place in a high
school auditorium covered by paper signs.
More like the Grammys.
Nah. Nicer than the Grammys
In that opening scene, we see that Pia Zadora has
been nominated for the award for the best original
screenplay. The atmosphere around the ceremony
reminds her of her first award ceremony, so many
years ago, back in high school, when she received an
elaborate statuette as the "outstanding English
student," and made her first acceptance speech.
Do you sense a flashback beginning?
Years earlier, in pigtails and a gingham dress, the
subtle hints that she was an innocent rube, Pia
delivered that first, too-sincere acceptance speech,
rambling on and on about presenting important ideas
in an honest way. A teacher, who was obviously as
bored as I was, interrupted her speech and
humiliated her. This was the first in a string of
humiliations which would fill her life, and
eventually spur her on to the Unspecified Award for
her Hollywood screenplay.
The next major humiliation came on the same night,
after the big senior bash, when she was raped with a
garden hose. ("I'm gonna give you something
special!") Although Pia obviously went to Holy
Innocents High School of the Arts and Virginity in a
poor California community, her rich and psychotic
assailant was from Beverly Hills, where he
presumably attended Norman Bates High. The
psychopath was played by a young Ray Liotta. Maybe
choosing to end up the big evening in private with
Ray Liotta was not the best life choice. You'd think
she might have suspected this after she showed
Liotta her "outstanding English student" award, and
he offered the witty riposte that "it looks like a
penis!" Luckily for Zadora, Ray was interrupted in
the early stage of the hose-raping by Mr. Famous
Screenwriter, who nursed Zadora back to health and
married her the next morning.
Or maybe not.
Anyway, he married her soon thereafter, but this
marriage had a few problems. To begin with, she was
in high school and he was middle-aged and impotent.
(Hey, it's a Harold Robbins story.) I guess they
might have worked through that, except that the sex
was the best thing about their relationship. She
re-wrote his latest script without asking his
permission, which caused him to go ballistic until
he realized she was right, so he used her re-write
and took credit for it. The last straw came when he
threatened to rape her with a garden hose, as kind
of a nostalgic trip back to the night they met. ("Or
is this is more your kick?")
Zadora figured that since she could improve the
scripts of Famous Impotent Screenwriter, she could
probably make it on her own, so she wrote a
screenplay and set off confidently to make it in
Hollywood, still wearing her best calico dress. Of
course, each person who read her script agreed to
give it very serious consideration - as soon as
Zadora finished sucking his dick or eating her
pussy. After the oral sex, there was always the ol'
brush-off, except for occasional post-fellatio
cuddles with garden hoses, and then later with ever
larger hoses. Once it got around that she was really
into hoses, then the guys with the big nozzles
started to show. You'd think Perhaps Zadora should
have figured out this scam after falling for it a
couple of times, particularly when her prospective
mentors would show up for a script meeting in a fire
truck, but she fell for the same scam again and
again. Of course if she had wised up sooner, the
film's running time would then have been less than
feature length. In fact, if she had figured out the
drill in a logical amount of time, the running time
would have been less than the length of a Nike
commercial.
She did love one man after Mr. Famous Impotent
Screenwriter, but he was Mr. Gay Director, so she
seemed to be batting zero in the ol' romance
department. Finally, Zadora went insane, and in her
feverish, insane dreams she saw all her exploiters
spinning around her keyboard.
She cleverly deduced from the "people in her life
spinning around on a keyboard" metaphor that her
subconscious mind was telling her to write the story
of her own life, so she wrote the very story which
we are now watching, and that leads her (and us)
right back to the Unspecified Awards Show seen in
the opening scene. Yeah, as if the very script we
are now watching could be nominated for a
screenwriting award.
Let's cut to the chase. Despite the fact that the
film she has written is this very film, one of the
worst screenplays of all time, she wins the
Unspecified Award for Best Screenplay. This allows
us to see and hear some things which we aren't
likely to experience in reality.
The first is Pia Zadora holding an
award.
The second is her memorable acceptance speech, in
which she declaims, "I don't suppose I'm the only
one who's had to fuck her way to the top," then
sets down her award and walks out of the
auditorium alone, into the anonymity of the night,
while the crowd jeers, the credits roll, and the
singer sings the haunting "Lonely Lady Ballad."
--------
Pia couldn't act, but she was a pretty good singer,
and had a decent musical career in the 90s and
beyond. She is now 65 years old and living her life
outside of showbiz. It has occasionally been a
turbulent life.
Wikipedia
tells the story.
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