“Play It As It Lays” (1972) is a bleak Hollywood drama about the psychological unraveling of movie actress Maria Wyeth, her failed marriage, and her search for meaning in a world of emptiness. It was director Frank Perry’s first film following his divorce from his screenwriting partner, Eleanor Perry, and she is sorely missed.
His choice of material was Joan Didion’s novel of the same name, for which he wrote the adaptation (usually Eleanor’s job) with Didion’s husband, John Gregory Dunne, in addition to coproducing it with her brother-in-law, Dominick Dunne.
Tuesday Weld plays Maria, who strolls on the grounds of a mental hospital, recalling the traumatic events that led to her breakdown. She is married to an unfaithful, self-engrossed director (Adam Roarke) who neglects her. Following a series of one-night stands, she becomes pregnant. Her husband divorces her, and she has an illegal abortion. Maria’s only friend is B.Z., a gay movie producer played by Anthony Perkins. World-weary, he tells Maria that he has discovered the meaning of life is nothing. He invites her to commit suicide with him. However, she decides to live and cradles him as he dies after overdosing on sleeping tablets.
Heavy stuff!
Unfortunately, despite a good performance by Weld, the film only comes alive when she drives endlessly around LA’s spectacular freeways, which, in the 1970s, were considered one of the city’s great engineering and architectural achievements. Perkins is passable in the underwritten role of another doomed homosexual.
STREAMING: YouTube.
Seventy Queer Films Made Under the Hays Code (1934-1967)
https://thebrownees.net/seventy-queer-films-of-the-new-hollywood-1967-1981
