The Day of the Locust

“By train, by car, by bus, they came to Hollywood... in search of a dream.”

Tod Hackett (William Atherton) is a young painter who takes a job as an art director in 1930s Hollywood, working in the lurid, tired world of the studios. He falls for his neighbor Faye Greener (Karen Black), an aspiring actress who would rather have the life that Homer Simpson (Donald Sutherland), a lone accountant, can offer her. John Schlesinger sets it all in grainy light, among people whose dreams are sliding away from them.