The movie Karen Black called a “horrible” experience: “I wish quite heartily I’d never made it”
While the name Karen Black might not be the most recognisable in contemporary popular culture, any cinephile with an interest in the age of New Hollywood will be familiar with the actor to whom it belongs. After coming through in a series of movies in the 1970s, Black established herself as a key figure in American cinema, earning an Academy Award nomination in the process.
Known for playing offbeat and eccentric characters, Black took her position in the spotlight and made her major film debut in Francis Ford Coppola’s You’re a Big Boy Now. She followed up with further efforts in the likes of Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Great Gatsby and Nashville, working with some of the biggest actors and directors in the film industry.
Like any actor, though, Black suffered her fair share of difficult film productions, most notably in John Schlesinger’s 1975 satirical historical drama The Day of the Locust. Also starring Donald Sutherland, William Atherton and Burgess Meredith, the film tells of a group of desperate Hollywood figures just before World War II who fail to realise their dreams and ambitions.
Based on Nathanael West’s book of the same name, The Day of the Locust serves as a critique of the film industry by comparing it to a nightmarish experience. However, the real nightmare seemed to take place in the actual production of Schlesinger’s film, which, according to Black, was “very troubled”.
“I became the scapegoat that everyone blamed,” Black had once told HuffPost. “People kept getting sick, getting fired, and it was just a horror, an absolute horror.” The production took seven months to complete, and as problem after problem piled up on top of one another, rumours began to circulate about Black’s disruption of the film.
“Gossip-mongers are often very convincing, and there were all these people making things up behind my back, and it really hurt me,” Black said. “It hurt me a lot.” According to the actor, her co-star William Atherton had walked off the set before completing the film’s final scene “because he couldn’t take it anymore and, oh my God…awful.”
Black had played the aspiring actor Faye Greener in Schlesinger’s film, a tragic character who has several men vie for her affection, including a hopeful artist and a repressed accountant. Many believe that Faye is a figure in The Day of the Locust capable of breaking one’s heart, but Black herself isn’t so sure, noting, “If you have one, and I’m not sure that Nathaniel West (author of the book) did.”
Going on to express her disdain for the film, Black said, “That was not a fun experience, making that film. It was just horrible.” In fact, Black wishes that she had never made the film to begin with because she felt that she might have enjoyed a different career path had she not. “I wish quite heartily I’d never made it because I’d have had a much longer career in Hollywood,” she explained. “I’d have been making major movies for many years had I not done that film.”
Indeed, following The Day of the Locust, Black’s career changed forever, and the 1980s largely saw her perform in a number of independent and horror movies, including Tobe Hooper’s Invaders from Mars, a far cry from the major studio movies she had made so many decades before.
