Starlite Terrace

Dark stories of failed dreams and contemporary desperation in Los Angeles.

In a rundown Los Angeles apartment buildingthe titular Starlite TerracePatrick Roth unfurls the tragic linked stories of Rex, Moss, Gary, and June, four neighbors, in a sort of burlesque of the Hollywood modern. In each of their singular collisions with fame, Roths dark prose presages a universal and mythical fate of desperation.   In The Man at Noahs Window, Rex shares the story of his father, a supposed hand double for Gary Cooper in High Noon. In Eclipse of the Sun, Moss, who lives in fear of the next holocaust, awaits a visit from the long-lost daughter he has tracked down. In Rider on the Storm, Gary, a rock drummer and born-again Christian, who almost played on the Turtles 60s-hit Happy Together, strives to find an escape from his personal guilt. And in The Woman in the Sea of Stars, June, a former Hollywood studio secretary whose husband once cheated on her with Marilyn Monroe, makes the best of a disconnected life until she emerges reborn through ashes strewn in the illuminated swimming pool of the Starlite Terrace.   In each of these four tales of wannabes and almost-weres, Roth's L.A. portraits unfold in rare style, and, in Krishna Winstons masterful translation, the hopeless, loveless perversion of an Ed Ruscha-inspired California becomes a compelling pageant of all-American grotesques that is not to be missed.

 

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