Welcome to LA **** (1976, Keith Carradine, Sally Kellerman, Geraldine Chaplin, Harvey Keitel, Lauren Hutton, Sissy Spacek) – Classic Movie Review 11,553

Writer-director Alan Rudolph’s confident, revealing and entertaining 1976 ensemble film Welcome to LA is much like those of his mentor, producer Robert Altman, a plotless look at a group of mostly middle-class people, who include womanising songwriter Carroll Barber (Keith Carradine), his businessman father Carl Barber (Denver Pyle) and the kooky young housekeeper Linda Murray (Sissy Spacek), drifting through a La Ronde-style scenario of sexual adventures.

The sub-title is The City of the One-Night Stands (Richard Baskin’s music suite on which the film is based) – and the denizens of 1970s Hollywood have plenty of sex on their minds, seemingly their only way to make contact.

Baskin plays celebrity musician Eric Wood, who plans to record an album of songs written by Carroll Barber (Carradine), whose manager Susan Moore (Viveca Lindfors) rents him an LA house from real estate agent Ann Goode (Sally Kellerman), who is unhappily married to furniture store owner Jack Goode (John Considine), who is pursuing their housemaid Linda Murray (Spacek), who wants a relationship with her married executive friend Ken Hood (Harvey Keitel), who neglects his wife, Karen (Geraldine Chaplin). Carroll rejects Susan to have sex with Ann when she shows him his house, and he ends up having affairs with receptionist Jeannette (Diahnne Abbott) and his father’s photographer mistress Nona (Lauren Hutton).

It is an impressive, well-constructed scenario, and if it doesn’t always hang together, it is continually involving and questioning. However, despite being the film’s inspiration, it is still a dreary score from ice-cream heir Baskin.

But the acting speaks quality, as expected from Keith Carradine, Sally Kellerman, Geraldine Chaplin, Harvey Keitel, Lauren Hutton, Sissy Spacek, Viveca Lindfors, Denver Pyle, John Considine, Richard Baskin, Allan Nicholls, Cedric Scott, Mike Kaplan, James Remar as David, Tom Arnold as Barry and Diahnne Abbott as Jeannette Ross.

It is Alan Rudolph’s third directorial effort – following Premonition (1972) and Nightmare Circus (1974). It is followed by the 1978 noir melodrama Remember My Name., also with Geraldine Chaplin.

Later Rudolph films are Roadie (1980), Endangered Species (1982), Return Engagement (1983), Songwriter (1984), Choose Me (1984), Trouble in Mind (1985), Made in Heaven (1987), The Moderns (1988), Love at Large (1990), Mortal Thoughts (1991), Equinox (1992), Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994), Afterglow (1997), Breakfast of Champions (1999), Trixie (2000), Investigating Sex (2001), The Secret Lives of Dentists (2002) and Ray Meets Helen (2017).

Diahnne Abbott was married to Robert De Niro from 1976 to 1988.

Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall in Nashville (1975).

Carradine acted in several of Rudolph’s films, playing a madman in Choose Me (1984), a petty criminal in Trouble in Mind (1985), and an American artist in 1930s Paris in The Moderns (1988).

Carradine made his mark in Altman’s films McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971), Thieves Like Us (1974) and Nashville (1975).

Carradine starred with Keitel in Ridley Scott’s The Duellists (1977).

Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,553

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