Independent Films, Film Profiles

Star 80
by Bob Fosse

Star 80 is a 1983 film about the true story of Playboy Playmate of the Year Dorothy Stratten, who was murdered by her estranged husband Paul Snider in 1980. The film was shot on location in Vancouver, British Columbia and Los Angeles, California; the death scene was filmed in the apartment in which the murder actually took place. The story is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Village Voice article "Death of a Playmate" by Teresa Carpenter; the film's title was taken from the vanity license plates of Paul Snider.The fictionalized director Aram Nicholas is based on Stratten's real-life lover, Peter Bogdanovich. Hugh Hefner sued the producers of the film because he did not like the way he was portrayed, perhaps in part because the article the film was based on suggested that Stratten was as much a victim of Hefner and Bogdanovich as she was of Snider. Hefner also later sued Bogdanovich for the negative portrayals in Bogdanovich's book about Stratten, The Killing of the Unicorn. In a later interview in 1998, Hefner stated that he still disliked the film on account that it was a poor portrayal of Dorothy Stratten, although he did commend Eric Roberts for "an excellent portrayal of the sick husband who murdered her".Star 80 is not the first movie to be based on the murder of Dorothy Stratten. In 1981, there was television film Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story in which Jamie Lee Curtis portrayed Stratten and Bruce Weitz portrayed Paul Snider.