The Day of the Locust

It's 1930s Hollywood, a town where many come to fulfill their dreams which largely do not only not get realized, but end up being the cause of tragedy. Two such dreamers are Yale educated Tod Hackett, who has just gotten a job in the art department at Paramount and who, like all his colleagues, wants to become an art director, and aspiring actress Faye Greener, who lives with her ex-vaudevillian father Harry Greener, who now uses his vaudeville clown shtick to sell tonic door-to-door. Faye's goal is to become both rich and famous, and as she has only been able to get work on screen so far as an extra, she figures she has to marry someone rich, although she is not averse to having fun with others not husband material along the way. Tod and Faye meet both being residents of the run down San Bernardino Arms, a bungalow court residence, he immediately attracted to her and quickly following falls in love with her. While she strings Tod and many others along for what she can get out of them, Faye ultimately enters into a business arrangement with accountant Homer Simpson, an outwardly religious man who is a repressed ball of nerves when it comes to anything social, let alone sexual. In his dealings with Faye and Homer, and in his effort to climb the studio ladder using whatever tools he has at his disposal, Tod is exposed to the good, bad and ugly of Hollywood life, that tragedy within this group inevitable with the proper proverbial trigger.