Movies

January, 1978

Bringing a big best seller to the screen is a ticklish job, a problem of how to get between the lines without blowing the book to bits--or becoming so sheepishly reverent that the movie is embalmed at birth. Writer-director Richard Brooks exercises a strong, sure hand with Judith Rossner's Looking for Mr. Goodbar, reshaping it into a contemporary and warmly compassionate story of loneliness, one-night stands and a doomed young woman's lust for a better life. On the printed page, Mr. Goodbar's la...