Chris Rock praises Bob Fosse’s final film Star 80 for top viewing as part of the October 2023 Turner Classic Movies lineup in his own TCM Picks video that dropped on Friday.

“First of all, everything Bob Fosse ever touched was amazing – Lenny, Cabaret,” Rock says in a video that follows the lead of Spielberg, Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson, who unveiled their own TCM Picks film recommendations to help save TCM.

This month, it’s Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro and Rock going to bat for TCM with their own film fave recommendations, and the Hollywood comic legend taps Fosse’s 1983 film inspired by the notorious murder of Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratten.

“There’s something about Star 80 that is so L.A.,” Rock continues, especially as it tackles the themes of Hollywood fame and greed.

Star 80
Theatrical release poster

Star 80 starred Mariel Hemingway and Eric Roberts in a drama about a successful young model who had to contend with her obsessive manager-turned-husband after she became a popular Playboy centerfold, and he was consumed with jealousy. That obsession resulted in a murder-suicide.

In real life, Stratten was shot and killed at the age of 20 by her husband, Paul Snider, when he turned the gun on himself.

“I always say two of the most desperate things in the world are people that want cocaine and have no money, and people that want fame and have no talent,” Rock says in the TCM Picks video.

Star 80, which was released in late 1983 was a commercial flop.

Fosse died of heart attack in September 1987 at age 60.

Credits:

Directed by Bob Fosse
Screenplay by Bob Fosse, based on “Death of a Playmate” by Teresa Carpenter
Produced by Wolfgang Glattes
Cinematography Sven Nykvist
Edited by Alan Heim
Music by Ralph Burns

Production company: The Ladd Company

Distributed by Warner Bros.

Release dates November 10, 1983 (limited); February 3, 1984

Running time: 103 minutes
Budget $12 million
Box office $6.4 million