Dis­cov­er the dis­co-rich sound­track of a lost 70s crime drama

The omis­sion of the 1977 pro­duc­tion Look­ing for Mr. Good­bar from film his­to­ry is an odd anom­aly. An adap­ta­tion of the 1975 nov­el of the same name by Judith Ross­ner — itself based on a mur­der case from anoth­er two years pri­or — to con­tem­po­rary view­ers, the film is like­ly most rec­og­niz­able for the careers it set in motion rather than any dis­tinct ele­ments of its con­tent, break­ing young faces Richard Gere, LeVar Bur­ton, and Tom Berenger into pop­u­lar cul­ture. Despite hav­ing been nom­i­nat­ed for two Acad­e­my Awards and achiev­ing a mod­est­ly suc­cess­ful run at the box office, the film has not been released on any form of phys­i­cal media since its most recent VHS print­ing in 1997, hav­ing become vir­tu­al­ly lost to time.

The rea­sons for this neg­li­gence aren’t clear. While its com­mer­cial recep­tion may have been suc­cess­ful, ini­tial crit­ics weren’t fond of the film, often paint­ing it as moral­is­tic and didac­tic. Though ris­ing star Diane Keaton por­trayed the film’s pro­tag­o­nist to crit­i­cal praise, her role was over­shad­owed by her pres­ence in Annie Hall, released ear­li­er that year. The most com­mon spec­u­la­tion as to why Look­ing for Mr. Good­bar has yet to acquire restora­tion comes in what is per­haps the film’s great­est asset: its absolute­ly stacked soundtrack.

Com­posed of a pletho­ra of musi­cal heavy-hit­ters like Don­na Sum­mer, Diana Ross, Bill With­ers, the Com­modores, and the O’Jays, the sound­track of Look­ing for Mr. Good­bar includes numer­ous hits, and with that comes the trou­ble of licens­ing these tunes for a new release. Worse still is that, as many of the tracks fea­tured in the com­pi­la­tion are over­heard in bars as lit­tle more than back­ground music, it would like­ly be dif­fi­cult to replace the audio that fea­tures these tracks at such a low vol­ume in order to gain the rights to redistribution.

Yet the Look­ing for Mr. Good­bar sound­track is not only an excel­lent encap­su­la­tion of sul­try dis­co; it tells a more com­pelling nar­ra­tive than the film itself. The film fol­lows There­sa (Diane Keaton), a recent grad­u­ate turned school teacher for Deaf chil­dren who tra­vers­es bars at night. In doing this, her desires for sex­u­al cathar­sis begin to lure her towards men who treat her with every­thing rang­ing from dis­re­gard to out­right con­tempt. The film’s infa­mous end­ing depicts There­sa being fatal­ly raped, a har­row­ing end­ing to an already pes­simistic tale.

Make no mis­take, as a film Look­ing for Mr. Good­bar is thor­ough­ly mediocre. Whether read as a warn­ing against its protagonist’s actions or a fem­i­nist tale of a woman will­ing to risk any­thing for sex­u­al free­dom, the film is over­long, redun­dant, and flat in explor­ing its protagonist’s cen­tral dual­i­ty, plac­ing the view­er at a dis­tance that isn’t prop­er­ly uti­lized for thought­ful examination.

The film’s sound­track, how­ev­er, tells a slight­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry. The songs them­selves were clear­ly cho­sen to set an atmos­phere first and fore­most, with musi­cal com­mon­al­i­ties of sin­u­ous bass grooves and brood­ing vocal per­for­mances con­tribut­ing to a mood of stalk­ing ambi­gu­i­ty that per­me­ates the smoky set­tings in which these tracks are heard. They are, more impor­tant­ly, quite sexy — dis­co stal­warts like Don­na Sum­mer and Diana Ross both make invalu­able con­tri­bu­tions with ecsta­t­ic songs like ​“Could It Be Mag­ic” and ​“Love Hang­over,” respec­tive­ly, but even a cut like ​“Back Stab­bers” by the O’Jays rev­els in the seduc­tive allure of its danger.

The nar­ra­tive of the film is reflect­ed in these songs. Some choic­es are more obvi­ous than oth­ers: ​“She’s Lone­ly” by Bill With­ers is a some­what on-the-nose inclu­sion in depict­ing Theresa’s despair. Yet from the cen­tral lines of the film’s theme, ​“Don’t Ask to Stay Until Tomor­row,” as per­formed by Mar­lena Shaw, Theresa’s inte­ri­or­i­ty is probed with care­ful exam­i­na­tion, demon­strat­ing a woman whose rigid bound­aries devel­oped as a defense mech­a­nism pre­vent her from even enjoy­ing the sex­u­al con­nec­tion she desires: to quote the song, ​“Don’t stay long enough for me to miss you.”

From there, the film’s music fol­lows a fair­ly sim­i­lar arc to the nar­ra­tive: songs like Thel­ma Houston’s ​“Don’t Leave Me This Way” and the afore­men­tioned ​“Love Hang­over” pro­vide a decid­ed­ly libidi­nous char­ac­ter moti­va­tion. Beyond the sur­face-lev­el exam­i­na­tions of Theresa’s lone­li­ness, how­ev­er, a gen­uine hope for her long-term prospects with these men begins to fos­ter, as is reflect­ed by the place­ment of Don­na Summer’s (abbre­vi­at­ed) ​“Try Me, I Know We Can Make It” on the album’s B‑side. Yet even that song is undone by the grim irony that awaits it: ​“Back Stab­bers” snaps back into focus just how much of a pos­ses­sion There­sa is to the men she encoun­ters, a blow only made that much more trag­ic by the punc­tu­a­tion of the album with the now emp­ty hope of Don­na Summer’s heav­en­ly (per­haps lit­er­al­ly so) ​“Pre­lude to Love / Could It Be Magic.”

Even the album in ques­tion is dif­fi­cult to obtain these days; while keen-eyed fans have re-cre­at­ed the album on ser­vices like Spo­ti­fy, phys­i­cal copies of the sound­track are lim­it­ed to sec­ond­hand edi­tions. For all of the film’s faults, a hid­den aspect of Look­ing for Mr. Good­bar that has gone rel­a­tive­ly under-exam­ined is its fas­ci­nat­ing demon­stra­tion of the pow­er of a sound­track to illus­trate a film’s pur­pose, both in com­po­si­tion and lyri­cal con­tent. Not only does the album per­fect­ly set the tone of its nar­ra­tive, but it might very well ren­der its cen­tral char­ac­ter with more dimen­sion than the script that cre­at­ed her. Whether or not Look­ing for Mr. Good­bar will even be acces­si­ble in the near future is impos­si­ble to deter­mine, but the Inter­net has nonethe­less made the film an inter­est­ing case study in music’s pow­er in struc­tur­ing a sto­ry avail­able for pub­lic scrutiny.