A rarely screened, scathing critique of the American Dream Machine that deserves a rediscovery. Burned-out B-movie actress Maria (Tuesday Weld), depressed and frustrated with her loveless marriage to an ambitious film director, Carter Lang, who would rather work on his career than on his relationship with her, numbs herself with drugs and sex with strangers. Only her friendship with a sensitive gay movie producer, B.Z. (Anthony Perkins), offers a semblance of solace. But even that relationship proves to be fleeting amidst the empty decadence of Hollywood. “If you were to imagine a celluloid ancestor to Mulholland Drive’s Diane Selwyn, she’d probably look a lot like Maria Wyeth, the heroine of Frank Perry’s acerbic Play It As It Lays, based on Joan Didion’s merciless second novel… Didion’s book is extremely fragmented, [with] the point of view shifting abruptly between the third and first person. Perry’s film expertly translates this disjointed sense of time” –Melissa Anderson, Film Comment.