Sometimes, you're dissatisfied because repo men are trying to take your car. Sometimes, you're dissatisfied because people have forgotten that you're a celebrity and left you alone in your giant, decaying mansion with only your ex-husband as a servant. Sometimes you're dissatisfied because the movie business is just tough. Sometimes, you're dissatisfied because a crazy celebrity is using you as a gigolo—and sometimes you're dissatisfied because that same celebrity murdered you and left your dead body floating in her pool. Each of these normal, everyday situations is covered by Sunset Boulevard—after all, it's part of Hollywood, where dreams all get mushed up in the gutter and rot in the open air… the graveyard of dreams.
Questions about Dissatisfaction
- Leo Tolstoy wrote, "All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Are the characters in Sunset Boulevard dissatisfied in similar or in different ways?
- Is Joe dissatisfied because he actually wants fame and recognition and all those things that Norma once had? Or is he dissatisfied just because he needs money to keep up his car payments and improve his quality of life? Or is he dissatisfied because he isn't fulfilling his own creative urges? Or is it a mixture of all of these?
- Could Norma ever overcome her dissatisfaction—if she got to make another movie and everyone loved it, would she actually feel better?
Chew on This
Norma's dissatisfied because she can't let go of the past. If she could just embrace her age, we bet she'd have a nice career resurgence playing doddering old grandmothers.
Joe's dissatisfied because he's secretly a big fat material girl—or boy, that is. He wants nice things—things he can't get back in Dayton—so he clings to Hollywood in any way that he can.