 What does the author think would have improved The Slums of Beverly Hills?
Can a documentary use scripted scenes and yet remain ontologically authentic? How much can you stylize material before you alter the reality that you're striving, at least in theory, to capture? The movie tracks four aging New Yorkers--two men, two women--through their lonely dating rituals, in the process depicting a universe of lusty, coupled-up haves and downcast, excluded have-nots, all viewed Rear Window -style through rectangular openings in the massive apartment houses in which they reside. The director selected his four subjects from many hundreds of potential candidates, followed them around for months, and then scripted their monologues and dialogues to reflect what he says he saw. Calling his own film "an exercise in mendacity," Barker goes on, "I'm quite happy to tell lies about my characters and even collude with their self-delusions if it enables me to communicate larger dramatic truths." It's always nice to see distributors proved wrong about the merits of "difficult" films, but in this case I think they did the decent thing. Michael turns out to be the film's most sympathetic subject--by a wide margin. At least he's not Mikey, a paunchy 54-year-old who writes but can't sell screenplays and who always flees blind dates, because the women he gets fixed up with are "mutts." He also reminisces about that 24 hour period in the '70s when he managed to sleep with three different beautiful women, whose pictures he shows off.
 a more experienced director
 a more realistic plot  more episodes to explain the situation  a more experienced director  more attractive actors