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A young woman with long hair and a short white halter dress walks through the casino at the Riviera in Las Vegas at one in the morning. It was precisely this moment that made Play It As It Lays begin to tell itself to me.

Joan Didion

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Joan Didion
Age: 89
Born: 1934
Born: December 5
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Sacramento
California
Young
Hair
Vegas
Play
Walks
Gambling
Made
Morning
Precisely
Long
Moment
Dress
Woman
Lays
Riviera
White
Dresses
Halter
Tell
Begin
Casino
Moments
Short
Casinos

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Making judgments on films is in many ways so peculiarly vaporous an occupation that the only question is why, beyond the obvious opportunities for a few lectures fees and a little careerism at a dispiritingly self-limiting level, anyone does it in the first place.
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California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension.
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