well midler give a smashing and touching and tear the house down dynamic and exhilarate oscar nominated performance a the rise and a fabulously wealthy and successful popular rock superstar sensation who be burn out and wear down by too much long hard time on the road and too much booze and drug ( rise like to swig southern comfort straight from the bottle while perform live on stage ) and too many camera in her face and too much time spend record song in the studio at the expense of have a meaningful and fulfilling personal life and all of which leave rise feel terribly lonely and unhappy and unloved . rise want to take a much need vacation and but her pushy and ruthless and overbear greedhead manager rudge campbell ( flawlessly play to intensely contemptible perfection by alan bates ) urge her to do a special hometown concert . rise find temporary solace in her relationship with good look nice guy drifter houston dyer ( a characteristically top drawer turn by the criminally undervalued frederic forrest and who deservedly snag a best supporting actor nomination for his superlative work here ) and but dyer inability to easily handle rise wild lifestyle of debauched excess only exacerbate the severity of rise depression and which go off the deep end into total despair with tragic consequence . loosely base on the real life flash in the pan live fast and live hard and live like today almost over and tomorrow ain not never gon na happen and if you live like this too much you will most certainly die young sexn wouldrugsnrocknroll exploit of janis joplin and the rise poignantly expose the horrible price of fame and fortune and show to often devastate effect the way fame destroy one ability to have a personal life and push people to a near breaking point and and grind people down to nothing after they lose the strength need to withstand the strain be a famous person grimly entail . mark rydell perceptive direction and the trenchant script by bill kirby and bo goldman neither glorifies nor vilifies the rocknroll lifestyle and opt instead to merely show it potentially dangerous pratfall with a properly glum and depress tone and an arresting and unflinching frankness . vilmos zsigmund glittering and burnish and fade cinematography give the film an appropriately blind brightly saturate color flashy look and shoot the lively and uninhibited concert sequence through a dense smoky haze of pierce reddish hue ( such fellow note cameraman a laszlo kovacs and owen roizman and haskell wexler also lend a hand to the dazzling concert sequence ) . toni basil and who have a fluke top 10 hit tune with the waggish novelty song hey mickey and do the raunchynraucous dance choreography . midler belt out all her song in a hoarse and bluesy and whiskey ravage alto with incredible incendiary gusto while the highlight include the hauntingly beautiful and melancholy title ballad and a torchy and slow burn rendition of when a man love a woman and and a hilariously campy shredding of bob seger fire down below do in a drag queen bar with a bunch of outrageous transvestite celebrity lady impersonator ( 70 mock disco diva sylvestor play the diana ross lookalike ) . midler show dominate tour de force portrayal get sterling support from an exceptional cast pepper with stand out character actor represent david keith a a bashful soldier and jack starrett a a country music road manager and john dennis johnson a a rowdy hick jerk in a hillbilly bar and jonathan bank a an oily tv promoter and don calfa a a smarmy music biz leech and victor argo a a bath house locker room attendant and will hare a an amiable grocer and and and in a particularly chilling and startle cameo and the great harry dean stanton a a cold hearted ahole country singer or songwriter who flatly tell rise right to her face that he think her sing stink . a sad and insightful and eye opening film and the rise make for a truly heart breaking and but undeniably powerful portrait of an all too human and fragile person who get lead down the road to ruin by the very business that ironically make her .