Richard Brooks "Bite the Bullet" (1975) was Brooks' return to the western. He based his original screenplay on the endurance horse races popular at the turn of the century. In 1977, he released another controversial film, an adaptation of Judith Rossner's 1975 novel "Looking for Mr. Goodbar." It starred Diane Keaton as a Catholic school teacher who searches for sexual satisfaction in singles bars. Brooks made the film on a tight budget, and its frank treatment of sex and its horrific storyline brought praise and condemnation and sold tickets. He ended his career with "Wrong Is Right" (1982), a satire about the
Looking for Mr. Goodbar sparked her interest, that of schoolteacher Roseann Quinn who had been brutally slain in January 1973 by a man she had purportedly picked up in a singles bar. In the end, "Esquire", fearing legal ramifications, declined to publish the article, so Rossner decided to write a novel instead. "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" was published by Simon & Schuster on June 2, 1975, to positive reviews. Carol Eisen Rinzler, in "The New York Times", said the book was "a complex and chilling portrait of a woman's descent into hell... full of insight and intelligence and illumination." "Time" magazine wrote, "it is