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
Mr. Wrong unfunny" from the point when after Martha dumps Whitman after seeing his true persona and he then begins stalking her and literally destroys her personal and professional life while continuing to fool everyone around her with his good-guy charade. Rita Kempley, writing for "The Washington Post", assessed the film a "sour, listless debunking of romantic comedies, ... [with] fewer laughs than "Looking for Mr. Goodbar"" and laments that "Ellen DeGeneres, a comedian and sitcom star in her film debut, [who] is ostensibly the protagonist here" does not control the action, but her character "merely reacts to [Whitman's] twists and turn-ons".