Miscellaneous: Surfacing

Coming up for air to weigh in on a few things ...

Spiderweb/Shooting Star, by Robert Bloch (1954/1958). Hard Case Crime revives the double! Two Bloch novels in one, both set in a Hollywood where the tinsel is not so bright. Shooting Star, about a one-eyed literary agent turned gumshoe investigating a cowboy star’s suspicious death, is creaky but fun. Spiderweb is an unmitigated blast. A showbiz wannabe is groomed into a phony psychic so he can work his way to the top of the movie colony. And you know how I feel about phony psychics.

Redbelt. David Mamet has described his latest as both a fight movie and a modern Samurai tale. It’s really about the code of the warrior. Mamet strikes an idiosyncratic tone here, blending a knotty, intellectual plot with Rocky-style uplift. A good chunk of the audience I saw the movie with didn’t get it, which I understand. I, however, was on its wavelength from frame one. I heartily endorse its philosophy, it’s got some great Mamet dialogue (“Everything in life, the money’s in the rematch”) and my favorite scene of the year so far, where Chiwetel don’t-call-him-Chewie Ejiofor trains Emily Mortimer.

Iron Man. Haven’t seen it yet. Yeah, I can’t believe it, either. But I could only squeeze in one movie in the last week, and Redbelt had better start times. Soon, though. In the meantime, Jeff Bridges was kind enough to post his photographs from the shoot on his dandy website.

World Cocktail Week. It runs through Tuesday. Get out there and do your part. I had the boys at the Zig Zag Café fix me a “lost” classic cocktail featured on their website, a Firpo’s Balloon. Ask for it by name and give your bartender fits.

Labels: Books, Miscellaneous, Movies

Link: California Crime

My friend the czar of noir Eddie Muller has a terrific article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle on why the city by the bay looms so large in crime fiction. He interviewed 30 writers who live in the area, and the resulting piece explains the importance of community as well as touching on the struggles of the mid-list author. Go read it.

Labels: Books, Miscellaneous

Book: Matala, by Craig Holden (2007)

Craig Holden’s Four Corners of Night is a big, bruising heartbreaker of a novel. His latest, Matala, is short enough to be read in a single sitting and sharp enough to wound. It’s dark, sexy, twisted. Kinky in every sense, which I intend as a high compliment.

Darcy is a spoiled American girl fresh out of high school, sent on a European tour by her wealthy parents. Naturally, she gets bored at once. In Rome she falls in with Will, another American who’s grifting his way across the continent. Will, in turn, is in thrall to the older Justine, a veteran con artist who looks at Darcy and sees nothing but opportunity. The three of them agree to smuggle a package to Greece, and before the trip is over all manner of masks will slip.

Here’s the best way I can plug Matala. A meme currently making the rounds ask you to open the closest book. Turn to page 123. Find the fifth sentence. Post the next three sentences. (Yeah, I don’t get it, either.) No one has tagged me – what, you think you’re better than me? – but Matala was the closest book when I first came across it. I give you the result:

They had each other to keep them amused and happy and satiated. And she certainly felt all three of those things. Will had proved to a robust and durable lover, and Darcy did not feel disappointed in him except at the furthest edges of her desires.

Tell me you don’t want to read more.

Miscellaneous: Links

The AV Club’s exhaustive primer on my musical hero, Elvis Costello. King of America is a personal favorite.

Roger Ebert on Joe Vs. The Volcano. Via Bill Crider, a charter member of the JvTV fan club along with yours truly.

Labels: Books, Movies

Book: Sleeping Dogs, by Ed Gorman (2008)

With the last major primary out of the way and the Democratic party’s electoral future clear – sweet Jesus, this campaign is gonna go on forever – this seems like an ideal time to recommend Sleeping Dogs, the latest from friend-of-the-site Ed Gorman. Ed, an immensely talented writer who’s done some time in politics, knows the territory and covers it well.

Political operative Dev Conrad steps into an Illinois Senate race in the closing stages. The incumbent, a good-enough pol with only a minor history of bimbo eruptions, finds himself in a pitched battle with a downstate “nut job ... (who’d) gone to sanity school recently.” Dev has to deal with campaign sabotage and the suicide of the man he’s replacing, not to mention his own doubts about the candidate he’s working to reelect. The action, as always with Ed, goes down smooth, and is punctuated by his bittersweet observations about life and culture.

Don’t just take my word for it. Bill Crider, Lee Goldberg and James Reasoner like the book, too. I might steer you wrong, but those guys? Never.

Movies: More Blast of Silence

Found: a few panels from Sean Phillips’s graphic novel adaptation of the movie that has altered the way I communicate. Thanks to GreenCine Daily.

Labels: Books, Movies, Noir

Sort Of Related: Hollywood Station, by Joseph Wambaugh (2006)/Confessions of a Superhero (2007)

LAPD veteran Wambaugh is perhaps the master of cop fiction. He turns his attention back to his old department for the first time in 20 years – at fellow author James Ellroy’s urging – and it’s obvious the man hasn’t missed a beat.

Station has a plot of sorts, involving a pair of tweakers and some Eastern European thieves whose fates are destined to collide. But the bulk of the novel is devoted to the day-to-day of the police officers who work the still-mean streets of Hollywood. And quite the motley bunch they are: surfers and wannabe actors, single moms and wily veterans. Wambaugh makes no bones about his dislike for the federal consent decree that the LAPD has been operating under in the wake of the Ramparts scandal, but aside from a single chapter it never overwhelms the narrative. It’s rich, compassionate, funny and heartbreaking stuff. A TV series based on the book is in the works, but there’s no sense in waiting for that. I’ll be jumping on the just-published sequel Hollywood Crows ASAP.

Wambaugh’s cops aren’t superheroes. As it turns out, his superheroes aren’t superheroes either. Some of the novel’s action takes place around the intersection of Hollywood and Highland, where people in costume pose for photographs with tourists outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Wambaugh spells out exactly how low-rent this spectacle is. According to him, many of the “performers” are meth addicts, and the police ID three similarly clad figures as Fat Elvis, Thin Elvis, and Smelvis.

Matthew Ogens’s offbeat documentary Confessions of a Superhero profiles four people who don capes to stay afloat in Tinseltown. The movie’s Superman, who identifies with his alter ego to an alarming degree, is a recovering addict who’s also the son of Academy Award winner Sandy Dennis – unless he’s not. Wonder Woman’s tale is all too common: the belle of her high school, she heads west to learn that she’s too “voluptuous” to book TV commercials. And wait ‘til you see what happens to Batman. Sometimes “only in L.A.” is the appropriate response.

Labels: Books, Movies

Book: City of the Sun, by David Levien (2008)

Another day, another screenwriter’s novel. And as it happens, another good one.

With Brian Koppelman, David Levien has written several entertaining movies, among them Rounders and Ocean’s 13. His first foray into crime fiction ventures into some truly dark territory.

In suburban Indianapolis, 12-year-old Jamie Gabriel disappears while on his paper route. Over a year later, the police are no closer to finding him and the marriage of his parents Paul and Carol is on the verge of collapse. Out of desperation and resignation the Gabriels hire Frank Behr, a brooding ex-cop with a tragic past. Behr’s investigation will yield reasons for them to hope – and to despair.

There are a few plot developments that strain credibility, and the ending is a lot to swallow. But I went along with it, because Levien knows how to power through a story. He also peoples it with a strong gallery of characters. Not just Behr and the Gabriels but the range of criminals responsible for Jamie’s abduction, all of whom are given some shred of humanity.

In a recent essay, ESPN’s Bill Simmons names Rounders as one of the only classic sports films of the past decade. Which raises the question: is Rounders a sports movie? Feel free to respond in the comments.

A few years ago, Simmons did a two part Q&A with Koppelman and Levien. Glad to hear that my reaction to Rounders is fairly typical. First time around you can take it or leave it, mainly because the poker scenes leave you in the dust. But for some reason you’re compelled to watch it again, and the lingo makes more sense. By the third viewing, you’re completely on board. And that ending is still ballsy.

Music: Brad Mehldau Trio: Live

I have reached some kind of jazzbo milestone. The new album from the trio – Mehldau on piano, Larry Grenadier on bass, Jeff Ballard on drums – was recorded during an October 2006 run at New York’s Village Vanguard. Rosemarie and I were at one of those shows. Which means that could be us you hear applauding. Only I didn’t applaud. I snapped my fingers beatnik-style and then requested “Freebird.”

Listen to the album. You won’t be disappointed.

Miscellaneous: Folding Links

The New York Times profiles Mad Magazine’s Al Jaffee, complete with interactive gallery of his fold-ins.

Labels: Books, Jazz, music

Book: The Kind One, by Tom Epperson (2008)

Heading to California to make a name for yourself is perhaps the quintessential American story. Tom Epperson’s version is a pretty good one. He and childhood pal Billy Bob Thornton went west to break into show business. After kicking around for a hard ten years, they finally broke through with their script for One False Move, still a first-rate crime drama.

Los Angeles as a city of last chances and fresh starts looms large in Epperson’s first novel. It’s 1934, and “Two Gun” Danny Landon has a crease in his head where he was struck by a lead pipe, a severe case of amnesia, and a reputation as a tough guy that doesn’t sit right with him. He works for L.A. kingpin Bud Seitz, whose ironic nickname provides the book’s title. Bud gives Danny a choice assignment as bodyguard for his latest girlfriend Darla, a singer who is nowhere near as tough as she pretends to be.

It’s a classic noir set-up. Anyone familiar with the genre will quickly surmise who Danny is and be able to predict the fates that befall him, Bud, Darla, and the neighbors drawn into Danny’s orbit. But the characters are so well drawn that you won’t mind one bit. There are echoes of John Fante and Nathanael West here; Epperson writes with real feeling for the place and time, his story as rambling and expansive as the California landscape. I was more than happy to amble along with him.

Miscellaneous: Links

Gene Weingarten spends a grim 24 hours in the opinionscape of blogs, talk radio and cable news. Biggest surprise to me: you can now use “douche bag” as a pejorative in the august pages of the Washington Post. Oh, and pundustry, pundustry, pundustry. Read the article and you’ll know why I did that.

And the Los Angeles Times sets out in pursuit of John Hughes, the mystery man of 1980s cinema.

Labels: Books, Noir

Book: Pictures At A Revolution, by Mark Harris (2008)

Harris’s book is an essential read for any serious film fan. Which surprises me, because I had doubts about its premise. Subtitled Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, it follows the quintet of titles nominated for Best Picture of 1967, from development to awards glory. As if the Oscars are any indication of quality.

But Harris, an Entertainment Weekly contributor, knows his show biz and merely uses the awards as a framework for a larger story. 1967 was a transformative year in the movie industry. The old guard was still in power, but a new cinematic culture driven by European filmmakers was beginning to take hold. The five movies that ended up in the Oscar derby reflect that tension, and Harris meticulously researches their histories. The nominees are:

Bonnie & Clyde. Easily the contender that has held up the best. My favorite tidbit: 16 year old Texan Patsy McClenny served as Bonnie’s double because Faye Dunaway couldn’t drive a stick. A few years later, Patsy went to Hollywood and became Morgan Fairchild.

Doctor Doolittle. The only one of the five I haven’t seen. A critical and commercial flop, it’s widely seen as having bought its nomination. Harris recounts the campaign in detail.

The Graduate. I saw this week I graduated from college and didn’t get it. Perhaps it captured a moment so perfectly it was lost on those of us who weren’t there. Or maybe it was me. Director Mike Nichols tells a great, sad tale about meeting Ava Gardner – at Ms. Gardner’s insistence – for the role of Mrs. Robinson.

Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. Harris won me over with his treatment of this Stanley Kramer movie. Yes, it was square at the time, a middlebrow take on race relations that stacked the deck completely. But, Harris asks, why shouldn’t films that speak to middlebrow audiences get a little love? Sadly, Kramer felt he was being overshadowed by the young turks. The section in which he embarks on an ill-fated college tour to talk to “the young people” is one of the best in the book.

In the Heat of the Night. Spoiler alert: it takes home the prize. Truman Capote, fuming that the adaptation of his book In Cold Blood wasn’t in the running although many expected it to be, called Heat “a good bad picture.” It’s also the one I’ve seen the most. It was a fairly important movie for me growing up, because it was the first time I became aware that the crime genre could be used to address other issues. I still like it. I plan on watching it again. Harris has me ready to watch them all – except for Doolittle. Nothing’s getting me anywhere near that train wreck.

I can think of five other 1967 movies I would rather see nominated for Best Picture. Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Two by Stanley Donen, the comedy Bedazzled and the romantic drama Two For The Road. And a pair with Lee Marvin, The Dirty Dozen and my personal choice, Point Blank. Your picks?

And now I present, in its entirety, my favorite story from Harris’s book. Mike Nichols is in pre-production on The Graduate.

With nobody yet cast, Nichols returned to Broadway and spent the fall of 1966 at the Shubert Theatre, directing Alan Alda, Barbara Harris, and Larry Blyden in THE APPLE TREE. Nichols brought in Herbert Ross to help stage the numbers and could at least take comfort in the fact that somebody else’s movie was in bigger trouble than his own: After six months, Ross was still working on DOCTOR DOOLITTLE for Arthur Jacobs and was increasingly grim about the ordeal. “He was dividing his time,” says Nichols. “He’d come to New York and he’d work, say, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and half of Monday, and then he’d go back to Los Angeles and the movie. One week he flew off, and we were rehearsing the next day, and suddenly he comes strolling back across the stage. I said, ‘Herbert, what happened?’ And he said, ‘We’re postponed for three days. The giraffe stepped on his cock.’”

G’night, everybody!

Labels: Books, Movies

Miscellaneous: Grab Bag

Busy, busy, busy, so here’s a bunch of stuff at once.

A Diet of Treacle, by Lawrence Block (1961/2008). Hard Case Crime has reprinted some extraordinary early novels by Lawrence Block. But Treacle, originally published as Pads Are For Passion by Sheldon Lord, is the first that seems like a paycheck gig. It’s a sordid trip through the Greenwich Village beatnik world. Block paints the scene as peopled largely by posers and venal layabouts, a characterization I have no problem with. As always in a Block book, there’s fluid prose and vivid New York atmosphere to spare. But nothing much happens until the last forty pages or so. To be fair, those forty pages are pretty damn good, but Treacle is more a curio than anything else.

And then there’s that title. I dig that it’s a riff on Lewis Carroll, who always seemed like he Got It. But as a title, man, it’s strictly from Squaresville.

Stardust (2007). Why wasn’t this a big hit? High adventure with a noble hero, a fallen star, evil princes, wicked witches, and a swishbuckling sky pirate (not a typo), all of it served up tongue-in-cheek. Loads of fun.

Let’s All Kill Constance, by Ray Bradbury (2003). In 1960 Hollywood, an unnamed writer (c’mon, it’s Ray himself) is asked by a legendary star of the silent screen to figure out who left two “Books of the Dead” for her. If James Joyce wrote a pulp detective novel after mainlining Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, Constance would be the result. I don’t know if I completely got it, but I did enjoy it.

Larry King Live. Last night, Larry was responsible for the single dumbest hour of television I’ve ever seen. I was on a treadmill at the gym, but as fast as I ran I couldn’t escape it. Larry had tag teams of celebrities talking up their picks in the 2008 presidential election. The dictionary may not agree with me here, but I’m making a new rule I expect Larry to follow. Newspaper editorial boards, political organizations, and elected officials can “endorse” a candidate. Samwise Gamgee and Kumar can only support the individual of their choice. I have spoken.

Labels: Books, Miscellaneous, Movies, TV

Upcoming: Noir City Northwest

It’s hard to believe a year has passed since Eddie Muller brought his dark carnival to town. That’s because it hasn’t been a year. The last Noir City was in July. You don’t hear me complaining.

It’s another dazzling line-up that kicks off tomorrow night with Joseph Losey’s The Prowler, restored by UCLA and the Film Noir Foundation. Once again, we have tickets for the entire run. Once again, I will endeavor to write up the whole megillah.

My gavel-to-gavel coverage of the previous Noir City can be found right here.

Book: An Ordinary Spy, by Joseph Weisberg (2008)

If you’ve gotta have a gimmick, former CIA officer Weisberg has come up with a gem. His novel is a putative memoir by a disgraced intelligence operative that includes the redactions imposed by the CIA. Whole swaths of text, sometimes entire pages, have been blacked out. That lack of information becomes essential to a narrative about the relationships that develop between spies and their contacts. It’s tough to describe, but well worth reading.

Miscellaneous: Post-Strike Link

Stephen Colbert welcomes back his illustrious writing staff. The last one out does the heavy lifting.

Labels: Books, Noir, WGA Strike

Book/Rant: Confessions of a Political Hitman, by Stephen Marks (2008)

This book is lousy. Which is unfortunate, because there’s a great tale to be told about the world of opposition researchers, who dig up dirt on political candidates.

Marks insists on referring to himself throughout by his alter ego “Oppo Man,” a device that gets tired instantly. The book is clogged with lazy writing; Rudy Giuliani’s 1989 mayoral campaign is caught “flat-footed” twice in three pages, while Congressman Richard Gephardt responds “lamely” twice in two pages. And it comes off the presses past its sell-by date, with Marks singing the praises of sure-to-be-GOP-nominee Giuliani and offering a handful of tips to John McCain “if he’s still even a factor in the race.”

But the book’s worst feature is its truly abysmal copy editing. Not just the dropped punctuation marks that seem commonplace in every book published these days. I mean the misspellings of names.

I’ll let “Brittany” Spears slide. But a book that purports to give you the skinny on how politics really works should not feature appearances by former House Minority Leader Bob “Michael,” California Congressman Dave “Dreir,” Florida Governor and Senator Bob “Gramm,” Utah Senator “Orin” Hatch, New Jersey gubernatorial candidate “Brett” Schundler, Michigan governor “Gennifer” Granholm, and Pennsylvania Congressman “Kurt” Weldon.

I’m not a shadowy political operative. I’m just a guy who reads the newspaper every day. And even I knew those names were wrong.

Oh, and “Hitman” isn’t one word.

Labels: Books, Rants

WGA Strike: Hello, Grindstone

The strike is over. My pencil is up. Also, I’m ready to go back to work.

When official word came, I symbolically cut the strike bracelet that’s been on my wrist since November. I have plenty left; they were cheaper by the gross so I gave them away to friends and colleagues. Maybe I’ll sell the rest on eBay.

Book: Gas City, by Loren D. Estleman (2008)

The latest by Estleman is, simply put, a thing of beauty. A big rollicking story anchored by perfectly scaled details. The long-serving chief of police in a fading Midwestern metropolis decides after his wife’s death to upend the genial system of corruption in which he has been a more than willing participant. Gas City gives us a cross-section of urban life – mobsters, politicians, press barons, clergymen, even a disgraced cop turned part-time pimp – and has them jockey for position against the backdrop of a hunt for a serial killer.

Estleman is as good a stylist as we have in any genre, and his dialogue is sharp enough to make me laugh out loud. It’s only February, but here’s one of the year’s best.

R.I.P., Roy Scheider

Not too long ago, I watched Scheider in 1986’s 52 Pick-Up for the first time. And was reminded again of why I’d always been a fan. Scheider was an easy but alert presence on screen, always thinking, never phony.

For some reason that 52 Pick-Up piece attracted a lot of attention, and became the most-read post in this website’s history. It even turned up in a newspaper’s online tribute to Scheider. That makes me happy. What would make me happier would be a DVD release of Last Embrace, featuring a Scheider performance that deserves to be remembered alongside his work in The French Connection, Jaws, Sorcerer, and All That Jazz.

Labels: Books, Passings, WGA Strike

Miscellaneous: About As Good As It Gets

Here’s how Rosemarie and I went about constructing a damn near perfect day yesterday.

1. Get up and out a reasonable hour. The Lord loves a working man, even on Saturdays.

2. Stop in at Zanadu Comics to introduce myself to the world of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’s Criminal.

3. Go to the Seattle Mystery Bookshop so I could get a copy of Money Shot signed by the divine Christa Faust, as well as meet Marcus Sakey, author of the fine novel The Blade Itself, and the lovely and lively Sue Ann Jaffarian. Tell me the sample chapter of Money Shot doesn’t make you want to read the whole thing.

4. Lunch at The Honeyhole, offering the finest sandwiches within Seattle city limits. The Chachi’s Favorite is particularly good.

5. See In Bruges, the feature film debut by brilliant playwright Martin McDonagh. A pair of hit men (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) hide out in Belgium, getting on each other’s nerves while awaiting instructions from their hair-trigger boss (Ralph Fiennes). A dark, moving comedy with a richly mordant Irish sensibility. Tell me that unrated trailer doesn’t make you want to see the whole thing.

6. Meet up with Christa, Marcus, Sue Ann and Kim of Seattle Mystery Books at my home away from home, the Zig Zag Café. I’m not sure I’m old enough for the conversation that followed, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. A marvelous night in the company of good people. Don’t take my word for it: here’s Christa’s report. (UPDATE 2/11/08: And here’s Sue Ann’s.)

All that, plus the Washington State caucuses got along just fine without me. And it looks like the WGA strike is over, meaning I can get back to work.

I tell you, kids, sometimes it’s good to be me.

Labels: Books, Cocktails, Life, Miscellaneous, Movies

Book: Saturday’s Child, by Ray Banks (U.S. 2008)

I’ve linked to Banks more than once. You want to talk horror, he’s your man. We email back and forth on occasion. He is, as they say, good people.

He’s also a novelist, with several critically acclaimed titles to his credit. Alas, not readily available in America.

Saturday’s Child changes that. I grabbed it ASAP, with a single thought in mind: I hope this doesn’t suck. Those emails are gonna be awkward.

Good news all around. Saturday’s Child is, as they say, a damn fine piece of work.

Cal Innes, back on his feet after a stint in prison, is trying to make a go of it as a private investigator when he gets a call from Manchester kingpin Morris Tiernan. Cal went down to cover for Tiernan’s psycho son Mo, and to Tiernan this means Cal owes him a favor. It should be a simple job: track down a blackjack dealer who lit out with some money that wasn’t his. Naturally, Tiernan is leaving a few select details out. And Mo, not exactly a fan, is shadowing Cal for reasons of his own.

It’s the voice that grabs you from the jump, tough, spare, always human. When Banks makes one of his effortless switches from Cal’s perspective to Mo’s, you know whose head you’re in before the first period. Saturday’s Child is intimate in both story and action. When the blows come Cal feels them, and so do you.

What impressed me most was how the book revitalizes the P.I. genre. The last few novels of the type I read, some of them well-regarded, felt secondhand and hollow. Banks has come up with a living, breathing example of the form, one that should win him plenty of fans on this side of the pond. I can’t wait to see what Innes, the poor bastard, gets up to next.

But for the record, Banks, I still like Shoot ‘Em Up.

Labels: Books

Miscellaneous: Today’s Brilliant Observation

Thanks to the internet, everything is now either overrated or underrated.

Miscellaneous: How I’ve Been Spending My Time

Jekyll (2007). This six-hour contemporary take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic – by Steven Moffat, who according to Rosemarie is responsible for the best Doctor Who episodes – gets more ridiculous and more entertaining as it goes along. It’s a field day for actor James Nesbitt. And Denis Lawson from Local Hero – fine, Wedge Antilles to you Star Wars geeks – makes a sublime heavy.

Billion-Dollar Kiss: The Kiss That Saved Dawson’s Creek and Other Adventures in TV Writing, by Jeffrey Stepakoff (2007). Stepakoff’s career in TV spans the everybody-gets-a-deal boom years of the ‘90s and the recent rise of reality TV. His book details the many ways that industry consolidation has affected the television business, from the stunted development of most writers’ careers to the neglect of entire demographics. Interesting material to consider in the midst of a writers’ strike.

Labels: Books, Miscellaneous, TV

Miscellaneous: Grab Bag

Oscar nominations. They’re out, and here’s all I have to say: if “Falling Slowly” from Once doesn’t win Best Original Song, somebody’s getting a letter.

Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates (1961). A modern classic I am only now coming to. It deserves its reputation; I was well and truly staggered. Yates’s story of stultifying suburban life and how the lies we tell ourselves can poison others blazed a trail that novelists have been following for decades.

The Colbert Report. Tuesday night’s show, with “Stephen Colbert” dipping into Stephen Colbert’s family history and a closing Gospel number, is a must-see. Colbert has always walked a high wire, but the WGA strike has removed his net. He has yet to stumble.

Miracle (2004). I don’t know how I missed this movie about the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team. I’m a sucker for inspirational sports films, it acknowledges my alma mater as a college hockey powerhouse, and I revere Kurt Russell as the acme of American manhood. A recent mention from Kung Fu Monkey corrected my oversight.

Art in the Blood, by Craig McDonald (2006). Not too long after I raved about McDonald’s debut novel Head Games it was nominated for an Edgar, due presumably to my endorsement. I can also recommend this collection of interviews with some of the leading lights of contemporary crime fiction. McDonald knows how to ask questions, and includes a wide range of writers. Lots of insight to be gained here.

Labels: Books, Miscellaneous, Movies, TV

Book: Money Shot, by Christa Faust (2008)

My, but things have been in the gutter around here lately, haven’t they? And I see no reason to change that.


Some of you may recall how much I wanted a preview copy of Money Shot by Christa Faust, the first woman to be published by Hard Case Crime. I was thwarted in that effort, but a good Samaritan who shall remain nameless stepped in. An organization that shall also remain nameless delayed my reading the book until now. But I still beat the street date by two weeks.

Ex-porn star Angel Dare – née Gina Moretti – has found success on the other side of the camera running a booking agency. She agrees to do one last movie as a favor for a friend, only to find herself bound, gagged, and left for dead in the trunk of a Honda Civic. She has no idea why this happened, but she’s hell-bent on finding out – even if it means transforming herself into an avenging Angel to do it.

Two words to describe Money Shot are fast and mean. It’s a savvy tour of the porn demimonde in which no one can be trusted to do anything, even stay alive. I enjoyed the hell out of it.

So your porn name is your childhood pet and the street you grew up on? Say hello to Prince Wilshire. With a handle that good, maybe I ought to get into the business.

Labels: Books

Movie: More 52 Pick-Up

Turns out I’m not the only one who’s watched the sleazetastic Elmore Leonard adaptation 52 Pick-Up lately. So did Filmbrain and Premiere’s Glenn Kenny, who notes that the movie includes a veritable who-did-who of late ‘80s porn. I missed that aspect of the movie entirely. Yours truly, a good Irish Catholic boy, doesn’t take an interest in such prurient matters.

Book: Gilded Lili: Lili St. Cyr and the Striptease Mystique, by Kelly DiNardo (2007)

On the other hand I did read a biography of a stripper, so maybe I’m lying.

Lili St. Cyr is primarily remembered now as a reference in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But she was America’s greatest ecdysiast. (I’ve always wanted to use that word.) One glimpse of Lili plying her trade in Irving Klaw’s burlesque films Varietese and Teaserama and you can see why. She had a cool elegance and a sense of the theatrical that elevated her performances above the mere bump and grind ... although she had va-va-voom to spare. (Check out the NSFW Varietease trailer for a sample.)

But a life rich with incident – six husbands, multiple suicide attempts, and a sad end as an elderly heroin addict – doesn’t necessarily equal a compelling story. Lili never fully registers as a person in these scrupulously researched, rather academic pages. DiNardo wants to use Lili to make broader comments on evolving attitudes toward sex and the role of women in society, but the dancer born Marie van Schaak doesn’t provide enough of a foundation.

Still, there are plenty of great tidbits. A nicely fleshed-out portrait of Montreal as the Sin City of ‘40s North America. Sally Marr, Lenny Bruce’s mother, taught at the Pink Pussycat College of Striptease in Los Angeles, including a course called ‘Dynamic Mammary, Navel and Pelvis Rotation.’ Lili’s numbers in the film adaptation of The Naked and the Dead were so arousing that they allegedly made director Raoul Walsh’s glass eye pop out.

I didn’t need to know that Lili possessed a “high-pitched, Minnie Mouse-like voice,” though. Shades of Lina Lamont.

Kelly DiNardo is interviewed by Rick Klaw, grandson of Irving, here. DiNardo’s blog The Candy Pitch covers the contemporary burlesque scene and is worth a look. Or several.

Labels: Books, Movies

Book: Red Cat, by Peter Spiegelman (2007)

It’s always strange to leap into a series in the middle. But considering the acclaim Red Cat has received, I figured it was time to meet Peter Spiegelman’s New York private investigator John March.

March is the black sheep of his family. Which is why he’s surprised to be hired by his own brother. David March is a successful financier. Also a married one. That doesn’t stop him from meeting women anonymously via the Internet for what are supposed to be meaningless flings. Unfortunately his latest paramour, a mysterious beauty who calls herself Wren, isn’t interested in going away quietly. Wren has worked out David’s identity and is threatening to expose his indiscretions. John’s job is to turn the tables and learn who she is. Only once he does, he also discovers that Wren isn’t interested in something as simple as blackmail – and that David may not be the innocent victim he claims to be.

I have one quibble about Spiegelman’s writing. Ending a chapter with a plot twist, then starting the next one some time later and filling in what happened after that twist, is a powerful device. Unless you use it in almost every chapter, as Spiegelman is wont to do. Then it becomes somewhat mechanical.

But that’s a minor complaint. Red Cat is smart, suspenseful, and full of sharp observations about family, marriage and New York. Particularly when it comes to categorizing every type of cold weather that plagues the city come winter. Red Cat is the third of the John March books, so I plan on doing some falling back of my own.

Miscellaneous: Links

Both courtesy of Movie City News. 15 performances left on the cutting room floor. Then Joe Queenan on why No Country For Old Men is set in the past, and how technology has killed suspense.

Labels: Books, Miscellaneous

TV: Late Night Report

Second day back for the network shows and things have already returned to normal, in that I didn’t watch any of them. And if I’ve got the TV on tonight, I know what I’ll be watching: Skidoo. Otto Preminger’s counterculture film – Jackie Gleason as a mobster on acid, Groucho Marx playing a gangster named God, and hippies, hippies, hippies – gets a rare television screening on Turner Classic Movies at 2AM Eastern/11PM Pacific. Mark Evanier has done a sterling job of getting the word out. Don’t miss it.

Book: Luck Be A Lady, Don’t Die by Robert J. Randisi (2007)

Back in March I raved about the first of Randisi’s Rat Pack mysteries. The second entry in the series keeps the good times rolling. The Pack is back in Las Vegas for the premiere of Ocean’s 11, and once again they reach out to Eddie G, pit boss extraordinaire at the Sands casino, for help. Frank Sinatra, pining for Ava Gardner even as he cavorts with Juliet Prowse, has arranged for yet another young lovely to meet him in town. After checking into her hotel she disappears, and Mr. S wants Eddie to find her. Before he’s done Eddie will cross paths with a battery of luminaries, including Sam “MoMo” Giancana. With slick plotting and a peerless recreation of 1960 Las Vegas, the book goes down like good bourbon.

It also reminded me of another recent appreciation of Las Vegas in its mobbed-up heyday, from Bob Newhart in the HBO documentary Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project. As Newhart put it, say what you will about “the boys,” they knew how to run a gambling establishment.

Labels: Books, Movies, TV

Miscellaneous: Miscellaneous

Work, work, work. Herewith, a grab bag.

The New York Times ten best books of the year list is out, and for once it’s not terra incognita for me. I’ve read one fiction entry – Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris, which I adored – and am coincidentally in the middle of one non-fiction entry, Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone. This makes me feel like a certifiable genius and a man of the world.

We did see Enchanted, as referenced below. (I know some of you were wondering.) I liked it, and can say with great certainty that Rosemarie liked it even more.

We also caught up with Paris, Je t’aime on DVD, which is like an entire meal made up of amuses-bouche. “Collective” films are typically spotty, but this one has a good hit-to-miss ratio. It helps that each short is five minutes long, so the successes leave you wanting more while the misfires don’t go on too long. Each director’s assignment was to tell a love story in a different neighborhood in the City Of Lights. Leave it to the Coen Brothers to set their film entirely in a Metro station and consist of bad things happening to Steve Buscemi. Other favorites include the efforts by Alexander Payne, with its great performance by character actress Margo Martindale; Isabel Coixet, which initially seems like a send-up of French cinema but soon reveals the coeur beneath the sangfroid (hey, I took French in high school); Sylvain Chomet, finding fresh uses for both mimes and the Eiffel Tower; and Christopher Doyle, whose bizarre film is either pure fancy or a complicated allegory for the French experience in Southeast Asia. I honestly don’t know.

Labels: Books, Miscellaneous, Movies

Book: Head Games, by Craig McDonald (2007)

Ever read a book and think the target audience consists of ... you? McDonald’s debut – named one of the year’s ten best crime novels by Eddie Muller in the San Francisco Chronicle – is about the intersection of pulp fiction, Hollywood and politics. Naturally, I ate it up.

Hec Lassiter is the last of the Black Mask boys, still cranking out two-fisted fiction in 1957. He’s being profiled by young poet Bud Fiske for True magazine when a real-adventure comes their way: they wind up in possession of the stolen head of Mexican general Pancho Villa, which is being sought by Yale University’s Skull & Bones Society for use in its secret ceremonies. Hec and Bud square off against intelligence agencies, ancient revolutionaries and homicidal frat boys. McDonald weaves plenty of real-life figures into the tale. Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich, John Ford, Ernest Hemingway, Senator Prescott Bush. Even the senator’s grandson makes an appearance.

The plot moves at a hell-for-leather pace and is basically an excuse to mourn the passing of an era of American manhood and pay tribute to old-fashioned storytelling. Personally, I’ll never see Touch of Evil the same way again.

TV: Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project (2007)

The best observation in this HBO documentary about the insult comic comes from Penn Jillette:

“(Rickles) had this quality of ... pleasing the audience was the most important thing in the world. Not in his life, in the world. But he would not compromise in any way to please them. A very complicated, very important idea. In a certain sense, the definition of art.”

The documentary is a must-see for fans of old-school showbiz. John Landis, who directed, met Rickles while working as a production assistant on Kelly’s Heroes. But there’s no mention of their other collaboration: 1992’s Innocent Blood, in which a sexy French vampire preys on Pittsburgh gangsters. Rickles plays a Mob lawyer-turned-bloodsucker. Also in the cast are Anthony LaPaglia, future Oscar nominees Angela Bassett and Chazz Palminteri, and half of The Sopranos. It’s great, trashy fun.

TV: This Week’s Reason Why I Don’t Watch CNN

I went back and forth about posting this photograph. It’s outside my bailiwick, the image isn’t the best, and it’s in questionable taste to harp on a typo in the midst of sad news. But I mentioned it over at Bill Crider’s blog, and now I feel it’s my duty.

Here’s Wolf Blitzer reporting on Wednesday’s shooting incident ... in Obama, Nebraska.



It’s a fast-moving story, they’re under pressure, I get it. But I still can’t believe this went on the air. Is the network using an election season macro? Any word beginning with ‘O’ auto-completes as Obama unless it’s changed to Oprah or Orange?

Update: The photo is now also up at Leavenworth Street, a blog devoted to Nebraska state politics.

Video: Farewell, Something Weird

PopMatters (via GreenCine Daily) brings word of the impending demise of Something Weird Video. I’ve watched a lot of the company’s titles over the years and while the movies themselves may have been disappointing, the presentation never was. Keeping these oddities in the public eye is valuable work, and Something Weird did it well.

I wrote about two of SWV’s burlesque films with Bettie Page here, and their Barry Mahon double bill here.

Labels: Books, DVD, Miscellaneous, TV

Book: The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps (2007)

Ed Gorman’s review alone convinced me to order this book, a compendium of writing from the glory days of the pulps. Editor Otto Penzler has assembled the big names. Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Cornell Woolrich, even a never-before-published story by Dashiell Hammett. Then there are the names that only the hardcore hardboiled fan recognizes. Steve Fisher, Frederick Nebel, Raoul Whitfield. And plenty more that are new to me. Short stories, novels, reproduced illustrations, biographical sketches, the works.

The volume tops out at over 1100 pages. Good thing the shipping was free. It’s literally the size of a phone book. One of the bent cops contained within could use it to obtain a confession. I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it yet. So far, I just take it down from the shelf and admire it.

John Banville, the Booker Prize-winning author who pens crime fiction as Benjamin Black, offers another take on the collection in Bookforum. (H/t to GreenCine Daily.) The intro’s a touch precious, but his thoughts on Chandler versus Cain are interesting. And we’re in complete agreement on the Parker novels by Richard Stark, aka Donald Westlake (“among the most poised and polished fictions of their time and, in fact, of any time”) and Georges Simenon. Read his piece and Ed’s. Then I dare you not to buy the book. You’ll probably finish it before me.

Miscellaneous: Scenes From A Marriage

Me: Salon came out with their sexiest men alive list. Want to know who’s on it?

Rosemarie: Do I? They probably went with Dennis Kucinich. Sure, go ahead. Who’s their sexiest man alive?

Me: (bad fake drum roll) Jon Hamm.

Rosemarie: (sharp intake of breath) From Mad Men?

Me: Yeah.

Rosemarie: Wow. That’s an excellent pick.

Me: You know who else is on here? Flight of the Conchords.

Rosemarie: (another sharp intake of breath) Which one?

Me: Both of them.

Rosemarie: Who else?

Me: Um, Alec Baldwin, Tony Leung, Will Arnett –-

Rosemarie: Let me see that.

Labels: Books, Embarrassing Personal Stories, Noir

Book: Deadly Beloved, by Max Allan Collins (2007)

Every month Hard Case Crime has a drawing to give away advance reading copies of their newest book. Every month I enter. Every month I lose.

I really wanted to win the latest one, so I could be among the first to get my hands on Money Shot by Christa Faust. Christa is the first woman to be published by Hard Case, her blog is a regular stop, and the plot – ex-porn star left for dead seeks vengeance – had me at ‘ex-porn star.’

Surprise. I didn’t win. But I can steer you toward someone who did get an early look.

It turns out Hard Case held a second drawing using the Money Shot entries when they realized they had additional ARCs of Deadly Beloved by Max Allan Collins. I finally win a Hard Case book, and it’s the one title I’d already decided to take a pass on. Collins’ stuff has been hit-or-miss for me, and I knew nothing about Ms. Tree, the graphic novel character making her prose debut in Beloved.

Naturally, I read the book as soon as it arrived and enjoyed the hell out of it. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Collins is a well-known disciple of Mickey Spillane; he had a hand in completing the Mick’s Dead Street for Hard Case. Spillane provided the inspiration for Ms. Tree. Suppose Mike Hammer finally married his bombshell secretary Velda only to be gunned down on their wedding night? And further suppose that Velda took over Mike’s business?

I don’t know about you, but I find that premise irresistible.

Michael Tree’s husband – also named Michael – has been in the ground a year when Beloved begins. Ms. Tree is hired to look into the open-and-shut case of a woman who murders her cheating husband. The investigation points toward a shadowy professional killer nicknamed “The Event Planner,” whose long list of victims might also include Ms. Tree’s spouse.

Collins, who wrote the Dick Tracy comic strip for several years, doesn’t shy away from the character’s cartoon origins. The good guys have names like Steele and Valer, while the evil Mafia family is called the Muertas. Collins also finds a way to bring the larger-than-life tone of graphic novels to the page. Deadly Beloved bounds along at a furious clip, providing loads of fun along the way. Another winner for Hard Case, in more ways than one.

News: Strike Stuff

Look, I don’t want to link to it, people. I have to.

John August explains residuals. Craig Mazin backs him up with another metaphor. Mmmmm, cake.

Patrick Goldstein of the L.A. Times has a message for the moguls: “If you don’t believe in the future, you shouldn’t be in show business.”

Who says there’s no money in the internet? Not these guys:



Miscellaneous: Links

Meet the best reason to watch HBO’s Flight of the Conchords: Kristen Schaal.

Hey, did somebody say Ruben Studdard?

Labels: Books, WGA Strike

Miscellaneous: The October Stuff-I-Didn’t-Get-To Post

The Shotgun Rule, by Charlie Huston (2007). Stephen King blurbed this book, calling it “Stand by Me on dexedrine.” If he hadn’t made the comparison, I would have. Four teenage boys growing up in the ‘burbs of Northern California in 1983 decide to stick up for one of their own and recover a stolen bicycle from some local hoodlums. They also swipe a bag of crank from the hoods’ drug lab, a spur-of-the-moment act that unleashes forces they’re not quite old enough to understand. The book doesn’t match the hell-for-leather pacing of Huston’s brilliant Hank Thompson trilogy. But it gets the details of those years at the tail end of adolescence right – including the shocking realization that not only were your parents young once, but they’re still feeling their way along, too.

Year of the Dog (2007). A fascinating, off-beat comedy. Molly Shannon stars as the kind of woman who seems to exist in every office: friendly, a bit creepy, truly awful taste in sweaters. Then her pet dog dies, a small tragedy that expands the horizons of her life in unexpected ways. Featuring wicked supporting turns from Laura Dern and Peter Sarsgaard, and a script by Mike White that’s one of the best of the year.

TV: Viewing Tip

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was well before my time. I know the series is much-loved among espionage fans, and thought the upcoming DVD release would be a chance to check it out.

As it happens, Tuesday, November 6 is U.N.C.L.E. day on Turner Classic Movies. Eight two-part episodes of the show were edited into feature films, and TCM will air all of them beginning at 6AM Eastern.

Labels: Books, Movies

Book: Grub, by Elise Blackwell (2007)

It’s funny to realize how few novels I’ve read about novelists. You always hear that there are too many books about literary life. No doubt this is true. But unless the protagonists are accused of murder or battling vampires, odds are I’m not going to pick those titles up.

Grub, however, may have changed my mind. Elise Blackwell’s novel is an elaborate contemporary re-imagining of New Grub Street, the 1891 satire of the London publishing world by George Gissing. I’m not familiar with Gissing’s book, but I have read the Wikipedia entry, which qualifies me as an authority.

Aside from moving the action to New York, Blackwell apparently hasn’t changed much. Nor does she have to; ambition, jealousy and fear are constants in the writer’s lot. She smartly updates the Victorian conventions of Gissing’s novel. More impressively, she recreates the feel of reading one of the books of that period, with its rich stew of characters and incident. Success, failure, romance, secret identities, and endings that come in degrees of happiness. There’s something for everyone. Lovely stuff.

Sports: The Road to Recovery

The Phillies, who outlasted my New York Mets, are already out of the post-season. The Yankees also made an early exit. Which means I can just sit back and enjoy the rest of the baseball playoffs.

I have moved on from the Mets’ late-season collapse with the aid of mental health professionals. The other day I even wore my Mets cap in public again.

Complete Stranger in Supermarket: I haven’t been brave enough to put mine on yet.

Me: You gotta man up, son. Next year starts right now.

Complete Stranger in Supermarket: You’ve inspired me.

Sadly, that exchange is the supreme accomplishment of my life so far.

Labels: baseball, Books, Sports

Miscellaneous: The September Stuff-I-Didn’t-Get-To Post

Lonely Hearts. The sordid tale of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, who murdered at least a dozen women in the late 1940s, was told in The Honeymoon Killers and Deep Crimson. Now Todd Robinson, grandson of one of the Long Island detectives who brought the pair to justice, recounts the case from their perspective. His low-key but gripping style honors the memory of his grandfather, played by John Travolta. I was concerned about Salma Hayek as Martha Beck, a fearsome woman who weighed over 200 pounds. But Salma finds her own ways to be fearsome.

The Wounded and the Slain, by David Goodis. Don’t be fooled. This isn’t a pulp novel about a couple getting caught up in murder while on vacation in Jamaica. It’s a brutal portrait of a marriage in crisis that cuts to the bone.

The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet. You think you know how bad a sexploitation version of the Bard’s classic filmed in the style of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In – complete with repeated references to “beautiful downtown Verona,” women hollering “Sock it to me!” during sex, and cutaways to lame one-liners – can be. Then you watch the movie. And you realize you had no idea.

Sports: That’s What I’m Talking About

After the Mets collapse, what I needed was a game like last night’s instant classic between the Rockies and Padres to, as they said at Faith and Fear in Flushing, restore my belief in baseball. (I should have linked to FAFIF long before now. Some excellent writing to be found there even if you’re not a Mets fan.) Seeing Mets castoffs like Heath Bell and Kaz Matsui playing with fire was odd, but it allowed the healing to begin. I figured the Arizona Diamondbacks, who smoke-and-mirrored their way to the best record in the National League, would win the pennant. But I’m revising that opinion. Whoever makes it out of the Rockies/Phillies showdown, sure to be a corker, will be in the World Series and give the AL champ a run for their money.

In Mets’ downfall news, ESPN’s Bill Simmons was so moved by the team’s collapse that he created an entirely new level of losing to describe it. What did he call it?

The Goose/Maverick Tailspin.

I had that on Sunday, Simmons. I want full credit. Top Gun is an obscure film no one remembers.

And don’t let anyone tell you what happened to this team is not a tragedy. Lives are being destroyed by it.

Miscellaneous: Links

A moment of silence for The Tube, an excellent music channel gone too soon.

Hey, Stephen Fry has a blog!

Labels: baseball, Books, Miscellaneous, Movies, Sports

Books: Lit Crit

Here’s a New York story. A wealthy older woman about to embark on a cruise to Europe takes a cab to the ship. En route, she falls into easy conversation with the driver and impulsively asks him to come along. The cabbie agrees and drives his hack into the hold of the ship with the meter running. They disembark in France and the driver ferries his passenger into Paris, then to the Riviera, down deep into the boot of Italy, high into the Alps, over to Berlin, up into Scandinavia, even across the Channel to Merrie Olde England – the whole time with the meter running.

At the end of the jaunt, back into the hold goes the taxi. They return to Manhattan. The fare comes to fifteen thousand dollars, which the woman happily pays. “Now,” she tells the driver, “all you have to do is take me to my home in Brooklyn.”

“Brooklyn!,” the driver says. “Sorry, lady. You’ll have to get another cab. Every time I go to Brooklyn I come back empty.”

Somehow, I don’t think this is what the driver was talking about. Hat tip to Arts & Letters Daily.

Labels: Books

Miscellaneous: Neither Here Noir There

Steve Lewis, the man behind the indispensable Mystery*File, posed a question in the comments yesterday:

(T)he guys over at (hardboiled/noir mailing list) Rara-Avis are always saying that if there’s a happy ending, it can’t be noir. Do you go along with that? If not, or even if so, what’s your take on what Noir is?

Steve’s not the only one to put this headscratcher to me. At a Seattle International Film Festival noir double-bill earlier this year, I chatted with my friend and game-show competitor, critic Tom Tangney. Tom said, “What’s with you noir guys? I thought you were all about the downer endings but in a lot of the movies I’ve seen, things work out OK.”

Solving the what-is-noir riddle accounts for a hefty slice of the traffic on R-A. It gets brutal at times. Lives have been lost. Worse, feelings have been hurt. You think I’m going to wade into that contentious debate here?

OK, I will.

The safest play would be to punt, to Potter Stewart the question and say I know noir when I see it. I’m not a purist when it comes to definition. There are some who insist that “noir” can only refer to the original canon of authors published by the Série Noire line in France, or films made between 1940 (Stranger on the Third Floor) and 1958 (Touch of Evil). I don’t want to watch a movie like The Money Trap or Memento and think, “Jesus, that’s as noir as can be. Too bad it didn’t come out in ‘52.”

The recent explosion of noir films on video clouds the matter further. Steve’s question was prompted by two titles in Warner’s Film Noir Classic Collection Volume 4. Over the weekend I caught up with another movie in the set, 1955’s Illegal. Politically ambitious D.A. Edward G. Robinson discovers he sent an innocent man to the electric chair. He resigns, hits the skids, then reinvents himself as an unscrupulous criminal lawyer allied with the crime boss he was once determined to bring down – until his former assistant is indicted for murder.

Entertaining? You bet. Noir? Not really. Sure, it has its share of noirish elements, but it’s the second remake of the 1932 melodrama The Mouthpiece. The first remake, 1940’s The Man Who Talked Too Much, is about two lawyer brothers squaring off on opposite sides of a case. I’d say every iteration of this movie belongs in your video store’s “Hambone” section – a genre to which I am also partial. So why include it in a film noir collection?

A definition I picked up at Rara-Avis is known as The Bludis Heresy, after author Jack Bludis, who coined it. It states that hardboiled fiction is about characters who go into a cold, unfeeling world with no illusions, while in noir those characters are doomed to be crushed by said world. Or, as Bludis puts it with admirable economy:

Hardboiled = Tough
Noir = Screwed

I like that a lot.

Eddie Muller, a man I always listen to on this subject, said that all noir stories are about “people who know what they’re doing is wrong, but they do it anyway.” He also said that the genre’s ethos was perfectly encapsulated by Walter Neff’s explanation of his actions in Double Indemnity: “I killed him for money and for a woman. I didn’t get the money ... and I didn’t get the woman.”

So what do I think?

I think noir, by definition, is about losers, the perpetual short-stickers of life. I think fate plays an active role. Look no further than Detour. Tom Neal, the poor bastard, never stood a chance. In the movie and in the real world.

It’s not darkness for its own sake. Too many contemporary writers branded with the noir label seem to wallow in misery, to enjoy torturing their characters. Noir is not about bad things happen to marginally good people. It’s about poor decisions boomeranging back with a vengeance.

True noir shouldn’t end on an upbeat note. But I’m willing to give the movies some leeway on that score. The powers that be in the business have always been reluctant to send the audience out feeling blue. Besides, happy endings, unlike Tolstoy’s happy families, are not all alike. At this year’s Noir City screening of Nightmare Alley, I heard some grousing that the closing scenes went too easy on Tyrone Power’s Stanton Carlisle. Sure, if hitting rock bottom is to be preferred over the long plunge down.

The French may have given the genre its name, but noir is a fundamentally American invention. Which is as it should be, because noir’s message cuts straight to the heart of the American dream. In a nation obsessed with winners, there are bound to be losers. And not only should their stories be told, they’re invariably more interesting.

Miscellaneous: Links

Steve Lewis keeps on giving. He sent me Wired’s list of unlikely movie scientists. And via BoingBoing, we have a stunningly thorough comparison of Simpsons scenes and the movies they pay homage to.

Labels: Books, Miscellaneous, Movies, Noir

Book: But Enough About Me, by Jancee Dunn (2006)

Meet my new favorite book. Jancee Dunn is a Jersey girl who ended up a Rolling Stone correspondent and a VJ on MTV2, back when the network used to play videos. (Hard to believe there are now two MTVs against which that charge can be leveled.)

Her memoir, which is hysterical and reads like a breeze, is studded with tips on how to interview celebrities. Examples: always chat up the drummer when talking to a band, and drivers provide the best gossip. But the most interesting sections are about Dunn’s own life. Her suburban childhood. Her close-knit family with its possibly too-strong ties to J.C. Penney. (I still remember Dunn introducing “a video from, as my dad would say, Mary J. Bilge.”) And her eventual realization that “being hip was a full-time job, and (she) was only a part-timer.” Dunn pulls off the neat trick of being more interesting than the luminaries she’s paid to write about.

The new crop of shows covering the celebrity beat seem hell-bent on taking them down. In Slate’s words, they’re either about hostile intimacy or intimate hostility. Try to steer clear of the press, as Matt Damon does, and you get taken to task by the editor of Variety. (Peter Bart should read the disturbing section of Dunn’s book in which Ben Affleck demonstrates to her how quickly a routine task like getting lunch is wrecked by paparazzi.) Which is another reason why I enjoyed But Enough About Me. It’s refreshing to read about someone regularly exposed to fame who seems so ... normal.

Miscellaneous: Link

I’m depressed that the boys in the the Bad Plus even feel they have to explain how their improvisational covers of modern songs are not ironic. Anyone who’s heard their electrifying version of “Tom Sawyer” should know better.

Labels: Books, music

Miscellaneous: The August Stuff-I-Didn’t-Get-To Post

Forever Cool, Dean Martin. Enough with the albums where dead singers “duet” with contemporary artists. Dino did more than enough entertaining when he was with us. Let the man rest in peace. That said, at least this album includes some of Dean’s in-studio banter and revives the movie theme “Who’s Got The Action?,” performed here with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Robbie Williams again shows he knows his way around a standard. And Kevin Spacey earns points for chutzpah – or something – for singing with Dino as Dino.

Stalin’s Ghost, by Martin Cruz Smith. I never miss an Arkady Renko book. In this latest outing, the good-hearted Russian detective is assigned to investigate subway sightings of the title specter only to find himself drawn into post-Soviet politics and the repercussions of Chechnya.

Ask The Dust. Colin Farrell is terrific in Robert Towne’s adaptation of the John Fante novel. The bantam rooster strut, the self-doubt expressed as hostility; I actually believed I was watching a struggling writer in 1930s Los Angeles. The movie never fully escapes its literary origins, but that’s part of what makes it interesting. Also excellent: the letters Farrell’s character receives from his mentor H. L. Mencken, read in the vinegary rasp of film critic Richard Schickel.

This Is Tom Jones. No sooner had I picked up the first disc in this series of variety shows than Tony Kay recapped ‘em all, proving great minds really do think alike. The women’s lib sketches with Anne Bancroft alone make this worth a rental. I was struck by how much the 1969 Tom Jones looked like one of those deadly clotheshorse thugs that turn up in U.K. gangster films like Get Carter and The Long Good Friday. Time-Life should have done a better job of editing the shows. It’s not nice to promise Joey Heatherton and then not deliver. Not nice at all. So here’s Joey doing her all to sell mattresses.

Labels: Books, Miscellaneous, Movies, music, TV

Miscellaneous: The July Stuff-I-Didn’t-Get-To Post

Sunshine. The production team behind 28 Days Later turns their attention to science fiction. An impossibly beautiful team of astronauts heads into space to jumpstart the sun before it dies. I liked it quite a bit. And the science is accurate. Kinda.

The Bullet Trick, by Louise Welsh. An interesting structure and seedy atmosphere to burn in this novel about a cut-rate burlesque magician who gets in over his head with dirty cops and shady dames.

Mad Men. Two episodes in and I’m loving AMC’s first dramatic series, about advertising execs in 1960 New York. It illustrates in many subtle ways how the world has changed in 45 years – and how it hasn’t.

Miscellaneous: Quote of the Day

From the New York Times article on the success of Skinny Bitch, a chick-lit-style diet book that, to the surprise of some purchasers, includes several chapters of animal rights information. Says co-author Rory Freedman:

“They’re mad that they spent $14 on a book that was not what they thought, but they’re not mad that chickens are having beaks chopped off their faces? How is that possible? I can’t even wrap my mind around that.”

Oh, come on. I’ll bet some of the people who bought this book paid good money to have part of their own beaks chopped off their faces.

Miscellaneous: Raise A Glass

Tales of the Cocktail, the international culinary and cocktail event, held their annual shindig in New Orleans last month. There my usual hangout The Zig Zag Café took home prizes for Best Drinks Selection and Best Classic Cocktail Bar. That’s in the world, folks, and decided by people who know. Congratulations to Ben, Kacy, Murray (also a finalist for Bartender of the Year), and company. Drop by if you’re in Seattle and mention my name. Maybe it’ll help. Me, I mean, not you.

Labels: Books, Cocktails, Miscellaneous, Movies, TV

Book: I Love You, Beth Cooper, by Larry Doyle (2007)

Doyle is the veteran Simpsons scribe who also has the sorely underrated Looney Tunes: Back in Action to his credit. (You can read that script and several others at his website.) His first comic novel triggered high school flashbacks so intense that my voice changed.

Denis Cooverman, star debater and valedictorian, blurts out the title line in his graduation speech. What he doesn’t expect is that Beth Cooper, head cheerleader and secret hellion, will find his professions of love cute. What he doesn’t know is that Beth has a new boyfriend, Kevin, who is massive, on leave from the Army, and lacking a sense of humor. As Denis, Beth and their friends spend a long graduation night shuttling from parties to make-out spots trying to avoid Kevin, Denis finds out the adolescent social whirl he’s long fantasized about isn’t quite as he imagined it.

It’s a funny book, with bright turns of phrase throughout. It’s also a rich one, with Denis and particularly Beth bursting out of the Breakfast Club pigeonholes into which high school has forced them in some surprising ways. By the end the book achieves a grace, even a wisdom, that caught me off-guard.

Seldom have I identified with a character as strongly as I did with Rich Munsch, Denis’s best (and only) bud. Rich is completely obsessed with movies and views every mortifying event as grist for the film someone must be making of his life. Rich, in other words, is the adolescent me, only with more flair. By which I mean any flair.

Reading the book has me thinking about high school and my graduation night in particular, when I had my own Denis Cooverman moment. For the full four years I attended Dunedin High School in Dunedin, Florida – go, Falcons! – I harbored an intense crush on a girl named Ellen.* I don’t know why. I knew nothing about her. I doubt we said more than fifty words to each other, mainly because I was tongue-tied in her presence. She sat next to me in several classes, and occasionally when the teacher made a joke that fell flat she’d turn to me and roll her eyes. At such moments I would come perilously close to passing out.

After the graduation ceremony we all filed back into the high school one final time. Emotions were running high; people were already exchanging goodbyes. And a single thought took possession of me: I have to mark this moment. I stalked the halls until I found Ellen, standing with a group of her friends. She smiled at me. I seized my chance.

“Congratulations,” I said, and kissed her. And I mean a full Adrien-Brody-on-Halle-Berry special, with a dip and everything. I may have banged her head into a locker. The whole thing’s kind of a blur. I am not usually given to acts of unprovoked affection.

When the kiss ended, I said, “I’m sorry, but I’ve wanted to do that for four years.”

Ellen laughed. “I’m glad you did it, then.”

I never saw her again. I’m sure she doesn’t even remember the incident. But that night alone almost made high school bearable. It was a lesson I’d learned from all the movies I’d been watching. If you get the ending right, all the disappointment that came before doesn’t matter.

* - Name changed to protect the innocent

Labels: Books, Embarrassing Personal Stories, Miscellaneous

Movie: Waterhole Number Three (1967)

Here’s actor Bruce Dern on Waterhole Number Three, from his memoir Things I’ve Said But Probably Shouldn’t Have. A book which, you may remember, I enjoyed.

I do a movie with as funny a script as I’ve ever read, called WATERHOLE NUMBER THREE. The writer and director, Joe Steck, a funny wunderkind, had written a movie called THE PRESIDENT’S ANALYST, which Jim Coburn was also in. WATERHOLE NUMBER THREE, a western, starts out with Coburn in a card game where he loses everything he’s got ... He walks outside, pulls his gun out, and kills his horse. Now he’s got nothing. He looks into the lens and says, “So blame me. So what? I want to start from scratch, okay? Is that okay with you? Can we go on now?” He’s saying this to the audience. I thought, shit, this works. It’s funny. He goes into another saloon, and an old miner’s there having a drink. The old miner has an attack. As he dies, he gives Coburn a napkin containing a map to waterhole number three, where there sits a fortune. He spends the rest of the movie trying to find it. Unbeknownst to him, there’s a bunch of people also looking for waterhole number three: Timothy Carey; Strother Martin, Maggie Blye ... Jack Elam, and the guy who James Arness kills at the beginning of GUNSMOKE every week, Bob Welke. Tim Carey, the guy in Kubrick’s movie THE KILLING who kills the horse, is in it. Carroll O’Connor is the sheriff, and I’m the sheriff’s deputy. We’re looking for the guys who are looking for waterhole number three. L. Q. Jones is another one. Warren Oates. They all found waterhole number three one after the other, except for Coburn, who has the real map. It’s a MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD with horses instead of cars. And it works.

Sounds like a hoot, no? I rented it for the horse gag alone, even though I knew that Joe Steck isn’t credited as the writer of The President’s Analyst – a funny movie – and my Leonard Maltin guide lists William Graham as Waterhole Number Three’s director.

Guess what? The horse gag isn’t there. Neither is Coburn addressing the camera. Or the miner. The map is in the possession of another gambler Coburn guns down in the street.

Also not in the movie: Strother Martin, Jack Elam, Bob Welke (actually Wilke), L. Q. Jones, and Warren Oates. Roger Miller narrates the whole thing in song, but Dern doesn’t mention him.

In the interests of completion, I should point out another error. The movie doesn’t work. At all. I gave up on it after half an hour. (So yes, technically, all those actors could turn up in the portion I skipped. Maybe in disguise, a la The List of Adrian Messenger. If that’s the case, no one in recorded history has spilled the secret.)

Certainly there’s some poor copy editing here. Someone should have caught the misspelling of Wilke’s name. And cut one of the Timothy Carey references. And maybe even, you know, watched the movie. Or at least verified the cast list.

And perhaps Dern isn’t wrong. The opening he describes could easily have been in an early draft of the script, while the missing actors’ scenes wound up on the cutting room floor. It seems more likely, though, that this is a concrete example of the treachery of memory. What’s in your head isn’t necessarily what actually happened.

I just wish I could see the movie Bruce Dern remembers. It has to be better than the one that exists.