Movie: Serial (1980)

So I’m scrolling through the late-night TV listings and come across this satire that I’ve never heard of before.

But Rosemarie has. It’s based on a novel by Cyra McFadden, one of those scandalous, zeitgeist-capturing books that merits reams of coverage in lifestyle magazines. Rosemarie can even picture the book’s original cover. But she never read it, and she hasn’t seen the movie, either. Set DVR on record.

SERIAL targets life in Marin County, California during the ‘Me Generation’ years, the era of consciousness raising, hot tubs and orgies. Or, as star Martin Mull says, “These are exciting times, aren’t they? Gas is over a dollar a gallon and it’s OK to be an asshole.” The cast is filled with TV stalwarts like Peter Bonerz, Tommy Smothers, and MAUDE’s Bill Macy. Horror icon Christopher Lee turns up just to keep things interesting.

The small screen pedigree extends behind the camera. Director Bill Persky was a key figure on the show KATE & ALLIE, and screenwriters Rich Eustis and Michael Elias would go on to create the family-friendly sitcom HEAD OF THE CLASS.

The TV influence sometimes works against the movie. It features a hellishly bad theme song that screams ‘Sundays at 9, 8 Central,’ and a jokey, episodic structure that makes it feel like an extended installment of LOVE, AMERICAN STYLE. Comedies that tackled similar subject matter earlier on have more bite, like the Paul Mazursky-scripted films I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.

But SERIAL eventually buckles down and focuses on Mull’s efforts to salvage his marriage to Tuesday Weld. A solid ratio of its jokes score, and plenty of them involve nudity and/or profanity, which I always appreciate. It’s not a perfect film, but it deserves a better fate than surfacing on Cinemax at four in the morning.

Miscellaneous: Links

The latest subject being pondered at Reason: why are celebrity profiles so bad? Slate places 50 Cent’s GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN’ in the context of autobiographical films and declares Eminem the winner. And Bill Pronzini offers a reminiscence of lost pulp master Jay Flynn at Mystery*File.

Movie: Road House (1989)

Is it me or is this movie playing somewhere in the cable universe at all times? That’s a sure sign of staying power. But getting a sequel more than 15 years later, even a direct-to-video one? That means a cult following. And I do hate to miss out on these things.

I’ve seen the 1948 ROAD HOUSE, with Ida Lupino and Richard Widmark. More than once, in fact. But the one where Patrick Swayze plays a philosophically-inclined bouncer who single-handedly cleans up an entire small town and flirts with lovely local doctor Kelly Lynch while she sutures his knife wounds was terra incognita.

Still, the unseen ROAD HOUSE has long been revered here at Chez K. Before Rosemarie and I met, we had both read the same review of the movie that cited some dialogue directed at Patrick Swayze’s Dalton:

“I used to fuck guys like you in prison.”

It’s a line the missus and I have fallen back on a lot over the years. I suppose I was afraid the rest of the movie wouldn’t live up to it.

Fortunately, it does. I can see why ROAD HOUSE is popular. It’s cheese that ages well, the kind of good, dumb, unpretentious B flick where an entire bar erupts in fisticuffs at the slightest slight. There’s some nice local color that doesn’t mock country folks, and Swayze’s goofy Zen demeanor works perfectly. (I don’t believe in guilty pleasures – if you like something, claim it with pride, says I – but if I did, the Swayze double-bill of this and POINT BREAK would be high on the list.) And that wily old pro Ben Gazzara even acts a little as the town boss who knows he’s destined for a fall, and who may be secretly relieved that the day is at hand.

As for the line referenced above, it’s even funnier in context. If you can call it that.

Music: “All the Best,” Glen Campbell

23 tracks may be a broad definition of “the best.” But “Wichita Lineman” is one of them, and that’s enough for me.

Music Video: “Hung Up,” Madonna

I never gave much thought to Madonna as entertainer or cultural force, pace Camille Paglia and the Reservoir Dogs. I stole my standard line on her from writer and critic Clive James, who said that she sings better than she acts, she dances better than she sings, and we all know somebody who dances better.

Her shenanigans the last few years have only made it tougher: touting kabbalah, kissing Britney Spears, rapping about soy lattes. Lately she’s been coming on like everyone’s crazy aunt Madge, who still hasn’t learned to dress age-appropriately.

Then I saw her latest video, available here and here. Now I’m ready to become an icon member of her fan club.

There’s the song, which is so infectious that the CDC should be notified. Then there’s Madonna, looking spectacular. Part of the credit has to go to yoga, but she’s also smiling here. I’m not sure if I’ve seen that before.

Finally there’s the video itself, directed by Johan Renck. It’s charged with a raucous energy, at times playing like the Luc Besson version of YOU GOT SERVED. It even has parkour in it.

There’s only one word to describe the ending, with its tribe of Madonna-led dancers busting old-school moves in a video arcade: joyous. I’ve watched this video over and over in the last 24 hours, because it makes me feel like a million bucks.

Music: “My Humps,” Black Eyed Peas

Conversely, I hate this song, currently the top download on iTunes. It’s the one in which singer Fergie offers a paean to “my hump, my hump, my hump/my lovely lady lumps.” Her boasts prompt witty rejoinders from her bandmates, like “Whatcha gonna do with all that breasts, all that breast inside that shirt?” It makes Kelis’ “Milkshake” seem like the essence of sophistication. At least that bit of pop ephemera was built around a metaphor, even a thuddingly obvious one.

I don’t mean to give the Steve Allen treatment to a stupid dance record. But whenever I hear this song – every twelve minutes – all I can think of is that criticism leveled at Spinal Tap. The Peas are “treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry.” Only, you know, without the poetry.

Miscellaneous: Link

Two of my favorite authors, Terrill Lee Lankford and Reed Farrel Coleman, are featured in the Wall Street Journal’s clear-eyed look at the harsh realities of the publishing business. Read it while the WSJ is free for the day.

Movie: Elevator to the Gallows (1958)

A friend called me three months ago, when this film played in New York, to tell me to watch for it here. It’s good to have people looking out for your interests.

Louis Malle was only 24 years old – a mere vingt quatre ans – when he made this tightly controlled New Wave noir. It’s one of the coolest movies I’ve ever seen, in the original hipsters’ sense of the word. Paris at night, Jeanne Moreau in an early role, soundtrack by Miles Davis.

A man commits the perfect murder only to get trapped in the elevator at the scene. His lover (Moreau), baffled that he’s missed their rendezvous, wanders the streets questioning their entire relationship. Meanwhile, a teenaged couple obsessed with trouble and each other steals the man’s car for a crime spree of their own. As the night progresses, the fates of all four become hopelessly intertwined. The wrap-up is particularly satisfying.

Rialto Pictures’ website features a trailer guaranteed to whet the appetite, as well as the dates of upcoming screenings around the U.S. Past Rialto re-releases like LE CERCLE ROUGE and THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS have preceded impressive Criterion DVDs, so a new home video version could be in the offing.

The high point of seeing this movie had nothing to do with the film itself. I was in the lobby when an elderly woman asked me, “Which way to the gallows?” Would that I’d had a clever answer.

Movie: From Hell It Came (1957)

While looking up GALLOWS under its original U.S. title FRANTIC in my trusty Leonard Maltin guide, I came across the review for this Grade-Z horror film. Leonard says, “As walking-tree movies go, this is at the top of the list.” You’ve got to figure that the Ents in the LORD OF THE RINGS series have wrested that title away. Still, FROM HELL had a good run.

Miscellaneous: Links

Slate’s slideshow on Calvin & Hobbes, “the last great newspaper comic strip,” has bumped that Bill Watterson collection higher up on my Christmas list. Over at Mystery*File, Gary Warren Niebuhr’s look at the Honey West books shows that you can’t go home again. Ah, to return to that bygone era of the international eye-spy with ample assets and professional football in Los Angeles.

Miscellaneous: Critics’ Choice

Nancy Franklin’s latest TV column in the New Yorker, which looks at several new sitcoms, contains her usual sharp writing. She suggests that the recent fallow period for comedies is what allowed offbeat shows like ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT and SCRUBS to survive despite low ratings. But now that the format is hot again, new sitcoms will be expected to deliver at once.

Her main focus is NBC’s hit MY NAME IS EARL, which she describes as “charmless and patronizing, and as refreshing as dust.” Ouch. You’d think that a review that bad would keep me from watching. But Franklin also says that EARL contains “more than a whiff of MALLRATS.” Rosemarie and I have an irrational degree of affection for that Kevin Smith movie, largely due to EARL star Jason Lee’s ridiculously charismatic performance. A weekly version of that goofball flick sounds worth a look to me.

GreenCine Daily steered me toward New York Times film critic Dave Kehr’s blog. His latest post does the impossible: it has me even more excited to see the adaptation of Scott Phillips’ killer crime novel THE ICE HARVEST.

TV: Masters of Horror

Here’s one new show that I am watching. Showtime presents 13 hour-long fright films by genre specialists. The premiere episode reunited Don Coscarelli with mojo storyteller Joe R. Lansdale after their success with BUBBA HO-TEP. The result was as intense as anything I’ve ever seen on the tube. This week’s episode, with Stuart (RE-ANIMATOR) Gordon turning once again to H.P. Lovecraft, made for a solid follow-up. Upcoming installments will be directed by Dario Argento, John Carpenter and Takashi Miike, and include adaptations of stories by Clive Barker and Richard Matheson.

Miscellaneous: And I Didn’t Have All I Could Eat, Either

The other day I received an email from Netflix informing me of a recent class action settlement. A former subscriber had filed suit against the company, claiming that they did not provide “unlimited” DVD rentals and “one day delivery” as promised. The company has denied any wrongdoing or liability, but has also reached an out-of-court settlement giving eligible members a free one-month service upgrade that they then have to remember to cancel. Naturally, I couldn’t be bothered.

Even in an age of ridiculous lawsuits, I still can’t believe someone went to court over this. Then again, when I was in New York last week I couldn’t believe people called 911 to say “I smell pancakes!” Clearly I need to be more on edge. Maybe I’d pick up some extra money. I’m still waiting for my David Manning and Milli Vanilli windfalls.

Miscellaneous: Link

The Onion AV Club assesses the past decade in underrated movies. I don’t agree with all of their choices, but any list that talks up LORD OF WAR, CELLULAR, SPARTAN, DARK BLUE, VANILLA SKY, WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER, OFFICE SPACE, ZERO EFFECT, TIN CUP, FUNNY BONES and multiple Walter Hill films has forever won a place in my heart. Elsewhere, Slate considers the rock snob.

Movie: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Go see this one. Trust me. It’s a blast.

Shane Black was screenwriting’s poster boy in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, scoring huge paydays for action scripts with wildly outsized characters. LETHAL WEAPON reinvented the form and contains a genuine edge of danger. THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT is uneven, but at its best it plays like a daft popcorn masterpiece.

Now Black is directing as well as writing, and it turns out he’s the best interpreter of his own work. He knows that for all the over-the-top slam-bang going on, his stories are actually about people driven by forces they can’t control or understand to find the truth. The secret of boy’s own adventure movies is that boys actually believe this stuff.

Robert Downey, Junior plays a two-bit New York thief mistaken for an actor. He’s shipped out to Los Angeles to audition for a role under the guidance of a tough gay P.I. (Val Kilmer). The two become embroiled in a convoluted murder plot out of a ‘40s crime novel. Quite literally: Black based his script in part on one of Brett Halliday’s Mike Shayne mysteries. The story even includes a series of cheap detective paperbacks that look like the Shayne books. Dig those crazy covers.

Not that the plot matters. It’s an excuse for Black to send up storytelling clichés in movies and in mysteries while at the same time revealing how satisfying they can be when used effectively.

Downey has never been better. He’s finally in a movie that matches his hell-for-leather metabolism. And Kilmer, who started in comedies like TOP SECRET! and the underrated REAL GENIUS, blows the roof off the place. Their scenes together crackle with a crazy, hellzapoppin’ energy. It’s like watching one of the great comedy teams of yesteryear. Normally I’d never say this, but here goes: I want a sequel. Bad.

Miscellaneous: Big Apple Grab Bag

Selected highlights of my trip to New York:

- Correcting a long-standing oversight by finally going to the top of the Empire State Building.

- Coming over the George Washington Bridge after a weekend in the country as “Native New Yorker” plays on the radio.

- Stumbling onto a bistro named after a favorite movie and getting one of the best hamburgers I’ve ever had.

- Discovering that I am not suffering from olfactory hallucinations.

- Taking a terrific walking tour of Dorothy Parker’s New York and absorbing just how much of American culture was created in the 20 blocks around Times Square.

- Concocting this recipe for a perfect day. Sleep late. Have lunch at a restaurant that only serves grilled cheeses. Go see a new print of the mesmerizing Nicholson/Antonioni film THE PASSENGER on the big screen. Have post-show snack at a place that only serves rice pudding. Meet friends for a tapas dinner. Walk back to temporary digs through Greenwich Village on the Saturday before Halloween, taking in a dizzying array of costumes.

- Walking the southern tip of Manhattan on our last morning in town, pausing only for the occasional Bloody Mary to slake an Indian summer thirst.

Miscellaneous: Links

I’m going to have to rely on Overheard in New York to tide me over for the next few months. A book based on the site is on the way, with an intro by my spiritual father Lawrence Block.

Mystery*File editor Steve Lewis and I tag-teamed on a review of ‘70s TV classic GET CHRISTIE LOVE! It’s now up at the Mystery*File website, along with a fascinating interview with author Dorothy Uhnak, whose books inspired the series.

Great news: Ed Gorman is back, and he’s blogging.

Website Update: I Have Returned

I'm back. Utterly spent, but back. Regular posting should resume shortly. In the meantime, the latest installment of my column In the Frame is up at Steve Lewis' Mystery*File. That should tide you over until I get my sea legs again.

I would, however, like to comment on one event that transpired while I was incommunicado. As I predicted, the White Sox won the World Series. Which means we all have one year to get our affairs in order. Remember who told you first.

Website Update: Brief Hiatus

Every so often I get the urge to test myself. Do I have what it takes to compete on the mean streets? To make it in the big town? To cut it in a permanent orange alert environment?

It's time for my annual pilgrimage home to New York City. I may post from the road, I may not. I make no guarantees. I'll be back on what passes for my regular schedule around Halloween. In the meantime, check out the sites on the links page and take care of yourselves. I want to find this place exactly as I left it or I'll call your mothers.

Movie: The Birds (1963)

When we heard that Turner Classic Movies would be showing Alfred Hitchcock’s THE BIRDS with Tippi Hedren in attendance, we had to go. We don’t get many movie stars in this neck of the woods. They’re all up in Vancouver. Although Rosemarie did once see Ethan Hawke coming out of our local supermarket. We never figured out why he was there. The produce selection is good, but not two-time Oscar nominee good.

Ms. Hedren (suddenly I’m Larry King – “Ms. Tippi Hedren for the hour”) looked every inch the movie star. She was literally dazzling; every time she moved in her chair, the light bounced off a different diamond. She was also wearing the pin depicting three birds in flight that Hitch himself presented to her when he signed her to a contract more than forty years ago.

TCM host Robert Osborne led her through a spirited interview. She was marvelously self-effacing, saying that Hitch wanted an unknown for the lead in THE BIRDS because any established actress would have known not to take the part. She told some wonderful stories about Hitchcock’s technique, but was also very forthright about the director’s obsession with her, which went far beyond their onscreen collaborations. Hitch wanted to control how she dressed, what she ate, what books she read. Osborne asked if Hitch’s wife Alma knew. Ms. Hedren said she did, and that she was very sorry about it. Ultimately, Ms. Hedren had to tell Hitchcock that she was uncomfortable with their relationship and didn’t want to work with him anymore. He accepted that – but also refused to allow her to act in other films. “For years, directors and producers came up to me and said they’d wanted me for a role, but Hitch wouldn’t allow it,” she said. “The worst was when I found out that Francois Truffaut had wanted to cast me. I’d never heard a word about it. That one hurt.”

Osborne is too much of a showman to let the conversation end on a down note, so he asked Ms. Hedren about the wildlife refuge she’s run for decades and her daughter Melanie Griffith. He closed with some kind words about Evan Hunter, who took the film’s premise from Daphne DuMaurier and concocted the screen story himself.

Then, on to the movie. I’ve seen THE BIRDS more than any other Hitchcock film, and I still don’t know how I feel about it. The attack scenes are brilliant, executed with a chilling indifference. The lack of explanations – and the inconclusive ending – are still deeply unsettling. But that first hour of half-baked psychology is awfully slow.

The sound in the theater was first-rate. Loud enough to make me shield my eyes, lest they be pecked out next.

You never know who’s going to show up at these things. There was the celebrity hound in our aisle, who shouted out allegedly witty remarks to Ms. Hedren and then left before the movie started. And the contingent from the Art Students’ League who decamped en masse about twenty minutes in. And the musky-odored gent ahead of us in line, who was there because “movies cost too much, and I heard this one’s free.”

Then again, there was the man who queued up behind us, took one look at the crowd, and said, “Lot of Rod Taylor fans, I guess.” You, sir, made our evening.

Website: Ed Gorman & Friends

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve linked to Ed’s blog. Yesterday he put up what he called his final post. Ed has shut down his site before only to come back. I hope he does so again.

Bill Crider does a far better job than I could explaining Ed’s many contributions to the crime fiction community. I’ve been a Gorman fan for a long time. His blog inspired me to start my own, and the plugs he graciously gave this site in its early days accounted for most if not all of its traffic. For that, I’ll always be in his debt.

Ed is one of the great appreciators, always singling out quality work no matter the medium or genre. By coincidence, in the past week I caught up with two films that Ed brought to my attention:

MISTER BUDDWING (1966) – Amnesia victim James Garner wanders the black-and-white streets of New York attempting to reconstruct his identity. It’s a surprisingly experimental movie, with the role of Garner’s significant other played by several women that his character encounters. I went in expecting a thriller, but the film posed a far more disturbing question. Does losing your way mean losing yourself?

NO DOWN PAYMENT (1957) – Sort of a BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES set a decade later, as WWII vets begin moving out to the suburbs only to face entirely new problems. Ed’s right to single out Tony Randall’s performance as a striver driven to alcohol by the need to keep up with the Joneses.

The films have a lot in common. They deserve to be better known. They’re based on novels by authors generally seen as crime writers (Evan Hunter and John McPartland, respectively). And they focus squarely on the human wants and needs of their characters, a quality evident in all of Ed Gorman’s work.

Like a lot of other people, I’m keeping my bookmark in place and waiting for his return.

Website Update: Changes

The incremental design change continues. I’ve tweaked the Links page, but that’s the least of it. The Purpose page is no more, because by this point even readers of Parade magazine know what a blog is. As for Theories, I finally had to admit that I was never going to update that section of the site. So I’ve kissed it goodbye.

But I stand behind the sentiment that graced that page for lo these many months: everything that is wrong with society can be blamed on either hippies or television.

Book: Hell Hath No Fury, by Charles Williams (1953)

It reads like the ur-noir novel. A slick operator in a small town tempted by a good girl, a bad woman, and an easy bank. Williams’ lethally spare prose conveys the heat, the desperation, and above all the sense that a man who feels trapped can talk himself into anything.

The novel was the basis for the 1990 film THE HOT SPOT. Williams himself had a hand in the adaptation. I somehow missed the film for fifteen years, and I have to say I’m glad. It’s simultaneously too faithful to the source – almost every incident from the book is recreated – and not faithful enough, serving up the action in an arch, self-conscious style.

Still, director Dennis Hopper casts the movie well. The good girl is future Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly, the bad woman recent Oscar nominee Virginia Madsen.

Don Johnson makes a perfect noir protagonist – thickset, good-looking, and not as smart as he thinks he is. I’ve thought Johnson was underrated ever since 1993’s GUILTY AS SIN, which I recently caught again on cable. Screenwriter and personal hero Larry Cohen begins with the conceit of recasting the femme fatale as a man. The result is schizophrenic, to say the least; director Sidney Lumet and costar Rebecca DeMornay seem to think they’re making a courtroom drama. But Johnson is squarely on Cohen’s page, unafraid to push the feminine aspects of his character. The actor also scored in a TV production of THE LONG HOT SUMMER, and as a comic foil in TIN CUP. I had hoped to check out Johnson’s new TV series JUST LEGAL, in which he played a role similar to Paul Newman’s in THE VERDICT, but it was an early casualty of the fall season.

You may have noticed that most of this post has focused on Don Johnson’s career instead of Charles Williams’ novel. That’s because there’s nothing I can say about an acknowledged classic of the genre other than: read it.

Movie: Thunder Road (1958)

The sometime Hollywood stuntman who anchors James Sallis’ DRIVE spoke so reverently about this movie that I had to seek it out. Robert Mitchum, who not only wrote the story but the title song as well, plays a Tennessee bootlegger facing down revenuers and the Mob.

A low budget and a formula script hamper the story, but the film has a genuine feel for life in the holler, and Mitchum creates another in his gallery of screw-you individualists. And fans of fine motoring will find much to savor, including displays of the bootlegger’s turn (a 180-degree change of direction without stopping) and the moonshiner’s turn (the same thing done while driving in reverse). Yes, I had to look them up.

Movie: Blind Spot (1947)

It has been pointed out by many writers that endings are a bitch. But titles aren’t a walk in the park either. At times, they can be the inspiration for all that follows, like MARS NEEDS WOMEN or I CHANGED MY SEX.

They can arrive with the original idea or show up a few weeks later as if by fourth-class mail. Occasionally, a suitable one never presents itself. And then you’re left hanging.

Last year an entire screenplay fell into my head. Plot, characters, dialogue ... everything but a title. I wrote it in a white heat – now there’s a title – then slapped a placeholder on it. THE NEXT LEVEL. As in, “I’m gonna take this to ...”

My manager is very enthusiastic about the script but says we’ve got to call it something else. Out of curiosity I ask why.

“When I hear that phrase,” he says, “I think of video games.”

“Damn,” says the PlayStation-less I. “We’ve got to call it something else.”

Thus began the title fight. The two of us come up with a dozen alternates. Friends and associates contribute even more. The winner, by almost unanimous decision, is BLIND SPOT. It suits a noir-style thriller, and has certain thematic resonance. That’s the title it was optioned under earlier this year.

Other movies have gone by that name. There’s the acclaimed documentary about Hitler’s secretary. And a 1947 mystery which is unavailable on video.

I vowed that at some point, I would track that BLIND SPOT down.

One of the highlights of the fall cinema season in this neck of the woods is the Seattle Art Museum’s film noir series, which always sells out instantly. A few days after that happened, I took a look at this year’s program.

October 13. Blind Spot. 1947.

This is where I’m supposed to explain how difficult it was for me to land a ticket. Nope. A friend put me in touch with SAM’s film curator. When I told him why I had to see the movie, he said, “Don’t worry. We’ll make room for you.”

This is where I’m supposed to say that the 1947 film is a hidden treasure. After all, Leonard Maltin gives it three stars and calls it a “tight little mystery.” Can’t do that, either. It’s got a clever premise. Chester ‘Boston Blackie’ Morris plays an alcoholic writer forced to prove that he didn’t murder his publisher using the method he devised for his next novel. There are some nice jabs at the book business, and Constance Dowling is on hand to look lovely.

The print we watched came from the U.K. and by all accounts is the only one in existence other than the original negative. I was one of the younger people in the audience last night, and it’s strange to think that someday I could be one of the few people who has seen this particular film.

But with any luck, it will live on through the title. A huge grin split my face when it came up on screen and stayed there throughout the movie. Although when the film ended, I did have this thought:

My BLIND SPOT will be better.

Book: Red Harvest, by Dashiell Hammett (1929)

Novelist James Reasoner recently wrote on his blog about the impact of having a teacher talk to you about a book you’re reading. It’s a powerful moment that hints that the transition to adult life might not be as hard as you think, and may already have started.

I remember how grown-up I felt when Miss Clark asked me how I was enjoying Martin Cruz Smith’s GORKY PARK. I was even reading the U.K. edition that I’d picked up in Ireland. I was quite the young sophisticate, in my smoking jacket from Botany 250.

The most memorable of these encounters came on the first day of my first college English course. The professor wanted to begin with beginnings, and hit us with this opening paragraph:

I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn’t think anything of what he had done to the city’s name. Later I heard men who could manage their r’s give it the same pronunciation. I still didn’t see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves’ word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better.

On day one of college, I was taught that the kind of books I wanted to read actually mattered. I still consider that knowledge a gift.

As soon as class ended I ran to the library and checked out a copy of RED HARVEST. That night, I read it for the first time. I revisited it most recently the other day. It’s still a staggering piece of work, a relentless narrative engine that’s also a definitive exploration of corruption.

I made a point of watching MILLER’S CROSSING again after I reread it. It’s said that the Coen Brothers wrote this script in frustration after being unable to secure the rights to HARVEST. The result is a Hammett pastiche that captures the flavor of much of his work. The Coens continue to use this approach to great effect; THE BIG LEBOWSKI riffs on Chandler and in particular Robert Altman’s adaptation of THE LONG GOODBYE, while THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE is the best unofficial James M. Cain movie there is.

Miscellaneous: Craig, Daniel Craig

Rumors that Craig would be the new James Bond have been circulating for months. Now that Variety and Slate have picked up the story, it’s seeming more like reality.

Craig is a fine actor – if you haven’t seen LAYER CAKE, rent it at once – and his casting, if true, hints that the 007 producers may finally be serious about reinventing the character in a meaningful way.

Conventional wisdom holds that a franchise part like James Bond can straitjacket an actor. I don’t buy it. Playing Bond put Pierce Brosnan in interesting films like THE TAILOR OF PANAMA. And no one worked the role like Sean Connery. During the height of his 007 fame, he appeared in movies as varied as MARNIE, THE HILL and THE OFFENCE. I’d love to see an actor of Craig’s caliber in films half as demanding.

Miscellaneous: All-Sports Edition

The halftime guests in the booth on MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL were Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jim Belushi. Interviewed separately. Meaning that ABC staffers blew the opportunity to reunite the stars of RED HEAT live on the air. Do I have to do everyone’s job for them?

Now to baseball. Considering all the ink spilled over the Yankees/Red Sox “greatest rivalry in sports,” I take a perverse satisfaction in seeing both teams bow out of the playoffs in the first round. Factor in another early exit for the hated Atlanta Braves and I’m pretty happy about the league championships.

I don’t have a dog in this particular fight, but if I were a betting man I’d pick the White Sox to win the World Series. And if that happens, watch out. The Red Sox take it one year and the White Sox the next? Only the crosstown Cubs are left, and after they win the 2006 Fall Classic the world will immediately come to an end. God himself will appear at Wrigley Field and say, “All right, I let all the cursed franchises win one more. Now it’s time to go.”

At which point a great cry will rise up from this region of the country. “But what about the Mariners? They’ve never ever been to the World Series!”

And the Good Lord will reply, “An expansion team? Screw that. Everybody has ten minutes and then, seriously, we’re outta here.”

Movie: Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

The first full-length adventure of W&G contains a rousing action climax typical of the shorts produced by Aardman Animation, a host of sly tributes to old Universal horror films, and a script packed with double entendres and bad puns worthy of Benny Hill. Which I intend as a high compliment. Ralph Fiennes is priceless as an upper-crust lout. Not every Englishman can utter “What ho!” with such brainless bravado.

But enough about the movie. It’s time for me to use this blog as it was intended: to vent about everyday annoyances.

Thanks to poor planning on the part of the theater’s management, the ticket-holders line is stretching into the parking lot instead of along the sidewalk. By the time we arrive all of the handicapped spaces are blocked, and the line has reached the first parked vehicle. The woman one step ahead of us squeezes into the last inch of available space, pressing her body flat against the minivan as if she’s just busted out of the joint.

The decision falls to me. If I go to her right, the line will arc out to the sidewalk. Where it’s supposed to be. If I stand on the left, the line will continue into the middle of the parking lot. Which is rapidly filling up with cars.

Naturally, I break right. I do not expect any thanks for this. I simply want the wisdom of my action to be acknowledged with grateful, wordless awe.

This does not happen.

Instead, the next group of people stands to the left of the woman making like Raffles, the gentleman thief. Others - with kids - begin milling behind them, studiously ignoring me.

And vehicles are still pouring into the lot.

Years of ushering instincts kick in, and I find myself making a public announcement. “Can we please move the line to the right so no one is in the way of traffic?”

Woman several places ahead of me, in no way affected by this request: I think that’s an excellent idea.

Woman hard against the minivan, who also does not have to move: Uh, OK.

The latecomers lope around the minivan and queue up behind me. The first of them is a pixie-faced hipster chick. Who smirks at me and says, in best Pacific Northwest passive-aggressive fashion:

“Sure, if it’ll keep you from stressing about it.”

I don’t want to overstate my actions. I’m no hero. All I’ll say is this: lives were saved by what I did out there. Including the lives of children.

And for my trouble, a Lisa Loeb manqué in an artfully ratty cardigan calls me uptight.

It’s not easy being a force for good in your time.

Miscellaneous: Quote of the Day

From this New York Times article on writers’ rooms:

“If I’m at home working, people don’t respect that that much; they call or text or e-mail, or make arrangements to have coffee.”

And, of course, you simply can’t ignore these distractions. When others “make arrangements to have coffee,” you have no choice but to go.

Book: Drive, by James Sallis (2005)

Abraham Lincoln believed that a man’s legs should be long enough to reach the ground. Jennifer Tilly makes a similar observation in the movie LET IT RIDE. Frankly, I prefer her version. No knock on the Great Emancipator, but La Tilly has better stems.

Length is also an issue in books. The latest from James Sallis is a mere 158 pages. Yet somehow, it encompasses a man’s entire life. A life spent behind the wheel, never running but always moving.

There are other areas where length matters. (Not that one. Get your mind out of the gutter.) Knives, for instance. Does the blade have what it takes to wound?

That’s all I can tell you about DRIVE. It’s short enough to read in a single sitting. And long enough to cut deep.

Miscellaneous: Observations

1. We had a Los Angeles-style freeway chase here this week, covered live on TV. Not that I bothered to watch. The next day one of the local affiliates ran an ad with a city police officer saying the station’s helicopter provided invaluable assistance. Unbelievable, I thought. They’re passing sensationalism off as a public service.

Last night, I saw another station’s ad. In which a county sheriff thanks their helicopter. This could get ugly.

2. Ridley Scott’s Crusades epic KINGDOM OF HEAVEN is out on DVD next week. One of the ads features the tagline “Without faith, there can be no future.” So far, I’ve only seen this spot on Fox News.

3. If you heard that Jack Carter was thinking about mounting a Senate bid in Nevada, wouldn’t you assume it was this guy and not former President Carter’s son? Wouldn’t you hope it was the first guy?

Miscellaneous: Links

Jaime Weinman offers a lovely appreciation of comic actor Hamilton Camp, who improved everything he appeared in. At Ed Gorman’s blog, Terrill Lee Lankford considers a few other luminaries we’ve recently lost.

Movie: The Great Silence (1969)

IFC’s SPAGHETTI WEST documentary certainly did its job. I’m hooked on these movies now.

This entry is revered by aficionados of the Italian western as perhaps its greatest achievement. It’s certainly among the most political examples of the form; director Sergio Corbucci describes it as a Vietnam allegory, although as is often the case with allegories I’m not entirely sure what the parallels are supposed to be.

Jean-Louis Trintignant plays a mute gunman who serves as avenger of the downtrodden. He heads deep into the mountains to square off against a brutal bounty hunter (Klaus Kinski) who always stays within the letter of the law. The action unfolds in a town that makes DEADWOOD look like the Harper Valley P.T.A. (Your choice of novelty song, low-budget movie or short-lived TV series.)

I have to admit that while I liked the movie, it didn’t bowl me over, largely due to the political content. Spaghetti westerns are a stylized genre to begin with, so amping up the symbolism threatens to push SILENCE to the brink of abstraction. Trintignant’s character never shoots first and only acts in self-defense; to put his technique in SEINFELD terms, he’s a goader. It’s an indication of the tenor of the then-times that behavior that made Audie Murphy such a contemptible villain in NO NAME ON THE BULLET is acceptable for a hero a mere ten years later.

The physical production of the film is impressive, exploiting bleak wintry landscapes in a way that prefigures Robert Altman’s McCABE & MRS. MILLER. The ending may be the darkest, visually and philosophically, that I’ve ever seen, and is more powerful for being of a piece with the rest of the movie. It doesn’t come from cynical nihilism, but a cohesive worldview borne of a turbulent era. All of it set to one of Ennio Morricone’s most haunting scores.

So far I’ve worked my way through two of the genre’s three stages as cited in the IFC doc: the films that revitalized the western (the Leone/Eastwood collaborations), then the ones that politicized it. All I have left are the parodies starring Terence Hill. These include movies with titles like FOUR GUNMEN OF AVE MARIA and GOD FORGIVES ... I DON’T, in which Hill plays a desperado named ... Cat Stevens?

The ‘Huh?’ Moment of the Day

From Timothy Egan’s New York Times article on the perils of hiking in Montana in the late summer and early fall:

“... the temperature can plummet 50 degrees in a few hours, and it can snow on a dime.”

I hope that’s a local expression. Stopping on a dime is an extraordinary demonstration of motor skills. The heavens opening up on some pocket change? Not really that big a deal.

Miscellaneous: Mystery*File

Steve Lewis’ first-rate ‘zine Mystery*File is migrating to the web. The site already features plenty to read, including the latest installment of my column In The Frame. This one reviews two of the later novels in the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child, as well as Universal’s first batch of film noir DVDs. Check out the whole issue. You won’t be disappointed.

TV: Extras

The HBO series from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant isn’t as good as THE OFFICE, or the surprisingly solid NBC remake of THE OFFICE. But it’s still remarkably funny, lacerating celebrities like no other show on the tube.

Consider this exchange, in which Ben Stiller (playing himself) tears into Gervais as an extra on the movie he’s directing:

Stiller: Who are you? ... That’s right. Nobody. And who am I?
Gervais: It’s either Starsky or Hutch, I can never remember.
Stiller: Was that supposed to be funny?
Gervais: You tell me. You were in it.

This after Stiller has told the Bosnian refugee whose life has inspired the film he’s making to “stop going on about your fucking dead wife.” Ouch.

Miscellaneous: Link

GreenCine Daily has an interview with the criminally underrated director Walter Hill. It turns out his classic 1979 action film THE WARRIORS, just released as a special edition DVD, is actually science fiction. That gang dressed as baseball players should have been a dead giveaway.

Movie: A History of Violence (2005)

In college I took a class called “The Body In Film,” a survey of the ways the human anatomy was treated in movies. It gave me the chance to see rarely-screened films like Nicolas Roeg’s BAD TIMING and Dusan Makavejev’s one-of-a-kind W.R., MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM, which is half documentary about psychotherapist Wilhelm Reich and half ... well, I never actually worked that out. It was the only course where the opening day lecture included the phrase “fucking like puppies.” In the film school, at any rate. I can’t speak for the veterinary college.

Not that I told my parents what their tuition money was going for. When my report card arrived, my mother asked about the class. I said, “It’s about structure. You know, like the body of a letter?”

“Right,” my mother said. “That must be why you got an A.”

Much of that grade came from my term paper on the films of David Cronenberg. It was easy to write, because I truly loved the subject. THE FLY is one of the great movies of the 1980s, a decade in which the director also made VIDEODROME and DEAD RINGERS. He has a singular sensibility that makes his every film worth seeing. The notion of him tackling a contemporary pulp thriller was almost more than I could bear.

Imagine my surprise when it left me cold. At least at first.

The story of a seemingly peaceful man facing up to his dark past is a familiar one in several genres. So familiar, perhaps, that Cronenberg never seems fully engaged by it, using it solely as a carrier for ideas that interest him. But I think of myself as a genre guy, so the underdeveloped plot and inconsistencies of character were initially all I saw. Roger Ebert, in his rave review, notes that VIOLENCE “is not a movie about plot, but about character.” I’m old-fashioned enough to think that the two should be one and the same, especially in a thriller. I like a little text with my subtext.

Ah, well. Nobody’s perfect. I’ll console myself with the new 2-disc edition of THE FLY.

Silly me. Days passed and I couldn’t shake the movie. Cronenberg has packed its deceptively simple frame with concepts and moments that resonate:

- Acts of violence that, as in life, erupt with suddenness and never play out as expected, at times veering into the blackest of comedy

- Unruly sex scenes that deepen our understanding of the participants

- Discomfiting notions about the obligations of family, biological and otherwise

And on top of that, brilliant performances. Maria Bello is matchless; I would now like her to be cast in everything. And William Hurt comes along to blow the roof off the joint in the best scene I’ve encountered in any movie this year.

I should have known Cronenberg would never let me down. VIOLENCE is like a dinner in which the main course is undercooked, but the side dishes are divine. There’s still plenty with which to make a meal.

TV: Class Dismissed

Can’t anybody be low-rent on television any more?

The question is prompted by last night’s premiere of the ABC revival of THE NIGHT STALKER. The sometimes cheesy original series and the pair of genuinely scary TV movies it was based on have always been favorites of mine, and introduced me to the work of Richard Matheson.

The new version of STALKER, overseen by X-FILES producer Frank Spotnitz, is smartly made, with a visual style that draws on Michael Mann’s COLLATERAL. Do I miss the dry wit and seersucker elegance of Darren McGavin? Naturally. But I’m no purist. Stuart Townsend is a fine actor who brings an edge to his portrayal of reporter Carl Kolchak. And Spotnitz has updated the show in other inventive ways.

Except for one, which isn’t his fault because it’s endemic to modern TV. The new Kolchak has too much money.

In the old show, Carl was a stringer for a bottom-of-the-barrel news service. Which made sense: a guy with a regular byline isn’t going to chase after the supernatural every week. McGavin’s Kolchak, with his cheap suit and his straw hat, was past caring about his reputation. All he wanted was the story.

In the wake of the Hurricane Katrina coverage, some on the right claimed that it was un-American to talk about class, that doing so was denying that the country was the land of opportunity. Firstly, bullshit. Secondly, like it or not, money or the lack thereof is going to have an impact on your decision making. That impact should factor into storytelling. Even on TV.

A reporter who’s never going to make the front page again will chase down stories no one else cares about. Just as a broken-down P.I. living in a trailer will take a different approach to the cases he investigates.

But the networks, in their compassion, don’t want to expose us to characters who might be seen as ‘losers.’ After all, it could affect us as consumers. So the new Kolchak isn’t just younger, he’s also a success, living in a gorgeous house that I’ve seen in at least two movies instead of a pressboard hovel in the Valley. His obsession with the paranormal still has to be explained – he can’t just find it interesting – so now he’s saddled with a tragic backstory involving his wife’s murder.

There are exceptions to this class-unconsciousness. ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT is about wealthy people being thrown off the gravy train, and much of the fun in the late, lamented (at least by me) EYES came from Tim Daly’s reveling in being rich. I’m convinced MY NAME IS EARL has scored in its initial outings because the character and setting are atypical for TV.

One other note on STALKER: I thought digitally adding footage of McGavin from the old show was ... kinda creepy. And not in a good way.

Book: Different Kinds of Dead and Other Tales, by Ed Gorman (2005)

Campfire stories.

I consider that phrase high praise, even though growing up in New York I never encountered campfire #1. There may have been a few in Florida, where I went to high school, but I was too busy huddling close to the air conditioner to go look for them.

One thing I did discover in Florida was Stephen King’s book NIGHT SHIFT. I remember copies being passed from one kid to another like samizdat. At first, I resisted; my snob impulses kicked in early. But eventually I succumbed, and as is so often the case the one who holds out longest falls the hardest. I still have my copy from those days. I don’t know which is scarier, the cover image of a bandaged hand studded with unblinking eyes or the list price of $3.95.

I read every story in the book, not just the one about the killer washing machine but the heartbreaking “The Woman in the Room.” Each tale featuring lean prose and a feel for character and place that made the scary ones even more terrifying.

Reading Ed Gorman’s latest short fiction collection was like revisiting those days of squeezing in one last shocker before study hall ended.

Ed’s a King fan, too, and dedicates my favorite story in the book to him. “The Brasher Girl” would not have been at all out of place in NIGHT SHIFT. Other influences turn up; “A Girl Like You” carries the melancholy sting of Ray Bradbury, and the elegant title tale reads like Henry James on the prairie.

Above all, the stories are pure Gorman. Ed has few peers when it comes to depicting small town Midwest life and working-class disappointment, and he has a direct way of dealing with matters of the heart. Plenty of writers can combine those elements, but only Ed would ad alien abduction to the mix as he does in “The Long Sunset,” and to powerful effect.

Halloween’s coming up. Do yourself a favor and spend part of your allowance on this book. I gotta go to gym class.

Miscellaneous: Link

Speaking of samizdat, unpublished articles never die. They just get circulated via email. From Arts & Letters Daily.

Movie: Blood On The Moon (1948)

I should have included westerns on the list of genres that the late Robert Wise knew his way around. He plays to his strengths in this one, blending a film noir plot with the moody visuals of a Val Lewton movie. (Cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca shares Wise’s pedigree, having shot CAT PEOPLE and OUT OF THE PAST.)

With noir stalwarts like Robert Mitchum and Charles McGraw in the cast, it’s a good thing Walter Brennan is also on hand. Robert Preston plays an outright bastard. I’ve seen THE MUSIC MAN so many times that his performance here comes as the best kind of shock.

The Downside of Empathy

I’ve admitted to being hooked on Kathy Griffin’s reality series, which details the superhuman effort required to stay even marginally famous. My favorite aspect of the show was Kathy’s relationship with her non-showbiz husband. It was snarky but always supportive.

When I read via Defamer that they’re getting divorced, I felt genuinely bad. Then I felt genuinely foolish. I don’t even know these people.

The Upside of Illness

Thanks to a cold, I’ve spent the last few days staring at the TV. Which allowed me to catch a rerun of BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY featuring Jerry Orbach as an intergalactic record producer (think a less evil Simon Cowell) who stirs up youth violence via subliminal messages. He carries out his scheme with the aid of Richard (NIGHT COURT) Moll and Judy Landers, one of the lovely Landers sisters.

Or at least I think I saw it. I may be much sicker than I think.

Bidi-bidi-bidi. Thanks, Buck.

Movie: The Big Gundown (1967)

As part of its tribute to Italian westerns, IFC aired this Sergio Sollima film regarded as one of the finest non-Sergio Leone examples of the form. I’m not about to disagree. It’s a terrific, tough-minded movie with Lee Van Cleef as a quasi-lawman who agrees to track an accused rapist and murderer into Mexico in order to jumpstart his Senate campaign.

IFC’s SPAGHETTI WEST documentary cites GUNDOWN as one of the political films that changed the genre. Van Cleef is essentially a tool for moneyed interests while his quarry Cuchillo, played by Tomas Milian in several movies, is a savvy peasant.

Maybe I’m getting more conservative in my dotage – or maybe it’s because Van Cleef was ridiculously magnetic onscreen – but I couldn’t root against the man. I figure if Dennis Hopper, the man behind EASY RIDER, can go Republican and vote for George W. Bush twice, then I can pull for Van Cleef to get the job done.

R.I.P. Don Adams

The actor passed away on Sunday at the age of 82. Like any kid with a warped sense of humor and a taste for James Bond, I devoured GET SMART. Here’s hoping the forthcoming DVD release of the series brings its pleasures to a new audience.

Let’s not overlook the actor’s contributions to animation. That’s right, Chumley, I’m talking Tennessee Tuxedo. INSPECTOR GADGET was my kid brother’s after-school cartoon of choice, and Adams’ pinpoint timing made the show fun for older siblings.

My fondest memory of the actor is the syndicated audience participation series DON ADAMS’ SCREEN TEST. Each week wannabe actors would recreate famous movie scenes with the help of celebrity guest stars like Milton Berle and Mel Brooks. It was a silly, cheesy TV show, and I loved every minute of it.

Miscellaneous: Links

The Los Angeles Times recounts how politics have affected what sounds like a fascinating project from Albert Brooks.

Josh Friedman weighs in on the psychological factors that determine the makeup of a screenwriter:

In short, writers whose parents ignored them so they became class clowns like to pitch first and write second. On the other hand, writers whose parents ignored them so they became awkward little geeks who stayed in their room and read Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators like to write first and pitch never.

Writers who were both class clowns and awkward little geeks like to create blogs.

In the words of Troy McClure: My God, it’s like you’ve known me all my life!

Movie: Lord of War (2005)

I shouldn’t be surprised that LORD OF WAR hasn’t set the box office on fire. Nobody ever got rich doing black comedy. I’m a little disappointed that the critical community isn’t behind it. You’d think a movie that was both wildly entertaining and deeply subversive would get a little love.

Andrew Niccol’s film is alive in every frame, viscerally and intellectually. It burns with righteous anger. And it’s eager to play with both form and content.

It’s structured along the well-worn lines of the modern criminal epic. Count down the elements along with me:

- The insinuating voiceover that promises to pull no punches

- The jukebox soundtrack

- The close friend/family member whose psychological problems threaten the organization’s stability (think Joe Pesci in GOODFELLAS)

- The blankly perfect object of desire that will never fill the void, a la Michelle Pfeiffer in the 1983 version of SCARFACE

- The steady isolation of the main character, leading to a tragic comeuppance

And ... scene.

Niccol puts all these tropes in place only to turn each one on its head. He does this by having Nicolas Cage play an international arms dealer instead of a drug kingpin or mobster. Cage’s “crime” is in some cases legal and at other times tacitly approved by the world’s governments – but is always far more lethal than any caper the Corleones could cook up.

The knock on movies of this stripe is that they romanticize deviant behavior. It’s hard to buy the notion that crime doesn’t pay while watching charismatic hoodlums take whatever they want out of life. Niccol dynamites that conceit here. Cage isn’t some street-smart Machiavelli whacking his enemies on-screen while pushing horse to schoolkids off-camera. He’s just a salesman, a literal merchant of death – and yet thanks to Niccol’s kinetic storytelling, his life is exciting, compelling, even desirable.

For once, the voiceover doesn’t lie. Cage is never presented as heroic, or even anti-heroic. He’s a guy doing the one thing he’s good at, which happens to be sowing destruction wherever he goes, even in his own life. Forget THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE; if you want to meet the devil onscreen, look no further.

Every year, there’s at least one movie I spark to that no one else seems to care about. Remember, I’m the guy who called David Mamet’s SPARTAN the top film of 2004, and paramedics had to help me out of the theater when VANILLA SKY ended. So take it with a grain of salt when I say that LORD OF WAR is one of the best American films of the year.

Miscellaneous: Links

As everybody seems to be in a Bob Dylan frame of mind, I'll just say that you don't need this particular weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

So not only have I watched part of the first fall show to be canceled (well, it's obviously more than most of you did), I've also read Oprah's latest book club pick already. Finger on the pulse, baby. Finger on the pulse.

DVD: Cypher (2002)

1997’s CUBE is the working definition of a solid B-movie. The SF thriller about six people who find themselves trapped in a futuristic prison suffers from an obscure ending, but director Vincenzo Natali socks over the action with style. I eagerly awaited his next movie.

And waited. And waited.

Not that Natali wasn’t keeping busy. He got to work on this follow-up in short order, only to see it become caught in the logjam of Miramax releases as the company started its post-Weinstein transformation. A handful of those titles, like PROOF and AN UNFINISHED LIFE, will see the inside of theaters. Others are now surfacing on home video in bare-bones editions. Which is too bad, because CYPHER deserves better.

It’s a sly Philip K. Dick pastiche set in a near-future when everything looks vaguely ... Canadian. The ever-reliable Jeremy Northam plays a Silicon Valley milquetoast who feeds his yen for adventure by signing on as an industrial spy. His target: a software giant with a vast campus in the suburbs east of Seattle. I am sure it is in no way intended to resemble an actual company in this neck of the woods, one for which I have the utmost respect and that I do not fear in any way.

Northam soon discovers that the boring presentations he’s attending in global hot spots like Buffalo and Omaha are not what they appear to be, and that the truth may have something to do with mystery woman Lucy Liu. He lays on the Julius Kelp mannerisms a little thick at first, but it pays off.

Brian King’s script isn’t based on any PKD story, but the author’s influence is obvious. His great themes are now encoded in Hollywood’s DNA, and turn up in movies from THE TRUMAN SHOW to THE MATRIX. CYPHER’s low budget actually works in the movie’s favor. Most adaptations of Dick’s material, including the ones I like, ultimately become man-on-the-run thrillers. Financial constraints force CYPHER to keep the focus on ideas, as Northam’s character comes to question both his identity and his reality. Anyone familiar with Dick’s writing will spot the plot twists coming, but Natali’s smart, low-key approach is effective, and the closing scene packs a satisfying emotional punch.

The ‘No, Really?’ Item of the Day

According to Which John Cusack Are You?, I’m David Shayne from BULLETS OVER BROADWAY. I could have told you that without taking the test.

Movie: The Transporter 2 (2005)

Luc Besson has cranking out action movies down to a science: combine French style, American production values and the Hong Kong approach to fight scenes. This latest entry is pure, dizzy fun. It moves fast; at eighty minutes, it doesn’t have an ounce of extra fat – or a brain – to slow it down.

Besson’s action fare also has a willingness to embrace over-the-top emotion. One of the biggest surprises of 2005 is UNLEASHED, aka DANNY THE DOG, with Jet Li playing a man raised by crime boss Bob Hoskins (still my choice for villain of the year) as a pit bull. Li acts up a storm in this movie, and the ending is genuinely powerful.

Besson also borrows from the Roger Corman playbook by incorporating a soupçon (he’s French, see) of political content. A hit at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival, BANLIEUE 13 is a gloss on ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK that manages to comment on the ghettoizing of immigrants across Europe while staging fight scenes that use the urban sport of parkour.

Many of these films are written by Besson’s frequent collaborator Robert Mark Kamen. 20 years ago, Kamen wrote THE KARATE KID. Now he’s at the center of one of the world’s most prolific film factories. I’d love to know how he and Besson got together and work together.

In the first TRANSPORTER, a woman prepares breakfast for star Jason Statham. Included on the menu are madeleines, the cookie that sparked Marcel Proust’s reverie.

Rosemarie, a huge Luc Besson fan, commented on the scene afterward. “You can’t just make madeleines. You need a special pan. I don’t believe an ex-Special Forces soldier in a technosuave house would have one.”

This passes for weighty conversation around Chez K.

But Besson must have heard her complaint, because in the sequel, when grizzled French cop François Berléand (the best thing about T1, shoehorned into T2) is shown cooking in Statham’s house, we clearly see that the Transporter does indeed possess his very own madeleine pan.

Which is proof that it’s always about the writing.

TV: Spaghetti West

I had a beautifully wrought post about this IFC documentary ready to go. But Ed Gorman says all that I wanted to say, only better. Every Saturday night in September, IFC is airing key films from the genre. This week: THE BIG GUNDOWN and THE GREAT SILENCE.

Post-Operation Travolta: Peter Weller

Guess the actor doesn’t need my help. According to Entertainment Weekly, he earned a master’s degree in Renaissance art history last year. Now he’s teaching at Syracuse University, appearing in documentaries on the History Channel, and about to start work on his doctorate at the age of 58, all while keeping up his acting and directing careers.

It’s official. I used to want to be Buckaroo Banzai. Now I want to be Peter Weller when I grow up.

Miscellaneous: Quotes of Note

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK – I know there’s supposed to be a period at the end of the title, but dammit, it just looks wrong – has already taken home best actor and best screenplay honors from the Venice Film Festival. In the October 2005 issue of Premiere magazine, director/co-writer George Clooney describes the rehearsal process:

“(The cast) would come in and type out the news of the day on a typewriter. And (David Strathairn) would sit there and read it; just every morning, he would come in and read some of the news. We were watching, going, this is today’s news read by Edward R. Murrow. Oh my God. How different it sounds.”

I can only hope that Clooney rolled film while this was happening, and that some of this footage will be included on the DVD.

In the New York Times Book Review, Joe Queenan offers a surprisingly positive review of FAN-TAN, the film treatment-turned-novel by Marlon Brando and director Donald Cammell:

“... it sounds like the boys had a heap of fun cranking out this page turner while throwing back a few hundred martinis. There’s a lot to be said for this approach; if you can’t write a great novel, at least write a peculiar one and have a few laughs along the way.”

I particularly liked Queenan’s take on contemporary fiction:

“FAN-TAN is the kind of high-seas extravaganza nobody writes anymore because everybody’s too busy churning out books about land-based serial killers, perhaps concealing the Spear of Longinus beneath the Shroud of Turin in the glove compartment of a Dodge Neon that once belonged to Mary Magdalene’s luckless descendant, Rhiannon Schwartz.”

He also compares the book to the Kevin Spacey movie BEYOND THE SEA, so I pretty much have to read it.

R.I.P. Robert Wise

The Oscar-winning director passed away at age 91. And another link to the era of classical studio filmmaking has been severed.

Wise began in the cutting room working alongside Orson Welles, and directed his first features for Val Lewton’s legendary B-movie unit. That training, which emphasized technique in service of narrative, would serve him well in one of the most remarkable careers in Hollywood history.

Consider the range of genres he tackled: noir (BORN TO KILL, THE SET-UP, ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW), science fiction (THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN), horror (THE HAUNTING, proving he retained all that Lewton taught him). He also excelled at straightforward drama; I only recently discovered EXECUTIVE SUITE, still extraordinarily potent after 50 years.

And then, of course, there are the musicals that won him his Academy Awards, WEST SIDE STORY and THE SOUND OF MUSIC.

That last film also opened him up for a great deal of scorn from the critical community. Perhaps they never forgave him for his role in recutting Welles’ THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. Or maybe they simply undervalued a director who made his gifts work for the movie instead of the other way around, who felt his first duty was to storytelling. We won’t see his like again.

Junk Mail Title of the Day

Enjoy Employee Discount + idolatry. I guess Lee Iacocca really is back at Chrysler.

Movies: 2046 (2004, U.S. 2005), Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002, U.S. 2005)

These movies are linked for one reason: I saw them on the same day. Being a film buff is not for the faint of heart. Sometimes, to catch what’s interesting, you’ve got to double up, to adopt a festival mindset on what is otherwise an ordinary Saturday.

Sometimes, this approach pays off in spades.

I’d heard the stories about 2046, the latest from Wong Kar-Wai. The protracted production, the missed festival screenings, the wedge it drove into the relationship between the director and his greatest collaborator, the cinematographer Christopher Doyle.

Whatever went on, it was worth it. 2046 stuns. It’s a singular, transporting experience.

I could say it’s a quasi-sequel to 2000’s IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, but what would be the point? There’s a plot of sorts, but why go into it? Like all of Wong’s movies, it’s about desire, pain, and the moments when they overlap, whether they occur in late 1960s Hong Kong or the distant future.

It’s also about immersing yourself in an atmosphere, a feeling. To accuse Wong of favoring style over substance, as some critics have, misses the point. At his best, he’s a master of style as substance. He can express longing through the drape of a woman’s dress, convey a desperate romantic ache through the play of colors on screen. He sublimates emotions until the most intense of them – heartsickness, obsession – can be studied up close, like a cool, smooth pebble to be slipped into the pocket of a perfectly cut pair of slacks.

On top of that, you’ve got the actors. Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li, Faye Wong and Maggie Cheung, plus Tony Leung for the ladies. A more attractive cast you will never find.

Chan-wook Park’s film OLDBOY did more than make an impression on me. It may have left a mark. (It’s available on DVD now. Go get it!) I wasn’t about to pass up the chance to see his 2002 effort SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE at the Northwest Film Forum.

A thriller about a botched kidnapping, VENGEANCE isn’t as baroquely structured as OLDBOY. And while the director’s flair for startling images and plot twists is in evidence, he doesn’t employ them to the same devastating effect. But VENGEANCE is still a grueling, intense movie in which every shock is tied to genuine emotion. There are two characters who could be Mr. Vengeance in this movie, and you feel sympathy for both of them.

Plus, there were walkouts. Walkouts are always a good sign.

I spent Saturday morning working on a screenplay, then Rosemarie and I went out for a late lunch. After seeing these two extraordinary movies we met friends for sweet potato hush puppies and bourbon. As I turned in that night I realized that, for one day at least, I was living the life I had fantasized about when I was a teenager, stuck in a small Florida town.

Grab Bag: Dignity, Always Dignity

The other night I happened to flick from Bronson Pinchot on VH-1’s THE SURREAL LIFE to Bronson Pinchot on LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT.

In the former, he’s acting as referee between two of the most deluded figures on the pop cultural landscape, Omarosa (formerly of THE APPRENTICE and the hyphenated surname) and Janice Dickinson, who will be the first to identify herself as a supermodel. On the latter, he’s matching wits with Vincent D’Onofrio as a sleazy dentist suspected of murdering his wife.

The problem is I’ve seen more than a few minutes of Pinchot’s stint on THE SURREAL LIFE, in which he reveals himself to be, ahem, an oddball with a penchant for sexually inappropriate behavior. Knowledge that robbed his legitimate acting of some of its power. Which is unfortunate, because it’s obvious in his scenes with D’Onofrio that he can still bring the heat.

I can understand an actor’s impulse to stay in the limelight in the hope that it will lead to more work. For all I know, his SURREAL LIFE casting led to the L&O gig. But you don’t want that exposure to diminish your ability to do your job.

Contrast this with the example of Steve Guttenberg. (I’ve waited years to write that sentence.)

One of the most satisfying magazine articles I’ve read recently was this Entertainment Weekly piece on the POLICE ACADEMY series. It wants to poke snarky fun at the movies, but is thwarted at every turn by Guttenberg’s polite refusal to play along. The ending even has the snap of poetic justice.

Like all careers, Guttenberg’s has had ups and downs. Most actors’ lows, however, are not immortalized in song on THE SIMPSONS. (Curse you, Stonecutters!) But throughout, Guttenberg kept his focus on the work. He gave a solid performance in Jodie Foster’s HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS, and wrote and directed a low-budget adaptation of the play P.S. YOUR CAT IS DEAD.

This season, he joins the cast of the way-cool UPN series VERONICA MARS. Due in no small part to the fact that he’s held on to his credibility.

But nothing excuses the Goot’s appearance as a motorcycle-riding tough guy in the video for Michael Jackson’s “Liberian Girl.” Some things are simply beyond the pale.

Today’s TV Ad I Hate

The Verizon Wireless spot (which I can’t find online) in which the guy can’t work on his laptop in the coffee shop because of other people’s annoying behavior. Like ... sitting next to him. And drinking coffee. I think we’re supposed to feel his pain. I keep watching it in the hope there’s an alternate version in which he gets horribly scalded.

How Do You Feel About Cleveland?

I tried watching some of the John Roberts confirmation hearings on CNN’s The Situation Room today, but the show’s set made it impossible. Multiple screens on camera at once, all offering different angles of the same event. It was like watching a bad episode of 24. From one of the later seasons, when Jack Bauer finally goes to the bathroom.

Of course, maybe the real problem is that I miss Wolf Blitzer’s lead-in to his old show: Stand by for Hard News!

Book: Blonde Lightning, by Terrill Lee Lankford (2005)

In the interests of full disclosure, I will say that Terrill Lee Lankford is a friend of this website. Further, his previous novel EARTHQUAKE WEATHER was one of my favorites of 2004, a scorching, pitiless cry from the black heart of Hollywood that read like a cross between Jim Thompson and Nathanael West.

In BLONDE LIGHTNING, he picks up the story without losing a beat. EARTHQUAKE was set in the wake of the Northridge temblor of 1994. BLONDE unfolds amidst the L.A. tectonic shift known as the O.J. Simpson trial.

Ex-creative executive Mark Hayes is running out of money and is down to his last friend in Hollywood, faded writer/director Clyde McCoy. The two team up to make a low-budget thriller, the kind of movie where the most you can hope for is that it turns out better than it needs to be.

Mark’s duties as “associate producer” are vaguely defined. Mostly, he’s charged with keeping Clyde sober and his enemies away from the set. But trouble has a habit of following these two around, and their situation quickly goes from bad to worse.

In Mark, Lankford has created a slippery, borderline amoral protagonist who’s likable in spite of himself. He has just enough self-awareness to know how much of his soul he has left to lose. BLONDE is structured along more conventional lines than EARTHQUAKE, but brings these characters full circle in a richly satisfying way.

An earlier Lankford novel, the excellent SHOOTERS, features my all-time favorite blurb. From James Ellroy, it reads in part:

“This is a blood thriller that will vibrate your vindaloo!”

I’m still not sure what a “blood thriller” is. And if my vindaloo ever vibrated, I’d seek medical attention immediately.

TV: Navel-Gazing

Now that the cable networks’ coverage of Katrina is back in sensationalized, personality-driven mode – and plagued by the excesses itemized by Slate’s Jack Shafer here and here – I am once again someone who doesn’t watch TV news. I get by just fine without it. If there’s an emergency, I’m sure one of those nice people in the torch-wielding mob will fill me in on the details.

So I’m back to my usual TV diet: shows about show business.

HBO’s ENTOURAGE has been dismissed as shallow. Salon’s Heather Havrilevsky even said that the Katrina coverage pointed out how useless the series is. All I know is that a program where the biggest problem was whether a movie star would be able to commit to James Cameron’s AQUAMAN after Mandy Moore broke his heart came as sweet relief.

ENTOURAGE’s accuracy has never been in doubt. It’s also one of the best depictions of male friendship on TV. And Jeremy Piven continues to dazzle as superagent Ari Gold, particularly now that he’s no longer on top of his game.

I stuck out THE COMEBACK for Lisa Kudrow’s performance and the show’s hypnotic level of insider’s self-loathing. The later episodes tapped into some truly dark emotions and complex relationships, but the finale struck me as obvious.

It’s interesting to note that THE COMEBACK’s reality show within the show bears a striking similarity to Kathy Griffin’s MY LIFE ON THE D-LIST. Sitcom actress struggling to stay in the spotlight, wryly supportive civilian husband, gay best friend, fabulous house ... it’s all there.

My favorite thing about the slight but amusing HOPELESS PICTURES, IFC’s animated series starring several members of the Christopher Guest Repertory Company, is that each episode is only twenty minutes long. It’s like something on the old Dumont Network.

The best program about this business of show – and right now, the best thing on TV – is set in the theater. And in Canada. SLINGS & ARROWS, on the Sundance Channel, is about backstage shenanigans at a Shakespeare festival. The cast is stellar: DUE SOUTH’s Paul Gross, a young Rachel McAdams, Kid in the Hall Mark McKinney (also one of the writers). So is the breadth of its subject matter. It’s about art, commerce, drama, comedy, love, madness and ghosts. The series is available via On Demand, and Sundance will run a season one marathon on September 17.

SLINGS has me in the mood for the Bard lately. I finally got around to watching A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, which has been parked on the DVR for weeks. Rosemarie insists she recorded it because she’s a student of Shakespeare, not because it stars Christian Bale and THE WIRE’s Dominic West. I have every reason to accept this as the truth.

It’s a fun adaptation with a buoyant spirit and at least one instance of magic. Sam Rockwell, as an actor in a play that has gone off the rails, somehow goes from buffoonery to breaking your heart in a single take. The mystery of how he did it is why acting continues to fascinate me.

Miscellaneous: Links

I’ve put bullets in plenty of unproduced screenplays. I didn’t know you could get paid for it.

Here’s how writing for reality TV works. Personally, I’d rather sell Lady Kenmores at Sears.

This article on the zombification of grasshoppers freaked me out, and proves that if intelligent design is true, the intelligent designer has a warped sense of humor.

Music: Dive! Dive!

To mark Labor Day, I want to talk a little about work. Or what passes for it around Chez K, at any rate.

I don’t always listen to music while I’m writing, but at times it’s essential. Like when I need to drown out the sounds of the neighborhood, especially when the school down the street is in session. Those double Dutch tournaments can be brutal.

Occasionally, the accompaniment is related to what I’m working on. A few years ago I was hired to write an original screenplay based on the true story of a local criminal. The first thing I wanted to know was what kind of music he listened to. You know, to “get into the character.” Seemed like a writerly thing to do.

‘70s stuff, I was told. Southern rock. Specifically, the Marshall Tucker Band.

Well, that wouldn’t do.

It didn’t fit my conception of the man. There was a definite counterculture vibe to his life, including a pronounced tendency toward mythopoetic horseshit. Answer: the Moody Blues.

While writing the script, I listened to their album A Question of Balance. Over and over. It completely obliterated whatever affection Rosemarie had toward Justin Hayward and his rendition of 'Forever Autumn' on the WAR OF THE WORLDS concept album. I finished the final draft and haven’t played the record since. Although some of the more pretentious lines still come to me unbidden. “He took to himself an orange ...”

For inspiration, nothing beats movie soundtracks. Big music that encourages visual thinking. From Harlan Ellison, I cribbed the notion of listening to the great Ennio Morricone while writing. Danny Elfman also serves quite nicely.

Submarine movies often feature memorable music. I leave on the beginning of THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER and the end of CRIMSON TIDE whenever I come across them on cable so I can admire the work of composers Basil Poledouris and Hans Zimmer, respectively. Male choral singing gets me every time.

Rosemarie, of course, noticed this habit. To mark some recent success, she bought me the soundtracks as a gift. Then she went one better and threw in THE BEST OF THE RED ARMY CHOIR.

It’s great, stirring stuff that’s powering me through a new project. Plus there’s the perverse satisfaction of writing what could be a big Hollywood blockbuster – the very essence of American capitalism – to the strains of ‘Slavery and Suffering’ and ‘The Red Army Is The Strongest.’