TV: Viewing Tip

One of the damnedest movies I’ve ever seen makes a rare TV appearance this week. Deadline at Dawn (1946) screened at this year’s Noir City festival. It marks a wild confluence of talent – Clifford Odets adapting Cornell Woolrich for Harold Clurman, the founder of the Group Theater directing his only film. It airs this Tuesday, October 30, on Turner Classic Movies at 11:45 PM Eastern. It’s worth setting the DVR for.

Music: Terrasson/Vasandani

Seattle’s Earshot Jazz Festival is in full swing, and this year I’m finally making good on my annual promise to take in some shows. Not that I’m going to write about them at length. When it comes to jazz, I’m still a neophyte who doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. I’ll just tell you who I saw and leave it at that.

I’m all about piano, so Jacky Terrasson was at the top of my list. His solo set was the second such show I’ve seen this month after Martial Solal at the Village Vanguard in New York. (Oddly, each offered an idiosyncratic version of ‘Take The A Train.’) Terrasson is an intense performer who attacks the piano from a variety of angles, using it as a percussion instrument or reaching inside for a harp-like pluck of the strings. The sound that results is incredible. His ‘America The Beautiful’ is a haunting reverie, while his impassioned take on ‘You’ve Got A Friend’ wrings powerful emotion from a song that I’ve previously never liked. Both tracks are available on his fine new album Mirror.

The opening act, singer Sachal Vasandani, has a warm, supple voice and a way with standards (‘Baby, Don’t You Go Away Mad’) and original material (‘Storybook Fiction,’ a charmer you can hear at his website). A good night all around.

Miscellaneous: Links

A new member of the Writers Guild learns that David Mamet loves her house.

Nerve has a three part series on the best fictional presidents in film. How they could overlook Richard Belzer in Species II and Roy Scheider in Chain of Command is beyond me.

Miscellaneous: Quote of the Day

From the New Yorker excerpt of Steve Martin’s upcoming memoir:

Through the years, I have learned that there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.

Thank you, Steve.

TV: This Week’s Reasons to Love 30 Rock

The word “adverlingus.”

Jack Donaghy’s advice, “Never go with a hippie to a second location.”

Alec Baldwin in the roleplaying scene.

Movies: Horrorween Spooktacular!

Horror’s not my thing. I only scored a lousy 78 on this quiz. (Hat tip to Bill Crider.)

But it’s that time of year, with Halloween only a week away. So I put you in the good-if-bloody hands of the experts.

At the A.V. Club, Hostel director Eli Roth programs 24 hours of horror. His line-up starts with John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing, includes a surprising but fully justified appearance by Fellini, and ends with a little gem called Torso. He also makes the supremely idiotic suggestion that you watch Dario Argento’s Suspiria at two o’clock in the morning. All that’s missing is a handy list of local sanitariums you can check yourself into when you’re finished.

If it’s October, it means my friend Tony Kay is in the midst of Horrorpalooza at Pop Culture Petri Dish. Already he’s got entries up on the films of British director Pete Walker, the baffling splendor of The Manitou, and ‘50s scream queen Beverly Garland.

Tony’s post on filmmaker Jess Franco reminds me of how I spent last Halloween.

IFC will mark All Hallows Eve by airing three movies from the Coffin Joe cycle. I watched them earlier this year:

At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul

This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse

Awakening of the Beast

As for my Halloween plans, I know what I’m hoping for. A ghoulish game six of the World Series.

Miscellaneous: The Jet Lag Round-Up

Still coming down off that New York high. I had to watch Quick Change again to remind myself of how city life actually works. So, while I’m getting my feet back under me, a grab bag of sorts ...

I miss Dunkin Donuts. Their absence in this part of the country has led to a donut-shaped hole in my heart. Which I suppose technically is two holes. I should consult a cardiologist.

When in New York, visit Death & Company. Order some rye cocktails. Tell them I sent you. I’m trying to build up a reservoir of good will.

I saw The Darjeeling Limited on the trip and liked it a lot. So much so that I watched Hotel Chevalier, the short film billed as part one of Darjeeling, as soon as I got home. Chevalier looks great and has some charming moments, but on the whole I didn’t think it added much. Maybe it was seeing them in the wrong order. Now, in a reverse of the original plan, Chevalier will be included when Darjeeling goes into wide release this weekend.

I just double-checked. There are definitely no Dunkin Donuts around here. Damn.

Fred Kaplan went to see Martial Solal at the Vanguard the day after we did and raved. The promised recording of his appearance there will be something to behold.

Apparently, I’ll watch anything on a six-hour flight. Like a deeply disturbing episode of Super Friends. Mr. Mxyzptlk, the criminal imp from the Fifth Dimension – does he know Marilyn McCoo? – imprisons some of the Super Friends in a fantasy world based on The Wizard of Oz. Superman becomes the Tin Man, Aquaman the Scarecrow, and strangest of all, Wonder Woman is transformed into the Cowardly Lion, padding along the Yellow Brick Road in oversized cat feet and a leotard. It was like a fetish video for children. I didn’t know whether I should inform a stewardess or order a copy.

The last two episodes of Mad Men were worth waiting for. What a fantastic debut season.

In honor of the upcoming World Series – Boston and Colorado? Who saw that coming? – here’s an article detailing the history of the bullpen car.

God, I could really go for a donut right about now.

Miscellaneous: Look Homeward, Mets Fan

The hiatus is over. Time to document the trip home. And this time I’m serious.

I visit New York at least once a year. I see friends and family, take in shows, absorb all that the city of my birth has to offer. But there’s one thing I hadn’t done, and that’s return to the Queens neighborhood where I grew up. This time, I made it a point to do so.



Here I am in front of the apartment building I lived in when I was a kid. The building looked the same, although it seemed larger in my memories. The pavement leading to the front door used to be bright pink, like the slab of gum that comes with baseball cards.

A cemetery dating back to the colonial era is around the corner. Naturally, it haunted me. I still on occasion see this headstone in my dreams. To this day I have no idea who A.M. is.



Next stop, the church where I was an altar boy. I knew it was small at the time. We always heard that the diocese ran out of money during construction, so what was intended to be the basement ended up being the whole shebang. I don’t believe it, but it’s a good story.



The corner pharmacy where I bought my first paperback is still there, as is the local pizza parlor. The movie theater where I squandered my youth is now a health club, but there’s a much nicer multiplex just down the street.

I used the Museum of the Moving Image, located blocks from my old home, as an excuse to visit the neighborhood. Truth is, the museum would have been worth the trip by itself. It includes some terrific interactive exhibits. I went into a looping booth and rerecorded Humphrey Bogart’s dialogue from To Have and Have Not. His readings were better.

Rosemarie and I are both unafraid to do touristy things in our native town. We rode the Staten Island ferry for the first time, a feat that now means I have set foot in all five boroughs. We also ventured to Top of the Rock, the new observation deck in Rockefeller Center, which may offer the best views - and elevators - in the city.



As always, I went to the movies at every opportunity. I jumped at the chance to see what’s being billed as the definitive cut of Blade Runner on the big screen. I stepped out of the theater directly into Times Square, and for a moment I wasn’t sure the movie had ended.



We also caught We Own The Night, an old-fashioned New York crime thriller that takes full advantage of the city’s locations. There are several terrific set pieces: a fraught sequence in a stash house, a car chase in rain-soaked Queens that’s as good as action scenes get, a final exchange between two brothers that damn near killed me.

The main point of our trips is to see people. We added some new ones on this go-round. Our nephew and his charming new bride relocated to the city recently and are throwing themselves into life there with an enthusiasm that’s a joy to behold. Even better, another nephew was there visiting for the first time as an adult. It was a treat to spend time with people experiencing New York with fresh eyes and boundless hunger.

My friend Mike – he of Mets Fan Club and proud member of the Islanders Blog Box – came into town for dinner. The plan was to have a beer while coming up with a place to eat. We didn’t know the bar was having trivia night. By round three, The Sinatra Group had earned a comfortable lead and dirty looks from the regular competitors. We stayed to the bitter end and emerged victorious, thus fulfilling another of my lifelong dreams: to hold an oversized novelty check.



The regulars expect us back next Tuesday. They’re in for a long wait. They will look for us at the quiz night ... but we will not be coming.

Celebrity sightings were sparse, but the one we had was a good ‘un. We were leaving a restaurant as John Slattery, who’s been dazzling as louche agency head Roger Sterling on Mad Men, came in. Rosemarie said, “He gets the same billing at lunch that he gets on the show. ‘Special Guest Appearance by John Slattery.’”

I have a few more photos up at my Flickr page. And I’ll leave you with one more, of me recreating a scene from David Mamet’s The Spanish Prisoner at the actual location in Central Park.



Zoom in on my eyes. You can see the panic, can’t you? Oh, I’m bringing it, baby. Next trip I’m going up for a role on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. And another dream will be fulfilled.

Miscellaneous: Bites of the Big Apple

You expected posts? I’m on vacation, people.

Actually, I’m on a spiritual quest, one encapsulated by a question from the hardboiled fiction list Rara Avis: whatever happened to rye?

The answer divined from some of Manhattan’s finer bars confirms what I already knew. Rye is making a comeback. It’s used in any number of cocktails, many of which are named after neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Red Hook, Greenpoint, Bensonhurst, Bushwick, Park Slope. Apparently, this is something of a tradition for New York bartenders, as all rye cocktails are seen as descendants of a drink called the Brooklyn. It contains rye, dry vermouth, Maraschino liqueur, and Amer Picon. That last ingredient is the tough one to get ahold of, but it’s worth the effort. Even if you have to stash it behind the rocker panels.

In other news, we seized the opportunity to see Romance & Cigarettes. The musical written and directed by actor John Turturro was orphaned by its studio, so Turturro is distributing it himself. It’s a truly odd duck of a film featuring a stupendous cast and some singular moments, like Christopher Walken’s take on ‘Delilah.’ The limited initial run has been a success, so who knows? Maybe it will be coming to a theater near you.

And then there’s the real reason for the trip. Xanadu on Broadway. Sure, I have people to visit here, business to transact. But there’s also a stage version of the movie on the Great White Way.

I’ve seen the film countless times. I think of it as the cocaine simulator. You want to know what riding the white horse does? It makes you think that Xanadu is a good idea.

The show’s a hoot, even if you’re not way too familiar with the source material. And it’s allowed me to fulfill another lifelong dream. I have now seen a cast member from The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (and Tony Roberts as Warren LaSalle) sing and dance live. I love New York.

Miscellaneous: Travels With Laptop

Greetings from New York City. My first post from the road almost came in the wee hours of the morning, but I couldn’t get decent internet access at Sea-Tac Airport. Our red eye flight east was delayed due to weather. Takeoff was pushed from a hair before midnight to three AM. It’s strange to have a normally bustling superstructure all to yourself. Most of the other passengers decided to go to sleep, the automated announcements echoing off the walls not disturbing their slumber. Rosemarie and I ended up commandeering an empty section of terminal and playing charades using the longest titles we could think of. Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, If It’s Tuesday It Must Be Belgium.

Fortunately, the delay didn’t throw a crimp into our evening plans. We were reasonably bright-eyed and technically bushy-tailed when we went to see Martial Solal, one of the world’s foremost jazz pianists, celebrate his eightieth – eightieth! – birthday with one of a week’s worth of solo shows at The Village Vanguard. Solal is only the second performer honored with a run of such sets. (Fred Kaplan has a great summary of Solal’s career. It was Kaplan’s review of NY1, an album Solal recorded during a lonely run at the Vanguard after September 11, 2001, that sparked my interest in Solal’s work.)

The show was an absolute joy, a celebration in every sense. Solal toyed with a battery of standards – “Body and Soul,” “Tea for Two” – with the energy and ingenuity of a man half his age, but also with the ease of a performer who no longer has to prove himself. It was like eavesdropping on a master noodling on the piano in his study, playing for his own amusement. Occasionally I could glimpse a small smile creeping across Solal’s face, vanishing as soon as another notion occurred to him. “I tried to play ‘Cherokee,’” he said at one point, shrugging helplessly. His rendition of “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever” was infused with the memory of a lifetime’s worth of clear days. Quite the memorable start for our trip.

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.

DVD: Tension (1949)/Where Danger Lives (1950)

Onward into Warner’s Film Noir Classic Collection Volume 4 we go. Tension is the sleeper of the set so far. Richard Basehart stars as a mild-mannered pharmacist utterly devoted to wife Audrey Totter. Trouble is, Audrey’s not devoted to him. While he’s mixing pills on the graveyard shift, she’s swanning around town with her lover. Basehart wants to off the beau, but realizes he doesn’t have it in him. However, if he creates another identity for himself ...

Tension’s structure has dated somewhat; the proceedings are introduced and narrated by Barry Sullivan as a homicide detective with the great unlikely moniker of Collier Bonnabel. But the storyline about what people are capable of when they let slip their everyday lives is as sharp as ever. The cast makes the most of it, especially the magnificent Audrey Totter. She’s always a lot of fun to watch.

Where Danger Lives is a dud, but an oddly compelling one. Doctor Robert Mitchum saves a woman’s life after a suicide attempt, then promptly falls in love with her. (Don’t they cover these situations in medical school?) There’s a murder, and the couple goes on the run – even though initially, no one is chasing them. The first half of the movie is a series of miscues and mixed signals, while the second half grows increasingly surreal as Mitchum begins feeling the effects of a concussion.

The troubled woman is played by Faith Domergue, one of Howard Hughes’s “discoveries.” Faith, alas, isn’t a very good actress. But as the extent of her character’s mental illness is revealed, the weaknesses in her performance become ... well, not strengths, exactly, but interesting shadings in a psychological portrait. Let’s leave it at that.

Movies: Enjoy The Show

Yesterday we saw Michael Clayton, the terrific directorial debut of one of my favorite screenwriters Tony Gilroy. Great to see a smart, grown-up movie in a packed house. Still, the experience prompted a few rants.

Rant #1. Every preview we saw – and there were a lot of them – was for a movie about death. Dead kids, dead spouses, dead lovers, dead friends. Two in a row was depressing. Three was kind of funny. Four had people turning around to look at the guy who couldn’t stop laughing. For the record, attending a movie that addresses adult concerns does not mean that the audience is simply marking time until the sweet embrace of the grave.

Rant #2. The people who sat on the other side of Rosemarie brought an entire picnic with them. Thermoses full of liquid, large plastic sacks of bite-sized chocolate bars to be individually unwrapped. I’ve made my peace with the fact that people are incapable of sitting still for two hours without feeding themselves, and that many of these people are cheap.

But then the guy right next to Rosemarie ate an apple.

Anyone who eats an apple in a movie theater is a jackass. Apples are the loudest of the natural snacks, and they spray juice into the dark.

And don’t bother giving me the speech about how you’re hypoglycemic. Not everyone who claims to have blood sugar woes can be so afflicted. Statistically it’s not possible. You know the last society so fixated on humors of the body? Ancient Rome. And we all know what happened there.

Lastly, if you do insist on eating an apple during a movie, at least have the decency to take the core with you when you leave.

Ah. I feel better now.

DVD: Alligator (1980)

Here’s one for the Bill Crider video collection. A movie that probably had too much influence on me finally gets the DVD it deserves.

Alligator was a huge favorite of mine when I was a kid. A perfect blend of genuine shocks and tongue-in-cheek laughs, it somehow made the idea of a giant mutated reptile living in the sewers under Chicago plausible.

At some point I noticed that this movie and another cable TV staple, Piranha, were written by John Sayles. And that Sayles was also responsible for more ... grown-up fare. But he applied the same attention to detail, no matter what kind of movie he was making. From Sayles, I learned that craft counted regardless of genre.

The new DVD was a chance to watch Alligator for the first time in ages. Not only does the movie hold up, it’s better than I remembered. I appreciate the casting a lot more now. Comedian Jack Carter as the obsequious mayor, Henry Silva as a great white hunter brought in to get the gator. Robin Riker, playing the Midwest’s most fetching herpetologist, looks enough like Lindsay Lohan to give the proceedings some contemporary resonance. And Robert Forster is the man as the troubled cop who first realizes what lurks below.

The disc features an interview with Sayles, who explains how he folded a sociological critique into a monster movie (not a horror film), as well as a commentary track with Forster and director Lewis Teague that makes it plain everyone involved with this movie knew exactly what they were doing.

Miscellaneous: Overhead Conversation of the Day

Concerned Citizen #1: The government, they tell you they’re sending all that money to Iraq, but you know these guys are just lining their pockets with it.

Concerned Citizen #2: Yeah! They’re getting rich. Like Hal Burton. Dick Cheney’s buddy. Burton’s getting it all!

Miscellaneous: Link

I’m enough of a philistine to admit that I don’t think building a secret studio apartment in a shopping mall is art. I will say it’s pretty cool. Via The Obscure Store.

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!

Sports: Express Train To Mudville

Leave us journey back, if you will, to a simpler, happier time. A time when your humble correspondent was a younger, more virile figure. I’m thinking about a month ago.

The Seattle Mariners are in control of the wild card race and about to host the the Angels Angels of Anaheim (translation from the Spanish) in a crucial series. Take two out of three games and they’re in first place in the AL West. My beloved New York Mets, meanwhile, have a considerable lead on the competition. If they do well in a four-game stand against the second-place Phillies, the NL East will be decided early. I allow myself to fantasize about a Mets/Mariners World Series.

Not that my loyalties would be divided. I follow the Mariners, because I live in Seattle. I root for the Mets, because they are the team of my Queens childhood. In my fantasy World Series they don’t beat the Mariners. They crush them in four perfect games.

The Mariners get swept, never contend for the division again, and blow the wild card. They finish tied for the fifth best record in the AL. Not bad for a team that wasn’t expected to be a factor this year, but still disappointing.

The Mets? Oh, where to begin ...

They’re swept by Philadelphia, which prompts them to play their best baseball of the year. By September 12 they’d rebuilt their seven game lead, just in time for the Phillies to roll into Shea for a rematch.

They were swept again. Thus beginning what sportswriters are calling the most complete regular season collapse in modern baseball history. (Post-season collapse honors still go to the 2004 Yankees.)

The numbers are too ugly to contemplate. Still, let’s look at ‘em. The Mets closed out the year 5-12. They lost six of their last seven games at home to teams under .500.

Yet somehow, this morning their fate was in their hands. Win the final game of the year and at worst they forced a playoff against the Phillies for the division, with a shot at the wild card as well. Win and 2007 could still be the Mets’ Tom Cruise year.

You know how early in Cruise’s career he’d play cocky guys who had never been tested? Then Goose dies and Tom goes into freefall? But through adversity Tom recovers his swagger and proves that he’s every bit as good as he thought he was? Hell, better? That works for me.

The thing is, Maverick never gave up seven runs in the top of the first inning. And the Mets finish out of time, out of chances, and out of the money.

Making it worse, both the Mets and Phillies games were shown in their home markets over the air. Which meant I had to follow both games listening to the Marlins and the Nationals announcers praise their teams’ performances as spoilers. The compliments were deserved; both squads finished the season strong. But it’s not the same as hearing the joy from Philly, or the ruthless anatomization of a year gone wrong from the Mets booth crew, the best three-man team there is.

I should be heartbroken, but the truth is I never embraced this Mets team the way I did last year’s. That bunch, which was a swing of Carlos Beltran’s bat away from the World Series, could never be counted out of any game. This year’s team lacked that fire, and seemed to play with a sense of entitlement. As if they were saying, “Remember what we almost did last season? We’re gonna almost do it this year, too.”

On Thursday I told my friend Mike that I started wanting the Mets to choke because at least we’d get an epic failure out of it, something to make the season memorable. Years from now, when a team falters late, their fans will say, “Yeah, they suck, but it coulda been worse. It’s not like they were the 2007 Mets.”

I know the idea of rooting for a team is irrational. A bunch of millionaires wearing a particular uniform has nothing to do with me, with the place where I grew up, with the memories of my boyhood. But that lure is powerful. The other day I spotted a guy wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates cap and T-shirt. The Bucs logged their fifteenth consecutive losing season this year, but still he was letting his colors fly. I respect that. Even more, I understand it. I understand it all too well.

The 2007 Mets were overhyped, overconfident, underachieving assholes. But they were my overhyped, overconfident, underachieving assholes. And I’ll let my colors fly.

But not today. Today I don’t need the aggravation.

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.

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.

Miscellaneous: Links

Recently at The Rap Sheet, editor J. Kingston Pierce marked the 100th anniversary of the limerick craze that swept London by calling for five-line poems with a crime fiction theme. You know me. I can never resist a challenge.

Two of my efforts are now up at the site. Be warned: they’re completely ridiculous, and I take the name of the great Ogden Nash in vain.

I knew this day was coming. My own personal greatest movie of all time, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, is getting a big-budget, all-stops-out remake. It will mark the fourth collaboration between Denzel Washington and director Tony Scott (Crimson Tide, Man on Fire, Déjà Vu), with a script by Hollywood heavyweight David Koepp.

I honestly hope that this new version kicks ass. It’ll be damn near impossible to best the original, which is a perfect thriller, a quintessential New York movie, and one of the most entertaining films ever made. I’m curious to see how the story will be updated for the post-Giuliani era. “Screw the goddamn passengers! What the hell did they expect for their lousy MetroCard, to live forever?”

Movies: Decoy (1946)/Crime Wave (1954)

Volume 4 of Warner Brothers’ Film Noir Classic Collection has been out for weeks, but I’m only getting into it now. It’s not my fault, y’unnerstand. I ordered it as soon as it streeted from an online retailer and somehow wound up with a boxed set of Star Trek movies. The turnaround cut into my valuable noir-watching time.

Which killed me, because the collection includes a movie I’ve wanted to see for years. Decoy has become a fabled cult item because it features what may be the most macabre plot in noir history. A woman romances a prison doctor so he’ll revive her death row boyfriend after his execution – just long enough for loverboy to reveal where he’s hidden four hundred grand in stolen loot. The movie’s production history only adds to its mystique. Producer/director Jack Bernhard met actress Jean Gillie in England, married her, and made Decoy to introduce her to American audiences. They divorced before the film was released, and Gillie died of pneumonia soon after at age 33.

Her legacy burns anew with Decoy’s appearance on DVD. She’s remarkable playing the most fatale of femmes. TV legend Sheldon Leonard is terrific as a homicide dick who believes the worst about everyone. The rest of the cast? Not so good. And the soundtrack is overbearing. But that wild premise holds your interest, and the movie is bookended by spellbinding opening and closing sequences. To quote Rosemarie: “Anybody who wants to direct needs to study that intro.”

The writer of Decoy, Nedrick Young (who would go on to pen The Defiant Ones and Inherit the Wind), appears as an actor in the other half of this disc’s double bill. Crime Wave is the kind of rock-solid, unpretentious movie director André de Toth was known for. Reformed ex-con Gene Nelson gets sucked back into the life when a trio of prison acquaintances (a young Charles Bronson among them) busts out of San Quentin and expects his help. Hard-nosed cop Sterling Hayden watches his every move. Half the cast of this movie – Hayden, Ted de Corsia, Timothy Carey – would later turn up in Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing.

I’d already seen Crime Wave, but I watched it again so I could enjoy the commentary track featuring novelist James Ellroy and the czar of noir himself, Eddie Muller. Ellroy literally pants over authentic early ‘50s Los Angeles locations and notes all the ways this movie informed his novel L.A. Confidential. (He based Bud White, played by Russell Crowe in the movie, partly on Hayden’s character, and points out a dive bar that’s the inspiration for the Nite Owl.) He also says that after rewatching Chinatown, he’s decided that it doesn’t hold up, and that Crime Wave is the better film.

I don’t think he’s kidding.

Miscellaneous: Observation

The new gig prompted me to take the plunge and buy a laptop. Renovations around Chez K have reached the noisy stage, so I’ve started taking it to coffee shops so I can work. Meaning I have, at last, become one of those people I have always despised. Such is life.

Miscellaneous: Link

A completely inconclusive study hints that women with “tramp stamps” might not be able to receive epidurals when they go into labor. Gawker’s treatment of this news warms my black heart.

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.

Movie: Eastern Promises (2007)

Now this, ladies and gentlemen, is how it’s done.

And the audience at the Toronto Film Festival agrees. Of course, director David Cronenberg is a hometown boy. He’s long been a favorite of mine, too, never more so now that he’s become a master of the spare thriller. Terrific performances across the board. A harrowing fight scene destined to join the pantheon of greats.

But it’s really the script by Steve Knight that electrified me. It’s an absolute marvel of craftsmanship, using a simple premise – a midwife investigating the short, sad life of a teenage immigrant who died in childbirth – to dive headlong into the world of the Russian mafia and multicultural London. The elegance with which the narrative comes together makes the movie a joy to behold even as it ratchets up the tension. With this movie and Dirty Pretty Things, Knight has put himself into the top rank of screenwriters. See this one.

Miscellaneous: Link

Millard Kaufman, who wrote the great Bad Day at Black Rock and co-created Mr. Magoo, publishes his first novel at age ninety.

Movie: Shoot ‘Em Up (2007)

Clive Owen delivers a baby during a shootout, and spent shells rain down on the pregnant woman’s belly. Owen later deposits the newborn on a filthy men’s room floor and uses the baby changing station to clean his gun. Depending on your state of mind, such scenes will either strike you as:

A.) Tasteless
B.) Hilarious

I was in kind of a bad mood when I saw Shoot ‘Em Up, so I went with B. Michael Davis’ film is eighty-seven minutes of gunplay, trashy to its core and thoroughly disreputable. I cackled all the way through it. Any movie in which Clive Owen kills several dozen mercenaries literally single-handed (he is carrying that baby) scored to Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades” has a fan in me. There is a plot of sorts, but it’s so utterly ridiculous that the entire movie seems to turn toward the audience and say, “Can you believe this crap?” And Paul Giamatti goes over the top in grand style. Although personally I think it was unnecessary. I knew when he quoted Barbara Bush that he was a badass.

Miscellaneous: Link

Mike, this one is for you. And it’s even worse than you remember.

Miscellaneous: Links

The best way to keep the new fall TV season straight? Variety’s Season Pass, a group blog by the paper’s editorial staff.

The gang at New York magazine’s Vulture is happy that Jon Stewart will be back hosting the Oscars, but they suggest that the Academy cast a wider net in future by looking to the past.

For some reason my brain coughed up this bit of childhood detritus this morning. I can’t get it out of my head, and I don’t believe in suffering alone. I’m pretty sure that’s not standard firefighting technique. Or trombone playing, for that matter.

Movie: Le Doulos (1962)

Sometimes corporations know exactly what they’re doing. By the time Giant Video Store Chain finally made it into my yuppie/hipster neighborhood about a decade ago, they had clearly done some demographic analysis. In addition to the standard miles upon miles of new releases, the store also stocked goodies that wouldn’t be in suburban outlets a few miles away. Loads of obscure art films. A healthy selection of martial arts flicks.

And, on a dusty bottom shelf, a single VHS copy of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Doulos.

Prior to that point, I’d never seen a Melville film. I had only read about the world that Melville had created onscreen. A world of shadows and style, where men knew how to wear hats and lived by a code that made sense to them if no one else. Where the women were impossibly ripe. Where you could never drink too much or brood enough.

I knew sight unseen that it was a world I wanted to visit if not live in. Le Doulos was the first stamp in my passport. Since then, several of Melville’s films – Bob Le Flambeur, Le Samourai, Le Cercle Rouge, and his grandest achievement Army of Shadows – have returned to theaters and been made available on DVD. Now Rialto Pictures has reissued the film that introduced me to le monde de Melville. High time I saw it again.

The title is a slang term from the French underworld meaning a police informant, and was originally translated in the U.S. as The Finger Man. Such is the reputation that Silien (Jean-Paul Belmondo) has acquired. His cohort Maurice doesn’t care; he’s putting together a heist after being released from prison, and Silien is one of the only people he trusts to help him plan it. When the cops show up in the middle of the job, Maurice begins to rethink everything he knows about his pal.

The script, based on a Série Noire by Pierre Lesou, can at times be difficult to follow, packed as it is with double-crosses and ulterior motives. It’s the kind of movie where one man will cold-bloodedly murder his close friend, another puts his life on the line for a guy he seems indifferent to, and you’re not entirely sure why. But all is made crystal clear by the gut punch of an ending. Belmondo makes no play for audience sympathy. He plays it cool and looks that way as well.

Le Doulos is showing in Seattle and Los Angeles through Thursday, and around the country for the next several months. My take on Melville’s Army of Shadows – for my money, the best movie in theaters in 2006 – is here.

Miscellaneous: Interim Report

Feels like I’m letting the team down by posting infrequently. I’m still adjusting to my new schedule. I haven’t read much other than the paper lately. And I’ve watched nothing but baseball – go Mets! – and disappointing movies on DVD that I don’t care to discuss.

I did see Superbad, which is funny. I identified quite strongly with Evan (Michael Cera), a decent, good-hearted young man who can’t understand why his female classmates don’t honor those qualities by having sex with him. He’s the character in a teen movie who comes closest to the adolescent me – after Mark Ratner in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. A movie theater usher with a crush on Jennifer Jason Leigh. Welcome to my childhood.

We’ve also been making our way through a collection of trailers from Something Weird Video, loaned to us by a friend of Rosemarie’s. When describing her tastes in exploitation fare to him, she said simply, “Knockers over gore.” And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I married her. (I’m sure there’s also a 2000 election joke in that answer, but I’m too tired to figure out what it is.)

You need a little something extra for stopping by. Here’s a throwback throwdown from an early episode of Flight of the Conchords.

Miscellaneous: Links

The Wire wraps its final episode, and the Washington Post is there. I have to wait ‘til January before the last season starts airing on HBO?

Premiere considers twenty classic twist endings. Or ruins twenty movies for people who haven’t seen them, depending on your point of view.

The latest issue of the Film Noir Foundation’s newsletter – trust me, you’re missing out if you’re not getting it – brings the sad news that actress Beverly Michaels passed away in June. Some of you may recall my powerful reaction to her performance in Wicked Woman, which screened at this year’s Noir City film festival. As a tribute to Beverly, here’s the trailer to that movie once again.

Music: Classic Songs, My Way, by Paul Anka

Anka’s at it again, recording another album of comtemporary(ish) songs in his own style. I was a big fan of Rock Swings, his first such album. In my mind Anka’s rendition of “Eye of the Tiger” has now replaced Survivor’s as the definitive one, and yes, I am fully aware of just how small a boast that is.

The follow-up record isn’t as good, because of song choice. Foreigner and Bryan Adams simply aren’t as interesting as Nirvana and Soundgarden no matter how elaborate the arrangement.

There are some good tracks, like Anka’s take on Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World.” The highpoint is easily his version of “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers. That’s a song with enormous personal significance for me, and one that demands to be sung over a full orchestra. Anka does it proud.

TV: Entourage

Rosemarie, as last night’s season finale was beginning: “I hope Billy Walsh gets killed by Basque separatists while they’re in Cannes.”

Miscellaneous: Links

In preparation for the upcoming remake of 3:10 To Yuma, the AV Club rounds up 17 dark westerns.

This New York Times Magazine profile of Rick Rubin is long but, in the words of The Bad Plus guys, “essential reading for anyone with the faintest interest in the music industry.”

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.

Miscellaneous: Placeholder

Work, work, work. I’ve got one project nearing completion and last week I started an exciting new gig that I hope to be talking up big around here soon. The upshot is I haven’t had much time to post, or even to watch/read anything to post about.

A while ago, I said that under such circumstances I would hang out the video for ‘Crucified’ by Army of Lovers, which as I explained is a band consisting of my first wife, my half-brother Nils, and the guy who used to handle my landscaping. And I’m not talking about yard work.

I was all set to do that today, but instead I’ve decided to go with a solo effort from the ex featuring a bunch of fellows from the gym. Enjoy!

Miscellaneous: Links

Ed Gorman has sent me to Cinema Retro for many a fine article. It’s only fitting, then, that the site features an interview with Ed, in which he weighs in on vintage crime films.

Several years ago, I wrote a profile of Jim Bouton, former major league pitcher and author of the landmark baseball memoir Ball Four, for a small magazine. The article was primarily about Bouton’s business career – he was one of the inventors of the bubble gum Big League Chew, for instance – but touched on all aspects of his fascinating life. He was in Altman’s The Long Goodbye, fer cryin’ out loud! After the piece ran Bouton sent me an autographed copy of Ball Four, made out to “a great writer and a nice guy.” It remains one of my most prized possessions, even though he was wrong on at least one and possibly both counts. In some respects that lovely gesture on his part set me on the path I’ve followed ever since.

Bouton’s latest project is the Vintage Base Ball Federation, dedicated to recreating the experience of our national pastime as it was played in the 1880s. Yahoo’s Steve Henson covers the league’s first world series.

Movies: Out For Justice (1991)/Mercenary For Justice (2006)

Last week, Steven Seagal said he wants a public apology from the FBI for the damage a Bureau investigation did to his career. It’s clearly a reach; Seagal’s career was on the skids before the Feds came around. But the story reminds me that, problems aside, I like Seagal. I kind of miss the guy. And I miss the sort of movies he makes. (Yes, he’s still making them, on the cheap and primarily for video.)

I’m talking about your stripped down, basic action film. Not even meat-and-potatoes. Try meat only, bloody and still on the bone. The plot’s always the same. Bad guys do bad things. A badass who’s a good guy gets pushed too far. He settles the score by punching people in the face and snapping a few necks. Watching a bunch of one-dimensional louts get their asses kicked can satisfy on a deeply primal level.

Recently I stumbled onto Out For Justice, a big favorite around here. (Believe it or not, Rosemarie is a fan, too. You know the observation that Fred Astaire gave Ginger Rogers class while she gave him sex appeal? Rosemarie gives me class and sex appeal, while I contribute crap action movies and Dijon mustard. Surprisingly, she seems happy with this.) I left the movie on for two scenes and ended up watching the whole thing again.

One scene is what Rosemarie calls “the Uncle Pino story.” Seagal, playing a New York cop hunting down a childhood friend on a drug-fueled rampage, stops the narrative cold to recount a rambling episode about going to the movies as a kid with his Mafioso uncle. It’s got nothing to do with the rest of the action, but it’s strangely compelling, in part because Seagal wasn’t a bad actor. It’s also an example of the off-beat human moments that somehow found their way into Seagal’s early films. I’m not saying he was Robert Altman, but Seagal’s movies often wove in textures that weren’t necessary but always appreciated.

The other key scene is a bar fight. Every good action movie’s got to have at least one, with these two beats: somebody sails into a neon beer sign, and a pool cue is used for a purpose other than the one for which it was designed. Out For Justice’s is a doozy. To this day, when I can’t find something I’m looking for, I’ll wander around Chez K bellowing “Anybody seen Rich-IE?” There’s also a fine sequence in which our Steven lays waste to a pork store.

Fast forward a few days. I’m flipping around and find Mercenary For Justice, one of Seagal’s later efforts, on basic cable; the premium channels don’t touch his stuff any more. Seagal has thickened up considerably, and doesn’t move so well now. You could fit a craft services table between him and the goons he’s ostensibly thrashing.

Worst of all was a throwdown in a swank restaurant men’s room. Seagal gestures vaguely toward a thug, who goes sailing into a wall so hard that a urinal falls off. Literally, it falls off. There’s no geysering water. It’s not even connected to any pipes. It might as well have been hung there by Marcel Duchamp.

That’s the real reason for this post. I wanted to mention Steven Seagal and Marcel Duchamp in the same breath. My work is done.

Miscellaneous: Links

William Gibson talks noir and other subjects. And I’m glad I’m not the only person who notices these things: Vulture on how Michael Kamen’s score for Brazil is suddenly everywhere.

Miscellaneous: Links

Variety on all the reasons – good and bad – why Young Frankenstein is the Broadway event of the season.

From the New Yorker comes Bruce McCall’s handy illustrated guide to summer camp pests.

The AV Club names 17 dangerous cinematic computers. I respect any list that gives props to Colossus: The Forbin Project. Extra points for noticing a connection between Dark Star and Sunshine that I’d missed. Here there be spoilers.

Stage: Young Frankenstein

It’s important in any entertainment to establish tone early. Which is why it was good to hear, in the opening scene of the new Mel Brooks musical Young Frankenstein, that the title doctor is on staff at “the Johns, Miriam and Anthony Hopkins School of Medicine.” It lets you know what you’re in for. And it signaled to me that I’d be right at home. Three fleet hours of bawdy jokes, leggy dancers and Jolson impressions is my idea of a good time.

I had my doubts about Mel Brooks tuning up the film, but I shouldn’t have. After all, YF has the strongest spine of any Brooks movie. The play’s book by Brooks and Thomas Meehan hews closely to the original script by Brooks and Gene Wilder, right down to many favorite lines. (“What knockers!” is there, “It could be raining” is not, and “He vas my boyfriend!” is its own number.) Mel had more work to do on The Producers.

The familiarity of the movie is perhaps the biggest challenge to a ridiculously talented cast, but they’re all able to put their own spins on well-established characters. The one actor who by circumstance is forced into an imitation, Christopher Fitzgerald as Marty Feldman as Igor, walks off with the show. Go figure.

Sutton Foster, a Broadway veteran I know as Coco from Flight of the Conchords, joins Shakira on the short list of women who make yodeling sexy. It’s an embarrassment of riches onstage, with Roger Bart as Frederick Frankenstein, Andrea Martin as Frau Blucher (complete with horse whinnies), Will & Grace’s Megan Mullally succeeding Madeline Kahn as Elizabeth, and Shuler Hensley as the Monster. Odd note: Hensley, a Tony winner for Oklahoma!, played Frankenstein’s Monster in Van Helsing, although to my knowledge he doesn’t have a number in that movie. I also have to mention Fred Applegate, doing double duty as Inspector Kemp (the Kenneth Mars role) and the blind hermit. In the latter scene he manages to do a perfect rendition of Gene Hackman’s distinctive chuckle, a tribute I think was intended just for me.

The caliber of the cast is so high that it’s a problem finding enough for them to do. Mullally, the best known performer, has only one song in the first act and then disappears until midway through act two. She did have a second Act One number according to the program, but it had already been cut a week into previews.

The true star of the show is director/choreographer Susan Stroman. Her staging deploys a full battery of techniques to create a palpable mood, and on top of that she fills the stage with dancers.

Brooks’s songs are the show’s weak link. (Name one song from The Producers. Go ahead, I dare you.) They’re more like ditties, excuses for bits of comic business. But they’re socked over with such gusto by the cast and so inventively presented that you don’t mind.

The one truly memorable song in the score is the only one Brooks didn’t write: Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” The movie’s use of the song has nothing on how it plays out here. The number starts out small, then slowly and surely builds into pure joyous delirium. My sides actually ached when it was over.

Young Frankenstein runs at Seattle’s Paramount Theater through September 1, then moves to Broadway. Friends in New York already report that tickets are hard to come by. Insert monster hit joke here.

Miscellaneous: A Public Service Announcement

Traffic’s up at the old internet homestead lately, owing in part to an inordinate number of visitors in the last two weeks who searched the web for “Snyder” and “one day at a time.” I assume that’s because of this post about the late talk show host Tom Snyder and the website’s subhead.

I also assume that these people have arrived here in error.

Please always remember and don’t ever forget that the lovable handyman on the CBS sitcom One Day At A Time played by Pat Harrington was named Dwayne F. Schneider. I hope this helps.

As for those who got here searching on “swinger pics” ... your guess is as good as mine.

Miscellaneous: Links

Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus – go buy Prog, it’s terrific – takes a break from the trio’s tour to talk noir with Allan Guthrie. Do The Math keeps on giving: Ethan links to a new blog by critic Fred Kaplan, whose reviews are what helped me start climbing that jazz learning curve. Kaplan attended every night of the recent 70th birthday tribute to the great bassist Charlie Haden at New York’s Blue Note. Haden performed with a stellar line-up of pianists: Brad Mehldau, Paul Bley, Kenny Barron ... and Ethan Iverson. Would that I could have been there. I’ll have to fire up my copy of Always Say Goodbye, the Haden/Quartet West album that’s like a soundtrack to a brilliant film noir that never existed. See what I did there, bringing it back to noir? God, I’m good.

Fellow E.L.O. and Xanadu fan Matt at scrubbles.net digs up some great video featuring the band’s music – including one anime clip from a 1983 Japanese science fiction convention that must be seen to be believed. It’s four minutes that will change your life.

Miscellaneous: Meaningless Milestone

This is my 750th post. Do I win a prize?

Stage: Eddie Izzard

I’ll be blunt. Actor and comedian Eddie Izzard is a fucking genius. If you haven’t seen his concert special Dress To Kill, queue it up right now to see a performer at his absolute peak. When we heard that Eddie was doing two shows in Seattle to try out new material, we snapped up tickets at once.

The general theme of the set could, I suppose, be described as the evolution of human belief systems. A rubric broad enough to include the following digressions:

- What aliens with acid blood would really be like
- The inner monologue of the human appendix
- The reasons why cows would make great secret agents
- The difficulty faced by Roman soldiers in describing Hannibal’s elephants in Latin

All of it done Eddie’s singular style – rambling, discursive, yet circling back on itself in surprising ways.

That spontaneity led to the show’s high point, namely Eddie being hit in the face by a kamikaze fly that had gotten into the theater. It prompted a ten-minute riff that won’t be repeated anywhere else. Sometimes, you really do just have to be there.

When Eddie blanked on the name of “that dancer who died because her scarf was so long it got caught in the wheels of the car,” Rosemarie shouted out Isadora Duncan first and loudest. And here I thought she was so circumspect.

Seattle’s stint as the new New Haven continues. Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein musical is in tryouts here before opening on Broadway. We’ve got tickets for that, too, and will be seeing it later this week.

Movie: Slayground (1983)

I watched this movie because I am a Donald E. Westlake/Richard Stark completist. And so you won’t have to, because it’s not good.

Stark’s Parker character, here named Stone and played by Peter Coyote, is forced to go ahead with an armored car robbery without his getaway driver of choice. The reckless replacement ends up killing a young girl. Her wealthy father hires a professional killer to track down the men responsible. And Stone hies off into England to hide out in a creepy amusement park.

Slayground errs in making the hit man a full-blown psychotic out of a horror movie. As a result, plenty of potentially engaging material – how does the assassin locate three loosely-connected thieves? – is skipped over entirely. There’s some interest in seeing the British comic actor Mel Smith in a straight role, but the amusement park stuff wears thin in a hurry.

Still, for the first twenty minutes or so I thought I’d lucked into something special. There’s a great, ice-cold opening scene (featuring Kelli Maroney of Night of the Comet and Chopping Maul) explaining what happened to Stone’s original driver. And the heist itself is the closest representation of Stark I’ve yet to see on film, a quick and brutal piece of work carried out in one of those isolated shades-of-brown towns where cash remains king.

But once Parker – sorry, Stone – tells the rookie driver to pull over after the accident to see if anyone’s hurt, I knew the good times were over. The Parker I know wouldn’t do that.

TV: My On Demand Demands

Hey, basic cable networks. You’d be having an even better summer if you took full advantage of On Demand. I missed Sunday night’s debut of TNT’s The Company, based on the novel by Robert Littell and starring VKDC favorite Michael Keaton as legendarily brilliant-but-batshit CIA officer James Jesus Angleton. No problem, I figure. I’ll just catch up with it during the week.

No dice. Part one hasn’t aired again, and there’s no sign of the miniseries at TNT On Demand. Yet all their other summer shows, like The Closer and Saving Grace, are there. The USA Network will allow you to catch up on Monk whenever you want, but not their spy caper Burn Notice. I know I have a DVR, but seriously, do I have to do everything myself?

Miscellaneous: Links

The unbelievable feel-good story of the day: the inspiration for Omar in The Wire and the main character of The Corner are getting married.

You don’t have to be a Catholic from Queens to find this Onion story hilarious. But it helps.

Rant: All The News That’s Print To Fit

It’s day two of the incredible shrunken newspaper. Yesterday, the New York Times cut one-and-a-half inches from the width of its pages. This hard on the heels of another increase in price. The Times has managed to convince some fools to pay more for less.

Meet one of those fools.

I have a more romanticized notion of the daily paper than most people my age. Blame my father. Not that he was an ink-stained wretch. He worked at the airport, and every day he’d salvage whatever newspapers were left behind on planes and spend the night paging through them. He’d walk through the door with a stack so thick a cop in a James Ellroy novel could beat a guy with it. Not just the New York rags, but papers from around the globe. Occasionally a copy of the Sun would be in the mix, and I’d ogle the page 3 girl while pretending to broaden my horizons. The idea was fixed in my head from a young age: reading the paper is what grown-ups do.

I’ve been subscribing to the New York Times for years. Not too long ago, I was about to break the relationship off. The size change and the rate hike were factors, but the main reason was much simpler. I was tired of reading the paper. If I didn’t tackle it early enough in the day it became a burden, like a troll dwelling under a bridge I had to cross on my way home.

Me: I can’t believe enough shit happens in the world to fill this damn thing every day.

Rosemarie: You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. You’re allowed to take a day off.

Me: I can’t. It’ll know.

The Times’s checkered recent history didn’t help. The excesses in the Wen Ho Lee case. The Jayson Blair scandal. Judith Miller’s flawed reporting on WMDs in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. I’d gone from thinking of the paper of record as an institution, like marriage, to thinking of it as an institution, like the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Whole sections of the paper I never even look at. I could not describe under pain of death the contents of Thursday Styles or House & Home. The magazine irks me, largely because of Deborah Solomon’s odious feature in which she puts condescending questions to accomplished people. I hate the sports coverage because it slights the Mets in favor of the Yankees.

Then we have the op-ed pages. I skip the editorials. Maureen Dowd’s poisonous coquette act has been tiresome for 12 years. Every Nicholas Kristof piece on Africa is the same. (There, I said it.) One out of every seven David Brooks columns is interesting; the others are unhinged because of Brooks’s desperation to cling to his conservative bona fides while appealing to the paper’s liberal readership. And if Thomas Friedman explains how “going green” makes sound business and political sense one more time, I will track him down and tear out his transit cop mustache with my bare hands.

When the letter announcing the increased rates arrived, I snapped. That’s it, I said. I’m not standing for it. I can read the damn thing online, the way I read the local Seattle papers, and for free.

I logged onto the Times website to cancel my subscription. What followed was a curious exercise in number crunching.

Do I get $6.40 worth of value out of weekday delivery of the Times? Obviously not.

Do I get $6.50 out of Sunday delivery of the Times? Hell, no. The national edition doesn’t even include much of the good stuff. Rosemarie likes the crossword puzzle, but not that much.

Do I get $12.80 out of seven-day delivery?

Hang on a minute.

Yes. Yes, I do.

I need to read the paper. I have to get my news from somewhere, and I haven’t watched it on TV since Lynne Russell left CNN. The Times is to newspapers what democracy is to systems of government according to Churchill: the worst we have, except for all the others.

And I don’t want to read the Times online. I spend too much time staring at my computer screen as it is. I never finish anything beyond a certain length anyway. (This post is getting dangerously close to that limit.)

Online, I’d only read articles that interest me, about culture and politics. I wouldn’t see striking photographs or pullquotes that might draw me in. I might miss the bylines of Times staffers like Jack Hitt and C. J. Chivers whose reporting is always worth a look.

Also, it’s difficult to drag a laptop into the bathroom. I admit it, I read in there. It’s the only place where I multitask. The rest of the time, baby, I’m focused like a laser. (Incidentally, the new smaller size makes restroom reading even easier.)

Portability has an added benefit. One of the great pleasures in life is reading the Times in coffee shops. While everyone else huddles over their laptops or has inane conversations on their cell phones, I pore over the vital issues of the day. It’s one of the rare times in life when I truly feel like an adult. Like a grown man. And I’m willing to pay close to thirteen bucks a week for that privilege.

But three bucks for the coffee? That’s another story.

Miscellaneous: Links

Behold the awesome power of animation! From the great comedian Louis CK.

Salon (yes, you’ll have to sit through an ad) interviews blogger Paul Clarke of The Cocktail Chronicles, who sings the praises of a local watering hole I may have mentioned once or twice.

New York magazine discovers that winning a competition reality show like Project Runway or Top Chef is no guarantee of success. And this comes as a surprise to whom, exactly?

Movie: The Simpsons Movie (2007)

“Irreverent humor throughout” is right. Why, the credits alone are packed with sassback!

The Simpsons big screen debut is loads of fun, with a suitably grand sense of scale and a spirit the harks back to the early seasons of the show. I could have used more Krusty, but at least he gets one great sight gag. The breakout star in the supporting cast: Chief Wiggum. Maybe he’ll get that spin-off after all. Does this mean President Arnold Schwarzenegger will meet Rainier Wolfcastle, as the movie shows they’re clearly not one and the same?

I am firmly a part of Generation Simpsons. Literally every day for the past fifteen years, I have made at least one reference to the show in conversation. One of Moe Szyslak’s pearls of wisdom comes up frequently (“I’m a well-wisher, in that I don’t wish you any specific harm”). More often than not it’s a throwaway line of Homer’s. Favorites include:

“Well, if we agree, then why are we arguing?”

“It teaches them while they learn.”

“You can’t go this far and not go further.”

“Everyone is stupid except for me.”

“It’s because they’re stupid. That’s why everyone does everything.”

To be fair, I had those last two thoughts before Homer put them into words, so I feel I deserve partial credit.

The Simpsons line I cite most often isn’t spoken by any of the regulars, but a guest player. Perhaps the show’s supreme guest player, who also turns up in the movie, one A. Brooks. It’s from his appearance as self-help guru Brad Goodman:

“There’s no trick to it! It’s just a simple trick!”

Something about that sentiment is as American as apple pie.

On The Web: Siskel & Ebert

More than ten years’ worth of reviews from Siskel & Ebert, beginning in 1985, are now available online. Looking at a few clips reminded me how much of an impact the show had on me during my budding movie buff years. Sometimes the only thing I’d know about an independent or foreign film that wouldn’t play the hinterlands of South Florida would be what Gene and Roger said about it.

Too bad you can’t watch entire episodes. I have vivid recollections of one from June 1987, when Gene’s annoyance that Roger gave a thumbs down to Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket while praising Benji, The Hunted ate away at him throughout the telecast. He kept circling back to it, goading Roger. When they appeared on talk shows that summer, Gene continued to bring it up.

The Full Metal Jacket clip shows both critics at their best. (For the record, I’m with Gene.) Gene Siskel is a classic example of someone who shouldn’t work on television – a vinegary, balding, middle-aged man – taking to it with aplomb.

I stopped watching the show regularly after Gene’s death in 1999. I have tremendous respect for Roger Ebert as a critic and a human being, but it was his tetchy chemistry with Gene that made the program worth watching. For proof, check out the look of disbelief on Gene’s face as Roger famously gives a thumbs up to the Burt Reynolds kiddie comedy Cop and a Half. “Where’s your red suit and beard, Santa, ‘cause you just gave them a gift.”

Miscellaneous: Blow Out the Candles

When I was a kid, my least favorite days of the year were December 25 and August 3. Christmas and my birthday. Because for at least part of those days, I was the center of attention. And believe it or not, I hated being the center of attention.

But that was then, this is now, and I’m starting to warm up to the spotlight. So, for the good of my own mental health: today is my birthday. Hooray for me.

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.