Movie: Robot & Frank (2012)

Frank Langella wrote one of the odder, more compelling books I read in 2012. He also starred in one of the year’s more underrated movies.

Frank (the character, not the actor) lives alone in bucolic upstate New York, which makes his estrangement from his family and his escalating dementia worse. His son does what he can by buying the old man the latest in near-future amenities: an automated home health care aide (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard). Frank initially resists and resents this chipper microchipped interloper with its insistence on regular schedules and hobbies. But once he sees the robot in action, he decides to return to his old profession – cat burglar – with a new partner. Thus stumbling into a legal gray area not covered by Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics.

Don’t let Robot & Frank’s geniality fool you. Beneath its unruffled surface lie some tough-minded thoughts on aging and obsolescence, which are not at all the same thing. The entire cast is fine, especially Langella and Susan Sarandon as the flesh-and-blood librarian that Frank wants to take out more than any of the few remaining print books. With its gentle charm and matter of fact exploration of how advanced technology could be integrated into everyday life, the movie has the feel of a Ray Bradbury story.

Cocktail of the Week: The Pink Lady

What’s in a name? That which we call a Pink Lady by any other name wouldn’t be that sweet at all, and would probably be ordered a lot more often.

The best example of how the Pink Lady’s handle has doomed its fortunes comes in Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails. Haigh calls the drink “The Secret Cocktail,” even filing it under S, so that potential imbibers won’t be prejudiced by its not exactly masculine title. Ironically, as Haigh and many others point out, the Pink Lady is virtually the same drink as the Clover Club. Both are made with gin, lemon juice and egg white (another potential problem area), both have a similar hue thanks to grenadine. The difference is the Pink Lady adds applejack, which not only lends dimension but kicks up the potency. Yet it’s the Clover Club that has made the comeback, turning up on Difford’s List of the top 100 cocktails while the Pink Lady is left out in the rain. Clearly rebranding is in order. The Pink Lady wouldn’t be facing this public shunning if it were called the Brute Force or the Unwashed Jock¹.

It was not always thus for our ruddy maiden. The Pink Lady has some history behind her. The name comes from the 1911 Broadway show that gave us the timeless classics “The Girl by the Saskatchewan” and “Donny Did, Donny Didn’t.” (To be fair, the play was quite popular – it had to be if it spawned a cocktail – and, though never revived, still has its admirers.) In Crosby Gaige’s 1941 Cocktail Guide and Ladies’ Companion, the Pink Lady is one of sixteen Hall of Fame drinks.

But dark clouds are gathering. Ten years later, Jack Townsend in his Bartender’s Book would write of Clover Club drinkers who feared being confused with “that nice little girl who works in files, who’s always so courteous but always seems so timid” and who orders a Pink Lady on the rare occasions that she dares venture into a bar thinking “Hmmm, that couldn’t do me any harm.” This in spite of the fact that, as Townsend readily admits, “the Lady packs quite a wallop.” The die was cast. The drink became a punchline.

The Pink Lady had more to contend with than an unfortunate name, the presence of egg, and an ill-advised dalliance with Jeff Altman. There were the many competing recipes. The Trader Vic’s Bartender’s Guide offers two versions, one with gin, grenadine and cream (a regular substitute for egg white), the other close to the contemporary rendition but featuring a dusting of nutmeg. Charles Baker, Jr. in his Gentleman’s Companion presents a variation from the Miramar Club in Old Panama City that “is enough different from the usual to make it well listable here.” It includes Old Tom gin, sloe gin, and absinthe, then tosses in egg white for good measure to ensure amateurs are scared off. Wrote Baker, “This is a drink of considerable shocking power, and after consumption keep out of the sun, and in touch with friends.”

No need to go to such lengths. The sparer the preparation, the better; I don’t even bother with simple syrup, although some bartenders do. There’s nothing cloying or demure about the Pink Lady. The drink is dry, surprisingly tart, and strong. If anyone asks what you’re having, announce the name with pride. Then hum “A Boy Named Sue” while they plan their next move.

The Pink Lady

1 ½ oz. gin
¾ oz. lemon juice
½ oz. applejack
1 egg white
dash of grenadine

Shake the ingredients without ice, then with. Strain. No garnish.

¹ Potential drink names trademarked by Vince Keenan, 2013.

Book: Drinking With Men, by Rosie Schaap (2013)

Catch me under the right circumstances – a drink in my hand, say, another already coursing through my system – and I will tell you how finding a bar I could call my own changed my life. I could say that the discovery of this watering hole in fact saved my life, but that would be melodramatic and slightly inaccurate. It would be more honest to describe the experience as the opposite of a phantom limb; I never realized that I was incomplete until I walked into my home away from home and unearthed a wholly unknown part of myself, ready to be put to use.

That firsthand sense of what a “third place,” in the words of sociologist Ray Oldenburg, can mean is why Drinking With Men, the powerful new memoir by Rosie Schaap, hit me with such force. But anyone who appreciates writing as sharp, clean and cutting as a scalpel will find much to take away from her book.

Schaap is an inveterate habitué of bars, divining her true local wherever she lives. As she puts it, “being a regular isn’t synonymous with being a drunk; regularhood is much more about the camaraderie than the alcohol. Sharing the joys of drink and conversation with friends old and new, in a comfortable and familiar setting, is one of life’s most unheralded pleasures.” Her book is a celebration of what she calls the “controlled, convivial shallowness” of the bar, but one driven by a constant, burning question. Having found comfort and companionship in barrooms, she wants to know why it is that “mostly, I’ve found that fellowship in the company of men.”

Her odyssey covers the full taxonomy of drinking establishments, from cocktail lounges to dives, from the railroad bar car where she did Tarot readings as a troubled youth to a Dublin pub. In each place she becomes one of the familiar faces, someone who understands that “at the bar, you don’t so much unload your shit as set it aside. You keep the conversation light; wit is welcome, humor even more valued, but nothing too deep, nothing too serious.”

Every bar represents a personal milestone, often defined by trauma. Death haunts the book, sometimes in the family from which she is estranged, sometimes in the surrogate one forged before last call. What she orders and what she asks for may change, but Schaap, currently the drink columnist for the New York Times Magazine, is exquisitely attuned to the regular’s “unwritten but powerful code of honor. Be good to the people serving you drinks; be open to your fellow patrons, no matter how different they are from you. Gently mind the people you bring with you, but have authority. Have fun, but not at the expense of anyone else’s fun. A bar is never yours alone.” Throughout, she’s acutely aware of her status as pretty much the only woman who’s just one of the guys. She’s also forthright about how she can often be her own worst enemy, creating or complicating her problems.

But there’s always a place she can go to find a ready ear or whatever else she might need. Faithful attendance at a bar creates connections and interests that might not otherwise exist. Schaap is very funny about how one local triggered a lifelong interest in European soccer. (Schaap, who is also, be still my heart, a fellow New York Mets fan, has this to say about Manchester United: “I hardly saw the point in despising them, much less in supporting them. What fun is a team that wins all the time? Where is the dramatic tension, the possibility of being surprised by joy once in a while amidst all the heartache? It seemed far too much like being a Yankees fan, an altogether weak and unimaginative proposition.”) For all the hassles that come with bar life, Schaap returns to it again and again. Why? “Because if you can talk, and if you can listen, and if it is easy and pleasurable to talk and listen to anyone, because you’re happy to discuss anything, really, and to hear stories about anything, because you know that people are endlessly interesting and you know that they all have stories, and because liquor loosens tongues and you are paying attention and taking people seriously, you might just stand to learn something.” One thing Schaap quite reasonably wants to learn is why more women don’t join her on a journey that can begin down at the corner bar.

Cocktail of the Week: The Champagne Cocktail

It’s always a difficult moment, when a devoted student realizes he disagrees with a favorite teacher. I gaze at such a Rubicon today. Its waters are not placid, friends. They roil with bubbles.

I have referred time and again to David A. Embury’s essential book The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. In this book Mr. Embury describes the Champagne Cocktail, which I like, as an “incongruous mess” and worse, “a decidedly inferior drink ... no true champagne lover would ever commit the sacrilege of polluting a real vintage champagne by dunking even plain sugar – much less bitters – in it.”

Hoo. I’m going to need a minute here.

This would be the time to point out that in his infinite wisdom Mr. Embury allowed for differences of opinion; he regularly encouraged readers to “roll your own.” This might also be the time to acknowledge that I am perhaps not a true champagne lover. Given the choice between straight champers and a French 75 I will almost always opt for the latter.

And maybe opinions have changed since Embury first published his book in 1948. What about a contemporary cocktail guru I regularly refer to like, say, the Washington Post’s Jason Wilson? Where does he come down on this particular drink?

“It is simply a terrible cocktail ... I can think of two reasons why the champagne cocktail exists in this world: 1) to cover up rotgut sparkling wine, and 2) to reinvigorate the remainder of a bottle that has been sitting around for a day or two.”

OK, I may be in over my head here.

While the Champagne Cocktail might not exactly have an amen corner, it possesses something better: longevity. Any cocktail that can trace its existence back to the 1850s clearly has its ardent admirers. A recipe appears in Jerry Thomas’ The Bar-Tender’s Guide (1862). Thomas disciple David Wondrich calls it “the first evolved cocktail on record.” Its target demographic can certainly be pinpointed; it was nicknamed “chorus girl’s milk,” and a cocktail guide/ladies’ companion published in the 1940s offered multiple variations with names like She Couldn’t Say No and Her Sarong Slipped.

The drink itself could not be simpler. Take a sugar cube, soak it in bitters, cover it with champagne. An early modification calls for the addition of a small amount of brandy, specifically cognac, and it’s this variety that has won me over. (While most recipes specify Angostura bitters, Wondrich suggests using Peychaud’s if adding cognac.) To begin with, it is a beautiful drink to look at, the champagne’s bubbles effortlessly dismantling the sugar cube and carrying the taste throughout the glass. And bitters and cognac always work in combination, even with carbonation.

It wasn’t just chorus girls who liked a little sweetness and sharpness with their bubbly. Charles H. Baker, Jr., in his Gentleman’s Companion, served up no fewer than five variations on the Champagne Cocktail, most including cognac. One, the Jimmie Roosevelt, which features a float of green chartreuse, is “cooling, refreshing, invigorating, a delight to eye and palate.” In his book Bitters: A Spirited History, Brad Thomas Parsons enshrines the drink sans brandy in the Bitters Hall of Fame, noting that “while Champagne is wonderful on its own, adding a sugary, bitters-soaked kiss to the equation elevates the experience tenfold.”

So I’m not in the minority after all. Thus proving a larger point: when forced to choose sides, always go where the chorus girls are.

The Champagne Cocktail

several ozs. Champagne
1 sugar cube
several dashes of bitters
½ oz. Cognac

Pour champagne into flute. Add cognac. Soak the sugar cube in bitters and drop into the glass. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Q&A: David Corbett

My friend David Corbett is a writer of marvelous crime fiction; see my review of his most recent novel, Do They Know I’m Running? David’s latest book is something different. The Art of Character draws on his experience as a writing teacher and focuses explicitly on characterization. Read excerpts of the book at Zyzzyva and Narrative Magazine – but after you read this VKDCQ&A.

Q. What can you tell us about THE ART OF CHARACTER?

Gee, thanks for narrowing it down. Short answer: Too much.

It’s a book that grew out of my teaching and my own writing in answer to a need I felt. Everything’s ramped up these days, the speed of life never seems to decelerate, people’s attention span is nil, and this is reflected in our stories.

Pacing is more important than ever, plot is king, “high concept” (the greatest misnomer in lit) still commands the biggest paydays, and I just felt this need to stop, take a deep breath, and say: What’s missing? And what’s missing is character.

When you emphasize story and plot as heavily as we do now, characters can easily gravitate to roles at best, tropes or stereotypes at worst – Always Second Best, Captain Oblivious, Evil Jesuit – and this creates characters based on ideas, not people.

To get to the level of awareness and imagination where you can create the kinds of characters a reader or audience never forgets, you have to take time. The process of creation and discovery, the back and forth between letting the imagination run free then bending it to your will – this all takes a quieter, more patient – more loving for lack of a better word – mindset.

I wrote The Art of Character to begin a dialog on getting back to a more patient, human brand of storytelling.

Q. Quoting from the book, on writing: “This is not a science. It’s barely a craft.” That being the case, how do you even begin writing a how-to?

You accept the fact that you can’t merely instruct, you have to inspire. (I cringe at the phrase “how-to,” by the way.)

The most crucial aspect of characterization will always take place within each writer’s imagination and heart. I tried very hard to elevate the style and tone of this book so that readers would never think they were reading a manual. I can only point you in the right direction, I can’t lead you there.

But pointing you in the right direction is no small thing. The difference between a novice writer and a more experienced one lies in the knowledge of what questions to ask. The Art of Character is basically an encyclopedia of probing questions, with examples of excellent answers provided by great writers. Plus a few decent tips, pithy anecdotes, and jokes.

Q. You’ve said you were motivated to write the book in part because so many writing texts focus on structure as opposed to character. Are there additional demands in balancing structure and character in genre fiction?

The irony is that structure serves to illuminate character. The two are inextricably linked. But if you start with structure, you can often see character solely in its role as serving the demands of plot, premise, theme, and so on. This again steers you toward characters as ideas, not people.

Since genre fiction is so story-centric, the problem gets amplified there. It’s not just world-weary cops, politicians on the take, and hookers with a heart of gold that are clichés. It’s hard to envision new characters in a well-worn format. But that’s the job – especially in genre writing. The pursuit of romance or justice is pretty much the same as it always has been. The great writers find a way to bring someone new, someone we’ve never seen before, into that arena, and convince us they belong.

Q. The book’s subtitle is Creating Memorable Characters for Fiction, Film and TV. You regularly use films like CHINATOWN and MICHAEL CLAYTON in your teaching. How big an influence has film been on your work?

I use films for teaching tools because it’s more likely the whole class will have seen a given film than read a given book. (And it’s easier to teach structure with films because they’re so tightly plotted, especially in Hollywood these days.)

But for some of the same reasons I cited earlier, I think that the demands of TV and film writing – especially tight deadlines and the need to please very broad audiences – make deep character work particularly hard. And so it gets fobbed off on the actors.

Instead, from the writers you get – at the risk of repeating myself – Always Second Best, Captain Oblivious, and Evil Jesuit (which are the names of character types taken from the website TV Tropes). I’m modestly hoping to swing the conversation back a little toward character.

To do that, you have to show that great characters have created some of the greatest stories – if not all the greatest stories. Chinatown and Michael Clayton being two good examples.

Q. What effect has this golden age in long-form television had on characterization? Has it made anti-heroes more palatable? Are there dangers of formula there, too?

Long-form television has in many ways replaced the novel as a narrative medium, which is good for character (bad for all but a few novelists). Characters are allowed to be more complex, more open-ended, less rigidly defined by role. And yeah, that’s a boon for anti-heroes.

Wherever you have tight deadlines, a broad fan base, and a lot of money on the line, you’re going to have the risk of formula. The great lie of capitalism is that people with money are risk takers. Money abhors risk. Adam Smith said that. He just forgot to write it down.

Q. What can we expect next from you?

Well, my whole fiction backlist has been prettied up and reissued by Open Road Media and Mysterious Press, with a brand new story collection titled Killing Yourself to Survive. You can check out the books by following the links.

I’m also working on a new novel I’ve almost finished and intend to complete as soon as all the rest of this brouhaha settles down.

Jazz Q. You were lucky enough to attend the inaugural concert at the San Francisco Jazz Center last month. Highlights?

Oh geez, there were dozens. But the two that stand out for me were, first, a duet between Esperanza Spalding (bass and vocals) and Eric Harland (drums) that was unlike anything I’ve ever seen or heard. It reminded you that jazz is a great art form because it’s based on the players listening to each other, giving to each other, not sticking to a chart. And second, Joe Lovano and Joshua Redman played a post-bop sax duet that was just stinging hot – it growled and got angry and cried like a baby. Or maybe that was me.

Baseball Q. You live in the Bay Area and root for the San Francisco Giants. Any strong feelings about the Oakland A’s?

I was happy to see them make the playoffs, but I’ve got to admit they were largely off my radar until late August.

Embarrassment of riches, being a sports fan in the Bay Area. Almost makes up for the Raiders.

Movie Q. You spent many years working as a private investigator. What movie offers the most accurate depiction of that profession?

That’s much easier to answer for TV, actually. The Rockford Files was pretty decent, but Terriers stole my black little heart.

At the risk of repetition, Chinatown and Michael Clayton (he’s a lawyer, but his job isn’t far from a PI’s) are both pretty good. (As Jake points out to Evelyn Mulwray, most days aren’t as rough as the ones she’s around for.) The Conversation is based on Hal Lipset, who was the granddaddy of San Francisco PIs, and it has that frisson of authenticity.

But the most accurate portrayal of a PI in film or TV was Paul Drake on Perry Mason. Hands down. He was a little thick, but I recognized his job.

Cocktail Q. You’re in a well-stocked bar. What do you order?

Three ounces El Jimador tequila reposado, one ounce Cointreau, one ounce each of Meyer lemon juice and guanabana nectar, shaken not blended, salt on request. It’s how we do our margaritas at Casa de Corbett.

Cocktail of the Week: The Margarita

What can I possibly say about everybody’s favorite college/cruise/cabana cocktail? I bring it up mainly out of a sense of completion, to play out the thread that began two weeks ago. The Margarita is simply the most successful variation on the storied Sidecar: base spirit, tarted up (in the gustatory sense) with citrus, sweetened with orange liqueur, featuring a bonus kick on the rim of the glass. It’s an obvious conclusion to draw, like knowing that humankind is materialized color operating on the forty-ninth vibration.

The Margarita is, in the words of David Wondrich, “the last indispensable cocktail,” the final entrant in the pantheon of essential mixed drinks. It didn’t start gaining broad acceptance until the 1970s, owing largely to tequila’s initially poor reputation; as mentioned earlier, David Embury devotes most of his scant words on the spirit in 1948’s The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks to its then-common unappealing aroma.

The smell partly accounted for the salt-and-lime (or lemon) ritual that regularly accompanied tequila. Kingsley Amis called the Margarita, which incorporated both elements into the drink, “a kind of dude’s version” of the process. He also said that “there’s no point in denying that this is one of the most delicious drinks in the world.” Its genesis remains somewhat hazy, but combinations of tequila, orange notes and citrus were found throughout Mexico in the 1930s. Charles H. Baker, Jr., who declared the whole salt and lime business “a definite menace to the gullet and possible fire risk through lighted matches,” even offered up such a cocktail of his own devising in his Gentleman’s Companion (1939), blending tequila, lime juice, orange flower water and grenadine and naming the concoction in honor of “the idol of Mexico,” matador Armillita Chico.

Scattered, half-baked thoughts on assorted elements of the Margarita –

Tequila. Typically a 100% agave blanca tequila is recommended, but I never stand on ceremony. I’ve had some tasty variations made with mezcal, the agave-based spirit with a rougher, smokier flavor.

Orange liqueur. Read: Cointreau. Not triple sec. Never triple sec. Be good to yourself.

Frozen? And what sorority are you a member of, young lady? (No, seriously, frozen Margaritas are fine. At a sewing circle.)

Salted rim. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of salt with the Margarita, and not only because of my poor technique. A well-made rendition won’t require salt. Often I’ll only treat half the rim of the glass. But lately I’ve varied my policy, and that’s because of …

Agave syrup. It’s readily available now and a natural addition to this cocktail. It gives the drink an earthier, more proletarian texture, and sets up an intriguing battle between the salty and the sweet. Add a barspoon to your next round and judge for yourself.

The Margarita

2 oz. tequila
¾ oz. Cointreau
¾ oz. lime juice
¼ oz. agave syrup

Shake. Strain. Pour into a glass with a salted rim. No garnish.

Movie: Nobody Else But You (U.S. 2012)

Nobody Else But You, known as Poupoupidou in France for reasons that will become evident, slipped into a handful of American theaters last year with zero fanfare. Hard to believe a twisted comic thriller about a crime novelist solving the murder of the putative reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe didn’t gain any box office traction against The Avengers.

David Rousseau is stalled on his next book; everyone compares him unfavorably to James Ellroy and he’s toying with using a Scandinavian pseudonym. But when he travels to a remote region of France known as “Little Siberia” for the reading of a relative’s will – he doesn’t inherit much – he stumbles onto the perfect yarn: the apparent suicide of model turned bottle blonde bombshell turned regional celebrity Candice Lecoeur (the luminous Sophie Quinton). Rousseau badly wants foul play to be involved, and his unorthodox unauthorized investigation plus the curious reaction of the locals convinces him he’s onto something.

Rousseau’s misadventures in the small town have a mordant sensibility reminiscent of the Coen Brothers. But the film’s strongest scenes trace Candice’s evolution from not-so-ugly duckling born on the wrong side of the tracks to the woman everyone in this corner of the world wants a piece of. Marilyn Monroe becomes Candice’s role model and the key Rousseau uses to unlock the mystery.

Writer/director Gérald Hustache-Mathieu plays a bit fast and loose with story logic in the late going, but the emotional logic cannot be faulted. The ultimate explanation for Candice’s fate is both wholly plausible and heartbreakingly sad. And the final beat, about the significance of stories not only for the audience but for the teller, is quite moving. Nobody Else But You is a silly, sardonic film with a power that sneaks up on you.

Cocktail of the Week: The Champs-Élysées

Picking up where we left off, with the Sidecar …

Versatility is the hallmark of a good cocktail. A small change can result in a vastly different experience. The Sidecar serves as a perfect example. Replace the Cointreau with, say, the complex French liqueur chartreuse and you might as well give the drink a new name. Maybe something that connotes Gallic elegance like, say, the Champs-Élysées.

But which chartreuse? That’s the question.

When the Champs-Élysées appeared in the Savoy Cocktail Book (1930), Harry Craddock did not specify a particular shade of chartreuse. Over time green has become the default choice; thanks to its higher proof and bolder taste, it’s the go-to color for bartenders and cocktail aficionados everywhere. As this recipe indicates, it’s how the drink is made at the Zig Zag Café, where I first sampled it.

Yellow chartreuse, on the other hand, has a more sedate flavor that would seem a better match for cognac. Flipping through my 1956 edition of Patrick Gavin Duffy’s Official Mixer’s Manual, I wasn’t surprised to see him call out the lighter brand of chartreuse.

There’s room for still more invention. Washington Post cocktail authority Jason Wilson offered a variation forsaking sugar in any form and incorporating sparks of orange that add a higher register to the drink. Contrast his version with the Zig Zag’s for a sense of the subtle range that’s possible within the spectrum of a single cocktail.

The Champs-Élysées

Jason Wilson

1 ½ oz. Cognac
¾ oz. yellow chartreuse
½ oz. lemon juice
dash of orange bitters

Shake. Strain. Garnish with an orange twist (not pictured).

Books: The Jack LeVine Trilogy

If Andrew Bergman had only written The In-Laws, one of the funniest movies ever made (“Serpentine!”), he’d be enshrined in my personal pantheon. His original screenplay Tex X spawned Blazing Saddles, he adapted Gregory Mcdonald’s Fletch, and as writer/director he’s responsible for the crackpot genius that is The Freshman.

Before going Hollywood, Bergman – a fellow proud son of Queens – studied Hollywood, penning a study of Depression era films. He also wrote a series of period detective novels that Mysterious Press has reissued as ebooks. I’d heard about them. I had no idea I was missing them.

The Jack LeVine books quickly shed the label of Raymond Chandler pastiche because the protagonist takes on a quirky life of his own. Note that capital V, for starters. No tarnished knight is our LeVine. He doesn’t have the time for such airs. LeVine is a big, bald Jew living in Sunnyside (Queens again!) whose idea of a good time is a can of Blatz and a ball game on the radio while he soaks in the tub. He regularly lapses into the third person to mock his latest failing, his lowly status or his love of simple pleasures.

The books are funny but not comic; Bergman has too much respect for the detective novel to lampoon the form. LeVine falls for a woman in each, but he has uncommonly good taste to match Bergman’s flair for creating smart, believable female foils. The budding romance and the frequently earthy sex scenes are among the highlights in each outing, to the extent that I wish Bergman had tried sustaining a relationship past a single entry.

LeVine rubs shoulders and butts heads with real-world figures throughout the series, Bergman deploying these personages in unexpected ways. In LeVine’s debut, The Big Kiss-Off of 1944 (1974), he’s hired by a Broadway actress to deal with a blackmailer who possesses her early stag films. Soon the shamus is caught up in the Presidential election, the pragmatically apolitical LeVine aiding challenger Thomas Dewey with FDR or at least his operatives shown in an unflattering light. 1975’s Hollywood and LeVine opens with a strong chapter in which LeVine has an awkward lunch with Walter Adrian, a former City College classmate turned successful screenwriter. “There was no rift, nothing that dramatic, just the inevitable drifting apart of friends living completely different kinds of lives.” Walter’s career is in jeopardy thanks to the coming Red Scare. Before his old school chum can clear his not-yet-smeared name, Walter dies in a highly suspect suicide. LeVine’s investigation leads to a Richard Nixon almost preternaturally inept when it comes to social cues, but the show business Communists come in for almost as much scorn. Humphrey Bogart doesn’t have a cameo so much as a featured role.

Bergman took leave to become a Hollywood A-lister himself, then returned to the character some 25 years later. Tender is LeVine (2001) is both the strongest and weakest link in the trilogy, beautifully recreating a time when orchestra conductor Arturo Toscanini could be one of the most famous men in America but spinning around the Maestro a convoluted plot involving Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano.

The books are available individually or in an omnibus edition that I picked up for a song on Black Monday. I devoured all three titles in succession, and now can’t help wishing LeVine would take another case.

Movie: The Nickel Ride (1974)

It’s significant that the first word that comes to mind to describe The Nickel Ride is downbeat. 1970s crime dramas are aggressively, gaudily grim. The country was going down the tubes (even in French and English films), the system was busted, no one had any answers, and wherever you looked there was polyester.

But the bleakness of The Nickel Ride cuts deeper because it’s so small time. Its characters aren’t getting enough sleep to dream big. The film was directed by Robert Mulligan, the live TV veteran best known for To Kill A Mockingbird, from an early screenplay by Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, The Insider, Munich).

Jason Miller’s Frank Cooper is a middle manager in an L.A. syndicate that’s going corporate. The ex-carny is known as “the key man,” and that’s not only an indication of his supreme utility. Coop oversees every warehouse in the city that holds stolen goods. It’s a hell of a lot of responsibility, as boss John Hillerman (in fine unctuous form) tells him. “You’re like a computer and we can’t afford to have you break down.” Coop’s hatched a scheme to ease his burden: “The Block,” uttered in reverent tones, a single massive structure to facilitate the movement of swag. It appears to him in visions like a redbrick Xanadu. He’s only waiting to close a protection deal with the cops, but they’re giving him the runaround. Even worse, he’s been saddled with a cowboy sidekick out of Tulsa (Bo Hopkins) who may have ulterior motives.

The ‘70s also spawned a subgenre of Working Man at the End of His Rope movies. Jack Lemmon won an Oscar for one of the most obvious, Save the Tiger. The Nickel Ride transports that rat race despair to a George V. Higgins milieu, only with none of Higgins’ blunt poetry. There’s no time for it. There’s shit to move out of the truck.

Miller’s galvanic performance is almost the entire show here. Coop is aware he’s sinking: “The business is off. New people, new faces. Things change.” But aside from pressing his contacts to make the Block happen, he doesn’t know what else to do other than what he’s been doing for too damn long. “Without the work, I’m nothing. What else is there?” It would seem impossible to show a range of impassivity, but somehow Miller pulls it off. The movie is about both Coop and the audience realizing just how wound up he is at all times, his calm an eternal vigilance eating away at him. As a result, his occasional explosions of violence startle him most of all. Mulligan shoots one in particular in hugely effective fashion. To say more would ruin it.

Odd as it may be to recommend a movie for its shabbiness, The Nickel Ride unfolds in some spectacularly drab downtown Los Angeles locations. There’s also a comically depressing birthday party hosted by Coop’s pal Victor French. There’s not much crime in the film, but a lot of drama, and a star turn that should be more celebrated.

Cocktail of the Week: The Sidecar

Claret is the liquor for boys; port, for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy. In the first place, brandy is most grateful to the palate; and then brandy will do soonest for a man what drinking can do for him. There are, indeed, few who are able to drink brandy. That is a power rather to be wished for than attained. – Samuel Johnson

And no cocktail showcases brandy, specifically cognac, better than the Sidecar. Imagine my chagrin to discover I’d neglected it up to now. I mean, it’s one of the six basic cocktails in David Embury’s The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. It turns up on a 1936 list of the western world’s fifteen most popular cocktails. What was I thinking?

I know what I was thinking. Much as I enjoy a good Sidecar, I don’t typically make them at home for a reason that will be revealed in due time.

With a drink as durable as this one, it comes as little surprise that there are multiple origin stories. Embury claims to have been friends with its creator, a World War I-era military man ferried via motorcycle sidecar to the Paris bar (apparently Harry’s New York) where the drink was made to his specifications. I’m inclined to believe him, as the scrupulous Embury was not given to idle boasts. Kingsley Amis repeats this version, calling the sidecar “the ideal vehicle for a soak when he’s been soaking – he can forget about the driver and snore away in peace.” Several other Continental establishments purport to be where the Sidecar was first poured. Embury also called the cocktail “the most perfect example I know of a magnificent drink gone wrong” because it swelled to a half-dozen or more ingredients from the original three. (I say four, finding that a small amount of simple syrup binds the other flavors together.) Any formulae in which the essential trio are served in equal parts is to be ignored. The drink calls for brandy, but that is always read as cognac or Armagnac.

One element not present in any of the early recipes is now the Sidecar’s signature feature: the sugared rim of the glass in which it is served. Cocktail expert Ted Haigh discovered that the drink bears a marked resemblance to the 1860s New Orleans concoction the Brandy Crusta, which features the same ingredients plus bitters and half a lemon peel – all in a glass with sugar on the rim.

Bringing us to my problem. My technique on this critical step is, shall we say, subpar. It’s easy enough in theory: you moisten the rim by rubbing the exterior with a wedge of the appropriate citrus fruit (here, lemon), then hold the glass parallel to the table and rotate it in a dish of the dry ingredient (sugar in this case, salt for the Sidecar’s spiritual descendant the Margarita). The goal is not to add anything unnecessary to the drink itself, keeping the sugar or salt on the outside of the glass. I prefer putting sugar on only half the rim because I add simple syrup to the Sidecar.

But my approach leaves something to be desired. I offer the attached photograph as evidence. I either get too much of the dry ingredient or not enough, which is why I tend to leave this trick to the professionals. Still, the Sidecar is too marvelous a drink not to have in the home repertoire, and practice makes perfect. For that reason I’ve been frequenting busy commercial strips and telling passersby that I’ll sugar their rims for them. Just remember: if you ask if they’re cops, they have to tell you.¹

The Sidecar

2 oz. Cognac
¾ oz. Cointreau
¾ oz. lemon juice
¼ oz. simple syrup

Shake. Strain. Pour into a glass with a sugared rim. No garnish.

¹Caution: not legally true.

Book: The Entertainer, by Margaret Talbot (2012)

Given the cruel pragmatism of show business, it would be all too easy to dismiss Lyle Talbot as a disappointment, an actor who had his chance as a studio contract player in the 1930s but without a breakthrough wound up in Ed Wood movies. Given the eternally optimistic nature of performers, it’s equally feasible to brand him a success, a man who supported his family through his craft alone and became a TV fixture. Only a storyteller would look at Talbot’s career and understand that it touched on virtually every development in modern popular culture, and only a daughter would chart that course with such affection.

New Yorker staffer Margaret Talbot chronicles her father’s path from traveling carnivals to barnstorming theater companies to the golden age of Hollywood and ultimately the quiet streets of the Ozzie and Harriet show. My impression of Talbot comes from the pre-Code films he made for Warner Brothers, movies like Ladies They Talk About and Havana Widows, where he always played the other man, a weak figure who caused strong women like Barbara Stanwyck or Glenda Farrell to come to grief. Talbot assesses her father’s gifts correctly: “Lyle often conveyed a bit of foppishness, a juvenile quality, with a faint trace of the feminine in it, that sometimes played as inadvertently goofy ... He did not project a large and distinctive personality that surrounded him like an aura from role to role.” She further suggests that temperament contributed to his also-ran status. “He possessed neither the soaring ambition nor the bottomless desire to be loved by the crowd that propels many stars.” Talbot himself blamed his activism; he was one of the founding members of the Screen Actors Guild, and the first on the Warner lot.

Lyle’s career included its share of unlikely triumphs and strange footnotes (he was not only the first actor to portray Batman’s Commissioner Gordon but Superman’s Lex Luthor). Margaret recounts them all, including the depressing years as a member of Ed Wood’s stock company. She finds something to like and even respect about Glen or Glenda, but “Plan 9 (From Outer Space) and Jail Bait ... are really unwatchable for me. When I saw them once or twice with friends who were cracking up over them, I just felt sad and queasy and embarrassed for my dad. They reminded me of the cheap, off-brand Day-Glo candy you’d sometimes get in those claw-grabber machines at an arcade. Candy was so good; how could anybody make it so wretched?”

The Entertainer is occasionally digressive, veering into biographical cul-de-sacs, but understandably so because Talbot is coming to understand her much-older father as his own person. Ultimately it’s not about the entertainment business so much as the mystery of adulthood, specifically that of your parents and those shadowy, impossible-to-imagine years when their lives didn’t revolve around you, when they were out raising hell themselves. The best sections of this engaging book detail how Lyle’s itinerant lifestyle inculcated traits that he passed along to his daughter in various forms including beautifully prepared school lunches.

I think that in those years as a traveling player my father cultivated his own collection of habits, and that they stayed with him, help carry him, really, through life. He never had the steadiest of moral compasses, nor much in the way of self-knowledge, and at times he might have been completely undone by his love of a good time and the wrong woman. But he always maintained the habits of professionalism and of small attentions to himself that can hold a person together when little else does. I think there are probably many people like that, people who manage to live good and productive lives less for any deep reasons of character than for the fact that they’ve acquired, somewhere along the way, certain rituals of reliability and self-respect. Lyle always showed up at the theater; he always knew his lines. He did not leave the house unless he was well-turned out; he believed that was part of the social contract we implicitly make with our fellow human beings.

A few more Lyle Talbots in this world wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Cocktail of the Week: The Lucien Gaudin

First, the man. Then, the drink.

Gaudin was a fencer from France. He would become the most successful Olympian in his nation’s history, although he was denied the opportunity to prove himself in that competition for years. In 1904, when Gaudin was 18, France did not field a team. Four years later a foil event, Gaudin’s strong suit, was not in the official Olympic program. It would be in 1912 in Stockholm, but the French fencing team withdrew over a rules dispute. In 1916, the world had more pressing matters to attend to. Gaudin was finally able to represent his country at the 1920 Games, where despite a foot injury he won the team foil silver. He had a better showing in Paris in 1924, where the hometown boys took the team golds in both épée and foil. But his greatest triumph came at the 1928 Olympiad, when at the relatively senior age of 42 he claimed the individual gold medals in the same two events, as well as a team silver in foil.

A mere six years later Gaudin was dead, committing suicide using barbiturates. The reasons why remain murky; either he faced financial ruin or he sustained a thumb injury while sparring with a novice fencer that would prevent him from competing in the sport he loved. (Personally I prefer the second, more tragic explanation, but I’m a print-the-legend kind of guy.) At the time of his death he was referred to as “probably the greatest swordsman of all time,” and his passing was “a bit like tearing a page in the history of French sport.”¹

It was at the height of his 1928 fame that a drink was created in his honor; only fitting, since Gaudin was the toast of la belle France. Thanks to Ted Haigh’s book Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, his namesake lives again. The Lucien Gaudin owes a lot to the Negroni. It owes even more to the Cardinal, which is a Negroni made with dry instead of sweet vermouth. The Gaudin’s innovation is the addition of Cointreau, its crispness like a blade wielded by a master.

The Lucien Gaudin

1 oz. gin
½ oz. Cointreau
½ oz. Campari
½ oz. dry vermouth

Stir. Strain. Garnish with an orange twist.

¹ Loose translation courtesy of Google and not my dodgy high school French. But if you want to ask where the autobus is, I’m your man.

Movie: Garden of the Moon (1938)

To begin: Happy New Year!

Then a housekeeping note. 2012 saw the fewest amount of posts in this blog’s history, and over a third of them were of the Cocktail of the Week variety, which I started this year on a whim. I’ll endeavor to update more frequently on a broader range of subjects in 2013, but I make no guarantees. A lot’s going on around here.

As a good faith gesture, here’s a New Year’s Day post on the last movie I watched in 2012. My contribution to the Tuesday’s Overlooked Movies series. I’ve mentioned Garden of the Moon before, but it deserves a post all its own. I’m tempted to call it a noir musical given the principals, but it’s too fizzy for that. It’s a veritable champagne cocktail of a movie, and thus it made ideal New Year’s Eve viewing. I sense a tradition coming on.

Pat O’Brien (Crack-Up) machine guns through his dialogue as the manager of the title nightclub, the most swellegant spot in Los Angeles. He finds himself in a bind when his latest star attraction is waylaid in a motoring accident; it’s an indication of where Garden fell in the Warner Brothers hierarchy that it didn’t rate an appearance from Rudy Vallee, but landed a cameo by his bus. O’Brien books a replacement orchestra led by unknown John Payne (99 River Street, Kansas City Confidential) without telling him he’s merely a placeholder meant to serve two weeks. Payne teams up with the Garden’s publicist Margaret Lindsay in a battle of wits to extend his run.

The script by Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulay (They Drive By Night) brims with wisecracks, which O’Brien delivers at top volume. Vaudevillian Ray Mayer (High Wall) is one of the members of Payne’s band, along with Johnnie ‘Scat’ Davis and Bob Hope regular Jerry Colonna. Colonna may have been a one-note performer, but what a note!

Dick Powell was originally slated to take Payne’s role, and Bette Davis chose to remain on suspension rather than appear in what she dismissed as a trifle. The film is most notable for being director Busby Berkeley’s last assignment at Warner Brothers. Berkeley has no bevy of showgirls here, no breakout hits. What he does have is a clutch of sharp songs with music by Harry Warren and lyrics by Al Dubin and Johnny Mercer, the best of them two novelty numbers performed by a dozen or so guys on a bandstand. Faced with these constraints, Berkeley responds with some of the most inventive staging of his career.

Garden may be silly nonsense from start to finish, but I have tremendous affection for it. It’s one of my favorite movies of the 1930s, and you can buy it from the Warner Archive. To give you a taste, here’s the demented and inspired ‘The Girlfriend of the Whirling Dervish,’ which would become a Looney Tunes staple whenever a touch of the exotic was required.

Cocktail of the Week: The Liberty

One of the benefits to living in Seattle is that come the most wonderful time of the year, there’s no need to fool around with holiday cocktails. Not when plenty of bars in town are making drinks suitable to the season. Rob Roy does a full Advent calendar, offering a different concoction every night in December closing with a Blue Blazer – Scotch set afire and poured between metal mugs – on Christmas Eve. (This year’s variation featured chartreuse. I missed it.) Sun Liquor serves up superlative egg nog. Earlier this week at Vito’s I savored the warm rum variation known as a Tom & Jerry, presented in the traditional mug. Says Tom & Jerry right on it.

Still, on occasion the Christmas spirit moves me to fix an appropriate yet simple cocktail. The weather demands crispness, which sends me straight to the applejack. But around the corner is the start of the new year, with its hope of sunnier times and balmier climes. Why not acknowledge that promise with some rum?

The Liberty brings both tastes together to smashing effect. The drink is often served over crushed ice as a summer cooler. But I find that its smooth blend of introspection and anticipation, up in a cocktail glass, plays every bit as well at the holidays. (Who am I kidding? The Liberty is pure alcohol, so whatever the calendar says it packs a wallop.)

The original recipe, as it appears in The Savoy Cocktail Book and Patrick Gavin Duffy’s Official Mixer’s Manual, is as basic as can be: applejack, a smaller quantity of rum, sugar. Later iterations called for a dash of lime juice, which makes a nice addition. The Liberty may not be an obvious Yuletide option, but it’s one guaranteed to make the season bright.

The Liberty

2 oz. applejack
1 oz. rum
¼ oz. simple syrup
splash of fresh lime juice

Stir. Strain. No garnish.

Book: To Have and Have Another, by Philip Greene (2012) / Cocktail of the Week: The White Lady

Few authors drank like Ernest Hemingway. Even fewer wrote about drinking like him. Alcohol was no mere prop to Papa or his characters; it frequently provided an additional level of insight into where they were, both geographically and emotionally. “Don’t bother with churches, government buildings or city squares,” Hemingway once said. “If you want to know a culture, spend a night in its bars.”

Philip Greene gives himself a tall order, then, using cocktails as a prism through which to view Hemingway’s life and work. But he’s clearly the man for the job: a lifelong admirer of Papa’s prose, Greene is not just one of the founders of the Museum of the American Cocktail but a descendant of Antoine Peychaud, creator of the legendary bitters.

To Have and Have Another: A Hemingway Cocktail Companion features meticulous scholarship. Greene ably debunks the legend of Hemingway’s supposed affection for the mojito; suggests that the Jack Rose the author drank in Paris was a far more complex drink bearing a resemblance to the Bronx cocktail; and even unearths a Hemingway original from Papa’s medical files, complete with diagram. Hemingway often comes across as more a stubborn drinker than an accomplished one, insisting on his own idiosyncratic preparation of the martini and bringing his own personal barman to parties.

Greene’s approach allows him to sketch out large swaths of biography economically. The book is arranged alphabetically by cocktail, a structure that occasionally forces Greene to be repetitive; mighty quantities of alcohol are consumed in the posthumously published Islands in the Stream, so each new drink requires a rehashing of the novel’s plot. But Greene also provides some shrewd literary analysis, as in the section on the most frequently referenced drink in the Hemingway canon, the whiskey and soda. (Greene convincingly argues it’s most likely ‘whisky’ in Hemingway’s case.) Recounting a scene in Islands, Greene notes that the protagonist “learns the painful lesson that hell isn’t necessarily as it has been described to us by Dante and other authors. Indeed, it could be a nice, comfortable stateroom on a favorite liner, taking you to a place you’d always loved.”

Inspired, I made the last drink featured in Greene’s book. “The White Lady is a delightful cocktail that, I boldly predict, will soon enjoy a renaissance,” he writes, and I hope he’s correct. The drink can be traced back to both the famous cocktail Harrys, McElhone of Harry’s New York Bar in Paris and Craddock of London’s Savoy; Greene astutely draws a parallel between the exodus of artists and craft bartenders to Europe in the 1920s. I didn’t use Greene’s recipe, but a modified one from The PDT Cocktail Book by Jim Meehan. Hemingway wouldn’t have cared for this version because it includes simple syrup, and he didn’t take sugar as his favorite daiquiri would indicate. I opted to include the egg white, which gives the drink a beguiling silky texture. Feel free to omit it.

The White Lady

2 oz. gin
¾ oz. Cointreau
¾ oz. lemon juice
¼ oz. simple syrup
1 egg white

Shake ingredients without ice if using egg white, then with ice. Strain. No garnish.

Movie: The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947)

Here’s ten minutes that saved my weekend.

The knock on Preston Sturges is that, after a staggering run of comic masterpieces (including The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, The Palm Beach Story and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek) that remains the benchmark for a single person’s productivity in Hollywood, his work tails off. He left Paramount, where he cranked out movies so quickly that some were released two years after they were shot, and threw in with Howard Hughes in 1944. The deal gave Sturges his creative freedom, the legend goes, but sapped his talents.

I don’t buy it. Mainly because Unfaithfully Yours (1948), which Sturges made for Fox after his partnership with Hughes collapsed, contains some of the funniest material of his career. Of course, that’s the only film from the post-1944 period I’d seen.

But on Friday night I desperately needed to watch something funny, so I turned to the one movie Sturges and Hughes made together. The Sin of Harold Diddlebock stars Harold Lloyd in a quasi-follow-up to his silent classic The Freshman (1925); Sturges’ movie opens with an extended sequence from the earlier film showing Lloyd’s gung-ho college football waterboy getting on the gridiron and winning the big game. Diddlebock begins immediately after, with Lloyd’s go-getter being offered a job by a grateful alum. He stays there for twenty-two years and accomplishes nothing other than being fired. It’s only then that his life truly starts.

Diddlebock was neither a critical nor commercial triumph. Hughes edited his own version of the film and released it in 1950 as Mad Wednesday. It fared even worse. Diddlebock can charitably be described as uneven. It gets sillier as it goes along, ending with the kind of physical comedy set piece that made Lloyd’s reputation but for which Sturges has little feeling. (The two comic titans respected each other but had differing views of their craft, which led to tension during the production.) But there are flashes of Sturges’ crackpot wit throughout. He could write certain types of characters better than anyone else: rich people, people who have suddenly become rich, and people whose jobs require them to cater to the rich. All three groups are present here.

But the film’s high point is the scene in which Diddlebock, his services just terminated, is coerced by new pal Wormy into having a drink with him at eleven in the morning. The cocktail will be Diddlebock’s first, and bartender Edgar Kennedy is determined to rise to the occasion. What follows is liberation via libation and Sturges at his unhinged best. It’s now my favorite scene set in a bar.

Cocktail of the Week: The Scofflaw

And now, a story with a simple moral: Don’t mess with serious drinkers. They have sharp senses of humor, and they will always get you back.

In 1923, a prominent Massachusetts member of the Anti-Saloon League, which had gotten Prohibition passed in the United States, announced a contest. The princely sum of two hundred dollars would be awarded to whoever coined the best word to describe “a lawless drinker of illegally made or illegally obtained liquor.” More than one person came up with ‘scofflaw,’ although if you ask me they weren’t trying all that hard. “One who scoffs at the law”? That’s the best you’ve got? This is what happens when brainstorming sessions are fueled only by sarsaparilla and sanctimony.

But the name that was meant to shame tipplers onto the path to righteousness had the opposite effect. Two weeks after the contest’s winners were named, the Scofflaw cocktail was being poured in Harry’s New York Bar in Paris. Take that, moralists! The word is now broadly applied to anyone who contemptuously violates social edicts by, say, amassing an ungodly number of parking tickets. The Scofflaw is on the extremely short list of cocktails born of Prohibition. Ironically, it wasn’t created in some dark speakeasy but in France.

For once the origin of a drink’s name is a matter of public record. It’s the recipe that’s in question. Patrick Gavin Duffy’s Official Mixer’s Manual (1934) suggests the following for a ‘Scoff-Law’: ⅓ rye, ⅓ dry vermouth, ⅙ lemon juice, ⅙ grenadine, dash of orange bitters. At some point the balance between rye and vermouth shifted in rye’s favor, which I am all in favor of. A few versions began specifying Canadian whiskey, wholly unnecessary now that a host of quality ryes are again on the market. Along the way the orange bitters were left off many formulas, a regrettable oversight as the citrus pulls the whiskey and vermouth together nicely. And there are those who suggest using chartreuse in place of grenadine, which I appreciate in theory; chartreuse improves many, many things. But in this case, I stick with the tried and true.

Consider the recipe below a work in progress. I stepped down the grenadine because, philistine that I am, I use a store-bought variety instead of making my own and a little of it goes a long way. And increasing the base spirit to two full ounces as many recommend is not a bad idea in the least. What follows is where I started. It isn’t necessarily where you’ll finish.

The Scofflaw

1 ½ oz. rye
1 oz. dry vermouth
¾ oz. lemon juice
½ oz. grenadine
dash of orange bitters

Shake. Strain. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Keenan's Klassics: It's a Shane Black Christmas

The question is, will IRON MAN 3 take place at Christmas? From December 2009.

There I am at my favorite watering hole, talking with the staff, when the subject of Christmas movies is raised.

First suggestion, not made by me: the traditional double-bill of Die Hard and Die Hard II: Die Harder.

Thus giving me the tenor of the conversation. This is not the time, perhaps, to mention Remember the Night and Holiday Affair, two overlooked films (with noir connections!) that Turner Classic Movies has labored to turn into Yuletide staples. Although a mention of Blast of Silence, full of Wenceslas wetwork, might not be out of the question.

So I lobby for my own Christmas favorite, The Ref. And then observe, not for the first time, that the entire oeuvre of Shane Black – Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – is set at the most wonderful time of the year.

Therefore, as you venture out for that last round of shopping, I offer, by popular demand, what has become a VKDC tradition. (“By popular demand” meaning Rosemarie asked, “Why haven’t you posted this yet?” And she did write most of it.) Here, once again, is Shane Black’s 12 Days of Christmas. Record your church group performing this and we’ll post the video here!

Twelve cars exploding
Eleven extras running
Ten tankers skidding
Nine strippers pole-ing
Eight Uzis firing
Seven henchmen scowling
Six choppers crashing

Five silver Glocks

Four ticking bombs
Three hand grenades
Two mortar shells
And a suitcase full of C-4

God bless us, everyone. Or else.

Cocktail of the Week: The Aviation

First thing you need to know about this drink: it’s a Rosemarie favorite and tomorrow is her birthday, meaning several of them will be consumed over the course of the gala weekend.

Second thing you need to know: The Aviation’s name can seem like something of a mystery – at least it did to me – because one ingredient may be lacking. The drink was first cited in Hugo Ensslin’s Recipes for Mixed Drinks (1916), when those daring young men in their flying machines stirred many a heart. Ensslin called for four components: gin, lemon juice, maraschino, and the violet-hued French liqueur crème de violette. The last element was said to give the drink a bluish color reminiscent of the sky, hence the handle. The first few times I ordered the cocktail, bartenders would apologize for not having violette on hand as they served up a pale but crisply refreshing beverage. Crème de violette became available in the United States again about five years ago but can still be difficult to come by. I’ve sampled Aviations with all four ingredients present and accounted for and can say that violette’s addition gives the drink only a faint purplish tinge, along with an appealing floral scent. The Aviation is just fine sans the supplement, but it’s worth noting that the same three ingredients in slightly different ratios will result in the Allen Cocktail or Allen Special.

Third thing: The Aviation’s revival was not without controversy. A panel at the May 2012 Manhattan Cocktail Classic called “Do Not Resuscitate” targeted once-and-currently-popular drinks that perhaps should have been left in blind pigs shrouded by the mists of time. Éminence grise Dale DeGroff nominated the Aviation, saying “It tastes like hand soap” unless you added crème de violette, in which case “it’s more like hand soap.” The objection didn’t prevent DeGroff from including the drink in his books The Craft of the Cocktail and The Essential Cocktail, although to be fair he never sounds all that enthused about it; his comments in the earlier book are limited to “The Internet cocktail crowd has breathed new life into this chestnut.” Still, almost a century after Ensslin the Aviation has its partisans, among them William Grimes of the New York Times, who called it his favorite forgotten cocktail, and my wife Rosemarie. Did I mention tomorrow is her birthday?

The Aviation

2 oz. gin
¾ oz. lemon juice
½ oz. maraschino liqueur
¼ oz. crème de violette (you probably don’t have any, and that’s OK; you should make the drink anyway)

Shake. Strain. Garnish with a cherry.

Cocktail of the Week: The Stork Club

Swells of all stripes, denizens from every destination demimonde, regularly assembled at the Stork Club. Columnist Walter Winchell, who had his own table there, dubbed the East 53rd Street nightspot “New York’s New Yorkiest place.” The club was the domain of former bootlegger Sherman Billingsley, who started the joint with the not-entirely-secret backing of organized crime figures and bought them out after some minor difficulties including his being kidnapped by their rival Mad Dog Coll. In his history Gangsters & Gold Diggers, Jerome Charyn brands Billingsley “a nebbish from Enid, Oklahoma” and “a snob” who cribbed everything he knew about the nightlife business from legendary hostess Texas Guinan – except for her democratic attitude toward her guests. Billingsley could only abide the rubbing of A-list elbows, and his velvet rope mindset helped to make him a celebrity in his own right; he turns up as a character in the Betty Hutton comedy set in his club as well as the novel The Murder in the Stork Club written by Laura author Vera Caspary, and hosted a TV show in the 1950s.

1946 saw the publication of The Stork Club Bar Book, penned by society journalist, clotheshorse and gourmand Lucius Beebe, who coined the term “café society.” I don’t have a copy of Beebe’s book, but reports indicate it includes the recipe for the club’s namesake cocktail and credits it to the Stork’s service captain Eddie Whittmer. I do have Dale DeGroff’s The Craft of the Cocktail, in which he hails chief barman Nathaniel Cook as the drink’s champion.

There’s a hint of the speakeasy about this drink owing simply to the amount of orange juice; during Prohibition, many a bad batch of gin was made palatable with an abundance of citrus. Then again the Bronx cocktail, also heavy on the OJ, predates the Stork Club and Prohibition by many years. There’s also some similarity in terms of ingredients to the Pegu Club.

That big jolt of juice pushes the Stork Club into its own spotlight. It’s a show biz level of excess, the kind of flash Billingsley himself no doubt appreciated. It gives the cocktail a bouncy buoyancy that would play well at brunch. The original recipe called for the juice of half an orange, which is typically read as one ounce. The same recipe also uses gin but I substituted the sweeter and more substantial Old Tom variety, which matched up better with the citrus. Sip this cocktail and you can pretend you’re a Stork Club regular like J. Edgar Hoover, who probably never drank one of these.

The Stork Club

1 ½ oz. gin (Old Tom if it’s available)
1 oz. orange juice
½ oz. Cointreau
¼ oz. lime juice
dash of Angostura bitters

Shake. Strain. Garnish with an orange twist.

Extra, Extra!: Noir City

It’s that time again, kids. The Winter 2012 issue of Noir City, the magazine of the Film Noir Foundation, is out as of yesterday, and you could be reading it right now instead of this. Included for your delectation:

An extended section on the lingering shadows of Edgar G. Ulmer’s quintessential film noir Detour, featuring Steve Kronenberg on Ulmer’s planned but never shot psychedelic ‘60s remake; his interview with actress Lea Lavish, who made her only screen appearance in the misbegotten 1992 remake; and Jake Hinkson on the sad life of the original film’s doomed star Tom Neal.

A second section on race and ethnicity in noir, anchored by Hinkson’s article on the once-lost Argentine-shot 1951 film of Native Son starring author Richard Wright as his own creation Bigger Thomas. (The restored movie will be screening at the Noir City film festivals in 2013.)

FNF honcho Eddie Muller on Josef von Sternberg’s Docks of New York.

A long overdue profile of bargain basement auteur Hugo Haas.

And another edition of my crime fiction’n’cocktail column Keenan’s Korner, this time spotlighting Dashiell Hammett’s Return of the Thin Man, the latest from Don Winslow, and a pre-Prohibition tipple you’re sure to enjoy.

You know the drill. To receive the magazine, swing by the Film Noir Foundation and make a donation at this, the most wonderful time of the year. The warm feeling in your heart will not be from the cocktail. Well, not entirely.

Today happens to be the birthday of one of noir’s greatest performers, Gloria Grahame. As a reward for reading this sales pitch, here’s Gloria in her glory with an able assist from vocalist Jo Ann Greer in 1954’s Naked Alibi. Want to read more about noir chanteuses? Then go buy Noir City Annual #4, with my article on the subject. (OK, sales pitch over. For reals this time.)

Cocktail of the Week: The Arnaud’s Special

It’s unfortunate that Scotch cocktails are such scarce beasts, because I’ve enjoyed the few I’ve tried. The Rob Roy, essentially a Scotch Manhattan, is the best known. I’m hugely partial to the Blood and Sand, and when I finally pony up for a bottle of Cherry Heering I will attempt to write the rapturous post that drink deserves.

Recently I found myself in Macleod’s Scottish Pub, a homey Seattle drinking house kitted out in full Celtic regalia and featuring an extensive menu of fine Scotch whiskies – along with several cocktails that made use of them. I was spoiled for choice, so naturally I ordered a beer. (I had a MurrayAid event to attend later that evening and needed to pace myself.) A return trip is most definitely in order, but in the meantime the visit put me in the mood for a drink featuring the smoky spirit. As luck would have it, I’d just come across one.

The Arnaud’s Special is highlighted in Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh’s excellent work of scholarship Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails. What truly sold me on the drink was its inclusion in Ted Saucier’s Bottoms Up!, the same 1951 book from which Murray Stenson had unearthed the Last Word. That serendipitous fact alone demanded that I sample it.

According to Haigh, in the 1940s and ‘50s this drink was a staple at the still-in-business namesake New Orleans restaurant, opened in 1918 by a bogus nobleman. If the Rob Roy brings the Manhattan to the Highlands, the Arnaud’s Special drags it further afield. In place of sweet vermouth it uses Dubonnet, its more piquant sweetness pairing with the Scotch to salutary effect. Orange bitters and a twist unify the drink with additional sharp notes of citrus. Per Haigh’s suggestion I used Johnny Walker Red; there’s no point in hiding the Scotch in this cocktail. Embrace its bold, solid flavor instead.

The Arnaud’s Special

2 oz. Scotch
1 oz. Dubonnet
3 dashes orange bitters

Shake. Strain. Garnish with an orange twist.

Movie: Mike’s Murder (1984)

For years I knew three things about Mike’s Murder, all of them making the film nigh on irresistible to me.

1. It had a test screening so legendarily disastrous that any mention of it to certain key participants turns them green to this day.

2. The compromised version that was tossed into a handful of theaters in 1984 after two years of studio tinkering still gained a fervent cult following. Leonard Maltin, in his always-within-reach Movie Guide, gives the film one-and-a-half stars out of four, calling it “One of the worst movies ever made by a filmmaker of (James) Bridges’ stature ... Escapes BOMB rating only because several critics thought highly of it.”

3. It was impossible to see. Usually movies with flawed reputations surface on cable in the wee hours of the morning, but not Mike’s Murder. It essentially vanished without a trace.

The on-demand Warner Archive made Mike’s Murder one of its early titles. I finally bought a copy and sated my curiosity.

Bridges’ original cut was longer, featuring a fractured narrative, a brutal murder sequence, and a lot more of Joe Jackson’s music. The film that was released was straitjacketed into a more conventional structure with lush John Barry accompaniment. But no amount of second-guessing was going to transform Mike’s Murder into a box office sensation. Not because it’s a dark, downbeat story, but because it tells the tale of losers in a city of winners. Mike’s Murder is not a great movie. But I’d lobby for it to be considered one of the great Los Angeles films, with a seductive, doomy vision all its own. (I’d wager that one person who has seen it is Paul Thomas Anderson; the ‘80s section of Boogie Nights has a similar feel, and Thomas Jane’s character in that film is a doppelganger for one here.)

The critics who loved the movie did so largely because of Debra Winger’s lead performance. She’s sensational as Betty Parrish, a woman who moved to L.A. for sunshine not stardom, a bank teller who still calls her parents when she lands a promotion. Part of the easy SoCal vibe means a hook-up with her tennis instructor Mike (Mark Keyloun). Mike is a looker of modest charm, a happy hustler who does what he can and who he can to get by. Sometimes that means crashing proto-Kato Kaelin-style at the guest house of a minor show biz luminary. Sometimes that means selling small quantities of drugs. Anything to keep alive the dream of flying high in the City of Angels. Mike is a telling gender reversal of a character common in L.A. lore, the young woman who uses sex to get ahead and soon finds herself lost.

Some of the digressive style Bridges intended lingers in the film’s first act. It unfolds hazily, spanning several months without making the passage of time immediately apparent. Bridges’ Los Angeles is a metropolis of low-slung ugly buildings and manicured medians, where life is lived in transit. Betty and Mike cross paths, mix signals, then drift apart for weeks at a time. Until Mike gets murdered following a drug deal.

The particulars aren’t that clear or even that interesting. What matters is that Betty suddenly feels a void where she didn’t even realize there was a presence. It’s here that Winger’s performance occasionally touches the transcendent. She’s not mourning Mike as a person but as a possibility; she’s grieving over the prospect that at some point they might have drifted together for good. She tells another of Mike’s paramours, a record executive played by Paul Winfield, that she loved Mike, but she’s only trying the sentiment on for size. Casting the little-known Keyloun pays dividends. He would leave acting a few years after this movie to work in I.T. Mike’s Murder is his sole cinematic legacy, a quirk that only intensifies the haunted feeling surrounding his character.

Betty doesn’t investigate Mike’s death. She simply wants to know more about the man who’s never going to come back into her life, and that interest puts her in harm’s way. The tense ending includes an only-in-California gambit at once completely ludicrous and wholly plausible. The movie leaves Betty and the audience in an in-between place, where the ground beneath your feet can’t be trusted and there are plenty of clear skies but no clear answers. A place an awful lot like Los Angeles.

Cocktail of the Week: The Bartender’s Choice

One of life’s great pleasures is having a drink made by a skilled bartender who knows you and your tastes, someone who has served as a spirit guide in every sense. On these occasions I am likely to trust myself to them completely, providing minimal direction – “I’m thinking rye” – or simply asking “What do you have that’s different?” and letting them work their magic. I am never disappointed, and often encounter something unexpected that opens up whole new levels of exploration and appreciation.

Such a bartender is Murray Stenson. I wrote about Murray’s recently diagnosed health issues last week. The call has been taken up by the world cocktail community, as this AP article illustrates. Tens of thousands of dollars have already been raised – and that was before the benefits. The one held the night before Halloween at Canon, where Murray works, was a massive success.

And the biggest is about to happen. I met Murray at the Zig Zag Café, the place where he made his deserved global reputation. Sunday night, the Zig Zag is giving back, donating the evening’s proceeds to MurrayAid. There are other Seattle benefits lined up in the coming days, plus events in New York, Washington and elsewhere listed at the MurrayAid site.

If you’ve enjoyed these posts, please consider making a contribution. The cost of a single cocktail would be a lovely gesture.

If you’re one of the many people I’ve taken for cocktails at the Zig Zag or Canon, I will be blunt: you owe me. So come down to the Zig Zag on Sunday and drink to Murray’s health. Rosemarie and I will be there – although to be honest, we probably would have been there anyway. If you can’t make it, try one of the other upcoming benefits. Odds are we’ll be at Bastille for the November 7 event. If you’re in one of the other cities where a MurrayAid benefit is happening, swing by. (New York people, I don’t know if the events scheduled for Monday, November 5 are still on. Even if they’re not, you should stop in. The bars could use your money, and you could probably use a drink.) If you can’t make a benefit, please make a donation. The best cocktails begin with the best bartenders. Murray is in that company.