Meaningless Milestone: Happy Blogiversary To Me

Two years ago today, VinceKeenan.com lurched onto the Interweb. I’ve spewed an ungodly amount of nonsense since then – my 500th post will be up here in the coming weeks – which has somehow landed me a regular readership. No one is more surprised at this turn of events than I am.

My thanks to all of you who keep stopping by the ol’ digital homestead. I’ll try to make it worth your while.

Movie: Brick (2006)

Don’t listen to those who compare this high school detective tale and Sundance favorite to the teen gangster romp Bugsy Malone. Bugsy was a joke, fer cryin’ out loud. It had songs in it. Writer/director Rian Johnson intends this movie as a serious exploration of noir. At times it has the feel of an experiment, but always one carried out in earnest. More often than not, it taps into the darkness underlying every cafeteria clique and homeroom freeze-out. Classic noir is about desperate people at the ends of their tethers. It stands to reason that kids gripping those ropes for the first time would be desperate, too.

Mainly, the movie works because of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Down these mean corridors a student must walk who is not himself mean, and Gordon-Levitt is your man.

Miscellaneous: Link

I’m late in coming to this Believer interview with Harold Ramis. (The Ice Harvest is on video now. If you haven’t seen it, do so at once.) Dave Kehr was late in coming to it, too, and I commend it to your attention for the same reason he does. Namely, this exchange:

Ramis: ... I can’t tell you how many people have told me, ‘When I go to the movies, I don’t want to think.’

The Believer: Does that offend you as a filmmaker?

Ramis: It offends me as a human being. Why wouldn’t you want to think? What does that mean? Why not just shoot yourself in the fucking head?

Amen.

TV: Beckett on Film

The things you discover when you’re up in the wee hours of the morning.

To mark this month’s centenary of the birth of Samuel Beckett, the Sundance Channel is airing Beckett on Film. This ambitious project, undertaken in part by the Gate Theater, Dublin and the Irish Film Board, brought together renowned actors and directors to commit 19 Beckett plays to celluloid.

Sundance is broadcasting the collection without much fanfare Fridays at midnight (read: late Thursday night), a timeslot in which it will only be seen by troubled loners, the chronically unemployable, and those suffering pronounced coughing jags. (Last Thursday, I spanned all three categories.) Beckett, no doubt, would have been thrilled.

I saw ‘Breath,’ a 35-second play without words directed by the artist Damien Hirst, and ‘Play,’ helmed by Oscar-winner Anthony Minghella, in which three disembodied souls are doomed to repeat their story of romantic betrayal.

David Mamet’s ‘Catastrophe’ featured Sir John Gielgud in his last performance. A powerful piece that I didn’t completely understand.

Rosemarie: It’s an allegory of totalitarianism.

Me: It is?

Rosemarie: It has to be. Any piece of theater you don’t understand is always an allegory of totalitarianism.

Me: Wow. Are you sure?

Rosemarie: Oh, yeah. I have a humanities degree.

As usual, she’s right.

My favorite of the films was ‘Not I,’ with Neil Jordan directing Julianne Moore. It’s an 14-minute close-up of the actress’s mouth as she spits out garbled sentences recounting a woman’s empty life. It’s nothing short of mesmerizing. The camera – and eventually the text – fixate on the unconscious mechanics of speech: the motion of the tongue, the hypnotic undulations of the lips. In my weakened condition, watching Angelina Jolie perform this piece would have killed me.

Critics have complained that some of the films aren’t true to the Beckett spirit. But for someone whose knowledge of his work is limited to ‘Waiting for Godot,’ they make an invaluable introduction. The series continues this week with ‘Krapp’s Last Tape,’ directed by Atom Egoyan and starring John Hurt. I plan on recording it. I’d rather not be awake when it’s on.

Miscellaneous: Link

What an age we live in, when a regular joe can use household technology to recreate a seminal moment in human history.

Movies: Cold & Flu Theater

Under the weather? Nothing like clearing movies off the DVR.

While the City Sleeps (1956). Jonathan Rosenbaum touted this in his overlooked noirs piece and I thought, “Didn’t I record that last June?” Yep. It’s a late Fritz Lang/Dana Andrews collaboration, from the period when Lang didn’t have enough money and Andrews had too many highballs. Rosenbaum calls it “the closest Lang ever came to remaking his greatest film, M,” which is overselling it. But it’s got a humdinger of a story.

A media baron dies, leaving feckless son Vincent Price in charge. Price pits the company’s top three lieutenants (including stalwarts George Sanders and Thomas Mitchell) against each other in a race to become his right hand man. All three lobby ace columnist Andrews for support. Also in the mix is icy “woman’s writer” Ida Lupino and Price’s unfaithful wife Rhonda Fleming. The story on page one: the hunt for “the Lipstick Killer,” played by John Barrymore, Jr. (Drew’s dad).

There’s too much plot for so small a budget, but Lang knows how to keep the action moving. While the killer stuff gets short shrift, it does produce the film’s most chilling moment. Barrymore accuses his adoptive mother of wanting a girl and she tells him, “You’re my son, and my daughter, and all the children I could never have.” Cripes.

Man in the Shadow (1957). A young Mexican ranch hand, in the U.S. illegally, is murdered, and only one man cares to bring his killers to justice. Consider this modest, solid western a forerunner to The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.

Quite the mix of talent here: Orson Welles as the heavy, veteran TV writer Gene L. Coon, and ace B-movie director Jack Arnold, all overseen by the Dino DeLaurentiis of the 1950s, Albert Zugsmith.

A supporting character is named “Aiken Clay.” In my drug-addled state, that struck me as significant.

Angel Face (1953). It’s fashionable now to slight Laura in favor of Otto Preminger’s lesser known crime dramas. Sorry. Leave Her To Heaven told this tale better. Points for the ending, though.

Second Chance (1953). Caution: While taking this medication, do not operate heavy machinery or watch movies originally filmed in 3-D. Even those with major stars.

Shameless Self-Promotion: Flash Fiction

Turns out that ultra-short stories are the literary equivalent of potato chips, in that I can’t stop with one. My latest, Short Ride Home, is now up at Flashing in the Gutters.

Book: Mouthpiece, by Edward Hayes (2006)

Hayes is an honest-to-God New York character, a high-powered lawyer who’s always in the scrum. Who owns closets full of hand-tailored suits and custom-made shoes. Who fraternizes with the great, the near-great, and Anna Wintour. He’s the kind of guy you’d expect to meet in a novel. And you probably have. Hayes was the inspiration for the well-connected but street-smart attorney Tommy “Whaddaya Whaddaya?” Killian in Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities. Wolfe even dedicated the book to him. In Mouthpiece, Hayes tells his own story.

It’s lumpy, misshapen, and a blast to read. Hayes, who describes himself as “a neighborhood white boy” made good, is upfront about everything: his bouts with depression, his diverse sex life, the ethical dilemma posed by taking out your fees in trade with your gorgeous prostitute clients.

“At one time,” he writes, “I represented high-priced call girls, an after-hours club that featured live sex shows with dwarves, and a bunch of rich gay guys who trolled transsexual clubs for gay go-go dancers.” We could have used such patrons when I worked at a law firm.

Hayes’s unflappability is why the powerful call him when they’re in trouble. When Hayes was settling the Andy Warhol estate he had dealings with artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, “who likes to leave naked women tied to hotel beds and apparently uses a lot of drugs. The naked women are one thing, I think, and the drugs are another. But the two together – that, I think, could be a problem.” With that attitude, I’d have him on speed-dial too.

Above all, Hayes is gloriously politically incorrect. He notes that there’s “going to be a shortage of white people pretty soon” if families continue to limit themselves to two kids, and feels right at home in an ornate courthouse because it’s where “an Italian contractor and an Irish politician got together and said, ‘Let’s get a Jew accountant and figure out how to rob the place blind!’ – which, of course, they did.”

Hayes is coming off a rough couple of weeks; he represents one of the recently convicted Mafia Cops and, until the other day, the gossip columnist accused of shaking down a billionaire. But no doubt being in the thick of two front-page cases is exactly where Hayes wants to be.

Miscellaneous: Links

It’s MySpace day. Slate considers the site’s effect on music, specifically the rise of “skank-pop.” Meanwhile, screenwriter John August doesn’t get it. Neither do I, which is why I don’t have a page there.

Update: Shame-Faced

Rosemarie corrects a grievous oversight by reading her first James Bond novel.

TV: Weekends With Maury & Connie

Rosemarie and I started Shame-Faced as a dry run for our eventual TV show, in which we banter about the vital issues of the day over cocktails.

That’s what Maury Povich and Connie Chung, married for over 20 years, are supposed to be doing on their new MSNBC show. There weren’t any cocktails in sight, but I’ll bet they’d come in handy.

The show is supposed to be light-hearted, but it’s just weird. Connie interviewed herself about Katie Couric becoming the CBS news anchor, but Stephen Colbert does a better job of this in his ‘Formidable Opponent’ segments – and without one side of the conversation being on tape. Later, Connie wrote a mash note to Tom DeLay.

During a piece on political changes in Russia, Maury clearly wanted to rip open an envelope containing paternity results and announce, “Vladimir, you are NOT the father of democracy in your country.” (I did like the graphic that ran throughout this bit: ‘Putin On The Fritz.’)

The closing debate segment is called “Po & Con.” Let me repeat that, because it’s the only reason I wrote about the show: “Po & Con.” Weekends is the rare news program where I felt like I knew less by the time it was over. About the news, about marriage, and about life.

Miscellaneous: Links

The New Yorker on how Muzak is reinventing the retail experience. And via Jaime Weinman, Jonathan Rosenbaum offers ten overlooked noirs.

Update: Shame-Faced

Spin-off. Is there a more beautiful word in the English language? Think of the joy the spin-off has brought us over the years. Fish. Enos. Joey. And then there’s Maude.

The spin-off is the mark of a true pop culture phenomenon. Which this website certainly is. So meet the unholy spawn of VinceKeenan.com ... Shame-Faced. (Yes, I know the word isn’t hyphenated, but the correct spelling was taken.)

Rosemarie and I have joined forces on this blog. It’s all part of our plan to become Nick & Nora Denton. Like I don’t have enough to do already.

This post explains what Shame-Faced is. More stuff is up there, more is on the way. I’ll keep you in the loop.

Miscellaneous: Link

The Writers Guild of America names the 101 Greatest Screenplays. Guild members love them some Charlie Kaufman, and deservedly so.

Miscellaneous: An Evening With Ray Harryhausen

Living legends don’t make it to my neck of the woods all that often. Particularly those whose work I’ve enjoyed my entire life. So when stop-motion animator/visual effects designer extraordinaire Ray Harryhausen stopped by Seattle’s Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, I wasn’t about to miss it. The man’s name is synonymous with the phrase ‘movie magic.’ Just look at the films he’s made. A sampling of clips, heavy on the monsters, kicked off the evening.

Arnold Kunert, who produced the recent DVD collection of Harryhausen’s early films, interviewed him about his new book before taking questions. Harryhausen spoke about the profound impact the original King Kong had on him (“If I hadn’t seen that movie, I probably would have become a plumber”). Kong’s creator Willis O’Brien eventually became his mentor. Harryhausen praised Peter Jackson’s “interpretation” of the story – although he did say that ninety minutes is a long time to wait for your first glimpse of the big ape.

He reminisced about hanging out in Clifton’s Cafeteria with longtime friends Ray Bradbury and Forrest J. Ackerman. (“People thought we were nuts, talking about space travel in 1938.”) He expressed his pleasure at the recent resurgence of stop-motion while taking pains to explain the difference between “puppet movies” like The Corpse Bride and Wallace & Gromit (“wonderful films”) and his style of work, in which animated characters interact with real ones.

Both of those “puppet movies” feature tributes to Harryhausen. Kunert told of another one, after an early screening of Jurassic Park. That film’s effects designer Stan Winston, on meeting Harryhausen for the first time, told him, “Those are your monsters up there, Ray.” Kunert also brought word of a new project: a short film executive produced by Harryhausen based on Poe’s ‘The Pit and the Pendulum.’ Featuring stop-motion and limited CG support, it will be playing at festivals this fall.

The evening ended, much too soon, with Harryhausen displaying the original model of the fighting skeleton used in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts.

If you need further proof of Harryhausen’s living legend status, how many other 86-year-olds are asked to sign a woman’s breast? Almost as impressive: the woman in question gave Harryhausen enough room to write his full name.

Shameless Self-Promotion: Flash Fiction

For weeks I’ve been meaning to link to Flashing in the Gutters, the website dedicated to flash fiction run by Tribe. Currently it features stories by James Reasoner and J. D. Rhoades, among others.

Including me. My attempt at the form, Namesake, is now up at the site. Go visit and stay awhile.

Sports: Opening Day

My adopted hometown Mariners lost their opener to the Pacific Rim Angels of Anaheim (rechristened again so that fans from Juneau to Yokohama can claim them as their own). But my actual hometown Mets won at Shea, and looked good doing it. More importantly, there’s now always something to watch on TV.

If only I could get to MoMA for their baseball movie series ...

Book: Backstory 4, edited by Patrick McGilligan (2006)

The Backstory interviews with screenwriters are invaluable for any student of the movies. Volume Four, about scribes of the 1970s and ‘80s, is no exception, even though it has its share of flaws.

For instance, spelling errors. A film reference work should know that there is no ‘i’ in Sydney Pollack, nor an ‘h’ in Nicolas Cage.

Some of the material is dated. At 72, Alvin Sargent had his greatest commercial success with Spider-Man 2. Striking pop culture gold at that age should provide interesting fodder, but no mention of the movie is made because the interview is several years old. Lawrence Kasdan talks about the promise of the Clinton administration in a Q&A from 1992.

Several star writers of the ‘70s – the unrelated Goldmans William and Bo, Robert Towne, Paul Schrader – aren’t included. Neither are the two writers who kicked off the spec boom of the ‘80s, Joe Eszterhas and Shane Black.

Not that I’d quibble with the names that did make the cut. Talents as diverse as Elmore Leonard and Paul Mazursky are heard from, along with several of my personal heroes. Like high concept king Larry Cohen, the relentlessly spare Walter Hill, and master of all trades Donald E. Westlake, who says of the film made from his novel Bank Shot:

... it was a farce shot in extreme close-up, so whenever somebody stepped on a banana peel all you knew was that they’d left the frame.

Frederic Raphael is more a writer of the 1960s and the 1990s, but any opportunity for the man who penned the extraordinary script for Two for the Road to weigh in is welcome. Particularly when he says things like this, about the making of Darling:

We then had various meetings with people involved in what they conceived to be the world of such a woman – as if Shakespeare, before being allowed to write KING LEAR, would have been required to meet with a certain number of dethroned monarchs of a certain age in order to discover what they had in common.

I eagerly await Volume Five, on screenwriters of the 1990s, even though the pickings may be slim. As John Milius observes in his interview, writers used to have twenty or thirty credits while today, “there are a lot of very successful writers who have no credits and ... a lot ... with one or two.” McGilligan has his work cut out for him.

Movie: Find Me Guilty (2006)

So far 2006 has been a solid year for the New York crime thriller at the movies. First there was 16 Blocks, which blended old-school shoot-‘em-up with crooked cop saga and allowed Bruce Willis to do some meaty character work. Next came Inside Man, a sharp take on the bank robbery genre bristling with big city attitude and sly star turns.

Both movies owe a debt to Sidney Lumet, master of Big Apple crime and punishment stories. Lumet, who turns 82 this year but looks a good two decades younger, also has a movie out. In many ways it’s the most interesting of the lot, so naturally it’s garnered the least attention.

Find Me Guilty focuses on “Jackie” DiNorscio, a New Jersey Mafioso (played by a damn good Vin Diesel) who served as his own attorney in a complex RICO case that became the longest criminal trial in U.S. history. The action doesn’t stray far from the courtroom; much of the dialogue is taken directly from trial transcripts. Lumet still finds room to explore Jackie’s belief in an outmoded system of honor that even his fellow defendants don’t take seriously.

Linus Roache scores as the hard-charging Irish Catholic D.A. prosecuting the case. Which brings me to my problem with New York crime thrillers: I always identify with the wrong guys. Cops, federal agents, attorneys. The white dress shirt brigade. Not because I’m a law and order type, but because these are people I understand. Growing up, my neighborhood was full of men who worked for the government in one capacity or another. The director John Boorman said of Goodfellas that it’s not about gangster characters but what it’s like to be a gangster. True. But it’s still easier for me to picture myself as the FBI agent who puts Henry Hill into witness protection at the end of the movie.

In another life, I could have been that guy. Well, not exactly. I’m lacking in what you might call physical courage, so law enforcement would be out. But I do have a low-key flamboyance, a self-righteous streak, and a stubborn belief that I’m smarter than everyone else. Hello, District Attorney’s office.

Watching Roache in the movie, an entire alternate life opened up before me. I burst out of Fordham with my law degree and quickly earn a reputation as a comer, largely because I have no inner life. I start cultivating relationships with an eye toward moving into federal law or politics. I marry a girl from the old neighborhood who ends up looking at houses out on the Island by herself every weekend because I’m just too busy.

Eventually my ambition gets the better of me. I miscalculate, step on toes, make enemies in high places. I get exiled to some backwater, handling cases John Jay students could knock off as homework. I engage in a seamy office romance that tarnishes what’s left of my reputation. To compensate I become a permissive parent and my daughters lose all respect for me.

A partner at a white-shoe law firm with a grudge against my boss hires me, and I while away the years doing corporate hackwork. I write a novel that’s equal parts self-aggrandizement and sexual fantasy, but it contains enough realistic detail to be published as a paperback original. I start hanging out in writers’ bars, where I am tolerated as long as I pick up the tab. I drink myself to death at age 57. At my funeral, people talk about all the potential I had.

In some parallel universe, that version of me exists. The poor bastard.

Miscellaneous: Link

Slate’s Human Guinea Pig is a paparazzo for a day. I don’t think pictures of Red Buttons are going to cut it.

Book: The Film Snob’s Dictionary, by David Kamp with Lawrence Levi (2006)

This book is dedicated in part to “everyone who has ever shouted ‘Focus!’ in a revival house,” so I’m surprised that an autographed copy was not delivered to me personally.

Don’t let the marketing fool you. The book may be next to cash registers the world over, the Barnes & Noble equivalent of a pack of gum. But it’s a smart, funny, opinionated take on movie mania. Kamp and Levi (whose no-longer-secret identity is film blogger the Looker) have been writing this material for magazines for years, and they know whereof they speak.

The authors differentiate the types of film snob; categories include Art, Gore and Kitsch. They point out that ‘existential’ and ‘offbeat’ are in fact euphemisms for ‘slow.’ They call bullshit on the oeuvres of Peter Greenaway and Dogme 95. I’m pretty sure they don’t think much of people who use the word ‘oeuvre.’ (I’ve already sworn off saying that a movie is a ‘meditation on’ something.)

The brief listings contain some surprisingly sharp writing, like a tossed-off reference to Robert Altman’s “muddy-brown period.” Or the lethally incisive observation that Hal Ashby established himself “as an ‘actor’s director’ – a designation that, like the sports term ‘player’s coach,’ suggests a mixed blessing of amiability and erratic discipline.” Any book that claims John Cassavetes “carried off his self-indulgences with an acuity and slim-lapelled flair that his heirs lack” demands to be taken seriously.

Besides, how many reference works contain handy sidebars that will help you tell Anita Ekberg from Britt Ekland, and both of them from Elke Sommer? I’ve lost sleep trying to keep them straight.

The book also underscores the cultural significance of The 4:30 Movie, a staple on New York’s WABC and the telecast that made me the man I am today. Dig those groovy opening credits.

Miscellaneous: Links

Via GreenCine Daily, an article in praise of recent horror films and their ability to tap into post-9/11 teen angst. Personally, I think the guy’s reading a little too much into them.

Elsewhere, Seattle considers its historic signs. Speaking of signs, I’d give this guy a dollar.

Book: A Touch of Death, by Charles Williams (1953)

Opening with a definition is an old high school debating trick. But the thing about old high school debating tricks is that they tend to work.

inexorable, adj.: not to be persuaded or moved by entreaty: relentless

For an example, look no further than this Williams novel republished by Hard Case Crime. The set up is familiar: big lug stumbles onto what looks like Easy Street, provided he can stay one step ahead of a bad dame.

But knowing where you’re going doesn’t mean you’ll keep your footing. Williams’ genius for plotting pulls you toward a foregone conclusion in ways you don’t expect. Around the halfway point I broke out in a sweat that didn’t let up until the hammer finally dropped. The cover promises that what begins as a burglary will end as a nightmare. The book delivers.

Movie: The Fallen Idol (1948)

The Third Man is so justly revered that it tends to overshadow this collaboration between Carol Reed and Graham Greene made the year before.

Rialto Pictures is working to change that with a brand-new print of The Fallen Idol that will be playing around the U.S. this spring. If it turns up anywhere near you, go. It’s worth the trip.

Greene’s story ‘The Basement Room’ has been turned into a remarkable film about childhood. Philippe, the son of the French ambassador to England, has forged an uncommonly close bond with a household servant (Ralph Richardson). From Philippe’s point of view we watch the dissolution of Richardson’s marriage – and possibly witness a murder.

Reed’s direction is extraordinary, transforming the vast rooms of the embassy into Philippe’s personal kingdom. It’s like Eloise at the Plaza meets Grimms’ Fairy Tales, complete with wicked witch.

TV: The Surreal Life

Honest, I’m not watching the umpteenth season of VH1’s has-been reality show. I’d just like to know how Tawny Kitaen can be so judgmental about her cast mates when the last press she got was for beating up her professional baseball player husband. Where is that carefree woman who gyrated on car hoods in Whitesnake videos?

Miscellaneous: Links

Dan Curtis, the producer behind Dark Shadows, The Night Stalker, and The Winds of War, has died. And screenwriter Josh Friedman is back from cancer surgery and better than ever.

Richard Fleischer, R.I.P.

A career like the one the late director Richard Fleischer had is probably a thing of the past in Hollywood. Decades long, in a range of genres, working with budgets high and low. He was a professional, in every sense of the word.

He’ll no doubt be best remembered for the big-budget extravaganzas 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and Fantastic Voyage, and with any luck he’ll be forgiven for big-budget flops like Doctor Doolittle. Soylent Green, the last film in Charlton Heston’s apocalypse trifecta, is largely regarded as a joke now – truth be told, it’s kind of a snooze – but when I was a kid, I revered it. Some part of me still does.

Easily his best work was 1952’s The Narrow Margin, which is everything you want a B-movie to be. I’ve also got to put in a word for an even earlier effort, Follow Me Quietly (1949). It’s a spellbinding little gem about the hunt for a serial killer, featuring one of the creepiest shots I’ve ever seen. It’s so shocking that for a moment, I thought I’d imagined it. You’ll know it when you see it, and you have Fleischer to thank for it.

Miscellaneous: Link

Sometimes, your wildest dreams do come true. Xanadu is becoming a stage musical.

Miscellaneous: Links

In a transparent attempt to make up for being remiss in my duties of late, I offer a few meaty links. Like Ed Gorman's two part feature on the work of the great Richard Matheson. And New York magazine's chilling dive into the depths of 9/11 conspiracy theory.

DVD: The Best of Youth (2003, U.S. 2005)

With all due respect to Roger Ebert, this year’s Best Picture winner Crash can’t owe a debt to Charles Dickens because it’s only 113 minutes long. To be truly Dickensian, you need a little room. Say six hours’ worth.

You don’t watch The Best of Youth so much as steep in it. Originally a TV miniseries, it follows two brothers through forty years of modern Italian history. Youth has an epic scope but a surprisingly intimate feel; it knows that no matter how tumultuous the times, the key moments in life are usually quiet ones. Chance meetings, conversations that may not initially seem important.

The best illustration of this is Youth’s first hour, which focuses on a trip the brothers take during a break in their studies. Nothing momentous happens, but the experience dictates how both men will live out their days.

Youth played theatrically last year. The New York Times’ A.O. Scott named it the best film of 2005. I can’t imagine the impact of seeing all six hours in one sitting. Spreading it out over a few nights doesn’t hurt it at all.

DVD: That’s My Queue

I watched Youth because Netflix allows subscribers to keep DVDs indefinitely. Late fees can make committing to a six-hour film a problem.

Today’s Los Angeles Times features an article on how the company is altering the movie landscape. A similar piece ran in Variety last month.

As fascinating as the statistics are – like Netflix’s 70/30 ratio of library titles to new releases – it’s the movies cited that made me take notice. Like Intermission, a terrific Irish film that I point to whenever someone badmouths Colin Farrell. Fifty percent of the Americans who watched Oldboy on video saw it via Netflix. For the documentary Capturing The Friedmans, the figure jumps to seventy percent.

These movies have two things in common: I love them, and saw them in theaters. Much as I hate the idea that the moviegoing experience is shifting to the home, I’m thrilled that these films are being seen, especially in smaller markets where they wouldn’t be released. For all the talk of how technology will change audience habits – digital projection, downloads, on demand, the whole schmear – something as doggedly low-tech as sending movies through the mail may be what reinvents the business.

Movies: Overlooked

Speaking of Roger Ebert, last year I emailed him to suggest that he screen Iceman in his Overlooked Film Festival. He was kind enough to respond, saying that he’s been meaning to program a Fred Schepisi film for some time.

Fred didn’t make this year’s line-up. But the centerpiece of the festival will be David Mamet’s Spartan, and regular readers know what a rabid fan I am of that movie. It’s good to have company.

Miscellaneous: Wha?

From Alessandra Stanley’s New York Times TV review:

‘The Evidence,’ a series on ABC about two homicide detectives, is set in San Francisco, but has no Asian or gay lead characters; these minority groups are not even visible in crowd shots ... it’s like filming a show in Bruges and making no mention of lace.

Not the example I would have picked.

Sports: Beisbol

The last ten days have been so hectic that I haven’t kept up my diet of pulp fiction and old movies.

To relax – and to prepare for the start of the season – I’ve been watching the inaugural World Baseball Classic. This in spite of the fact that ties are allowed, a ten-run ‘mercy rule’ is imposed, and the tournament’s last two rounds are single elimination. These affronts must make purists like Bob Costas want to die so they can turn over in their graves.

Still, there have been some good games, and it’s been fun to get a sense of baseball’s international flavor. Japan took the title thanks in part to a bravura display of leadership by the Seattle Mariners’ Ichiro, a man I aspire to emulate in every way. Here’s hoping he brings some of that fire to the AL West pennant race this year. I plan at least one trip to Safeco Field, which has its own share of international flavor. There’s nothing like eating sushi in the hot sun.

Miscellaneous: I’m Your Employer, Fly Me

Thanks to the travel boom, the days of airline employees and their families flying for free are numbered.

My father spent more than thirty years working runways, so I know firsthand how prized that perk is. Using it was always a little complicated. You’d have to dress up when you flew in case the only available space was in first class; the company wanted you to look like you belonged there. To this day I can’t wear casual clothes when I travel, even though it would make the extended security checks easier.

Flying home from college meant waking up at 4 AM to catch the first plane out of Boston’s Logan Airport, then spending the rest of the day in St. Louis waiting for a connecting flight. Sometimes two or three would take off before my name was called, but I was always home in time for dinner.

That fringe benefit made attending an out-of-state college feasible. It also allowed our family to spend part of each year in Ireland visiting relatives. One of my few regrets is that I didn’t take advantage of it to see more of the world.

Now when my father flies he has to pay full fare, and the planes belonging to the airline he worked for only take to the skies in The Aviator. Truly the end of an era.

TV: Cash Cab

How long has this Discovery Channel game show been on? And why isn’t it an enormous hit?

The rules couldn’t be simpler. Unsuspecting New Yorkers hail a taxi and are quizzed on trivia by their driver. The questions are worth more money – and become more difficult – the closer they get to their destination. Get three wrong and they’re booted out of the cab. I haven’t seen anyone abandoned on a bridge or in a tunnel yet, although a pair of college kids came close to being left to the mercies of the FDR Drive the other day.

The contestants get two shoutouts – one on the phone, one out the window. The latter proves surprisingly helpful. Passersby in New York are an erudite bunch, happy to tell you that the Frank Gehry-designed outpost of the Guggenheim Museum is in Bilbao, Spain.

This show fulfills two of my long-held fantasies: that a complete stranger will ask me general knowledge questions out of the blue for money, and that I will get out of a cab with more cash than I started with. Neither has ever happened to me. Now, there is hope.

Miscellaneous: Links

Via Mark Evanier, a fascinating interview with MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. And from James Reasoner, the 100 science fiction novels you have to read.

Movie: The Bellboy (1960)

Happy birthday to Jerry Lewis, who turns 80 today.

Coincidentally, I watched his directorial debut earlier this week. The Bellboy came about because Jerry insisted that his film Cinderfella be a holiday release. Paramount wanted a summer movie, so Jerry pulled one together over the course of a month while he was performing at Miami’s Fontainebleau Hotel.

The Bellboy is a string of gags without a plot. Jerry felt the need to prepare the audience with an intro featuring studio representative Jack Emulsion, who announces that you’re about to see a film “based on fun.”

My favorite bit has Jerry, as himself, checking into the hotel with his entourage. (“Stop with the brushing!”) The payoff, involving Milton Berle, is priceless.

Jerry was clearly a born filmmaker. One look at the way he frames his shots in the Fontainebleau’s vast lobby will tell you that. The Bellboy is at times like an American answer to the work of Jacques Tati. (I’m going to link to the Tati site again, simply because it’s one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.)

Book: The Scrambled Yeggs, by Richard S. Prather (1958)

When I need a break, nothing beats one of Prather’s Shell Scott novels. This one was originally released in 1952 as Pattern for Murder. I think we all agree the reissue title is one of the greatest in the history of publishing.

Rosemarie glanced at the cover and asked, “Is Shell spanking that woman?” Yep. Happens in Chapter One.

Miscellaneous: Correction

My award-winning niece Hannah also enjoyed the Hungarian film Kontroll. What’s more, she was the one who got it from the video store. She even made two trips. VinceKeenan.com regrets the error.

Miscellaneous: Links

At Mystery*File, Bill Pronzini and Lynn Munroe offer a definitive account of the life of pulp master Gil Brewer. And, via Arts & Letters Daily, a look at early avant garde cinema now on DVD, including the first film by Orson Welles.