A couple weeks ago I picked up some awesome pulp fictions at Found, here in Lowell, on Middle Street.
Tom, the owner, had a box full of these tawdry titles from the late fifties/early sixties, but they were all at least a little water damaged.
He would have sold me the whole box (about 20 paperbacks) for ten bucks. I was tempted, but I don't have room for many more books in the old condo, so I picked out four that I thought had a little something special.
Irwin Shaw's Two Weeks in Another Town looks especially interesting. It's about a movie crew "On location in Rome -- expatriate Americans making movies, money...and love."
If you're in Lowell, check out Found. Great place to find vintage stuff -- everything from art to books to records to furniture to old typewriters, toys, and everything in between.
Movies used to be designed, shot, and edited to be viewed on a movie screen. Today, movies seem to be made to be watched on decidedly smaller screens. Evidence of this is reflected in the faster cutting within scenes and the generally manic, disjointed nature of most Hollywood movies.
Have you ever gone to a movie with lots of action and fast cutting and stumbled out of the theater in a daze, thinking the movie made no sense? That’s because your eyes couldn’t adjust to each new shot before it was replaced by the next one. On a movie screen, your eye moves around the screen to discern the focus of each shot. On a TV screen, laptop monitor, or a miniature iPad/iPod screen you basically stare at one point in space and let a movie’s narrative shuffle on by without you having to scan around and get your grip on the action. In other words, the action comes to you – mainlined you could say – without you having to think much about it.
So, watching an old movie on the big screen comes as something of a revelation, a shock, no matter what movie you’re watching. To see an Orson Welles movie, it’s even more thrilling. Screened at the Capital Theater in Arlington (DVD projection, not a 35 mm print), Touch of Evil crackles with Welles' signature deep focus composition, wide angles, meaningfully cluttered shots (what the film students used to call mise-en-scène), and voices overlapping on a soundtrack often dubbed in post production.
It's a film noir fever dream. Probably the last movie to be considered noir as it came out in 1958 at the end of the era, it showcases the classic noir elements of vivid black and white cinematography, on-location photography, and cynical characters. In Touch of Evil we've got corrupt, racist border town cop Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) who has been dealing dirty all his life.
Touch of Evil chronicles Quinlan's downfall over the course of one day, as he attempts to bring down up-and-coming Mexican do-gooder cop Miguel (Mike to you) Vargas. Vargas is played by Charlton Heston with his signature Hest-rionics dialed down to about a four. Or maybe it just seems that way playing the straight man to Welles' Quinlan, a festering, bloated recovering alcoholic who seals his own fate when he falls off the wagon and implicates himself at the scene of a crime by leaving his cane behind.
Then there's Dennis Weaver as a motel clerk who...I can't explain it, but Heston's performance is nuanced and subtle compared to Weaver's. His character inspiration comes from one of those little dogs who pants and trots and whose eyes belie an internal terror. Mr. Weaver here invents the term manic. He overacts to such a degree that I wanted to extricate him from the movie and plunk him down into some Three Stooges flick.
Elsewhere there's Janet Leigh. Leigh plays Susan, Vargas' very blond wife. Vargas and Susan are newlyweds just trying leave for a honeymoon, but their reverie is interrupted by a double murder at the border crossing. While Vargas remains sidetracked investigating, Susan is kidnapped and brought out to the remote motel that employs Weaver’s clueless night man. Meanwhile, Vargas witnesses Quinlan frame a young Mexican man for the double murder and this sends him on a righteous crusade to bring Quinlan down.
Welles directs Touch of Evil like his life depended on it. He stages a virtuosic, uninterrupted opening crane shot that lasts about 3 and a half minutes ending in a car explosion (the double murder). He starts a scene with a close up of two shot glasses atop a bar, then follows them getting walked to a nearby table as the camera moves back to frame the rest of the bar. What other director would do this in one shot? None director.
Welles puts the camera on the hood of a car and lets Charlton Heston and Mort Mills (as an assistant DA) drive through a street no wider than an alley at high speeds instead of shooting a cheesy rear screen projection. A good noir doesn't just show you the dirt, it pushes your face in it. Touch of Evil is dusty and oily from tequila and hopped up on MaryJane and doesn't shy from seedy whore houses and garbage-filled canals.
Many familiar faces pepper the movie, including Zsa Zsa Gabor as a showgirl and Marlene Dietrich as a madame, who's worth seeing for some great dialogue ("He was some kind of a man... What does it matter what you say about people?"). Then some actors who worked often with Welles, including Joseph Cotton, Akim Tamiroff, and Ray Collins.
If you rent the DVD, ensure it's the most recent version, which has been restored to Welles' original specs after Universal took the film from him, recut it, and even reshot some of it with another director. This latest version was reconstructed based on Welles' notes. There's so much to like in this lost classic, that I won't give away any more details. Just rent it, and enjoy. And if you get a chance to watch it projected on a movie screen, so much the better.
Here's the famous opening crane shot:
Stats:
Theater location: Capital Theater, Arlington, Sunday, February 20th, 3:15 matinee. Price $7.00. Viewed with Liz. Snacks--RJ's Raspberry Licorice Log.
The Big Bad, the debut crime novel by Phil Beloin, Jr., is a lean, crude, fun ride. The novel is populated with stoolies, pornographers, redneck hitmen, alcoholics, necrophiliacs, ex pro-hockey drug dealers, ex-cons, and more hitmen. In the deft hands of Mr. Beloin, this motley crew is presented as an almost endearing bunch of screw-ups. They talk tough and act crazy, but they’re also human, with humbling foibles and recognizable tics.
When we first meet The Big Bad’s anti-hero, bar owner Nick Constantine, he’s a quiet alcoholic who just wants to live a semi-secluded, non-productive life above the seedy bar he owns, in a boring mid-sized city, in the middle of Connecticut. He’s a former strong arm for Irv Marquette, a pro hockey player turned full-time drug dealer. Nick’s done some bad stuff to bad people in the past. Now he lives on the payday earned when he turned state’s witness—a move that sent Irv to prison for tax evasion.
While Nick never claims to be a Rhodes Scholar—constantly in a cloud when faced with any big word or concept—he’s smart enough to keep his bar unsuccessful so he can write it off as a tax deduction. It’s a small point that illustrates Beloin’s use of dichotomy; he never misses a chance to turn a cliché on its head—either for a laugh or to add some depth or twists to the proceedings.
The story gets its kick start when Nick wakes from a bender with two beautiful young blondes sleeping in his bed. He can’t remember how they got there. It’s a great hook. Probably one of the most effective classic pulp fiction plot devices. After making sweet love to the closest blonde, it dawns on Nick that these lovely ladies aren’t just wicked hungover, they’re dead. It’s a ballsy move, putting necrophilia in the first chapter of a debut novel. But it’s Beloin’s warning shot to the reading public: “Join me on this funny/wacked journey or close the book now and miss out.”
Irv, now out of prison, gets some dirt on Nick—video footage of the dead girls in his apartment. He blackmails Nick into finding his lovely virginal girlfriend, Pamela, who has run off without a trace. Nick has no choice but to take the assignment. He hasn’t played enforcer in a while, and the fun of the novel is seeing this lug forced to rediscover his dusty wits and survival instincts to outsmart the bad guys, even while smoking three packs a day and drinking beer morning, noon, and night.
Marbled throughout are anachronistic details which call into relief the history of crime fiction, used not as crutches but as motifs, tapping into the reader’s conscious (or subconscious) history of the genre. Poor people live in ghettos and slums. Nick drives a Delta. The source of blackmail evidence is footage on a VHS videotape. It’s all very 1940s, 1970s, or 1990s, depending on the scene.
The characterizations also mix old and new. Nick talks and thinks like a classic tough guy but he’s also misanthropic, homophobic, and sexist. He’s a reflection of contemporary fears and worries; he’s not really searching with a moral compass because he never had one. He may have a code of honor like some honorable Western outlaw, but it’s never articulated.
To any God-fearing normal, he’s the personification of moral turpitude—a one-man melting pot of addiction, hatred, bad moves, quiet rage, and lethal training. We still somehow root for Nick because he has the capacity to recognize the bad in very bad men. He’s part classic detective out of Dashiell Hammett, part James M. Cain everyman making bad choices for the wrong reasons, and homage to the psychotic screwups that pepper Jim Thompson’s grittiest tomes. Yet he can still fall in love and care for his cat.
Many of the characters are sensitive in unexpected ways that transcend boilerplate: Irv’s a stone cold drug dealer, but he’s still insecure about Pam—like an adolescent worried sick over his crush liking him back; Irv’s bodyguard, Michelle, is quick with a semi automatic, but she also had to overcome an abusive father; Eddie, the pornographer Pam has connections to, is an Iraq war vet who can’t get it up.
Nick eventually tracks Pam down at a remote cabin above a picturesque lake. But don’t let the beautiful countryside fool you. It is here that Nick uncovers the truth about Pam and how she has been playing Irv for a fool.
Beloin shines during the inevitable shootouts and double-crosses. He expertly paces his scenes of kinetic violence at the cabin and in the nearby barn and woods, letting adrenaline-fueled momentum and lean description ramp up the tension. The final showdowns feel liberating; they read like a prose version of a violent Sam Peckinpaw film mixed with the diabolical glee of Roger Corman’s ruthless Depression era crime spree flick Bloody Mama.
Don’t miss out on Phil Beloin, Jr.’s wacked, wickedly funny revisionist crime novel The Big Bad, available at Amazon.com. Read my interview with Phil over at Beyond the Margins, where he talks about his interest in crime fiction, how movies and TV influence his writing, and follow links to read some of his stories online.
Last Sunday I helped Liz set up at a craft show in Worcester called stART on the Street.
There were hundreds of craft vendors set up on Park Ave.; a mile of white tents running double down the center line.
Hundreds, nay, thousands of people walked through during the beautiful Sunday, checking out the crafts, food, and entertainment, which included poetry slams, bands, singers, and exotic belly-type dancing.
After I finished my rigorous setting up duties, I went a walkin' to check out the scene. A few yards up Park Street from Liz's tent (she was sharing with Candace of the Intuitive Garden) I spied a store called That’s Entertainment.
I went to college in Worcester back in the day, but I don't remember any store like this. And it looks like it's been there awhile. (However, I do remember Al-bums. Stacks of cool vinyl.)
That's Entertainment is a warehouse chock full of new and used comics, graphic novels, action figures, toys, records, books, and other various memorabilia and ephemera.
I spent almost 2 hours browsing, checking out the huge selection of unusual comics and graphic novels. At the back of the store I found a trove of used books. Mostly fantasy and sci-fi, but also some tasty pulp novels from the fifties. I picked up a lot of 12 John D. MacDonald paperbacks.
Mostly pre-Travis McGee era titles, with names like One Monday We Killed Them All, You Live Once, and Dead Low Tide. Complete with appropriately lurid cover illustrations:
Pretty hot stuff for the 1950s. I've only read titles from MacDonald's color-themed Travis McGee novels (Nightmare in Pink, Darker Than Amber, A Purple Place for Dying) so it'll be fun to see how it all began.
I picked up a new graphic novel I'd been looking for called Filthy Rich. A crime story that takes place in the 60s. I guess my mind has climbed in the wayback machine and broke off the knob somewhere around the end of the film noir era.
I couldn't resist this oddity from Peter Bagge (creator of Hate and Neat Stuff) called Apocalypse Nerd, about a couple of buddies who return to Seattle after camping in the mountains and discover their city's been nuked. Hilarity ensues.
Actually, it kind of does, with Bagge's spot-on character studies of nervous losers and slackers in extremis. This is the first of 6 issues. Guess I'll have to track down the other five to see how it turns out for A. Nerd.
When I finally went up front to pay, I realized the place was jammed with curious and collectors alike. Maybe this had something to do with the crowd:
The next time you're in Worcester, head on down to Park Ave. and check out That's Entertainment. Oh, and see you at next year's stART on the Street.
Today I listened to a wonderful podcast of a story by Phil Beloin, Jr., Hardboiled Hell, posted on welltoldtales.com. I'm familiar with Phil's oeuvre, so I thought I had an idea what to expect with this podcast. But nothing prepared me for his very new twist on an old pulp fiction trope: "A hard-drinking hep cat falls for a sexy gal he met in a jazz club. But things turn weird -- real weird -- after she brings him home for the night."
The only thing familiar is the setup. What happens next you'll have to discover for yourself. The podcast features a game reading by Andy Catt, with help by Sherry Wine, and is presented complete with campy sound effects and moody music which all help generate a perfect atmosphere for Phil's twisty, unexpected piece. Hearing this podcast took me back to Saturday afternoons when I was a kid listening to Mystery Theater on the radio.
Phil's short crime fiction has been published on numerous sites in the past few years. Check out an interview I did with Phil last year for this blog, from which you can access more of his work.
I highly recommend Hardboiled Hell. It's not for the squeamish. In a good way.
