COMIC-CON AND 4 ALTERNATIVES

Slave Leia cosplayers: There can only be more than one.

As many of you may have noticed, Comic-Con is currently underway in San Diego, which, as film critic Scott Renshaw noted, is “a stupid place for an event where you're indoors the whole time.” (This documentary I reviewed over at Tor is an okay-ish primer.) It's the nerd Super Bowl, a massive event, a place where somebody detonated a claymore full of comic books, video games, science fiction, TV, board games, toys, fucked-up carpeting, and laminated badges. My only in-person Comic-Con experience is with the decidedly smaller and less crazy one in New York, and let me tell you, even that blew my fuckin mind. I got lost for half an hour trying to find the room where my roundtable interview with Joe Cornish was, then I got lost for another forty-five minutes trying to find someone to covertly hand my borrowed press credentials off to, eventually randomly stumbling across a colleague who was cosplaying with her girlfriend as the Eleventh Doctor and companion. Then I tried finding another friend's booth for another bewildering few minutes and eventually just had to check the fuck out from sensory overload and get in a goddamn cab.

The thing is, as fascinating as the whole thing is, and as much a nerd as I am, I still don't quite fit in at Comic-Con. While there isn't really a Con monoculture (much as it all may blur into one for outsiders), I don't really fit in with any of the tribes, either. I'm not a comic book guy (I like them, I just sometimes brainfart and think Steve Ditko coached the '85 Bears), I'm not really a hardcore gamer, for the same reason I don't really get down with swords and orcs and gelflings and questing and saying “thou” and shit, because it feels like all the big video games are The Quest of the Eldritch Dragon Lord, unless they're Tom Clancy's Call of Modern Warfare, and if I want to play that game I can watch Fox News while voguing with my PS3 controller. Movies, I do like (as you may have noticed), but I don't get automatic geek boners for superhero trailers (the squee-est I ever got over a trailer was for Bande a Part at Film Forum, because my superpower is being tweedy enough to fucking crush planets). Toys, hey, look. I don't want to be all “I'm in my fucking 30s” and stuff, but I'm in my fucking 30s. If you told me they were putting out an Alain Delon action figure from Le Samourai I'd be all up on that shit, but otherwise y'all can have 'em with no competition.

While Comic-Con is fine and dandy for the people who it's for—and I won't lie, even though I feel like I'm in a foreign country there, it's a reasonably hospitable foreign country—it's not for everyone. With that in mind, here are some alternate Cons (feel free to break with longstanding Movies By Bowes ™ tradition and actually use the comment section to propose Cons I might have overlooked):


Fritz-Con

The idea: This is something the Self-Styled Siren and I came up with a while back (I don't remember whose idea it was, and she doesn't even remember the conversation; such is the danger with goofy passing fancies): a whole Con based on Fritz Lang. Which would fucking rule. You got a solid forty years of awesome movies to choose from, even if you'd have to stick to the classics to appeal to civilians. Though, on second thought, the idea of any civilians voluntarily showing up to Fritz-Con is the funniest thing ever.

Cosplay opportunities: Many, and awesome. Dudes can cosplay as Dan Duryea in Scarlet Street and have everyone in a hundred-mile radius be like “Whattafuckindouchebag . . .”

Or fuck it, show up as Fritz himself if you want rule fucking balls:

For the ladies, you could cosplay as Thea von Harbou and get in a fight with one of the Fritz cosplayers, or if you're feeling less dramatic, you could be Sylvia Sidney in Fury—

—or Brigitte Helm—

—or Joan Bennett—

—I mean, you got tons of options here.

Must-see booths: You got your UFA booth, with a dude on stilts dressed as F.W. Murnau, that booth's got great lighting and is shaped so weird you wonder how it doesn't tip over. Then you got your noir booth, which is lit similarly but stuff looks more normal, though the booth babes have an unfortunate tendency to make men leave behind the lives they've known and unravel along Freudian psycho-sexual spirals, but hey, man, shit happens at Con, what can I say.

Potential for commercialism to swallow it whole: Nil, unless the Skrillex “In the Hall of the Mountain King” remix blows up.


Donkey-Con

The idea: A Con for the kind of people whose jokes are too complicated and “ironic.” The entire Con is spent explaining to people with increasing exasperation that the Con has nothing to do with Donkey Kong. No one really knows why it's called Donkey-Con, because the explanation is so long no one has ever managed to sit through the whole thing.

Cosplay opportunities: I was at a Halloween party a few years ago talking to a friend of mine and her roommate. My friend was wearing a big old ratty-looking beehive and smudged make-up, and her roommate was wearing nothing but a plastic bag, a white tube top and shorts, and a big straw sticking up out of her cleavage. They explained they were Amy Winehouse and her bag of cocaine. Which was awesome, because this is when Amy Winehouse was still alive. At Donkey-Con, the people would explain that they were cosplaying as my friend and her roommate . . . get it? (Ed. Note: Donkey-Con is fucking insufferable)

Must-see booths: There are a lot of them, but after the first one explains what it is to you, you leave and go to the bar.

Potential for commercialism to swallow it whole: Virtually guaranteed, because some evil white guy in a suit would be like “Hey, wouldn't it be ironic if we made a billion dollars off this bullshit?” And he'd proceed to do so, even while everyone at Donkey-Con would explain that that wasn't really ironic, but if a trip to Donkey-Con teaches you anything, it is that you do not listen to anything anyone at Donkey-Con says.


Con-Con

The idea: The world's finest con men and women “con”vene (ahh, being me fucking rules sometimes) to present the latest in flim-flam, misrepresentation for financial gain, and plain old bullshit. Paypal me a hundred bucks and I'll tell you what city it's in this year.

Cosplay opportunities: This one can be a little tough to pull off—

—which is why this one's the most popular among men:

For the ladies, there's always the classic Brigid O'Shaughnessy—

—or if you're feeling new school, Annette Bening in The Grifters (secretly one of the sexiest performances in cinema)—

—or you could go subtle and just try a variation on “eye-catching but relatively unassuming.” You know, because you want to build trust in your mark.

Must-see booths: Hard to say, but one thing's for sure, at least one of them's going to prey on your deepest unspoken desire.

Potential for commercialism to swallow it whole: Awesomely, all the corporate sponsors lose all their money, too, just like you. Though, I mean, it sucks that you got fleeced, but hey, the evil white guys in suits did too, fuck them, woo hooo!!!


Karma-Con

The idea: Fuck yeah, that's right. A racially insensitive, commercialized-to-the-gills Indian cinema Con aimed squarely at NRI/American fans. Boosh.

Cosplay opportunities: Dude. Fucking unlimited. You can be bland and go the Shahrukh Khan NRI melodrama route—



—or more traditional, which in this case is less boring (here's Madhuri Dixit and Aishwarya Rai in a still from Devdas)—

—or straight-up 70s WTF—



—I could go on all day. We're talking the greatest cosplay like, ever.

Must-see booths: All of them. Good luck getting into the SRK panel, though, it's fuckin gonna be jammed. He'll be the only one of the Three Khans there (otherwise they'd just call it Three-Con): Aamir will not be there because it's not serious enough, and Salman won't be there because the Con isn't being held in his backyard.

Potential for commercialism to swallow it whole: Considering that this entire thing is a rancidly cynical marketing thing that would piss hardcore North American Bolly fans off to the point of murder (which is why the list of stars attending is always going to be weirdly selective), having it be consumed by commercialism would be a bit like dividing by zero. But seriously, it'll still be worth it for the mind-bending cosplay.


That, of course, is just the tip of the Con iceberg. To each your own subculture. May it never outgrow you.

BETTER LIVING THROUGH NETFLIX, VOL. 10: FIND ME GUILTY

Vincenzo Gasolina and Tyrion Lannister. Boosh.

With a handful of notable exceptions, Sidney Lumet's career as a director was characterized by his tendency to make very good movies that it never occurred to anyone to watch. This, to be clear, was never Mr. Lumet's fault. (Well, almost never: Q&A was terrible.) It was merely a function of his valuing character and story over all else, his refusal to (intentionally) lean on melodrama for cheap effect, and—maybe most important—the humility with which he carried himself personally. If you want people running around sucking your dick about what a genius you are, you need to plant the seeds by acting like one. Of course, this can backfire if you aren't one. But Sidney Lumet never seemed to care about that, always talked up the importance of the work above all else and the collaborative nature of the filmmaking process, and as a result he never won a competitive Oscar (he was given an honorary one when he was old, and his speech was pure elegance and class; Sidney Lumet was a men among men, believe) and even among the list of all-time classics he directed, all are associated primarily with their leading actors. His careful preparation, empathy, and humble commitment to the work above his own personal glory (and a number of other things associated with being awesome, surely) led to a vast array of actors giving either the best or one of the best performances of their careers working under Lumet's watch, among them Henry Fonda, Rod Steiger, Al Pacino, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Paul Newman, River Phoenix, and many many others. So too, in the second-to-last movie Sidney Lumet would ever direct, did Vin Diesel, in Find Me Guilty.

That's right, Vincenzo Gasolina himself. And it's not like “oh, sure, wow, he turned in a better performance than The Fast and the Furious, xXx, and The fuckin' Pacifier, big whoop.” Vincenzo's amaaaaazing in Find Me Guilty. He's out of his mind good in this. There's a grand total of one moment the entire picture when he's not perfect, and that moment is like two seconds in the Annabella Sciorra scene an hour or so in, even then it's just a moment of his composure cracking because he doesn't know what to do with his hands, and even then it's something you can rationalize as “well, maybe it's not that Vin doesn't know what to do with his hands, maybe it's Jackie” except, sorry, it is Vin. But that's okay. The whole rest of the picture Vincenzo's in this fucking wig looking like Jerry Orbach except radiating Movie Star, and it's like “Holy shit, Vincenzo has star power even when he's not flexing his guns driving two hundred miles an hour doing sex with Asia Argento?” If ever there was a moment for Sidney Lumet to pop his collar and be like “Oh yes that's right, y'all,” it's this. Making Robert Duvall look good is one thing. Making Vincenzo Gasolina look like something other than a guy who throws grenades by flexing his biceps is another matter entirely. It's not that Lumet waved a magic wand and turned Vincenzo into a good actor, it's that he knew enough about what acting actually is and was forward-thinking enough to say “I'm going to make a picture with Vin Diesel playing the lead where nothing blows up and he never drives a car.” And he did. And it's a massive amount of fun.

Based on a true story (and purporting to consist to great degree of actual court transcriptions), Find Me Guilty is the story of Jackie DiNorscio (Vincenzo), a wiseguy from the Dirty Jerz whose fuckhead cousin tries to clip him, unsuccessfully. Once he recovers, Jackie's luck takes another turn for the shitty when he gets pinched trying to buy a suitcase full of coke from an undercover cop. Not to mention, he has racketeering charges hanging over him. The US Attorney's office (represented by oily Linus Roache, who did an NY/NJ area accent so well I had to check who he was, only to be like “Holy balls, that's Linus Roache?”) swoops in and offers Jackie a deal if he rolls over on The Boys, only Jackie's a stand-up guy and won't hold with such rubbish. He tells the US Attorney, “Hey, you got a brother? Fuck him, too.” And thus Jackie and practically everybody he knows and has worked with go on trial.

The trial, a massive clusterfuck (it would go on to be the longest criminal trial in American history), is the bulk of the movie. Judge Sidney Finestein (Ron Silver, who is pick-your-jaw-up-off-the-fuckin-floor great in this, in a reminder of how great he could be when not simply noshing on scenery in an exploitation movie for a paycheck) does his best to keep all twenty-something defendants and their respective lawyers (the de facto leader of whom is played by the mighty Peter Dinklage, who rules beyond the capacity of the English language to describe) in line. And he'd have done so perfectly if not for the monkey wrench of Jackie deciding to defend himself. Jackie's wildly inappropriate, blithely ignorant of proper procedure, yet charming debut as defense counsel completely overwhelms the entire trial.

Storywise, that's all there is to Find Me Guilty. The narrative has occasional telling-rather-than-showing problems with conveying the massive amount of time over which the trial took place, and despite being based on a true story elements of it are really, really farfetched. It's the kind of material that in the hands of anyone other than an absolute master—and I really think it's time we start putting Lumet in with the all-time greats, if we aren't already—would be ridiculous nonsense. But in Lumet's hands, it's a delightful bit of entertainment.

Beyond the performances, which are simply tremendous, with countless beautiful little human moments, Lumet's direction is pristine classicism, with meticulous framing, long takes, actual medium and long shots that aren't either establishing shots or panoramic landscapes, and invisible edits. In spite of this it never feels conservative, or an example of a relic of a bygone era clinging to an outmoded way of working because it's all he knows. I feel like kicking myself in the balls for even suggesting such a thing. No, this is a director who trusts his actors to be all the flash and dash the picture needs. That trust derives from careful preparation, years of experience, and the confidence those combine to create. Maybe the result only seems so good because no one makes classical American cinema anymore, but it's still a wonderful little movie.

It's a movie that's been done wrong by history, too. Due to one of the absolute worst marketing campaigns in the history of human endeavor—like, “Kilgore Trout's SF appearing in porno magazines” level bad marketing—Find Me Guilty was gone from theaters before anyone knew it had come out, and was a non-factor in 2006's Oscar race, which I mean yeah I know, “Oscars? blow me,” but imagine if Harvey Weinstein is running the picture's campaign. Suddenly we've got Sidney Lumet going up against Marty Scorsese for Best Director, with both of them trying for their first. You've got Vincenzo getting a nom against Forest Whitaker; I mean, Forest Whitaker still would have won, but then we get the Fast and Furious trailer hailing “ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE VIN DIESEL.....and paul walker” a couple years later, which would have been considerably lulzier than Vincenzo returning to the franchise having failed elsewhere.

Anyway. Fuck the business. Find Me Guilty still exists, and can be watched. And I'm here to say, with all the authority given a random asshole on the internet with Proustian Tourette's that it goddamn well should be. So there. At the very least, people fiending for a Game of Thrones fix should watch this to get a hit of some Dinklage. Or if you feel like winning a bet with a friend of yours who refuses to believe that Vin Diesel could ever look like Jerry Orbach. Or, if you just want to plain want to see a good movie. Sidney Lumet was the truth, ladies and gentlemen. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

A MOTHER'S DAY CHAT WITH MOM

Happy Mother's Day! This year, to commemorate the day, I decided I wanted to have a chat about movies with the person who took me to hundreds of them when I was a kid (and still occasionally to this day): my mom, Betsy Bowes.


me: Okay, so let's start: what was the movie that made you realize you loved movies?

Mom: The fist movie I ever saw, The Great Locomotive Chase, starring Fess Farker who was already my favorite actor from Davy Crockett. It came out in 1956 when I was either 8 or 9.

me: Was there anything in particular about the movie or about Fess Parker that really spoke to you?

Mom: There was plenty of action and I was already interested in the Civil War. Fess was an engaging hero.

me: So you already knew Fess from Davy Crockett; was this the TV version? It wasn't the radio show, right?

Mom: It was the TV version, withe theme song you had a record of when you were a toddler. I had to watch it at my next-door neighbor's house because we didn't have a TV.

me: So, before you got a TV in the house, did you primarily see movies at the neighbors', or in theaters? What were your options as far as theaters at that time?

Mom: I had a friend whose mother took a few of us to the movies for her birthday party each year. The Pajama Game in 1957, a few Martin and Lewis comedies (I always liked Dean better than Jerry), and Ocean's Eleven in 1960. I LOVED Ocean's Eleven. I didn't start watching movies on TV until I was a teenager and was babysitting. The movie theaters we went to were the Embassy in Waltham, a movie palace from the 20's or 30's (the first suburban Boston theater to show talkies), the Community Playhouse in Wellesley, and the multiplex at Shoppers World in Framingham.

me: Whoa, there were already multiplexes in the early 60s? I thought those only came along later.

Mom: I think it was a very early one. I remember there being several different movies playing there.

me: The thing about Ocean's Eleven---the original---that really stood out to me was that they all looked like they were having so much fun, like that was the purpose of the whole thing; was it that way for you too? Also, Sammy was awesome in that, driving the garbage truck and so forth.

Mom: Absolutely, and Sammy was awesome with the garbage truck.

me: Didn't you meet him or get an autographed photo or something once?

Mom: Yes, when I was a freshman at NYU . A friend down the hall in my dorm had an uncle who was a VP at NBC. He got us into a dress rehearsal for the Sammy Davis Show. Sammy spoke to us and gave us unsigned photographs. He was friendly and gracious. Some of the guests on the shoe that week were Frank Sinatra Jr, Leslie Uggams, the Copacetics, and Milton Berle. One of us approached Milton Berle but he snubbed her. Sammy was married to Mai Britt at the time. She was in the audience and was very blond and pretty.

me: Milton Berle's all like "I have better things to do," what a tool.

Mom: (Like in his youth fucking Aimee Semple McPherson.) I was never a big fan of comedians who used drag as shtick. Of course Some Like It Hot was a different matter altogether. There was a reason for Jack and Tony to disguise themselves as women to hide from the mob. And in Bosom Buddies Tom [Hanks] and Peter [Scolari] need an affordable place to live.

me: And in Some Like It Hot, you've got Joe E. Brown not giving the slightest fuck that Jack Lemmon's really a guy, which I always loved. Trying to think of a better last scene that that's hard, no?

(Also, I love that you throw Bosom Buddies right in there with Some Like It Hot.)

So, let me ask this: at what point did you start getting European movies up there? Those were about the only foreign pictures you got back then, for the most part, right?

Mom: When I was a teenager the Exeter Theater in Boston was the place to see foreign films. The first movie I saw there was La Belle Americaine which was a series of vignettes featuring the same fabulous big American convertible. Also there was a student exchange program with my high school and a town in France, with an annual movie as a fundraiser. One year they showed Black Orpheus, which I loved. I saw 8 1/2 in Boston with some friends and a 7 year old sister one of them was babysitting.

me: And was this around the time you developed your thing for Alain Delon and Marcello?

Mom: How could a teenager resist them?

me: Any other favorite actors or movies from that period?

Mom: At a certain point my parents decided that if a movie was based on a book I had to read the book first. So in 1959 I read Ben Hur from cover to cover and was allowed to ride my bike to the Embassy in Waltham by myself to see it. I particularly like the naval battle and the chariot race. I read Tom Jones so I was allowed to go into Boston by myself to see the movie. One had to be at least sixteen to get in and I turned sixteen during its run. I fell in love with Albert Finney then and still love him today.

me: Well, he's Albert Finney. When was it you moved to New York, 1965?

Mom: Yes, in September, and started going to the movies as much as I could afford. There were so many great movies to see at so many movie theaters within easy walking distance. Most of them are long gone.

me: I was going to say, I imagine you started seeing more movies at that point. Were there any particular places you went to a lot? Any specific kinds of pictures you sought out more than others? Or just everything, as much as you could see?

Mom: Also, in 1965 the Protestant center began a film series, where I saw To Have and Have Not, Scorpio Rising, Triumph of the Will, Olympia (parts 1 and 2), I forget what else they showed. My dorm showed movies also, Shane, the Zombies of the Stratosphere serial, and other stuff. At theaters I saw La Dolce Vita (two showings back to back), Georgy Girl, The Graduate, La Chinoise, A Hard Days Night, and lots of other movies.

me: Nice.

Mom: One thing I forgot to mention earlier was how Hitchcock enabled me to pass a my high school chemistry mid-year exam. I was so stressed out and knew that more studying would be pointless, so the evening before the test I persuaded my parents to let me go see a double feature of Psycho and Vertigo to chill me out. It worked and I passed with a B-.

me: Awesome. Now, especially people my age and thereabouts who didn't actually get to experience it firsthand, kind of romanticize the period from about the late 60s through most of the 70s as being kind of a second Golden Age, or the Hollywood New Wave, or some such. I'm curious, since you were actually there and going to lots of movies, whether that was something people were conscious of at the time, or whether it was a perception that happened in retrospect, when people looked at the volume of awesome stuff that came out and went "whoa." Was that something people thought and talked about at the time?

Mom: I don't think we were conscious at that time that it was any second Golden Age or Hollywood New Wave. I think we just expected movies to be good, were discriminating in what we chose to watch, and were rarely disappointed. There were just a lot of movies worth seeing.

me: You mentioned Fess Parker, and The Great Locomotive Chase being your early favorite, owing to the action. Have you always been into action movies?

Mom: I went to the Rex Cinema (now Cobble Hill Cinema) to see Frank Sinatra in Dirty Dingus Magee. It was unmemorable, but the second movie of the double feature was a western I had not previously heard of, For a Few Dollars More. My love (and respect) for Clint Eastwood continues to this day.

I was introduced to Hong Kong action movies when we got our first VCR and you picked out movies at our local video rental outlet. Together we watched all of Bruce Lee's moves over and over, then Chuck Norris, Stephen Seagal, Bruce Li, Jet Li, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Arnold, Sly, Jason Statham, Vin Diesel, heroes all. And the great franchises: Terminator, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, on to Transporter, Bourne Identity, Mission Impossible, xXx, The Fast and the Furious.

An important aspect of the action hero/antihero was that though battered, bloody and often tortured, he managed to beat out Evil in the end by HIMSELF (or with, if he had one, his team).

me: I remember you telling me about seeing The Godfather in the Metropolitan in downtown Brooklyn, back when it was all one theater....

Mom: We went to see it with our upstairs neighbors. I absolutely loved it although I thought Diane Keaton was miscast. The Metropolitan was a great place to see movies. I saw Death Wish there. I was almost the only white person in the audience and everybody cheered when Charles Bronson killed another mugger.

me: Yeah, I kind of miss the Metropolitan too, even after it got all run down. I'll always remember seeing Double Impact there with you, with the guy behind us going "Look out! There goes Bolo!"

Mom: As it got all run down, audiences changed, but everybody always CAME TO SEE THE MOVIE, and were totally into it. There was never a security problem during daytime movies, no racial incidents going one way or the other. Couples often brought sleeping babies to action movies there to save on baby sitters, and there was no problem with babies crying. The Metropolitan is now a church, and I wonder if it is even half as much fun as it used to be.

me: Not even on its best day, I bet.

Mom: Today's movies with stadium seating and properly functioning air conditioning may be more comfortable, but I miss the funky old theaters without endless advertisements or too many trailers for shitty movies I don't want to see, but with audiences who really having fun at the movies.

me: Yeah, the ads and shit drive me nuts, with all the stupid trivia questions "This actress, whose name rhymes with Shmishirney Deaver, starred in Alien and Ghostbusters", and it's like, come on, man, can't we just watch a movie?

Mom: Yes those are totally stupid and they keep looping so you see the same ones repeating while you are WAITING FOR THE FUCKING MOVIE TO START FOR FUCK SAKE.

me: Absolutely. And if you cut things too tight in terms of showing up on time so you don't have to see that bullshit eight thousand times, you either don't get a seat or miss the start of the movie....

Mom: Sometimes makes it worth the wait for Netflix to have the movie so you don't have to deal with that shit. But there's nothing like watching the movie on a big screen in the dark.

me: Absolutely. Do you have much problem up on the Cape now with people screwing around on their cell phones for the whole movie? That's kind of an epidemic here in the city these days.

Mom: Not a problem on the Cape. In fact I have seen a number of movies here (especially the first showing of the day toward the end of a run) when I have been the only person in the theater. If almost feels like a Command Performance for me.

me: Heh, "Entertain me, mortals."

Mom: Entertain me, Celluloid Heroes!

me: Yes! Celluloid Heroes! Thank you so much for ensuring I never had a Kinks-deprived childhood.

"HE TRIED TO MAKE LOVE TO ME, SO I SHOT HIM."

It's the 104th anniversary of her birth, so celebrate by watching one of her pictures. When she was good, she was great. When she was bad, she was better.

REMINDER: F.W. MURNAU WAS AWESOME

Obviously, F.W. Murnau wasn't really on crack, since they didn't have crack in 1927. But he might have been cranking the camera with his dick because holy shit dude. That there's Sunrise, kids. That there's one of the best movies that ever has been. Revisit this post for a more in depth discussion of Murnau's cinema.

LINE!

I really like this. As an (increasingly occasional) actor, I can relate.

100 YEARS OF NICHOLAS RAY, AND HERE'S TO 100 MORE

Today is the 100th anniversary of Nicholas Ray's birth. You could make the argument that he was the best American film director of the 1950s, but rather than do that I'll just call him my favorite (the argument gets simpler when you consider Douglas Sirk was German and Hitchcock was English). I love the way his movies look, he got great performances out of his actors, and his eye for Otherness was unmatched in his time and rivaled only intermittently ever.

I've liked every Nicholas Ray picture I've ever seen—even his Jesus picture was pretty good—but three stand out as particular favorites:


1—In A Lonely Place (1950)

A noir picture that departs, per its director's habit, from a lot of the usual noir norms. Humphrey Bogart stars as a screenwriter with serious anger issues. He might have killed a guy, we're kept guessing about whether or not he did it until the end, but we're still totally compelled by him. I'd go as far as to call it Bogart's best performance ever. You feel the anger and danger, but also totally understand what Gloria Grahame sees in him (and her performance is top-notch). Their relationship is vivid, harrowing, all too real, leading to Gloria Grahame being both madly in love with and abjectly terrified of Bogart.

The ending is one of the greatest ever, even if it's pretty damn far from happy. It turns out that Bogart didn't actually kill the guy . . . but he still totally fucked up his relationship with Gloria Grahame, and the last absolutely stunning shot is Bogart walking away, tiny and alone, into the darkness. It's an ending where you exhale for the first time in like half an hour, saying “wow.”

In A Lonely Place is just a really good fucking movie. There's no way you can watch it and not go “That was a really good fucking movie.” You all gotta realize, me saying it's Bogart's best performance, I really like Humphrey Bogart. I think he's the greatest movie star in the history of America, and I give him more credit than most as an actor, too. The fact that this was Nicholas Ray's second feature—his first, They Live By Night, is pretty great too—is unreal. It's a completely assured, confident movie that goes nowhere you expect it to. I mean . . . it's just a really fucking good movie.


2—Johnny Guitar (1954)

Okay, Joan Crawford in a Western is a high concept that I'd greenlight with my zipper down. That alone is the greatest fucking idea of all time (I'll sacrifice all that stupid verisimilitude shit to have Joan Crawford in a Western, fuck y'all) but the fact that we got Mercedes McCambridge up in this too, as the villain, that's just icing on the cake.

Also, Sergio Leone copped the plot and everything else about this he could carry for Once Upon A Time In The West and that's very, very important. Like Keith Richards appropriating a Chuck Berry riff. But even more than that, a Western in the 50s (before John Ford ended the era with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, because there ain't really shit new to say about the genre after a picture that good) where both protagonist and antagonist are women is notable. A movie that isn't romance-based where the hero and villain are both women and the guy is the love interest (even if he does get the movie named after him) today would be an outlier, but back then? Revolutionary. Again, there's that eye for Otherness.

This one doesn't quite hold up to the scrutiny of In A Lonely Place, but there's a wide expanse of gray area between “not as good as In A Lonely Place” and “not good.” Johnny Guitar is more for those moods when you're like “I want to see Joan Crawford in a Western, and I want to see some hawt 50s color cinematography.” Those moods are valid, make no mistake, and luckily for them there's Johnny Guitar.


3—Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

The first time I saw this was on TV when I was about 10 or 11 or something and my mom said “You need to learn about James Dean” or something along those lines. I watched it and learned all about James Dean (and, it must be said, all about Natalie Wood, too . . . meowwww; yes, I was a little precocious in that regard).

The second time I saw this was in a film appreciation class in high school that was a bit of a misnomer, as we watched everything on VHS and the class was only an hour long so we had to break every movie up over at least two classes and if too many of the hair-gelled “ey, fuck you, arright” guys and equally hair-gelled “ewwww, that's retaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarded” girls evinced any degree of boredom we'd abandon the picture at the hour mark and watch something else next class. The fact that we finished Rebel Without a Cause and then spent a third hour talking about it is a testament to the power of that movie, even if the discussion was peppered with “I didn't get it” or “that was old, that doesn't got nothin to do with nothin, people don't tawwk that way.”

Look, that's just the way teenagers are. Jesus Christ could do the Dougie across a swimming pool and turn tax forms into tits and at least one teenager would go, “Pssh, that's lame, the Dougie was so 2010.” And it's not because teenagers are shitheads, even though they are. The reason teenagers are shitheads is simple. You may remember how it went: there you were, little kid, short, squeaky voice, less than optimal cognitive abilities, when all of a sudden BOOM! Some mad scientist shot you in the ass with something that was part Viagra (which must have been doubly frustrating if you were a girl), part HGH, part evil mad scientist serum that caused bipolar disorder and whose side effects included horrible things happening to your skin. That shit would turn Gandhi into a shithead (and it probably did, too). Being a teenager sucks. It's no wonder they all turn into shitheads.

But even the shithead deserves empathy, up to a certain point, and that brings us to Rebel Without A Cause. The aftermath of World War II, which found America frantically trying to build a utopia as a means of dealing with how fucking horrible the war was (make no mistake, we got off easy, but that didn't mean the war didn't abjectly fucking suck), but not succeeding all the time. The kids were the ones who bore the brunt of their parents' freaking out, and so some movies were starting to be made about the troubled youth. Nicholas Ray sensed this trend, and was like “*sniffsniff* . . . I smell existential alienation . . . Otherness . . . there's only one man for the job! Get me a script, a camera, and some really pretty, emotionally damaged young people, and get me that shit five fucking minutes ago!”

The title Rebel Without A Cause sums the movie up perfectly. Outwardly, one can be excused for looking at James Dean and going “Fuck's his problem? He's growing up prosperous, in Los Angeles so we can't even write his gloominess off to the weather. Nut up, fucko.” But that's the thing. Being a teenager sucks sufficiently that even under relatively ideal circumstances like this one—like, seriously, his biggest problem is that his dad's henpecked, and that shit happens when you get in relationships with strong women, it doesn't mean strong women are bad and shouldn't be that way, it's just one of those things—the mere fact of being a teenager sucks balls.

Even though things turn out all right for James Dean (if a night or two with Natalie Wood doesn't take the edge off, you're beyond being worth saving), they end tragically for Sal Mineo. This is Nicholas Ray (widely said to be bisexual), clearing his throat pointedly and being as obvious as he was allowed to by the censors that sure, being a teenager is a headache, but being a gay teenager is a migraine.

Of course, Rebel Without A Cause is primarily remembered today for the whole James Dean thing. He died a month before the movie premiered, and it's been hard if not impossible to separate Rebel Without A Cause (or Giant or East of Eden for that matter) from the James Dean cult. (Eerie coincidence: I typed “James Dead” and had to correct it like 90 kajillion fucking times writing this.) I maintain that if he hadn't died, James Dean would have ended up being competition for Marlon Brando in the weird, annoying genius Method actor sweepstakes, flaming out in the mid 60s in some hushed-up scandal Kenneth Anger wrote about in Hollywood Babylon II before showing up in a few Paul Morrissey movies in the early 70s with his dick out fucking Joe D'Allessandro in the ass, then ending up bombed out of his goddamn mind on Hollywood Squares for a few years before croaking in 1981 or so with prostitutes of both genders trying in vain to flush the rest of the coke down the toilet before the cops arrive.

Had that seedy if highly lulzy series of events transpired, Rebel Without A Cause would probably be remembered today in much the same way as Nicholas Ray's earlier pictures were: as a really well-directed, well-acted tale of the Other, and maybe even his most multi-faceted look at the Other, because you've got James Dean, the handsome heteronormative (hahahahahahahaha oh that's funny because it's James Dean) white dude who's an Other because he's a teenager in the 50s, then Natalie Wood, who's the Other because she's a girl, with that subtle edge that she's olive-skinned (shit, people in the 50s were so racist Irish people were still barely white), and Sal Mineo is an Other because he puts the boldface and italics in the word “gay.” The pacing is much like it is in In A Lonely Place, not fast, but steady enough that it enchants, bringing the audience along with it into a world they probably wouldn't think to explore. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Nicholas Ray is fucking awesome.

So, happy 100th to the man, and may his contributions to cinema not be forgotten. I may have only talked about three of his movies here, but if you look up anything that says “directed by Nicholas Ray,” watch the shit out of it. Nicholas Ray is the truth.

SERIOUS CINEMA FOR CIVILIANS

I've written before about the needlessly contentious relationship between film writers and civilians, mainly as a chance to be rude to more successful critics, often in vague, non-specific terms, about what I think they're doing wrong. This doesn't accomplish much other than make me look like an asshole, so I'm going to try a different tactic, one that I think more serious cineastes should take (naturally, since it's my brilliant fucking idea): reach out to civilians.

None of them are reading this blog, obviously, because they're all off doing whatever civilians do. I mean . . . what the fuck do they do with the time that we're writing 7000 word articles about the role of UFA in shaping the visual aesthetic of Hollywood's First Golden Age, or getting into fistfights with people over Terrence Malick movies? Whatever they get up to, that's not the point, we could spend years of field research tagging them and studying their habits, but why waste all the tranquilizers sedating them when we can use them to get high (and anyone who's tried to watch a Godard picture from after 1967'll tell ya: getting lifted helps). Point is, we all know a civilian or two—they're fairly easy to identify—and it's about fucking time we let them know we're not big scary eggheads with insular vocabularies and superhuman boredom thresholds. At the core, we're just like them: people who like movies.

This is the thing a lot of the civilians I talk to get hung up on: because of the unctuous jerkoffs who take five minutes to say the word “film” and insist on the brilliance of shit that sounds fucking boring (or, worse, the unctuous jerkoffs make it sound fucking boring), civilians think “serious” cinema is not for them, and regard art cinema and entertaining movies as two disparate entities. This is a shame, because while there are any number of art pictures that are challenging to their audiences, there are also a whole lot of really great “films” that also rule the fuck out of shit as “movies.”

The intent of this post is to give us—because don't even try to bullshit, if you're reading this, you're One Of Us—the vocabulary to let civilians know that just because it's serious doesn't mean it can't be serious fun. So, first, an important distinction:

Film vs. Movie: Basically they mean the same thing. A lot of people use “film” and “movie” interchangeably, which is fine, for the previously stated reason, but you want to watch it with the word “film” in certain contexts, especially when dealing with civilians. A lot of them hear the word “film” and go, “ooh, that sounds serious,” and while we all know serious is (or can be) awesome, your civilian might get a little wary. Especially if it's used as a suffix to the words “foreign” or “independent” you might end up totally fucking blowing it. So if a civilian asks you something like “what kind of movies do you like?” don't make the mistake of ending the conversation by being like “I like foreign and independent film” because they're just gonna go, “Ahhhh,” and pretend to be interested and end up either changing the subject or leaving. On the other hand, if—for whatever fucking reason, and goddammit this had fucking better be because the civilian brought him up—Ingmar Bergman gets dragged into the conversation, there's no ifs ands or buts, the only acceptable phrase is “Bergman film.” This holds true for a select few foreign and art cinema directors. But the handy thing is, you're usually not going to be talking about any of these directors until way past the entry level, and by the time your civilian is watching Wild Strawberries or whatever they're not going to be civilians anymore, so it's a moot point.

This is not a rant against the word “film.” When we're among our own kind, we can use whatever language we want, be as pretentious as we like, and the only danger is mouthing off to someone smarter than you or getting busted trying to pawn off something you've read as your own thoughts. Then, there's no real danger of anything except looking like a dickhead. You're not alienating a potential movie lover. Cuz really, that's the thing, we want more people loving movies, and feeling uninhibited about liking good ones.

Basically, we want to use friendly, non-intimidating language. I find the word “picture” to be the best of all possible worlds. It's a little old-fashioned, so older civilians won't find it threatening. It's short for “motion picture,” so it makes sense, and it's not excessively casual like the word “movie” can be under the wrong circumstances. But the coup de grace is that it's so fucking pretentious a lot of serious cinema people will cringe occasionally, and what good is hanging around with serious cinema people if you can't fuck with them and give them dyspepsia every now and then? The best part is, only serious cinema people know how pretentious it is, so you've basically got your own private screening going on in your head while having a seemingly innocuous conversation about a “Humphrey Bogart picture” with your nice civilian friend over a beer.

So, good, we've got our civilian all warmed up. We still have a bunch of big fucking obstacles in our way. Our tripartite demon of civilian fear and loathing is thus:

Old
Foreign
Independent

All three of these shibboleths cast massive, dark, foreboding, frigid shadows over our nice, friendly civilian and send them scrambling to watch unspeakable things, movies which I shan't even name for fear of upsetting the more sensitive readers out there. Our challenge is to present these types of movies in as palatable a way as possible. Not to tell them, “This is good, thus you must like it.” Describe why it's awesome, and if you do so properly you get “That sounds awesome.” Then all you gotta do is watch the fucking movie, better known as the fun part.

Of paramount importance, of course, is picking the right movie. Let's start with “old” (read: anything made before the civilian in question was born).


OLD

The way to figure this out is to figure out what your civilian actually likes, because if you try and force what you want them to like on them, le jeu sont fait, motherfucker. So here's a couple hypothetical answers to the (impossibly reductive, but fuck it) question, “So what do you like?”

Civilian: “I like ownage. Who in old-ass movies owns the shit out of people?”

Answer: Humphrey Bogart



Beginner's Level: Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon
Intermediate: The Big Sleep, In a Lonely Place
Advanced: well, shit, if they're at the advanced level they're probably off watching The African Queen and The Caine Mutiny and shit on their own initiative. Good job.

Keep in mind the purpose of this post is to provide general unsolicited advice, and so the question becomes, who has the broadest appeal? For ownage alone, one might be tempted to answer “John Wayne” and while it's true that John Wayne did own, there's the political problem. Like in fucking Hondo when he's out there protecting the woman and her kid and he throws the fucking kid in the river to teach him to swim and growls something right-wing and the woman gets all aroused. That scene aged badly. Bogart works better, as he makes up for not owning as many dudes as John Wayne did by really makin em fucking count. Major Strasser. End of list.

There's a reason everyone trips about Casablanca. One of the first posts I ever did on this blog was about how great it was, but words are ephemeral. Casablanca will win over anyone except apostate nitpicky killjoy assholes farting about how there's no such thing as “real” letters of transit and all that fuckin shit. Of course, you don't phrase it that truculently to your civilian. You go, “Oh, yeah, I know everybody's been sucking this movie's dick for the last hundred years but trust me, half an hour in, its balls will be on your chin, too.” Or paraphrase. Build up enough trust with your civilian so that if you go “Trust me” they don't just go “fuck you.” Casablanca will not betray that trust.

The Maltese Falcon also works because it's every bit as good as Casablanca is except it won't make you cry. Casablanca occasionally makes people cry, and if your civilian isn't progressive and is mumbling about “chick shit” like romance, show him (chicks rarely complain about chick shit) The Maltese Falcon, which features pretty much nonstop Humphrey Bogart ownage, of verbal, physical, and even intellectual varieties. The Maltese Falcon is powerful shit. People buy fedoras and tan raincoats and shrink six inches and start rolling their own cigarettes to be like Bogart in that fucking movie. As well they goddamn should.

Shocking as it may seem, some civilians might be looking for something other than ownage in their old movies . . .

Civilian: “I like comedies.”

Answer(s): Pretty much anything Preston Sturges ever made.



This one's a little tricky for me because it's outside my usual home territory; any number of you out there better-versed in classical Hollywood cinema than me might be able to think of better suggestions. Preston Sturges works well for civilians, though, because he was such a stunningly fucking good writer and his dialogue and characters hold up remarkably well over the decades. The Lady Eve is fun as hell because Henry Fonda's a dork, Barbara Stanwyck is Barbara Stanwyck, et cetera ad infinitum, so if you want to keep it light, that's a good one to go with, but if you want to blow your civilian's fucking mind, show them Sullivan's Travels.

Sullivan's Travels is hilarious in some places, really really dramatic in others, and ends on such an exhilarating, transcendent note that you'll be talking about how awesome it is with your civilian for hours afterward. You do have to be careful, though, because the dramatic parts may make some tune out, so if you're sensing an unreliable attention span you might want to try something else first.

This is where Billy Wilder comes in handy. Specifically, Some Like It Hot. Actually, what the fuck am I talking about? Disregard all that other shit. Watch Some Like It Hot with your civilian, and say “you're welcome.”


Answer: “I like tearjerkers.”

Solution: There is but one. The man is Douglas Sirk. The movie is Imitation of Life.



Some might say I'm crazy, busting this out for a civilian. And sure, I'm crazy. And sure, parts of Imitation of Life are dated as shit, though Troy Donahue menacingly growling the n-word is one of the funniest things ever. And, yeah, it's over the top. And sure, the average civilian, not (over)thinking the matter, is going to look at the ending and go “Get the fuck out of here, did she really just die of a fucking broken heart?” To which there's only one reply, “Yes, yes, she does.” (Ed. Note: Imitation of Life is fucking awesome). Your civilian will at this point perhaps sneer and go, “Well that sucked.” So . . . what am I on about here? Why did I tell you to throw on Imitation of Life? Because your civilian is going to turn right around and tell you “This sure isn't any An Affair To Remember.”

Therein lies the brilliance of my plan. Only civilians have ever seen An Affair To Remember beginning to end (little known fact: even Nora Ephron, who's not a civilian, only saw the couple seconds of it she used in Sleepless in Seattle). Serious cineastes had to turn it off or leave the theater or whatever after the first five minutes to either throw up or get treated for diabetes. Because your civilian is a civilian, they've seen An Affair To Remember. They all have. They can then use this knowledge to get one up on you, the nominal expert, and the first seed in the orchard that is cinephilia has been planted: the feeling of superiority attendant to having seen something the other person hasn't.

By the way, the whole above scenario is word for fucking word the way it'll actually play out. The sneakiest thing about civilians is that they do know more than you do about old tearjerkers, it's a glitch in the Matrix (by the way, that brings up another excellent point that I'll consign to an aside just to be a dick: confirming to civilians that movies they like are actually good works wonders. Their eyes light up when you tell them, yes, The Godfather and Lawrence of Arabia totally count as Greatest Of All Time picks).

So, to make a long story short, the trick with getting your civilian to watch old movies is basically just getting them in the right mood, not being condescending, and picking the right movie. Easier said than done, sure, but so is everything. Except defenestration: throwing a motherfucker out the window is quicker than that long-ass word.


FOREIGN

Much harder. Shit, if you thought getting someone to watch a black & white movie was hard, getting them to watch something with subtitles usually involves bribery of some sort. Or one of those Clockwork Orange-style chairs. I was actually a little disappointed when I got my Lasik surgery back in 2000 that the apparatus wasn't more old-school with razor-sharp shit sticking out everywhere, and no anesthesia and all that cool stuff, me going “NOOOOOOO!!!” as they went for my eyes. Instead everything was all comfortable and soft and they gave me all the drugs I asked for—which, considering I was a couple months shy of 22 was a fucking lot—and said reassuring things to me and I barely felt a thing and only whined like a bitch for like two seconds.

I'm digressing because it pains me, way more than that extremely smooth and painless surgical procedure, to admit how fucking impossible it is to get civilians to watch pretty much anything foreign. The only person who ever figured out how to get civilians to watch foreign movies is Harvey Weinstein, and a distressingly high percentage of the foreign movies Miramax released in the 90s sucked marmoset dick (Cinema Paradiso, Chocolat, shit like that, even if neither of those technically came out in the 90s). How Harv did it, man was not meant to know.

The best advice I can give to anyone who wants to get civilians to watch foreign movies is the way Arthur Dent taught himself how to fly in Hitchhiker's Guide: throw yourself at the ground and miss. By which I mean, if you think about it for two seconds, the whole shithouse'll go up in flames, you just need to go with the organic flow of the universe. If you're with a civilian, and they want to watch anything foreign, don't question it. Just watch (or endure) it with them and hope they like it well enough to be talked into watching something good later. You cannot prod them at all until they've lost their cherry, and even then you have to give them space until they volunteer enthusiasm.

This is the most frustrating thing of all. Much as you know in your heart of hearts your civilian would like a gritty French gangster movie, or a big bright crazy Bollywood masala picture, or a sparse, minimalist Japanese drama, or a picture about a bunch of Iranian chicks who are totally nuts about soccer . . . you cannot make the first move. Just about anything you say to your civilian suggesting they watch something foreign, unless they've given you a clear indication that they're open to it, could result in a “meh,” or the dreaded “I don't like foreign movies, I hate reading subtitles.” And once they've given you that initial sign that they might dig something foreign, be careful. Don't fuck it up, you don't want to create one of those “I saw a foreign movie once, I didn't get it” people.


Hope I didn't bum you out too much, because fortunately, the last one's really fucking easy:


INDEPENDENT

These have the advantage of usually being in color and not necessarily having subtitles. They also have all kinds of cool stuff like nudity that the studios have to foreswear in their idolatrous worship of the PG-13 rating. Or, if you're dealing with someone who isn't into that kind of thing, there are PG-13 and under independent pictures as well. That's the big secret of independent cinema: they're just regular movies that are financed and produced by someone other than a Hollywood executive.

And yet, “independent” movies are regarded as this big daunting thing by a lot of civilians. They tend to have this unfortunate stereotype of independent movies as boring, pretentious, and cheaply made. This stereotype didn't come out of nowhere, there are plenty of boring, pretentious, cheaply made independent pictures. They're also known as shitty independent pictures. The good ones are fucking rad, and civilians will not be able to tell the difference between a good independent movie and a studio picture that isn't one of the big special effects things.

Perfect case in point: back in 1994 when Pulp Fiction came out, none of the dipshits I went to high school with had any idea that it had a whole foofball independent movie backstory, playing at Cannes and all that shit. This was because it was screening in non-arthouse movie theaters, and when it came out on video it was right there on the shelf just like every other “normal” movie.

You can certainly make the case for Pulp Fiction not being a typical independent movie, because it's not. It's got dudes with guns just like studio movies, it's got recognizable movie stars, it grossed $100 million, and got shitloads of media attention. But in that last is the key: getting people who would ordinarily make the “who farted?” face when you say the words “independent film” to them will have no such negative reaction if you just present it to them like a normal movie. It's all in presentation.

Of course, you don't want to bullshit your civilian. Telling them Blue Valentine is just like The Notebook because Ryan Gosling's in it is going to accomplish nothing except pissing your civilian off. What you do instead is get your friend who likes crime dramas and pitch Winter's Bone, for example, as a story about meth dealers and shit and maybe drop some oblique hints about the chainsaw scene. Or, fuck, now you can just tell them Mystique plays the lead. That's a good strategy, finding an actor they know from a big studio picture and being like, “hey, you get to see more of them in this!”

The best thing about getting civilians into independent movies nowadays is that between Netflix and the other nine million ways to watch movies online one of the biggest pains in the ass from back in the 90s and before is gone: access. Used to be, you wanted to see something independent or foreign you had to get on the fucking subway, shlep into either the Angelika or Film Forum and if you were in the Angelika you had to put up with the motherfucking subway going by all the time on top of the incredibly unfriendly ambience, and that's the bullshit you had to put up with in New York, where it was easy. Outside of major cities, unless the gods were kind and granted you an arthouse within driving distance, you were shit out of luck. Now, once something comes out on DVD, it's just a movie. And if you've been good and built up trust with your civilian, they'll look at “keyword: independent” and ask you “Independent, huh? Is it good?” and you'll say yes, and they'll listen to you.

And thus, we come after a long and hopefully entertaining amble to the whole point of this: if you're not a dickface about knowing more about movies than someone else, they're more likely to trust you when you suggest stuff. That's it. Be nice to people and don't lord shit over them, and things will be okay. You may even, after getting an amiable newcomer to the joys of cinema to watch something good with you, create a new One Of Us. Then, when they get to the point when they get that reference, you'll brush a tear away and say, “Oh . . . they grow up so fast!”

DASHIELL HAMMETT IN PICTURES

"Hammett was the ace performer... He is said to have lacked heart; yet the story he himself thought the most of [The Glass Key] is the record of a man's devotion to a friend. He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before." ---Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder

Dashiell Hammett was born 117 years ago today. Completely aside from setting the bar impossibly high in the "write what you know" stakes (seriously, dude was a fucking Pinkerton agent before retiring to write crime novels drawn largely from his real-life experiences, that's just unfair for the rest of us), and being married to Lillian Hellman (herself a chronicler of her own massively badass feats), Dashiell Hammett gave much to the cinema. First, the obvious:




John Huston's The Maltese Falcon, one of the greatest movies ever made and one of the most important progenitors of film noir, was the third version made of Hammett's third novel (numerology hippies are advised to shut the fuck up, but quelle coincidence, non?). The other two, the Ricardo Cortez one and the Bette Davis one, are pretty good, but the Humphrey Bogart/Mary Astor/Peter Lorre/Sydney Greenstreet one sings. It captures the feel of Hammett's book perfectly, and that feel is fucking awesome.

Hammett's fourth novel, The Glass Key, has an equally impressive cinematic legacy. There were a couple direct adaptations made that were okay, but Akira Kurosawa really got shit crackin' with his unofficial adaptation, Yojimbo (often incorrectly called an adaptation of Hammett's first novel, Red Harvest):




One of the great classics of world cinema, Yojimbo makes the very intelligent decision to feature Toshiro Mifune owning the crap out of people with samurai swords, and while most of that is Kurosawa, he himself always attributed the Hammett influence.

Then, legendarily, Yojimbo begat A Fistful of Dollars, wherein Sergio Leone made the incredibly wise decision to make Clint the star:




Clint is Clint, and this was the first picture where it was made clear that Clint is Clint, and is thus historically very important, and while the reflected glory on Hammett is small by percentage, its albedo was fucking blinding, so take another bow, Mr. Hammett.

The Glass Key inspired another cinematic classic, this one based far more closely on the source material. I speak of course of Miller's Crossing.




While still more inspired by than a direct adaptation of The Glass Key, Miller's Crossing nonetheless captures the period atmosphere perfectly, and features original dialogue every bit Hammett's equal (and Hammett was one of the gods).

Hammett's last novel would inspire one of the most deliriously fun movies ever made (and several almost-as-enjoyable sequels), The Thin Man.




Nick and Nora Charles are fucking rad. The degree to which they're based on Hammett and Hellman is debatable, but the degree to which they rule is not. Sure they dress beautifully and can drink any mammal discovered by science under the table, but the greatest thing about them as a couple was that they were both massively in love (emotionally and physically, though the degree to which the latter was permitted to be shown was limited by censors) AND, most impressively, actually liked each other. It's a vividly portrayed relationship, beautifully written by Hammett, perfectly adapted by the filmmakers, and wonderfully played by William Powell and Myrna Loy.

Hammett spent most of the last three decades of his life involved in politics rather than writing. As a real-life character, he was interesting enough to inspire a not-bad fanfic novel called Hammett by Joe Gores that was turned into a not-as-not-bad Wim Wenders picture (like with most Wim Wenders pictures, the degree to which it doesn't suck depends on how much you like Wim Wenders). And then, in Julia, the 1977 movie adaptation of part of Lillian Hellman's Pentimento, Dashiell Hammett was played by the one, the only, Jason Robards.




Here's to Dashiell Hammett. Writer, activist, mensch. One of a kind.

JUST A GANGSTER, I SUPPOSE

One might not immediately cite 1990 as a particularly notable year in the history of cinema. It was, after all, the year Dances With Wolves dominated the Oscars, with its lush visuals, its masturbatory, self-satisfied PC politics, its massive overlength. Flying under the radar that year were a number of fine pictures, four of which we will be discussing today, since they made 1990 an extremely notable year in the history of the gangster movie.

Usually, confluent trends in cinema are due to societal influence of some sort. The fact that 1990 saw so many different types of gangster movies might—amateur sociology alert—have something to do with the brazen, swaggering, felonious Wall Street culture of the 80s. It might just be that four (actually five if you count Ethan Coen) directors really liked gangster movies. Whatever the cause, the point is four awesome gangster movies came out in 1990.

Like any genre, gangster movies have evolved over time. Raoul Walsh basically invented the genre in 1915 with Regeneration. Shot on location in the Bowery, it's about as close as you can get to seeing what the milieu of Gangs of New York was actually like, as real gangs still prowled the neighborhood. From there, movie gangsters morphed into Paul Muni, then Cagney/Edward G. Robinson, then endless ripoffs of Cagney and Edward G. Robinson, then the paradigm shift/Shakespearean facelift performed by Dr. Francis Coppola, then Scorsese's hyper-realistic, autobiographical take on the genre, still the predominant mode in the gangster picture in 1990. Then Quentin Tarantino taught gangsters how to listen to Madonna and watch The Partridge Family, Guy Ritchie's take was awl roight, innit, then David Chase recast them in a bathrobe in their driveway, lumbering to pick up the morning's Newark Star-Ledger. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, back to 1990.

Our quartet each represents a different approach to the genre, each historically significant:


The Moody Character Piece—State of Grace

I talked about this one a bit in my St. Patrick's Day post, so rather than be redundant, let's focus on Phil Joanou's direction. The pace is deliberate (read: slow, if you're not in the mood) to give the actors all the time they need to make character choices (“I'm Irish . . . I'm drunk . . . I'm fatalistic . . . I need to brood decoratively . . .”) and the compositions, while serving the same end of not crowding the actors and giving them room to move, instead make the picture feel kind of emotionally neutral (and the lack of urgency in the editing reinforces that feeling of neutrality, and even detachment).

This would all be a critique of Phil Joanou's directing if the performances weren't all so fucking good. Sean Penn overdoes it a bit, as is his custom, but he's still pretty spectacular in this. Gary Oldman of course is Gary Oldman and nothing more need be said; he also overacts, but getting on Gary Oldman for overacting is like getting on water for being wet. Ed Harris, no stranger to overacting himself, keeps it pretty well in check here, and successfully conveys that his character's ruthlessness is due to weakness.

The psychological, Method acting approach to the gangster genre works if your purpose is examining the whys and wherefores behind gangsterism, or in State of Grace's case, the role of the gangster as the last, doomed line of defense against gentrification. The Westies were the most feared gang in New York, but they were no match for yuppies.


The Auteursploitation Picture—King of New York

King of New York is a decent companion piece to State of Grace, as both are “decline and fall of the gangster empire” narratives, and both have a similarly grim, moderato pace. One area in which King of New York is the clear superior, though, is in the overacting competition.

Remember, I'm not saying “overacting” as an insult, and remember also, King of New York stars Christopher Walken, perhaps the most flamboyantly strange actor ever seen on the silver screen. As drug kingpin Frank White, Walken is at his apex. Frank White is the king of New York, to the point where in a wonderful bit of irony, just about every black rapper from New York has, at some point or other since 1990, declared himself to be Frank White.

King of New York starts with Frank White's release from prison. Frank returns to a city where his lieutenant, Larry (pre-Laurence) Fishburne, is informed “nobody even talks to you goddamn motherfucking coños anymore.” Larry, aided by chemist Steve Buscemi and that one weird guy who just shouts shit in a coked-up rage all the time, rebut this assertion with a hail of gunfire and steal the gentleman's drugs.

The gangsters in King of New York always have half-dressed beautiful women lounging around, and the way you can tell Walken's the boss of bosses is that his half-dressed women are more beautiful than the other gangsters'. His headquarters, where all his women lounge around, is the Plaza hotel, another conspicuous sign that Walken is cooler than everyone else.

Walken attempts to diversify into the legitimate world, where he hobnobs with Pete Hamill (playing himself) and politicians, but the cops (led by a scenery chewing David Caruso and his earnest young protegé Wesley Snipes) are dead set on putting Walken back in jail, as they regard his release to be a crime in itself.

However he might crave acceptance in the straight world, Walken still has a drug empire to reconquer, which requires some doomed-from-the-start negotiations with a deliciously reptilian Chinese guy who sits around watching Expressionist horror movies with his (far too clothed for true gangster credibility) women and his henchmen. When business falls apart after the Chinese guy tells him “I didn't realize how fucking crazy you really are,” Walken and company are forced to resort to machine guns, which maneuver eradicates the Chinatown contingent.

David Caruso and the cops eventually decide that the only way to beat Walken is at his own game (which is to say, a machine gun battle), although Victor Argo (in the movie's only understated performance, and maybe its best) demurs and refuses to be party to such methods. Caruso and entourage succeed in killing a whole bunch of Walken's guys, including Larry Fishburne, though it costs poor Wesley Snipes his life, as well as a fresh-faced, recently married rookie's. Walken gets his retribution by drive-by blasting David Caruso at Wesley's funeral, leaving Victor Argo to arrest Walken, who mortally wounds Victor Argo, though he himself is mortally wounded by Victor Argo. Walken dies quietly in a cab in Times Square.

Director Abel Ferrara is very much an auteur, whose major theme is Catholic guilt, with subthemes sin and retribution, and because of his personal preoccupations, his bad men never get away with what they've done; they've sinned and ultimately must repent. So, although Walken is the King of New York, the king must die. Long live the king. And by God, long live King of New York. Few movies are as unrelentingly grim and violent, but even fewer are as fascinatingly badass. Anyone Biggie Smalls was willing to defer to in the badass department (the titular king, Frank White) is a force to be fucking reckoned with.


The Classicist Approach—Miller's Crossing

Of the movies in discussion today, the first that can unironically be branded a masterpiece is Miller's Crossing (also discussed briefly on St. Paddy's). Joel and Ethan Coen, in their nearly three-decade career, have made a half-dozen of the finest motion pictures of their generation, and to date have only directed one bad movie (Intolerable Cruelty, where they had to make chicken salad out of someone else's chickenshit script). Their finest, I submit—even better than Fargo, Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, or No Country For Old Men—is Miller's Crossing.

Borrowing from Dashiell Hammett, Damon Runyon, and Grand Guignol, Miller's Crossing is an incredibly stylized, intricately constructed, unabashedly unpleasant work of genius. Gabriel Byrne stars as Tom Reagan, loyal right hand to political boss (read: gangster) Albert Finney, who is having trouble with “ethical” Jon Polito and his right hand, the terrifying Eddie Dane (J.E. Freeman). Despite his loyalty, Gabriel Byrne is still fucking Albert Finney's woman, the hard-as-nails Marcia Gay Harden, whose brother, Jon Turturro, is number one on Jon Polito's to-kill list because “ethically, he's a little shaky” (an elegant understatement from an inelegant man).

So, in order to protect Albert Finney's interests, Gabriel Byrne has to disclose his affair with Marcia Gay Harden, thus prompting his exile from Albert Finney's inner circle (said exile accomplished by Albert Finney beating the shit out of him in public and throwing him down a flight of stairs), which leads to Gabriel Byrne having to go work for Jon Polito, whereupon Gabriel Byrne subtly subverts Jon Polito's organization from within, leading Jon Polito to kill Eddie Dane, after which John Turturro kills Jon Polito and Gabriel Byrne kills John Turturro, unfortunately ruining his chances at ever getting Marcia Gay Harden back but nonetheless being forgiven by Albert Finney. Exhale.

As compelling as the twisty, double-cross-laden plot is, and as gorgeous as the camerawork is (the Coens have always collaborated with the best DP's, first Barry Sonnenfeld then Roger Deakins and Emmanuel Lubezki), what makes Miller's Crossing so special is the dialogue. Basically, just read this whole page.

Of course, the scene with Albert Finney, the tommy gun, the burning house, and “Danny Boy” is the stuff of standing ovations. The fact that one of the greatest scenes ever in movies isn't even overwhelmingly the best scene in the movie is a testament to how fucking amazing Miller's Crossing is. The fact that an even better gangster movie was released in the same year is a reason to regard that other gangster movie with awe.


The Real—Goodfellas

“As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a gangster.” --Henry Hill
“I grew up with the gangsters and the priests . . . now, as a director, I'm both.” --Martin Scorsese

It all seems so effortless. It looks like it's really happening. It's arguably the best picture in one of the most storied careers in cinema, Martin Scorsese's. Based on the memoir Wise Guy by real-life gangster Henry Hill, Goodfellas (the name change was due to there being a TV show at the time called Wiseguy, which you should see if you haven't) covers thirty years in The Life, following Henry Hill from wide-eyed kid parking cars at a Mob cabstand to high-flying coke dealer to state's witness testifying against all his friends.

By this point, practically every scene in Goodfellas has entered the realm of myth, so recapping is unnecessary. As awesome as the whole movie is, two scenes stand out. They're Scorsese at his very best, and Scorsese at his best is exciting and important:

(1) The steadicam shot when Henry takes Karen to the Copa for the first time. We start outside, see the huge fuckin line, and Karen starts to say something about “wow, we're going to have to wait” only to have Henry tell her, we don't have to wait, it's better this way, as he hustles her through the service entrance. Now, the obvious reason why this shot is awesome is that it's all in one take, with dozens of people choreographed perfectly even before we get into the main room of the Copa and they produce a table from outta nowhere and all that. But the less obvious reason is that this shot is the ENTIRE MOVIE in microcosm: Henry the gangster is taking his girl out on a date, showing her the glamor of the gangster's life, but in so doing has to drag her through the less-than-glamorous underbelly of the club where you get a glimpse of where, metaphorically speaking, the sausages are made. The fact that you don't really notice that until the thirtieth time you see the movie leaves you feeling it's all a bit of an adventure, and that Ray Liotta famously bashes himself in the nuts about two-thirds of the way through the shot but gamely keeps going further deepens the metaphor. Now, my favorite part of the whole thing, the very end, when Henry and Karen are sitting down, and a waiter brings over a bottle saying, “This is from Mr. Tony over there,” and there's that pan over to a table full of friendly, gesticulating gangsters. Martin Scorsese is so cool he can make a camera move funny. That shit has me dying, every time.

(2) Billy Batts' coming-home party. This one isn't about the flashy camerawork, this is just the fucking apex of acting and directing. Joe Pesci, as Tommy, comes into Henry's bar with a girlfriend, not realizing that Billy Batts is in there with some henchmen. Tommy doesn't like Billy Batts. Billy Batts reminds Tommy, in a very demeaning way, that he used to be a shoeshine boy, all the while pretending that he's being friendly. He is, however, reminding a lesser gangster, one who has not been “made,” who the alpha greaseball is. Now. By this point in the movie we've had it firmly established for us that Joe Pesci is motherfucking crazy as a fucking shithouse rat. While he may rationally give a fuck that Billy Batts is a made man and he isn't, when Billy Batts suicidally keeps fucking with him, Joe Pesci's rational side gradually dissipates, until the coup de grace: “NOW GO HOME AND GET YOUR FUCKIN' SHINEBOX.” Joe Pesci slams the glass he's holding to the ground and goes nuts; Henry and Jimmy only just get him out of the bar before he launches himself at Billy's whole henchmen coterie.

Of course, that's not the end of it. Joe Pesci comes back, and he and De Niro jump on Billy. Character revelation: Joe Pesci is sloppy and all over the place as he beats Billy to death, whereas De Niro calmly and methodically stomps the life out of the guy (a concise portrait of psychopath vs. sociopath; beats the shit outta the DSM-IV, which has the added disadvantage of not being scored to Donovan). The best part about the ending of the scene, where they roll the “dead” Billy Batts in tablecloths and schlep him out to Henry's car, is that it means the scene with Scorsese's mom is coming up next.

That scene, where they're all just sitting around eating dinner at like 4 o'clock in the morning, and Catherine Scorsese shows the boys this amazing, stark painting she did, and De Niro remarks “[he] looks like someone we know,” and starts laughing, because the guy in the painting looks vaguely like Billy Batts, who's in their trunk, right outside . . .

There are so many classic bits in this movie: the “do you think I'm funny?” sequence (which was actually written and directed by Pesci), the whole saga of shooting Spider in the foot and Spider committing suicide by telling Tommy to go fuck himself (later homaged on The Sopranos before it started to suck when Michael Imperioli, who played Spider, goes into a bakery and shoots some guy in the foot, telling him “It happens!”), “Don't let the sauce stick!”, Kevin Corrigan's perfectly calibrated “thaw fuuuuck atta he” (translation: “Get the fuck out of here”) when Ray Liotta tells him about the helicopters, etc etc etc.

And, on a personal note, my 7th grade basketball coach is in the movie, playing himself, as the guy toward the end who haggles with Henry and Karen over the witness protection program thing. When I was in high school, one of his sons made “High School athlete of the week” in the New York Post, and the opening of the piece went something like, “Occasionally, the phone will ring. Sean will pick it up and the voice on the other end of the line will say, 'It's Wilt Chamberlain.' When that happens, Sean calls for his father: 'Dad! It's Henry Hill!'” Priceless stuff, that.

It's pretty fucking hard to conceive of a movie as good as Goodfellas. Of the top 5 or so movies of all time, Goodfellas is probably the most entertaining of the lot, and certainly has the best soundtrack. It's a beautiful movie about something ugly, the gangster and the priest in perfect balance. And it taught me the word “fucko.” For that alone, Goodfellas is a classic.


Now, astute cineastes will probably point out “Hey, there was a fifth notable gangster movie released in 1990.” And I, being generous, will indulge you and agree:


The Misfire—The Godfather, Part III

The whole meme about Sofia Coppola ruining this is a little overblown. The other problems (no Robert Duvall, and giving all his screen time to Diane Keaton, historically the weakest link in the saga, casting people like George Hamilton and Eli Wallach, who while both awesome do not fucking belong here, the central story—about power struggles in the Vatican—being so dense that you need footnotes to figure out who's how) overshadow poor Sofia, who was fated to be a director, anyway. When you have a movie where you're supposed to consider Andy Garcia ascending to the throne as a harbinger of doom, you have a very problematic movie.


In fairly short order after 1990, Tarantino would remake the gangster movie in his own image, leaving the quartet and change I mentioned today as the swan song of an era of crime cinema. It's surprising how not dated any of the four are (well, not so much Goodfellas, movies that good don't get dated), how even though they belong to the past, they're still in a language we understand in the present. We could stand, in this self-conscious (post)modern age, to take a page out of these pictures' book (if the metaphor police call, you never saw me) and remember what made them great. And hey, a 20th anniversary is always a good excuse to watch something.