Jesse Sublett's Blog, page 9

Noir at the Bar Monday May 12, repost

[Please note: This is a quickie repost of a lost blog post. Please excuse any errors that were made in my haste to recover lost material. Hope to have things fixed soon.]

Robert Johnson, monumental enigma, music icon, inspiration, subject of crime novels, too.

Austin crime fiction fans, please help me welcome Ace Atkins, a fine writer and friend, appearing May 12 at 7:00 PM at our semi-regular Noir at the Bar event at Opal Divine Penn Field. Ace is the author of many novels, including his Nic Travers and Quinn Colson series as well as the late Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels, including the just-released Cheap Shot. I’ve been following Ace ever since his debut, Crossroad Blues, in which he tackled the story of that musical genius and icon, Robert Johnson; and I remember saying, Jesse, YOU should have written that book!

[Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, by Elijah Wald, dissects and analyzes the true history and legend of Robert Johnson and the many other performers who were around pre-war in the South. A great piece of music scholarship.]

George Weir, writer of the Bill Travis series, will also be a featured author. Scott Montgomery will host as usual. There will be cool songs, great writing and libations (that’s French for booze and other liquids, plus bar food).  Look for more details on Scott’s MysteryPeople blog, which should be up by the time I post this.

Flashback: Little Black Book Post from the 2010 archives: Badass Gangster Novelist Ace Atkins Strafes BookPeople.

Ace Atkins & Me (right) talking to the people after one of Ace’s many gigs here in town. Next time at Opal Divine it will be darker, wetter (more kinds of booze) and LOUDER…

 

Apologies to my readers

[contact-form] My blog is in a shambles. The last three weeks of work I’ve done here, including a completely new design, revamping all pages, composing new pages and writing chapters for the new feature, Austin Noir, have been lost during the migration to my new domain at Bluehost. It’s possible they can be recovered from the previous subdomain, but it doesn’t look good right now.

I’m working on rebuilding and/or recovering all that material, so there will be a lot of changes in the next few days, but with any luck, the site will stay up.

Thanks for your understanding, and thank you to those of you who have written with suggestions on how there might be a way to fix this thing.

Cheers,

Jesse

AUSTIN MINOTAUR, NOIR

May 2014. Month of the Minotaur. Deal with it. (Backstage with Beast, print)

May is the month of Taurus and my birthday is May 15, so I am appropriating the entire month and calling it The Month of the Minotaur. Last week I started posting new Minotaur visual art by me on the Art page, with more to come. I’ll also post some Minotaur literature.

Today we inaugurate a new page on this site, Austin Noir. See the first post, Austin Noir Dispatch #001. The plan is to post essays about Austin crime and the underworld, including pieces from my long-running project on the Overton Gang and other intelligence and myth related to that syndicate of safe crackers, thieves, pimps and dark philosophers. In certain small but intriguing ways, Charlie Whitman, the mad man of the UT Tower Massacre in August 1966, also figures into that story. No one has ever reported on the links between Whitman and the Overtons before.

NOIR AT THE BAR

But first, I’d like Austin crime fiction fans to welcome Ace Atkins, a fine writer and friend, appearing May 12 at 7:00 PM at our semi-regular Noir at the Bar event at Opal Divine Penn Field. Ace is the author of many novels, including his Nic Travers and Quinn Colson series as well as the late Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels, including the just-released Cheap Shot. I’ve been following Ace ever since his debut, Crossroad Blues, in which he tackled the story of that musical genius and icon, Robert Johnson; and I remember saying, Jesse, YOU should have written that book!

[Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, by Elijah Wald, dissects and analyzes the true history and legend of Robert Johnson and the many other performers who were around pre-war in the South. A great piece of music scholarship.]

George Weir, writer of the Bill Travis series, will also be a featured author. Scott Montgomery will host as usual. There will be cool songs, great writing and libations (that’s French for booze and other liquids, plus bar food).  Look for more details on Scott’s MysteryPeople blog, which should be up by the time I post this.

Flashback: Little Black Book Post from the 2010 archives: Badass Gangster Novelist Ace Atkins Strafes BookPeople.

[contact-form]

GRACKLE CHRONICLES

Minotaur Undefeated, acrylic, 24 x 24 $475

Tonight’s art blog is a short one: I just finished the above piece a couple of days ago. “Minotaur Undefeated” is one of a number of Minotaur pictures I’ve done, with a new one on the easel this weekend also nearing completion. But the following is my first post in a new category I’m calling “the written word.”

THURSDAY NIGHT, at the quarterly art salon called Tertulia, at the Continental Club Gallery, I read the following piece. The theme for the evening was “Hope,” which Tertulia curators Kellie Sansome and Gretchen Harries Graham expect the songwriters, writers, and other presenters to do with whatever they are inspired to do. [for a complete list of the presenters, go here.]

This piece was written while dictating to the Notes app on my iPhone. I write quite a bit that way, often in the car or while walking, which increases the likelihood that Siri will make some weird guesses at what was said. I often curse the app for the stupid mistakes it makes. I finally decided on this piece that the mistakes were kind of interesting. I also liked the lack of punctuation and the inane arguments I had with the app, so I left the thing verbatim, unedited except for length.

I thought I might try to pass this off as poetry, and said so before I started reading. No one really laughed at that line (maybe they were of the opinion that poetry is no laughing matter?) but they did laugh at others.

(One last note: Kellie Salome posted her fine piece on her blog, and you should check it out)

GRACKLE CHRONICLES

So I was a blues singer in my past life anyway woke up one morning I was a graphical.

No not a graphical dammit a grackle you know a bird the trash bird

You see a car coming down the street is a pothole and the road is a blackbird picking up bassinet muddy water the car intentionally swerved trying to kill it probably the only bird people intentionally try to run over

That is a grackle

dammit

this isn’t some racial stereotype thing I was a white blues singer

there’s not the surly wrong with white blue singers but I could name some name

So anyway I never believed in reincarnation

There’s a lot of bullshit out there

My head was hurting hipsters everywhere I’m covered with black feathers I’ve got a worm in my beak

I’m taking a crap on these hipsters

all this yelling going out so like rusty saw blades wheezing back-and-forth on a 2 x 4

I hope you don’t consider Dave Matthews a blues singer if sure I want to know where you park your car

What happened to me I have no idea it’s a mystery

Saturday night I had a gig playing for the visiting firemen at the La Quinta

After the gig everybody in the emergency room I know everybody there pretty well was just surprised to see me I was on the operating table and woo hoo I just went out

they said they figured a guy with his many bullet holes is me should never made it to the hospital

That shit Bergerons poop quad

Correction that shit bird George Fuqua

claim that he copy of bed with his wife Elizabeth but that is a lie because I remember she hollered at me when I was in the bathroom to hurry up if I wanted seconds

George formerly classified as a good friend of mine

he pulled that 45 automatic not a nine millimeter like everybody else these days he is old school like his wife Elizabeth she still wears those Maidenform bras and vermilion color panties you know are a million like the sunset

except she wasn’t wearing any panties that night

Hey newsflash George by the way was run over by the trash track yesterday I know for a fact he is now a member of the same much disrespected species

grackle

Now George is officially a shit bird

And when I catch him

me and him will go round and round I will see that he is reincarnated as a feather bed at a fat farm

George years ago had a first wife fine looking woman he was preceded by her in death as they say her name is Susan Fairweather

she choose to prefer me to George too I don’t know if she got feathers on her tail these days or not but I know what she will be so happy to see me if she’s a bird or a basset hound or a zoo elephant or whatever

and not by nano she will be so happy to see me happy is a Mockingbird with a box set of Amos sumac records[1]

 Going to go down to the Cadillac dealership give me a Cadillac demo to impress her with and I’ve done that many many times before both before and after this reincarnation bullshit

Or maybe you think I’m lying just because I’m a grackle

Anyhow on way over there and then a fly over to Ben Mike Boulevard boys in the next hackberry tree tell me the water burger down there is changing out their grease pit

party time

People ask me how I keep up my spirits because this may not be something to be crowing about

But Jessis morning in Zilker Park I was hollering at the starling fighting with him over a French fry

somebody’s Rhonda Brown

no dammit somebody threw down

And this sweet looking little Cedar waxwing gave me the you know the one eye on the side of the head thing

And I think she recognized me from back in the life and she remembered my socks

My songs dammit my song

Something about the way she swung her breasts around and shook her tail before she flew off and disappear

I take that as a good sign someday I will be reincarnated as a egg red cardinal or maybe a rooster at a breeding farm

anyway next time you’re down and out look out the window and see what the radicals are up to

Grackles not radicals dumbass

If a grackle can make it you can make it

Have hope have face your good fortune could be right around the corner as close as the next grease trap, or mud hole or opportunity to make a major artistic contribution to the world

Hey you with the plaid shirt and the Jerry Garcia beard where did you say you park your car

END

Grackle at Exxon Parthenon

RED DIRT

At the Ace Hotel, downtown Los Angeles, formerly the United Artists theater palace.

And now, some poetry. This is a serial piece I’ve been working on for a while, and this is the first part of it. Not sure what to call the parts, but I guess we could call them chapters, and this one will be called “Red Dirt.”

RED DIRT

I rode us home in a cloud of red dirt

me in my crooked face and my last Sunday shirt

Four hundred miles to OKC

it seemed a little strange

you riding in back

and the dog up front with me

but it’s a long drive

and by then you were just a box of ashes

headed across the Red River

to an appointment with the wind

&&

I was down to my last two ideas

suicide, or a country song

&&

I sat down on this bed

peeled off my old tired boots

Red Wing Iron Rangers

been around the world

twice-resoled, forever faithful

these damn boots

have earned a rest

HOW TO FLY WITH A HEAVY HEART – repost

Quoting from Son House

Yes, it’s the same post from this morning. Sorry to confuse you, but the original post had so many errors (some weren’t even my fault), I wanted to repost the corrected version.

Here I am on YouTube, speaking (with a little a capello intro tribute to Son House) at All Saints Episcopal Church, Austin, TX, during Lent, their Autobiographies of Redemption series.  Jesse Sublett at Front Porch session March 28, 2014, “How to Fly with a Heavy Heart.”

(You can also view Stephen Kinney’s flattering introduction here.)

The experts believe that flight evolved as a means of escape from predators. Creatures who were already built for running swiftly developed to the point that they could actually escape from the tyranny of gravity for longer and longer periods, which adds new dimension to the term “flight,” as in leaving one’s problems — creatures who want to hurt, imprison or otherwise negatively impact one’s existence. The first creatures who actually became airborne were really odd looking, and so were the first flying machines developed by man. By the way, an ancestor of mine from the Hill Country, Jacob Broadbeck, is claimed to have built one of the first powered aircraft (although calling it that might be a stretch, even if the wildest claims of its success were true), which he tested either in San Antonio or near Luckenbach in September 1865, just after the end of the treasonous rebellion of the Southern States known as the Civil War–40 years before the first successful flight by the Wright brothers. The Handbook of Texas has a pretty good entry on Broadbeck. Like many German immigrants, Broadbeck was a sour looking fellow, at least in the images I’ve seen, such as this one below, and you have to wonder, did his expression change any when/if his invention “lifted the surly bonds of earth?”

Jacob Broadbeck, a great, great uncle of mine who may have been the first inventor of powered flight

Well, anyway, I spoke about my experiences, growing up Johnson City, which was a mean little town in the sixties, but LBJ was from there, and he was and still is my hero… and becoming a musician, falling in love, experiencing the murder of my first love, Dianne Roberts, by a serial killer in 1976, and dealing with that some 25 years later, when I was struggling, with the help of my beautiful and superhumanly strong wife, Lois Richwine, to overcome the odds of 4 percent chance of survival with throat cancer, starting in 1997. Well, look, it may sound depressing, but there was a lot of laughter, and I think it was the first time that I, Jesse Sublett —surrealistic blues singer, punk rocker, visual artist, crime writer, radical leftist liberal bird lover — have EVER filled the pews of a Christian church! Might be the last time, too. I dunno. I really appreciate being invited by Stephen Kinney, with some urging from congregation member John Burnett… They treated me well. Nice people. And the video was shot by Chris Green. Love the lighting! My face looks like the map of a forbidden continent!

UPCOMING GIGS / EVENTS: May 1, Tertulia at Continental Club Gallery, 7:30 PM… May 12, Noir at the Bar with Jesse Sublett + Ace Atkins, Opal Divine Penn Field 7 PM… June 19, 7 PM Austin book party for Broke, Not Broken: Homer Maxey’s Texas Bank War, by Broadus A. Spivey & Jesse Sublett, at BookPeople… More details to come on the above. [For latest developments, check my FaceBook page. There will be FB events created for most of these gigs.]

FYI, much of what I spoke about to the church gathering was covered in my memoir, Never the Same Again, published in 2004. You can order it by contacting me, or from BookPeople in Austin (they always have it), and you can read all about my other books, including my most recent noir novella, Grave Digger Blues, on the Jesse’s Book Page.

While on the topic of flight, I’ve been studying grackles a lot lately, trying to draw or paint them. They are such weird, funky creatures. I’ll keep trying — if only to redeem myself from the clumsiness of my early attempts.

[image error]

Courting Grackle

Me & Lois at the Legendary White Swan

HOW TO FLY WITH A HEAVY HEART

Quoting from Son House

Here I am on YouTube, speaking (with a little a capello intro tribute to Son House) at All Saints Episcopal Church, Austin, TX, during Lent, their Autobiographies of Redemption series.  Jesse Sublett at Front Porch session March 28, 2014, “How to Fly with a Heavy Heart.”

(You can also view Stephen Kinney’s flattering introduction here.)

The experts believe that flight evolved as a means of escape from predators. Creatures who were already built for running swiftly developed to the point that they could actually escape from the tyranny of gravity for longer and longer periods, which adds new dimension to the term “flight,” as in leaving one’s problems — creatures who want to hurt, imprison or otherwise negatively impact one’s existence. The first creatures who actually became airborne were really odd looking, and so were the first flying machines developed by man. By the way, an ancestor of mine from the Hill Country, Jacob Broadbeck, is claimed to have built one of the first powered aircraft (although calling it that might be a stretch, even if the wildest claims of its success were true), which he tested either in San Antonio or near Luckenbach in September 1865, just after the end of the treasonous rebellion of the Southern States known as the Civil War–40 years before the first successful flight by the Wright brothers. The Handbook of Texas has a pretty good entry on Broadbeck. Like many German immigrants, Broadbeck was a sour looking fellow, at least in the images I’ve seen, such as this one below, and you have to wonder, did his expression change any when/if his invention “lifted the surly bonds of earth?”

Jacob Broadbeck, a great, great uncle of mine who may have been the first inventor of powered flight

Well, anyway, I spoke about my experiences, growing up Johnson City, which was a mean little town in the sixties, but LBJ was from there, and he was and still is my hero… and becoming a musician, falling in love, experiencing the murder of my first love, Dianne Roberts, by a serial killer in 1976, and dealing with that some 25 years later, when I was struggling, with the help of my beautiful and superhumanly strong wife, Lois Richwine, to overcome the odds of 4 percent chance of survival with throat cancer, starting in 1997. Well, look, it may sound depressing, but there was a lot of laughter, and I think it was the first time that I, Jesse Sublett —surrealistic blues singer, punk rocker, visual artist, crime writer, radical leftist liberal bird lover — have EVER filled the pews of a Christian church! Might be the last time, too. I dunno. I really appreciate being invited by Stephen Kinney, with some urging from congregation member John Burnett… They treated me well. Nice people. And the video was shot by Chris Green. Love the lighting! My face looks like the map of a forbidden continent!

UPCOMING GIGS / EVENTS: May 1, Tertulia at Continental Club Gallery, 7:30 PM… May 12, Noir at the Bar with Jesse Sublett + Ace Atkins, Opal Divine Penn Field 7 PM… June 19, 7 PM Austin book party for Broke, Not Broken: Homer Maxey’s Texas Bank War, by Broadus A. Spivey & Jesse Sublett, at BookPeople… More details to come on the above. [For latest developments, check my FaceBook page. There will be FB events created for most of these gigs.]

FYI, much of what I spoke about to the church gathering was covered in my memoir, Never the Same Again, published in 2004. You can order it by contacting me, or from BookPeople in Austin (they always have it), and you can read all about my other books, including my most recent noir novella, Grave Digger Blues, on the Jesse’s Book Page.

While on the topic of flight, I’ve been studying grackles a lot lately, trying to draw or paint them. They are such weird, funky creatures. I’ll keep trying — if only to redeem myself from the clumsiness of my early attempts.

[image error]

Courting Grackle

Me & Lois at the Legendary White Swan

Bryan Ferry is still infinitely cooler than the rest of us

photo of Jesse Sublett + acrylic sketch of courting grackle

UPDATE at 9 AM Thursday. Does Bryan Ferry need to redeem himself? I mean, after the disappointing “Olympia” and for not continuing to put out great releases to compare with Avalon, Stranded, These Foolish Things, Country Life, Manifesto, etc? I guess the answer is no. I admit that I was frustrated with him after Olympia, which was so awful, in my opinion, that it didn’t even bear listening to all the way through. The recent cover albums, the jazz versions, were all OK. And really, after you’ve given the world “Do the Strand” and “Virginia Plain,” “Avalon” and “Kiss and Tell,” to name just a few, I think you’re entitled to retire on your laurels. And last night, it was clear that Bryan Ferry is still vastly cooler than the rest of us, and even a Bryan Ferry who has fiddled around in the studio about 10,000,000 hours longer than necessary to come up with a new EP every five years or so, a Bryan Ferry who hires a bunch of young guns, including several proficient and inspired musicians who happen to be beautiful women, well, hell, what the hell? He’s a Picasso of rock stars, isn’t he? He’s creating masterpieces on stage in real time. He’s no Americana hipster Willie Nelson singer songwriter, is he? Nope. And that’s why I relate to him. When some of my contemporaries were letting their beards grow and wearing flannel shirts and cowboy outfit, I was following this muse. I guess I still am.

Bryan Ferry live 2014

It’s after midnight and we’re at the hotel on Wilshire Blvd, thinking about packing for our flight back to Austin, way too early in the morning. We came out here to see Bryan Ferry play at the Nokia venue in the Staple center downtown. Lois decided that we needed a break and I’ve got a big birthday coming up in May, so she bought tickets and got our hotel & air fair on credit card miles, and we came out to hang with our great friends, P&I, to do a little shopping and dining a couple of days ahead of time, plus a few other odds & ends. Last night was the blood moon, which we watched with Rocky Schenck on his patio in Beachwood Canyon. Anyway, I’ve been so busy I did no research at all about what kind of show Bryan would be doing, not even the makeup of his band.



I’ve seen Bryan Ferry about a half dozen times before, starting with the Roxy Music tour of 1975, when he stopped at the Armadillo in Austin. Other shows were at the Greek Theater in LA and the amphitheater in Santa Barbara. Those were fine, fine shows, and tonight was a revelation, an inspiration, a surrealistic illumination. The set list was heavy on Roxy Music material, starting with “Do the Strand,” as the first tune. The band was top notch and Bryan was in superb voice. He played keyboards a lot. In fact, he was back up in the back line on the keyboards singing more often than he was center stage, doing his modernistic lounge lizard moves.

 

I’m not going to sweat the details here. It’s late and we’ve got a flight to catch early in the AM. It was a great show by an artist who is older but still delivers the magic. Bands come and go, and so do trends and seasons and fashions, but Bryan Ferry is still super cool. “Do the Strand” and “Avalon,” “Slave to Love,” “Editions of You,” “Virginia Plain,” and “Manifesto” are still super cool, still sufficiently strange and vibrant. Reminds me of when I first picked up the bass guitar and started a band.

 

 

 

It’s a grubby little world…

But so what? Mix me a redhead and tell me what you got that’s any better?

The Woman Chaser (1999) goes online May 1, 2014.

A few updates on yesterday’s post, helping spread the word about THE WOMAN CHASER (1999) going online starting May 1st. As you may know, I’m a huge fan of Charles Willeford, whose novels redefined noir fiction starting in the late fifties and early sixties. The Robinson Devor-directed adaptation of Willeford’s 1960 novel, “The Woman Chaser,” starring Patrick Warburton, goes online soon for your streaming pleasure, first to I-Tunes and Amazon May 1st, following with Netflix and Hulu in June 2014.

Here’s the official blurb:

Ex-used car salesman and filmmaker Richard Hudson burned down Mammoth Studios for butchering his masterpiece, “The Man Who Got Away.” Paroled after 14 years in prison, Hudson is still unrepentant

Watch the interview here:

The website is now live, with a team of busy digital ex-used car salesman elves working on tuneups, new additions and unbelievable deals: Visit: WomanChasertheMovie.com .

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Me & Charles Willeford in New York Times

I know I mentioned writing about Willeford and The Woman Chaser for New York Times in 2000. In case you missed that little self-promoting item, here’s a blown-up version of the article, but it’s much easier to read online.

Brent Simon, at shareddarkness.com wrote of The Woman Chaser’s “cool, offbeat elegy for old school noir… a time warp Get Shorty with the experimental ethos of a student film and the studied composition of a [loving] homage.”

Jeffrey M. Anderson, writing at combustiblecelluloid.com, wrote that “The Woman Chaser is a very off-kilter picture, and it’s bound to throw viewers for a loop.” Now, the uninitiated might see a line like that and assume it’s a negative assessment, but if your reading experiences include, for example, The Shark Infested Custard,  The Way We Die Now, or maybe Kiss Your Ass Good-Bye, … and let’s throw in The Black Mass of Brother Springer, you’ll probably have a knowing smile on your face.

Michael Dequina at themoviereport.com wrote that Devor’s film version was “cool, offbeat elegy for old school noir… a time warp Get Shorty with the experimental ethos of a student film and the studied composition of a [loving] homage.” Dig it. Michael must be feeling vindicated at the news that Scott Frank, who adapted Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty as well as Out of Sight, is the screenwriter for the FX pilot Hoke, based on Charles Willeford’s great Miami homicide detective series, which was last brilliantly adapted in Miami Blues, and three other fine sequels will be source material if the series is picked up.

Mere Bertrand at filmthreat.com wasn’t totally blown away by The Woman Chaser, but despite the caveats, he gave a rating of 4 out of 5, which ain’t bad. Would Richard Hudson would  burn down their website for not giving it a 5? Probably not. Again, from the context of the review, I don’t think Bertrand is familiar with the Willeford oeuvre. He compares Richard Hudson to Puddy, the role trademarked by Patrick Warburton on Seinfeld… as if Warburton had written Willeford’s novel. If you’re steeped in Seinfeld but haven’t read many Willeford novels, I suppose this short sightedness is understandable. Bertrand does, however, recommend the film, as we see in his conclusion:

By essentially reprising his TV role in a nastier form here, Warburton runs the risk of being permanently known for this one character. Lucky for him and, in the case of “The Woman Chaser,” lucky for us as well that he plays this humorously loathsome character so well.

Interestingly, the best reviews for The Woman Chaser seem to have been from California bloggers. Check out ex-San Diego writer Scott Renshaw, whose main gig is writing for the Salt Lake City Weekly, and he gave TWC an 8 out of 10 in a fab review. Sample quote:

THE WOMAN CHASER is different in all the right ways. It’s energetic and imaginative where other parodies are too often limp and witless. It skewers the ego of film-makers, but never loses its love for film-making. It even pokes fun at film noir without resorting to predictable gags. THE WOMAN CHASER is a surprise in every positive sense of the word, because really, it shouldn’t work.

Peter Stack at the San Francisco Chronicle also loved TWC. “THE WOMAN CHASER – A SWING AND A HIT–SWANK HOLLYWOOD SPOOF HAS A PULP FEEL” opens by calling it a “black comedy” and

“The Woman Chaser” is a teasy, cogent and funny noir spoof of dime novels and 1960s Hollywood. The title role is played with inspired swagger by Patrick Warburton, the handsome lug famed as Elaine’s thick boyfriend, Puddy, on “Seinfeld.”

Indie writer-director Robinson Devor, in his feature debut, creates a retro Hollywood of cocktail lounges, gimlet glasses and finned Caddies with confident style, capturing L.A. in a crisp mix of surreal and real. The landmark Capitol Records building — designed to look like a stack of vinyl records on a turntable — is a well-used part of the backdrop.

UNLIKELY HERO

Based on a pulp novel by Charles Willeford (“Miami Blues”), Devor’s script is a clever satire that tells the mean story of a used-car salesman driven by mad inspiration to become a moviemaker, a character whose pimpish savvy is powered by a hopelessly dangerous blend of ego and cluelessness.

A standout scene — maybe a classic — features the bearish Warburton, half naked, dancing balletically with his ex-dancer mother (Lynette Bennett). “The Woman Chaser” is funny but edgy, too. Warburton’s obsessed salesman, Richard Hudson, is perversely charming. His main gig in life is self-aggrandizement. Trysts with a secretary, his virginal stepsister and a Salvation Army worker have no emotional impact on him — he’s fired up only by his quest to become an artist.

HOLLYWOOD NIGHTS

The car salesman’s bravado, deadpan delivery and bordering-on-psycho emotional makeup make for a strangely compelling character. Hudson turns over his business to oddball flunkies in order to chase his dream of making a film titled “The Man That Got Away,” about a trucker who runs over a little girl and her dog.

In a world strewn with the sort of amusing misfits who were staples of precorporate Hollywood, the salesman enlists the backing of his mother’s husband — a failed movie director — and lands a deal with a steely studio mogul. Ultimately, there’s a showdown over artistic freedom that costs “The Woman Chaser” some of its edge. But that’s a mere quibble with a film that’s so much fun.– Advisory: This film contains strong language and graphic sex.

At Village Voice, Amy Taubin really hits the film critic mainline (as in the Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray”), referring to Willeford’s style as “psychopulp” and stating that, “At various times, The Woman Chaser suggests Ben Hecht’s The Spectre of the Rose, a Curtis Harrington mood piece, and various underground flicks from Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detourto Irving Lerner’s Murder by Contract…” I like Taubin’s style, and recommend reading the entirety of her fine review.

Finally, Dan Lybarger at nitratelonline.com wrote a fine piece on THE WOMAN CHASER. Again, he makes the Get Shorty comparison. Sample line:

The Woman Chaser has a Get Shorty-like bemusement at the silliness of the entertainment industry. It’s also bolstered by a remarkably effective film noir-ish atmosphere. In addition to being presented in black-and-white, the movie features an eclectic selection of 50’s-era music that’s both eclectic and refreshing. None of these fascinating tunes (played by everybody from Dave Brubeck to Tito Puente) ever plays on oldies radio stations, and they fit the eerie visuals perfectly. The supporting cast also look right at home in the Eisenhower Era surroundings. The actors, some of whom are non-professionals, look nothing like the ones who usually populate Hollywood flicks. Most have a 50s-style paunch that most contemporary filmmakers seem to ignore.

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Me & my Robert Mitchum on wood by Abby Levine

Willeford Cult Classic “THE WOMAN CHASER” Lives Again Via Streaming

“I’m not going to ruin my movie because of some stupid ruling that it has to be ninety minutes long. That’s just like adding three more plates to the last supper, or an extra wing to the Pentagon.”

― Charles Willeford, The Woman Chaser

Producer Joe McSpadden has announced that the 1999 adaptation of Charles Willeford’s “The Woman Chaser” will be available for streaming on I-Tunes and Amazon May 1st and Netflix and Hulu in June 2014. The announcement comes with a new trailer featuring a post-incarceration interview with Patrick Warburton, who played anti-hero protagonist used-car-salesman-turned-movie-producer Richard Hudson in the film. Watch the interview on youtube here.

The Woman Chaser, originally released in 1999, has new life via online streaming on May 1.

“I’m not going to ruin my movie because of some stupid ruling that it has to be ninety minutes long. That’s just like adding three more plates to the last supper, or an extra wing to the Pentagon.”

― Charles Willeford, The Woman Chaser

Some of the books from my Charles Willeford Collection

Charles Willeford novels

Charles Willeford, who died in 1984, is hailed by many as the greatest crime fiction novelist of the late 20th century.

“The Woman Chaser” adeptly captures Willeford’s philosophy and tone, which often has the reader or viewer laughing out loud at a slapstick moment just before things turn grisly–leaving some to wonder if they missed something or the writer was possibly putting them on. With Willeford, you may never know. This is the razor’s edge tap dance at which he excelled more than anyone else.

The Burnt Orange Hersey, by Charles Willeford

I wrote about “The Woman Chaser” and Willeford in a piece for the New York Times published in 2000.

“Just tell the truth,” Willeford once said, “and they’ll accuse you of writing black humor.”

Charles Willeford, probably the greatest noir author of the late 20th century.

This could be a really good year for Willeford fans. Last fall, Variety announced that FX had ordered a pilot titled “Hoke,” with Paul Giamatti in the starring role for a potential series based on Willeford’s great Hoke Moseley novels. The pilot has been described as a “dark comedy” about the “hardboiled… maybe insane homicide detective in 1985 Miami. Screenwriter Scott Frank adapted the pilot and will come on board as show runner if the pilot is successful. Frank’s screenwriting credits include “Get Shorty” and “Heaven’s Prisoners” (adaptations of novels by, respectively, Elmore Leonard and James Lee Burke). Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential) is one of the executive producers.

Now, if you know anything about noir, you know that Miami is the home of weird crime in America, and that means that a number of very fine crime fiction writers have made art out of that tragically flawed environment. And then you would also know that Charles Willeford is the godfather of all that.

The Atlantic ran a fine article about Willeford in 2000 titled “The Unlikely Father of Miami Crime Fiction.”

Not long after I met Charles Willeford, he told me the secret to writing. “Never allow yourself to take a leak in the morning,” he said, “until you’ve written a page. That way you’re guaranteed a page a day, and at the end of a year you have a novel.” Here was Willeford in a nutshell: the crudeness, the humor, and above all the love of the lie. One doubted whether he followed any of the advice he was so fond of dispensing.

Willeford, who died twelve years ago this spring, might be called the progenitor of the modern South Florida crime novel. John D. MacDonald had put the region on the mystery map in the 1960s, with his Travis McGee novels, but that was an older, sleepier South Florida. Willeford’s last four novels (1984-1988) spanned Miami’s metamorphosis from vacationer and retiree haven to the nation’s capital of glamour, drugs, and weird crime, and these inspired the post-Miami Vice group of Miami writers, including Carl Hiaasen and James W. Hall. “Miami Blues [1984] launched the modern era of Miami crime fiction,” Mitch Kaplan, the owner of Books & Books, Miami’s leading literary bookstore, told me recently. “There’s a direct line from Charles through just about everyone writing crime fiction in Miami today.”

Read the rest of the article here.

New Hope for the Dead, by Charles Willeford

“A man should always observe fanaticism when he gets the chance.” (The Machine in Ward Eleven)

Fanaticism for Willeford’s writing certainly elevated my life. Living in Los Angeles in the late 1980s–early 1990s, I was a huge fan of Willeford’s novels. One day in 1991 I ran into Dennis McMillan in Vagabond Books. McMillan published boutique editions of a number of Willeford’s more obscure works. McMillan and I hit it off, and later, he loaned me a bunch of manuscripts of Willeford’s remaining unpublished works. Through this chance encounter, I ended up making an important discovery: The novel “Deliver Me From Dallas,” co-written with W. Franklin Sanders, one of Willeford’s pals from the service, had been published by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1961 under Sanders’ name and with the title “The Whip Hand.” I made this conclusion and announced it after comparing the manuscript with a great looking Gold Medal paperback I first seen in a little used bookstore up in Big Bear Lake in the late 1980s (I was collecting pulp fiction by the truckload in those days).

Mulholland books site, by Doug Levin.