Ed Gorman's Blog, page 117

The Coen Brothers Look Wryly At Their Movies New York Times

mber 4, 2013‘We Are the Establishment Now’
By MANOHLA DARGIS and A. O. SCOTT

When Joel and Ethan Coen were growing up, they used to make Super 8 films, including remakes of Hollywood movies that they had watched on TV. Since then, the Coens have continued to let their imagination loose while ranging wide across cinematic and literary genres, drawing on pulp literature (“Blood Simple,” “Miller’s Crossing”), screwball cinema (“The Hudsucker Proxy,” “Intolerable Cruelty”), Homer’s Odyssey (“O Brother, Where Art Thou?”), the Bible and their own suburban Minneapolis childhood (“A Serious Man”) to make movies that, increasingly, have the quality of an evolving, distinctly American mythopoeia.In July, Manohla Dargis and A. O. Scott, the chief film critics for The New York Times, met with Joel Coen, now 58, and Ethan Coen, 55, in Santa Monica, Calif., to discuss their work, including their latest film, “Inside Llewyn Davis” (Dec. 6) about a 1961 folk singer (played by Oscar Isaac), who’s struggling with his music, the world, the changing times and — this being the Coens — his comically flawed humanity. The brothers sat across from each other and at times seemed to share a single (very large and fast-moving) brain. These are excerpts from the conversation.Q. Can you talk about the genesis of “Inside Llewyn Davis”?Ethan Coen We were in the office and Joel said, “O.K., suppose Dave Van Ronk gets beat up outside of Gerde’s Folk City. That’s the beginning of a movie.”Joel Coen It was an idea we kept coming back to. We were thinking 1961 is interesting, because it’s the scene that Dylan came into, not the one he created or transformed, because people know more about that. Dylan once said something — and I’m paraphrasing him — “Really, all I wanted is to be as big as Dave Van Ronk.” That’s how limited that scene was, in terms of the people in the broader culture.Did you grow up listening to that music?Ethan Yeah, sort of, through Bob Dylan, like everybody else, probably.Joel I’m a little older than Ethan, but I have very vague early memories of hearing folk music, my mother playing it or something, when I was fairly little.Ethan We had a fantastic record of a concert, a rock concert, of Big Bill Broonzy and Pete Seeger, which is kind of ——Joel Yes, that was a really early record that was a concert in Chicago, where Pete played. In fact, that’s how we met T Bone [Burnett]. T Bone called us up sort of out of the blue after he saw “Raising Arizona,” because he thought it was very amusing that we played Beethoven on banjo in the score in the movie. We said to him, “Well, we really stole that from Pete Seeger,” because Pete Seeger played that. We knew it from this concert record.Ethan Oh, the one disclaimer I should’ve made when we talked about the genesis of the movie: We did start thinking about Dave Van Ronk, and in fact read his memoir, which is kind of great, “The Mayor of Macdougal Street.” But the movie’s not about Dave Van Ronk, although Oscar, the character, has his kind of repertoire. It’s his music. It’s a fictional character we gave his music to.How did you find Oscar Isaac?Joel After we wrote the movie and we started casting it, we knew that there was going to be a lot of performance in the movie, and that actually when you heard a song in the movie, we really wanted to hear the whole song. And it’s also a story where we felt like there’s got to be something about the character that you only know through his performance and his music — you know, like a real musician. So we only auditioned real musicians.Ethan [Laughs.]Joel You know, that was not so great. It’s often possible — sometimes it’s even easy — to get somebody like that through a scene or two scenes or three scenes or whatever, and it’s great, it’s fine. But this character’s literally in every scene in the movie, so we realized we were going the wrong direction, and we just started seeing actors who could play, as opposed to musicians who could act. And there are more of those, by the way.Ethan And we’ve been doing this like, 30 years. You’d think we know something as basic as this, that you need an actor.Joel I know. It was a little insane. Oscar came in and he said, “Most actors, if you ask them if they play guitar, they’ll say they played guitar for 20 years, but what they really mean is they’ve owned a guitar for 20 years.” Oscar’s actually played guitar since he was little little, you know? He played, and we sent the tape to T Bone, and T Bone said, “This guy’s actually a better musician than a lot of the studio guys I work with.” So we went, “We found him.”for the rest go here:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/movies/the-coen-brothers-look-wryly-at-their-films.html

Daniel Woodrell: How I Write from The Daily Beastby...

Daniel Woodrell: How I Write  from The Daily Beastby Noah Charney Sep 4, 2013 4:45 AM EDTThe Dickens of the Ozarks talks jazz, how his first book was published, and what he always carries with him. His latest novel, the first since 2006’s  Winter’s Bone , is  The Maid’s Version , about a deadly dance-hall fire in 1929 Missouri and the maid who thinks she knows what caused it.78        inShare     0  “The Maid’s Version.” By Daniel Woodrell. $25; Little, Brown, and Co.; 176 pages.
for the rest go here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles...

Ron Faust

 From Ben Boulden of  the great website Gravetapping.


Ed,You may or may not know, but have you heard if Ron Faust passed away?  His most recent title JACKSTRAW has a copyright notice to a Jeffrey Donovan.  I've searched for an obituary (without success) and found one site, which listed his death year as 2011.  Also, I know you're a fan of his work.  I'm trying to put together a bibliography.  I know of the following fifteen titles; do you know of any other titles he published?  Or someone I might contact who would know?Tombs of Blue IceThe Wolf in the CloudsBurning SkyThe Long CountDeath FiresNowhere to RunIn the Forest of the NightWhen She was BadFugitive MoonSplit ImageLord of the Dark LakeDead Men Rise Up NeverSea of BonesBlood Red SeaJackstrawThanks for your help.Ben

Ken Levine on the Jerry Lewis Telethon

Ken LevineNamed one of the BEST 25 BLOGS OF 2011 by TIME Magazine. Ken Levine is an Emmy winning writer/director/producer/major league baseball announcer. In a career that has spanned over 30 years Ken has worked on MASH, CHEERS, FRASIER, THE SIMPSONS, WINGS, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, BECKER, DHARMA & GREG, and has co-created his own series including ALMOST PERFECT starring Nancy Travis. He and his partner wrote the feature VOLUNTEERS. Ken has also been the radio/TV play-by-play voice of the Baltimore Orioles, Seattle Mariners, San Diego Padres. and has hosted Dodger Talk on the Dodger Radio Network.

Ken Levine:



The only thing I did like about Labor Day was the JERRY LEWIS TELETHON. Okay, I admit it. I unabashedly loved the JERRY LEWIS TELETHON. I looked forward to it every year…for both the right and wrong reasons.

It did benefit a very worthy cause, the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The videos of the kids were both heartbreaking and inspiring. Let’s hope someday there’s a cure.

But the JERRY LEWIS TELETHON was the absolute height of entertainment cheese, a time warp to a Las Vegas scene that everyone but Jerry realized had long since passed, and was the home of the most insincere sincerity that only show business could create. The treacle just oozed out of your speakers. Born in the swinging ‘60s, nurtured by Sammy Davis Jr. (combining over-concern, hipness, gross sentimentality, and jewelry), this style was perfected by Jerry Lewis who added his own special touches. No one could beg with such passion while sticking a cigarette in his ear. No one could deliver a biblical sermon, break down crying, then go into his spastic character for comic relief.

The French call him Le Roi du Crazy. They still shortchange him. Since his auteur movie days he has developed his own unique and delicious blend of condescension and humility. Every year I knew what I’m going to get and was always richly rewarded.

One year Jerry called local New York co-host, Tony Orlando: “Only the best Puerto Rican to ever come to this country.”

Now how could you NOT love that???

Nowhere did superlatives fly like the JERRY LEWIS TELETHON. In only one half hour I caught “infamously wonderful”, “exceptional talent”, “most talented”, “most amazing”, “most exciting”, “unmatched”, “extraordinary”, “a true legend”, and “a treasure in every sense of the word.”

Give the man a hand. James Lipton can’t lavish praise like that.

On to the fall!

Pro-File Barb Collins a/k/a Barbara Allan

Pro-File: Barb Collins



1. Tell us about your current novel or project.   The newest book out (May 2013) is Antiques Chop, the seventh in the Trash ‘n’ Treasures mystery series that I write under the name Barbara Allan with my husband, mystery writer Max Allan Collins.  The books are in the cozy area, but rather subversively so, and we think very funny (Antiques Knock-off won the Toby Bromberg Award from Romantic Times for the most humorous mystery).  And Antiques Chop is up for the Nero (Wolfe) award.  We are both big Rex Stout fans, so that means a lot to us.
2. Can you give us a sense of what you’re working on now?  I’m writing the ninth novel at the moment; the eighth, Antiques Con, will be published next spring – it’s set in New York with a comics convention setting.  (When I say I’m writing, it’s because after we plot the book together, I do the first draft without Max, then he expands the book with his input.)
3. What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career?  OMG, I am so not the typical writer.  I’m only in the Big Top twirling by my teeth because I have a net below - a writing partner who also makes me feel confident about swinging on the double-trapeze.  (I don’t know why I used circus metaphors - I hate circuses.)
4. The greatest displeasure?  Actually parking my butt in front of the computer.  But once I get there, I can have fun.  Kinda.  Sorta.
5.  Advice to the publishing world?  Forget the established formulas.  Max and I were so lucky that our editor, Michael Hamilton at Kensington, let us do whatever we wanted with the series such as: using an on-going “soap-opera” arc, along with the mystery; a cliff-hanger at the end of each book to bring readers to the next (mystery solved, however); an inside map and cast list; even a handwritten chapter by the protagonist narrator who was in jail without access to a computer.  And our lead characters are very flawed – a divorcee on Prozac and her ditzy theater diva mother who is on bipolar meds.  The only thing Michaela continues to give us criticism about is not having the murder happen in the first chapter...which we don’t believe is necessary to hold the reader’s attention, and works against getting the cast and the conflicts set up.
6.  Are there any forgotten writers you’d like to see in print again?  Yikes.  Now you’re going to see my lack of literary knowledge.  Nope.  I mostly read biographies (and Max Allan Collins, and a few writer friends).  I am much more influenced, particularly in my short stories, by the old Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV series.  That led me to Roald Dahl, but he’s not forgotten.  Is it okay to admit I grew up on Nancy Drew?
7.  Tell us about selling your first novel.  I published a short story, “Regeneration,” some years ago that Max and I thought had the makings for a good thriller; it’s about the boomer generation getting old and losing their jobs and not having saved any money, and what lengths they’d go to, to re-invent themselves - basically a sell- your-soul-to-the-devil tale.  We had already done a number of short stories together, but writing this book as a team gave us an opportunity to see if the partnership worked in the long haul and if the marriage would hold.  It turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant experience.  Regeneration has recently been reprinted by Amazon, with a very nicely narrated audio book available.       

Otto Penzler-Elmore Leonard; The Rap Sheet, Elmore Leonard

FROM OTTO PENZLER
(Excellent Commentary on Elmore Leonard)

Through the wonders of modern technology, a friend provided this short video of my little tribute to my dear friend Elmore Leonard, on WPIX Channel 11 in New York, last Tuesday, the day he died. I wasn’t quite dressed for the occasion as it was a sudden thing, but I know you’ll forgive me. What it lacks in eloquence it makes up in affection. Otto
http://video.pix11.com/Remembering-Elmore-Leonard-a-legendary-crime-writer--25052735   

FROM THE RAP SHEET
(Jeff Pierce's amazing coverage of Elmore Leonard's life and death continues)


ATURDAY, AUGUST 31, 2013Expanding Our Elmore Leonard TributeWell, this just goes to show you can’t be too confident about the performance of your e-mail server. Following up on the latest of several notes I’d received from friends and contacts, all of them proclaiming that they’d lately sent me information I had not found in my e-mailbox, I accessed my e-mail spam folder ... and discovered 443 messages I didn’t know were there, sent over the last couple of weeks.

I have no clue as to know why or how this happened. I hadn’t asked that my spam threshold be increased, yet many more e-notes than I realized were suddenly being quarantined as spam--most of which were not, in fact, junk mail of any sort. Those included three responses from different writers to my recent request for comments about author Elmore Leonard’s death. I’d just assumed that those three people--novelists Christopher G. Moore and Sam Reaves, along with blogger Ayo Onatade--had chosen not to participate. Imagine my embarrassment at realizing I was wrong.

To fix this snafu, I have embedded all three of those additional comments near the end of Part II of The Rap Sheet’s Elmore Leonard tribute; click here to find them. And if you haven’t yet read Part I of our extensive tribute, you can still access that here.

I’m sorry for the mix-up. It looks like I’ll have to keep a much closer eye on my spam folder in the future.

http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/

Pro-File: Paul Bishop

PRO-FILE: PAUL BISHOP
Tell us about your current novel or project.
I have two new books coming out early next year via a new publishing paradigm. Lie Catchers is set in the world of interrogation and makes use of my extensive background and expertise in deception detection (I currently teach a week long interrogation course to law enforcement nationwide).  Next up is an all out action piece, Gun Hawks, about the LAPD’s Special Investigative Service, which The Los Angeles Times once dubbed the LAPD assassination squad.
Can you give us a sense of what you’re working on now?
Currently, I’m putting the finishing touches on my next Fight Card novella, Swamp Walloper, which is a direct sequel to Felony Fists.  By the end of 2013, we will have launched twenty-seven Fight Card related titles from some of the most exciting new writers working today.  The roster also includes three titles in our Fight Card MMA spin-off brand, as well as the debut of the first Fight Card Romance spin-off, Ladies Night.
What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career?
Aside from telling the stories I’ve always wanted to tell, it’s the association with other creatives in the writing community.  Working with and mentoring so many bright individuals on the Fight Cardseries has been a true joy.
The greatest displeasure?
Being stuffed into legacy publishing’s mid-list hell.
Advice to the publishing world?
Adapt or die.  Stop licking your wounds and getting pissed off because Amazon is outsmarting you at every turn. Start your own innovating by realizing writers are the key to your future and begin treating them with the respect they deserve.
Are there any forgotten writers you’d like to see in print again?
Absolutely!  W. Glenn Duncan’s Rafferty books make up a real gem of a P.I. series, comparable to Spenser or Elvis Cole. And then there’s John Whitlach, who wrote a dozen paperback originals in the early ‘70s.  Better known today for their wonderfully lurid covers, Whitlatch’s stories, crossed several genres, but all delivered top notch action.  Also, Marvin Albert’s Stone Angel P.I. series deserves wider appreciation.
Tell us about selling your first novel. 
I was very lucky.  I joined the LAPD in 1977 and began writing professionally in 1980, running both careers concurrently for more than 30 years.  I started selling non-fiction freelance article and was published in magazines as diverse as Runner’s World, Psychology Today, Parent’s Magazine, and Police Products News, but what I really wanted to do was write fiction.
While I had actually written a paperback original western for Pinnacle under a house pseudonym, I had not yet had a novel come out under my own name.  Then I met editor and mentor Michael Seidman (who was then working for Tor Books) at a Bouchercon convention in San Francisco.  He mistakenly told me if I ever wrote a cop novel to send it to him.  In my naivety, it was all the encouragement I needed. 
When I joined LAPD, there rumors abounded about officers on slow morning watch (11 pm – 8 am) shifts driving, on duty, in their police cars, to Vegas or Tijuana and back, while their fellow officers covered any emergency calls.  As proof of their testosterone driven run, they would get their picture taken with their LAPD police car in front of a casino or with a guy in a sombrero next to a moth-eaten donkey (I emphatically deny any knowledge of participating in such irresponsible behavior as the statute of limitations has not yet run).  With a little tweaking, I figured I could get a full novel out of this premise, so I sat down and wrote Citadel Run.  I then called Michael Seidman and we engaged in the following conversation:
“Hi, Michael. It’s Paul Bishop.”“Who?”
“Paul Bishop, the LAPD cop.  We met at Bouchercon.  You told me if I ever wrote a cop novel to send it to you.”“Was I drunk at the time?”“Very possibly.”“Okay, you do know me.  Send it on.”
Six weeks later, I had a contract for Citadel Run and the sequel, Sand Against The Tide.  If only all book sales were so easy ...

PRO-FILE: CAROLYN HART

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1. Tell us about your current novel or project.
DEAD, WHITE AND BLUE, 24th in the Death on demand series, was published
in May. It was fun because I built the mystery around two missing persons
and the question became: Where Is the Body? Also newly republished are three
stand alone suspense novels. Two American sisters try to evade the
Gestapo in Occupied Paris in ESCAPE FROM PARIS. A teenager opposes the Viiet
Nam War yet reveres his military dad in NO EASY ANSWERS. In BRAVE HEARTS, lovers
cling to each other amid chaos after the fall of the Phillipines to the
Japanese. Coming in October is GHOST GONE WILD. The late Bailey Ruth
Raeburn returns to earth to help a scruffy young man someone wants to shoot but
this time Bailey Ruth may never make it back to Heaven.

 2. Can you give us a sense of what you're working on now?
  I am in the last third of GHOST IN TIME. Bailey Ruth Raeburn plunges
into  a puzle masking a puzzle in hopes of saving an innocent student from a
muirder charge.

3. What is the greatest pleasure of a writing career?
Having written. I am always panicked that I won't be able to finish a book. I work with
a sense of desperation. The happiest moment for me is when I complete the
first draft and then it is sheer fun to rewrite. I have the book and
now I have the luxury of changing and improving.

 4. The greatest displeasure?
 Being out of an idea.

5. Advice to the publishing world?
 Stop pressuring authors to become Internet stars. Let them use their
 energies and talents to write.

6. Are there any forgotten writers you'd  like to see in print again?
Mary Roberts Rinehard isn't forgotten but she isn't available in print
now.

 7. Tell us about selling your first novel.
 I wrote The Secret of the Cellars, a mystery for girls eight to
twelve, which won a contest sponsored by Dodd Mead and Calling all Girls.

Forgotten Books: The Killer by Wade Miller

Forgotten Books: The Killer by Wade Miller


Wade Miller was of course Bob Wade and Bill Miller. They collaborated on a few dozen novels until Miller died of a heart attack in the office they shared. He was forty-one.

Much of their best work was done for Gold Medal. The Killer is a fine example. A rich man named Stennis owns a number of banks. His son works in one of them. During a robbery his son is killed. Stennis hires a big game hunter named Farrow to find the notorious bank robber Clel Bocock and his gang. When Farrow locates them he is to call Stennis who wants to be there to watch them die. Farrow is a unique character and not just because of the big game angle. He's middle-aged and feeling it, something rare in that era of crime fiction.

The search for Stennis--and the love story that involves Bocock's wife--takes Farrow from the swamps to Iowa (including, yes, Cedar Rapids) to Wisconsin to Colorado. The place description is extraordinary. Probably too much for today's readers but the Miller books are filled with strong cunning writing. Same for twists and turns. For the length of the first act you can never be sure who anybody is. They're all traveling under assumed names and with shadowy motives. The only thing that binds them is Clel Bocock.

For anybody who thinks that Gold Medals were largely routine crime stories, this is the noel you should pick up. Stark House published this a few years back (still available) along with Devil On Two Sticks, one of the most original mob novels I've ever read. There's also an excellent David Laurence Wilson introduction on the careers of the two writers.

Wade Miller got lost in the shuffle of bringing back the writers of the fifties and sixties. This book, so strong on character and place and plot turns, will demonstrate why more of their books should be in print.

BRITISH CRIME: HELL IS A CITY (1960) by Fred Blosser

BRITISH CRIME: HELL IS A CITY (1960)  by Fred Blosser

“Hell is a city much like London,” a poet wrote.  I thought it was a line from William Blake.  Actually, it’s by Shelley, not Blake, and in Val Guest’s 1960 film HELL IS A CITY, the city is Manchester, not London, captured in gritty widescreen black-and-white.

I like British crime films, whether old-school, post-war gangster noir like 1947’s NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH (which turned Slim Grissom’s drooling yokel from James Hadley Chase’s novel into a tuxedoed Bogart-type nightclub owner) or Guy Richie’s post-millennial bullet-fests.  HELL IS A CITY, from the same era as U.S. products like Don Siegel’s THE LINEUP and TV’s THE NAKED CITY, THE ASPHALT JUNGLE, and 87th PRECINCT, captured some of the same filmed-on-location realism and nighttime neon noir as its American cousins.

Inspector Harry Martineau (Stanley Baker) cares more about his job than his marriage, and his work schedule intensifies even more when his nemesis Don Starling (John Crawford) breaks out of prison.  Starling has two fresh murders on his record: a guard he clubbed to death while escaping, and a pretty 19-year old girl, a bookie’s courier whom Starling inadvertently killed in a holdup after returning home.

The murder of the girl especially enrages Martineau, and the script (based on a Maurice Proctor novel) convincingly documents his investigative routine as he pounds the pavement to turn up leads.   In a couple of kitchen-sink domestic scenes, the movie also suggests that Martineau’s dedication is motivated as much by his reluctance to go home, where he’s bound to get into a fight with his wife, as by his passion for justice.

A few years ago, if you’d asked me who was the least remembered of the many talented, ferocious actors who emerged from the British cinema in the 1950s and early ‘60s, I’d have said Stanley Baker.   Now, with Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Oliver Reed, and Patrick McGoohan long gone, and Albert Finney, Peter O’Toole, and Michael Caine known mostly by younger moviegoers as doddering old geezers, the question may be academic.  But Baker was equally convincing in tough-guy mode as a cop and a crook (see Joseph Losey’s icy heist movie, THE CRIMINAL), and it would be nice to see him get some attention again.  For that matter, he was also one of the great seething villains from the heyday of big-budget costume epics; in THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE and SODOM AND GOMORRA, he blows good guys Robert Taylor and Stewart Granger out of the water.

An American character actor who made a shitload of movies and TV shows and looked a bit like Sydney Chaplin, John Crawford is sturdy enough as ruthless escaped con Don Starling, but really, what kind of tough-guy name is “Starling”?  Maybe Proctor was making a subtle joke, Starling busting out of jail like a bird getting out of its cage.  Or maybe it was just part of an avian pattern to the names in the movie.  Martineau sounds like “martin,” and the bookie whom Starling robbed, played by a relatively young Donald Pleasance, is named “Hawkins.”  Intentional or coincidental, and if intentional, what was the point?  Who knows?

Trivia fans will appreciate that HELL IS A CITY was a rare but not unique crime movie from Hammer Films, and that Val Guest also made the memorable  QUATERMASS X-PERIMENT, QUATERMASS II, and THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE (maybe the first global warming movie).  All four films share a documentary-style attention to setting, character, and background detail; if Great Britain was as bleak in the post-war, pre-Beatles decade as Guest’s movies suggest, then the hysteria that attended the coming of the Beatles is easier to understand.

Another trivia note: I suspect that Jack Higgins, the thriller writer, was a fan of HELL IS A  CITY.  Three of his early paperback originals, reprinted a few years ago by Berkley Books, were gritty police procedurals, and a character named Harry Martineau has a lead role as a World War II spy in NIGHT OF THE FOX.  In HELL IS A CITY, the script wrings suspense from a vulnerable young female character, a deaf mute whose inability to scream puts her in jeopardy when she unexpectedly confronts Starling hiding in her grandfather’s shop.  In A PRAYER FOR THE DYING, Higgins places a blind girl in a similar cat-and-mouse situation with a depraved gangster.  I now wish I had seen HELL IS A CITY when I talked to Higgins briefly at a book signing a few years ago, so that I could have asked him.

There’s a new DVD edition of HELL IS A CITY from Studio Canal in the U.K.  The cover art, with a scratchy white illustration of Starling grabbing the bookie’s pretty courier against a black background, and the title splashed across in fat, shaky red letters, pretty obviously imitates the look of the poster for SIN CITY (2005).  I don’t know if younger viewers will agree -- probably not -- but in my humble opinion, Stanley Baker and Val Guest leave Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez, and their stupidly grisly live-action cartoon in the Manchester dust.

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