Ed Gorman's Blog, page 167

Dan J. Marlowe by Charles Kelly

Ed here: BIll Crider and Patti Abbott have both linked to this article. I'm doing so to remind everybody that this excellent article takes a fresh look at a writer whose best books are difficult to forget. When I finished the article I picked up The Vengeance Man by Marlowe and read it in two sittings. Then I remembered why I always found him--despite my admiration for him--troubling.

Here's a game for you. In one word describe the impression of the work of the hardboiled masters leave on you. For instance my choices would be:

Hammett- professional
Chandler - sentimental
Woolrich - fatalistic
Spillane - rage
Goodis - tormented
Thompson - psychotic
Rabe - cynical
Stark - ruthless

My opinion only. I'm doing this because I was surprised, after reading The Vengeance Man for the first time in years, that the single word that describes the novel for me is misanthropic. There's a nastiness here I don't find even in Jim Thompson perhaps because Thompson's people clearly have mental problems. Thompson's mind never seemed to be too far away from the mental hospital he wrote about. Thus there's a sense of suffering in most of his work that gives it a humanity. Not so in Marlowe's work. It's the misanthropy that drives his books that makes him important. But it's difficult to rest easy for at least a few hours after closing the covers for the last time.

Here's Charles Kelly in The Los Angeles Times:

Hollywood is for the young and tough, a place where you must be beautiful simply to survive, let alone prosper. God help you if you're homely, aging, and physically beaten. Double that if you've lost the creative skills you've counted on, and forgotten much of your life and all the people you've known. Double that again if you're a writer. Let's say it's 1978 and you are Dan J. Marlowe, once one of the hottest suspense novelists of your day, author of such hard-boiled Fawcett Gold Medal paperbacks as The Name of the Game is Death, The Vengeance Man, Never Live Twice, and the Operation books, featuring a bank robber turned international agent. It's 1978, yes, and the market for that kind of book has evaporated. You're 64 years old, suffering from amnesia, glaucoma, and the consequences of a stroke. It's painful for you even to lift your hands high enough to type.

Though you're chubby and unathletic and wear dark, horn-rimmed glasses, in the past you've been hell with the ladies. Now those ladies are ghosts to you. You've spent more than 15 years living in Harbor Beach, Michigan, a picturesque, isolated town on the shore of Lake Huron. You made a good living, served on the city council, partied with the Rotary Club. And you found time to indulge in your own secret sexual quirkiness. Now you're broke and short of options. So you're moving to the City of Fallen Angels to share an apartment with a former bank robber. To try to put your writing life back together, maybe even get movies made from your books.

You're a Hollywood Untouchable because you're a lousy money-maker, and you'll stay that way. People hear your name and confuse you with Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler's iconic detective, or with your mystery-writing contemporary, Stephen Marlowe. You're the wrong Marlowe, in the wrong time, the wrong place. So what are the chances you'll be remembered with fondness? What are the odds that nearly four decades later, megastar horror writer Stephen King will honor your talent by dedicating a novel to you? Well, you've always been a gambler — a professional one for seven years. You've played long shots and won. Maybe you'll do it again.

For the rest go here:
http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/19055...

"PRETTY POISON" From Fangoria Magazine

Ed here: One of my all time favorite movies. A true minor masterpiece.

FANGO FLASHBACK: "PRETTY POISON" From Fangoria Magazine
Posted by Tony Timpone Feb 01, 2012
Produced eight years after the landmark PSYCHO (see Fango Flashback here), 1968's psychological thriller PRETTY POISON almost plays, in its opening moments, like a dry run for star Anthony Perkins' later work in PSYCHO II. A disturbed young man, fresh from a long stint in a mental hospital, meets with his parole officer (SECONDS' John Randolph) to discuss his re-entry into society after serving time for some unspeakable crime.

This isn't Norman Bates, however, but one Dennis Pitt, a "reformed" arsonist who, we ultimately learn, "accidentally" set his aunt on fire years ago. A child trapped in a man's body, Pitt has an active imagination and lives in a fantasy world of his own making. He may be able to con his parole officer and the people in the quiet Massachusetts town he relocates to, but he will soon meet his match in the form of a gorgeous teenage cheerleader (Tuesday Weld, never better), who catches his eye. That's the basic setup of PRETTY POISON.

Buried upon its release by antsy distributor 20th Century Fox, PRETTY POISON has continued to garner a cult rep ever since. Perkins is wonderful as the awkward but likable Pitt, who tries to make a go of it by toiling in a paint-manufacturing plant. Then he becomes smitten with the "innocent" Sue Ann Stepanek (Weld). Pitt seduces her into his imaginary world of espionage, and Perkins is quite charming and funny in the scenes of their unusual courtship, displaying none of Norman's trademark nervous tics and stammers.

for the rest go here:http://www.fangoria.com/index.php/mov...

At the Scene, March 2012 MYSTERY SCENE

At the Scene, March 2012 Solving the mystery of what to read next!
IWinter Issue #123 out now!

March Greetings
Nicci French on Reading, Lucy Liu as Watson, Awards Continued, MS New Authors Breakfast at Malice

Hi everyone!

Research is definitely the theme in this issue of Mystery Scene. Lisa Gardner, for example, goes to great lengths - even into the boxing ring! - to bring realism to her fast-paced thrillers. She contends that imagination is no substitute for actually hitting someone - or being hit yourself.

Gardner was a working writer before she graduated college, publishing 13 romance novels by the time she was 25. "The disadvantage of starting to write so young is that I didn't have a trade first," she tell Oline Cogdill in this issue. "A lot of suspense writers were lawyers or reporters so they already had a knowledge base they could draw on. I don't." Hence, the prodigious research that make Gardner's thrillers so immersive and so very popular.

Jon L. Breen surveys Simon Brett's considerable body of work in this issue, just in time for this master of the whodunit's Lifetime Achievement Award from the Malice Domestic Convention in April. Jon also did some research into the favorite tipples of Brett's detectives, including, of course, Charles Paris' beloved Bell's Whisky.

Art Taylor considers the eternal appeal of Agatha Christie's little Belgian sleuth in "The Celebrated Poirot." As you might expect, Christie offers endless avenues for research. For example, did you know that Charles Laughton was the first actor to ever play Hercule Poirot? (See page 35.)

And speaking of 'tecs and their tipples, here is Poirot in Three-Act Tragedy:

"The sherry, I prefer it to the cocktail, and a thousand times to the whisky. Ah, quelle horreur, the whisky. But drinking the whisky, you ruin - absolutely ruin - the palate."

A little research can pay big dividends if you're a book collector. In this issue Nate Pedersen discusses "association copies," books whose values are increased by interesting connections to their authors or owners. (Check out the pride of my husband's book collection on page 40!)

It was the difficulty of research that turned Nicola Upson into a novelist. She had intended to write a biography of Josephine Tey, author of The Daughter of Time. Instead she found that a series of novels, carefully researched but also sympathetically imagined, better captured the character of this complex woman.

Research isn't always the final answer, though. Many sources declare unequivocally that Lester del Rey wrote the infamously (and deliberately) bad short story, "Rattlesnake Cave." Not true. For the real story on the worst story ever written see the note from Larry Block on page 46 or visit the Mystery Scene Blog.

This April, Brian and I, as well as a number of MS contributors, will be at the Malice Domestic Convention in Bethesda, Maryland. We're particularly looking forward to the New Authors Breakfast which we're sponsoring again this year. Hope to see you there!

Best wishes,
Kate Stine
Editor


Need Help With Your Subscription?
Send us a note.
Renew or subscribe at MysterySceneMag.com

'On The Road' Trailer Released

'On The Road' Trailer Released (VIDEO) From Moviefone

Ed here: For many people my age Jack Kerouac's On The Road was a novel of such great moment and vitality that some of us can still quote passages from it. He brought us a Whitmanesque America that the literary establishment scorned and loathed because it violated not only academic respectability but also it was the first shot fired in the revolution that would begin seven years later in Berkeley. The Beats of course weren't revolutionaries; if anything most of them disdained politics and found solace in Buddhism and marijuana and the hypnotic beauty of jazz. I still read On The Road every few years and find it even fresher and more compelling as time goes on. For me it's still the greatest naive hilarious sad beautiful hedonistic yawp of my time on the planet.

-------Moviefone

The cinematic adaptation of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" has a long, storied history. (Kerouac himself once asked Marlon Brando to buy the rights and star in the film.)

But the iconic Beat novel will finally be brought to the big screen, courtesy of director Walter Salles, and the movie's trailer has just been released. Sam Riley stars as Kerouac's alter ego Sal Paradise, Garrett Hedlund plays the Neal Cassady-inspired Dean Moriarty and Kristen Stewart portrays Dean's young wife, Marylou. Kirsten Dunst, Tom Sturridge, Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams, Steve Buscemi and Elisabeth Moss round out the cast.

The trailer sees Riley delivering perhaps the book's best-known line, "The only people that interest me are the mad ones. The ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like roman candles across the night."

Watch it below: http://news.moviefone.com/2012/03/10/...



FOLLOW MOVIEFONE

Great interview with director John Flynn

JOHN FLYNN: OUT FOR ACTION (Shock Cinema nº 29, fall 2005, pp. 26-29+46)
by Harvey F. Chartrand

Veteran director John Flynn is known for his taut, economical and well-scripted action pictures. He is certainly one of the most underrated directors in crime cinema today.

A protégé of Hollywood legends Robert Wise and J. Lee Thompson, Flynn learned his craft well by observing these masters at work, before tackling his first solo directing assignment in 1967 - The Sergeant, in which Rod Steiger gave an anguished performance as a macho Army sergeant who is horrified by his own feelings of attraction to another man (John Phillip Law). Sadly, this dark and courageous drama has yet to be released on VHS, let alone DVD!

Flynn's second film, the suspense story The Jerusalem File (1972), is equally obscure. Perhaps for political reasons, this exotic thriller about an idealistic American archaeology student (Bruce Davison) caught in the Arab-Israeli crossfire, is rarely seen on TV. Nor has The Jerusalem File been issued on VHS or DVD, despite the presence in supporting roles of Nicol Williamson, Donald Pleasence and Ian Hendry. (Zabriskie Point's Daria Halprin also appears here in her final film role.) Set in the Holy City after the Six Day War, the film is one of the few Hollywood productions to have been shot entirely on location in and around Jerusalem.

Flynn went on to direct 15 more pictures, including the hardboiled The Outfit (1973), praised as one of the best films based on a Richard Stark "Parker novel" by the author himself, and the grim revenge saga Rolling Thunder (1977), which so impressed the young director Quentin Tarantino that he named his short-lived film release company (Rolling Thunder Pictures) after it. Rolling Thunder also made Tarantino's list of his top 25 favorite movies.

Since 1990, Flynn has kept busy making excellent low-budgeters for U.S. cable networks or the direct-to-video market. His last film to date is 2001's Protection, a witness relocation drama with a twist, starring Stephen Baldwin, Peter Gallagher and a cast of Canadian supporting players.

According to film writer Matthew Wilder, John Flynn could give today's neo-noir directors seminars in the beauties of haiku-like plainspokenness. Shock Cinema agrees. We talked to John Flynn in May.

Shock Cinema: How did you get started in the film business?

John Flynn: I was Robert Wise's assistant. He hired me to do research on The Robert Capa Story. (This planned biopic of the famous photographer was never filmed. - Ed.) Later, Bob let me watch him work on the set. I was an apprentice on Odds Against Tomorrow, script supervisor on West Side Story, and second assistant director on Kid Galahad and Two for the Seesaw. Later, I worked as an assistant director on The Great Escape. I was also a second unit director on J. Lee Thompson's What a Way to Go!

In 1966, Bob Wise set up a company to produce low-budget films that others would direct. The first property that Bob found was Dennis Murphy's critically acclaimed novel The Sergeant. Bob asked me to direct. So I owe my directing career to Bob Wise - and to J. Lee Thompson, who mentored me on What a Way to Go!, Kings of the Sun and John Goldfarb, Please Come Home!

SC: Discuss your involvement in Kid Galahad (1962), a "boxing musical" starring Elvis Presley, Charles Bronson, Gig Young and Lola Albright.

JF: This was my first credit as an assistant director. One of my jobs was to make sure Elvis was happy, but he was easy to work with then, a really sweet guy. Charles Bronson always tried to act like a tough guy. You had to stand up to him and then he'd back off. Gig Young was a dream, one of the funniest human beings I ever met. He was always coming out with these great one-liners. Lola Albright was a very sweet, beautiful, professional woman, on the cusp of middle age, nearing the end of her career, as it turned out.

SC: You were an assistant director on The Great Escape (1963) - the best prisoner-of-war movie ever made. What did you learn from your seven-month association with action director John Sturges?

JF: I learned simplicity. John Sturges was one of the simplest shooters you'd ever want to see. He knew exactly where to place the cameras. Sturges was a very efficient, no-nonsense shooter and he was working without a script half the time. Writers would be flown in to Munich for rewrites every other week. Since we had no script, assistant directors had a hell of a time, because we had to call in all the actors, not knowing if we were going to use them or not.

It was a wonderful time in a Hollywood that no longer exists. The Mirisch Corporation sent over the same crew I worked with on Kid Galahad and Two for the Seesaw - everyone from grips to art directors to stunt guys. We were like a family. I can't tell you how many times I hung out with Steve McQueen and James Coburn, all those guys… James Garner had a poker game every week at his house. I also got to know the English contingent: Donald Pleasence, Richard Attenborough, James Donald, and the Germans too - like Hannes Messemer, who gave an incredibly poignant performance as the German commandant. We worked together six days a week for seven months in Bavaria. Off the set, we dined together and we partied together.

for the rest go here: http://www.focorevistadecinema.com.br...

Forgotten Books: The Executioners by John DF. MacDonald

The Executioners

I usually read a John D. novel every month or so. There are eight or nine I never get tired of simply because they're so well done.

Last night I picked up The Executioners (Cape Fear) for bedtime reading and read to page 102 before turning out the light. Yes, a few of his flaws on are on display, especially cutesy-poo man-woman dialogue but mostly in first half of the first act. But except for that this is a virtually perfect suspense novel. MacDonald wisely hews to the Hitchcock rule--suspense comes from knowing that the bomb is under the chair. MacDonald plants the bomb in the first chapter and then slowly lets the wick burn lower and lower. Several lesser incidents anticipate the final explosion.

Cady isn't Robert Mitchum's Cady but he could be his cousin. The scene where the family buries the dog Cady kills is as fresh and moving as it was the first time I read it. The wife is a tough woman, not the Polly Bergen version. And protagonist Sam, while not a typical MacDonald tough guy, is not the cipher he seems to be in the movie. JDM gives him real depth here.

The Executioners would be written very differently today. It would be angrier, bloodier, more brutal in terms of Cady's psychology (Mitchum got it exactly). But for me The Executioners bears re-reading because it's one of the best stories told by one of the best storytellers of my time on the planet.

Brendan DuBois; L.J. Washburn

Ed her: Brendan Dubois is a master of the short story. I read him with awe and envy. I also learn from him. I ordered this collection immediately. And so should you!

From Brendan:"I'm very pleased to pass on that my newest e-book anthology, "Blue and Gray Tales of Mystery," is now available on both the Book and Kindle platforms. Over the years I was most fortunate to be asked to contribute Civil War-related short stories to anthologies edited by Marty Greenberg, John Helfers, and Ed Gorman. For the first time, I've gathered all of my Civil War short stories into this one anthology, with another superb cover by Jeroen ten Berge. Of course, me being me, the stories include mysteries, alternative history, and science fiction. And to honor these three editors --- and the writing community lost a giant when Marty Greenberg passed away --- this anthology is dedicated to them. You can find it on Amazon at http://tiny.cc/iVsf2b or Barnes & Noble at http://tinyurl.com/6q8nbqu"

----------------L.J. Washburn


Livia Washburn can do it all and do it well. I've been reading her for twenty years or more--mysteries, westerns, historicals, fantasies, romances--and I still wonder (seriously) what makes her so gifted. (I can say the same for her husband James Reasoner who's written two of my top fifteen hardboiled novels and many of my favorite westerns.) But of all her books I like the Hallams the best.

I always enjoy books and stories about old Hollywood and former cowboy now turned private eye lives and works--as many real cowboys did--in the Hwood of silent films. He's a great character, the mysteries are fair-clued and stunning, and old Hwood is a character in itself.

Here's a great introduction--several great stories for 99 cents on Kindle.

Free Today For Kindle!

Amazon.com: Easy Innocence (Georgia Davis Series) eBook: Libby Fischer Hellmann: Kindle Store: From Booklist: In this fast-paced mystery, the author of the Ellie Forman series introduces suspended cop and now PI Georgia Davis. Georgia is hired to help clear a mentally ill man, Cam Jordan, who is accused of killing a teenage girl, Sara Long, in a local forest preserve.

Resurrecting_a_comic_art_icon/

Ed here: When I was young I was a comic book fanatic. I bought all the ECs, all the Mads, etc. My favorite artist was always Wally Wood. Whether he was in comic or dramatic mode, his hip approach always dazzled me. I kept up with his career well into my Thirties. What follows is an excerpt from Salon. :

MONDAY, MAR 5, 2012 7:00 PM CST
Resurrecting a comic art icon
Three decades after his tragic suicide, Wally Wood's famed work for Mad magazine is attracting renewed interest
BY MICHAEL DOOLEY, IMPRINT

TOPICS:IMPRINT, DESIGN
This article originally appeared on Imprint.
Wally Wood is most acclaimed for his comical comic books, mainly his acclaimed work for Mad back in its original, pre-magazine, 1950s incarnation. But his personal life was a drama verging on tragedy and culminating with his suicide in 1981. Only now, three decades later, is his story heading toward a happy ending, with a burst of renewed interest in his work. Among the most spectacular products are two oversize coffee table books: IDW's "Wally Wood's EC Stories: Artist's Edition," just released and already sold out of its first print run, and "Came the Dawn and Other Stories by Wally Wood," from Fantagraphics, scheduled for summer.

In other Wood news, just a few days ago author J. David Spurlock was appointed director of the Wallace Wood Estate. David began his career as an artist-writer but has become better known as an agent and creator rights advocate. He's also the founder and publisher of Vanguard Productions, which prints books on art and the careers of artists.

I took this opportunity to congratulate David and to chat about the man he calls "a pop culture icon."

.
Michael Dooley: How'd you first encounter Wood's work?

J. David Spurlock: When I was very young, right when I first started reading comics, was when Woody left Mad and went to re-create "Daredevil" for Marvel. I like to say he put the "devil" into "Daredevil," as the early, Bill Everett version was more like a circus daredevil in black and yellow tights. Wood revamped DD in a high-tech equipped, ominous, devilish dark red outfit, somewhat like we saw in the movie with Ben Affleck so many years later.

I caught Wood's "Daredevil," and his heyday at Tower with "T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents," and him in the Mad paperback collections all about the same time, there in 1965–'67. On rare occasion he'd also pop up in one of the black and white Warren horror magazines.


What do you admire about Wood's art?

In nearly all of his work – no matter how overworked he was – even when he did risque material, there was always a charm, and he imbued the work with a purity of love for the medium.

And he was a master of every genre. That is one of the things that make him unique. Whether horror for EC, humor for Mad or Plop, war comics for DC or Gold Key, science fiction magazine illustrations, his Wizard King trilogy of fantasy graphic novels, superheroes for Marvel, cheesecake, romance, or westerns, whatever genre one picks, Wood's contribution is among the finest ever.

I really can't pick a favorite genre but I will mention one of my favorite stories, "To Kill A God" from Vampirella magazine. It's an historical horror-fantasy starring Cleopatra and Mark Antony!




for the rest go here: resurrecting_a_comic_art_icon/

Too good not to be true

Ed here: This sounds like something from the Onion or from a Robert Sheckley sf story from the 50s Galaxy magazine.. But no it's the theocrats run amuck.

TPMMuckraker
SC County GOP: If You've Had Pre-Marital Sex, You Can't Be A Republican

SHARE
JILLIAN RAYFIELD MARCH 5, 2012, 2:04 PM 24943 379
Before you can join the Laurens County Republican Party in South Carolina and get on the primary ballot, they ask that you pledge that you've never ever had pre-marital sex — and that you will never ever look at porn again.

Last Tuesday, the LCGOP unanimously adopted a resolution that would ask all candidates who want to get on the primary ballot to sign a pledge with 28 principles, because the party "does not want to associate with candidates who do not act and speak in a manner that is consistent with the SC Republican Party Platform."

Among the principles, according to Vic MacDonald & Larry Franklin of the Clinton Chronicle, is standard fare like opposition to abortion and upholding gun rights, as well as "a compassionate and moral approach to Teen Pregnancy" and "a high regard for United States Sovereignty."

But then they get even more specific. From the Chronicle:

You must favor, and live up to, abstinence before marriage.
You must be faithful to your spouse. Your spouse cannot be a person of the same gender, and you are not allowed to favor any government action that would allow for civil unions of people of the same sex.

You cannot now, from the moment you sign this pledge, look at pornography.

It is unclear how they will precisely determine this (or regulate it), but an unidentified potential candidate for office in Laurens County told the Chronicle that candidates will be interviewed by a three-person subcommittee, who will then recommend to the full executive committee whether to allow the candidate on the ballot.

Bobby Smith, who chairs the Laurens County Republican Party, explained that "people feel the platform has not been adhered to. We want candidates to believe in and uphold the party's platform."

Though at first the resolution would have required candidates to sign the pledge, Smith clarified in a statement Monday that "due to various legal issues" the LCGOP cannot require that the candidates sign the pledge if they meet all of the other qualifications for a run. But, he said, the committee "reserves the right to vet its candidates and will encourage all candidates to uphold the principles of the party's platform as well as petition candidates to sign a pledge to do so. However, no candidate will be denied access to the Republican Party primary ballot for refusing to sign the pledge."

State GOP chairman Chad Connelly told the Chronicle that he doesn't necessarily oppose the idea. "If we are wearing the same uniform I want to be sure we are kicking the ball toward the same goal, or are you moving against me."

Via Corey Hutchins.