Ed Gorman's Blog, page 194

"The First Detective": A swashbuckling cop

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The First Detective": A swashbuckling cop

A new book explores the life of the thief-turned-cop who paved the way for today's investigators

BY MATTHEW BATTLES, BARNES & NOBLE REVIEW

This article appears courtesy of The Barnes & Noble Review.

The daring costumed escapes and bedsheet-rope prison breaks of the old romances weren't merely creaky plot devices; they were also the objective correlatives of the lost politics of early modern Europe. Not yet susceptible to legislative amelioration, rules and customs that seemed both indefensible and unassailable had to be vaulted over like collapsing bridges or tunneled under like manor walls. Not only fictional musketeers but such illustrious figures as the young Casanova and the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau spent their early years making narrow escapes from overlapping orthodoxies, swimming moats to marriages of convenience and digging their way out of prisons of privilege by dressing in drag or posing as noblemen's sons. If one ran afoul of the local clergy or some aristocratic cuckold, there were always new bishops and magistrates to charm in the next diocese or département.

In 1775 -- roughly a generation after the exploits of Rousseau and Casanova -- a prosperous baker's son named Eugène-François Vidocq was born in Arras, in northern France. Indolent and adventuresome, he embarked upon a career that in its early phase looked even more hapless and disastrous than those of his illustrious forebears.

for the rest go here:
http://www.salon.com/books/2011/07/11...
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TOP SUSPENSE GROUP RUNNING COLD BY HARRY SHANNON

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THURSDAY, JULY 21, 2011

Sizzling Summer Read RUNNING COLD (A Mick Callahan Novel)

Harry Shannon, here. I created media psychologist Mick Callahan as the protagonist of my debut hardcover mystery. Mick was born and raised near the small town of Wells, Nevada. He's an alcoholic, a loyal friend, a hot tempered genius. After a failed stint in the Navy Seals, Mick studied Psychology and ended up hosting a television show. Booze, sex and ego brought him down. Over the course of the four novels in the series, he's gone from humiliated and sober and on the comeback trail (Memorial Day), working in radio again (Eye of the Burning Man), back on track but in trouble with the mob (One of the Wicked) and now, in RUNNING COLD, your Top Suspense Sizzling Summer Read of the day, Mick is on the edge of collapse, fighting a return to the bottle and mourning the loss of his girlfriend.

And then one of Callahan's clients is murdered. The client's son Wes McCann is a soldier recently returned from Afghanistan. Wes blames Callahan. These two dangerous men are set on a collision course, one crazed with grief and the other tortured by guilt. I've been told that Running Cold is the darkest of the four Callahan novels, and I suppose that's true, though for me Callahan's deep concern for others and his sense of integrity always shine. He's flawed and troubled, but he's a good man. If character is destiny, Mick will likely end up okay when this series ends. Hell, he deserves that much after all I've put him through!


"A flawed and edgy hero. Dark wit, excellent writing and action-packed pace."
—The Rap Sheet, January Magazine

"Mick Callahan is a man with a past, a mean right hook, and a radio talk show. He's pretty good at giving people advice - just not necessarily good at taking it. The strength of this series is in its central characters, flawed, human, often funny, sometimes tragic, and the relationships among them."
—Mystery Scene

"Mick Callahan is not only likeable (as deemed by Library Journal) but he manages to endear himself as a very realistic hero, with a strong sense of purpose and an equal dash of vulnerability."
—Cemetery Dance

"Mick's road to redemption is wry, bittersweet and altogether touching."
—New Mystery Reader

Buy the book here.

Top Suspense Group-Set The Night On Fire Libby Hellmann

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Today's Sizzling Summer Read -- SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE by Libby Hellmann

"A tremendous book - sweeping but intimate, elegiac but urgent, subtle but intense. This story really does set the night on fire." --Lee Child

"A brilliantly-paced thriller, transitioning seamlessly from modern-day Chicago to the late '60s. First-rate characterization...Best to start early in the day, as it is easy to stay up all night reading it." --Foreword Magazine

"RT Top Pick for December: "Electric... a marvelous novel."
--RT Book Reviews

"Set the Night on Fire is a compelling story of love, truth and redemption. This will be a break-out novel for this talented writer. Highly recommended." --Sheldon Siegel, NYTImes bestselling author of Perfect Alibi

"A top-rate thriller that taps into the antiwar protests of the 1960s... A jazzy fusion of past and present, Hellman's insightful, politically charged whodunit explores a fascinating period in American history."
--Publishers Weekly

That's what reviewers are saying. Here's what I say:

TRUE CONFESSION:

I do remember the Sixties.

Especially 1968. That was the turning point in my political "coming of age." I was in college in Philadelphia on April 4th when Martin Luther King was assassinated. I watched as riots consumed the inner cities. I was saddened and disappointed -- as a teenager growing up in Washington DC, I'd gone to plenty of concerts at the Howard theater where blacks and whites grooved to Motown artists together. I actually thought we were moving towards a color-blind society -- I was young and idealistic then). So the frustration and rage expressed through the riots was - in a way- confusing.

Two months later I understood. My college boyfriend had been tapped to head up the national "Youth for Bobby Kennedy" program. I was really excited; I planned on dropping out for a semester to work with him. For some reason I couldn't sleep the night of June 5th and turned on my radio. Bobby had been shot just after winning the California Democratic primary. He died the next day. So much for the Youth for Kennedy campaign.

Sadness soon gave way to bitterness. The country was falling apart. Over the years some of our brightest lights had been snuffed out. Internationally our government seemed to be supporting the "bad guys." And underlying it all was an unwinnable war that - perversely -- was escalating and risking the lives of my peers. I began to question why I should work through the system, especially when the system wasn't working for us.

I wasn't alone. Plenty of others yearned for change. Fundamental change that would rebuild our society and culture. The next few years were tumultuous and volatile, but in the final analysis, we failed. Maybe the task was impossible -- how many Utopias exist? Sure, there were cultural shifts. But political change, in the sense of what to expect from our leaders and our government? Not so much. The era left me with unresolved feelings. What should we have done differently? Are all progressive movements doomed to fail?

At this point you're probably wondering what this has to do with writing a thriller. And you'd be right. It's never been my intention to write a political screed. I am a storyteller whose stories, hopefully, you can't put down. I realized that if I was going to write about the Sixties, I needed a premise that would hook readers in the present, regardless of how much they know or remembered about the Sixties.

I found that premise in a film. Do you remember SIGNS, starring Mel Gibson? It came out in 2002, and I thought the first half was the most riveting film I'd ever seen. Gibson's family is being stalked, but they don't know who and they don't know why. The second half of the film, when we discover it's just your garden variety aliens, was an enormous let down. Putting a face, an identity, on fear reduces its power. But NOT knowing who's targeting you -- or why -- is the most frightening thing I can imagine.

So that's what happens to Lila Hilliard, a thirty-something professional who's come home to Chicago for the holidays. Someone has killed her family, and now they're after her. She has no idea who or why. As she desperately tries to figure it out, she finds wisps of clues that lead back to her parents' activities forty years ago. In the process she discovers that her parents were not the people she thought.

The relationship between the past and present, the consequences of events that occurred years ago fascinate me. I also love stories that plunge characters into danger and make them draw on resources they didn't know they had. SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE was the way to combine all those themes. Writing the book was an exorcism of sorts, a way to make peace with the past. And while I enjoyed reliving the past, I loved putting it behind me even more. I'm finally ready to move on.

I hope you enjoy the read. To buy the book from Amazon click here. From Nook, here. And for more about the book, and me, and everything else, just click here.

Posted by Libby Hellmann at 12:01 AM 1 comments
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New Books: The Dead Genius by Axel Brand (Richard S. Wheeler)

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THE DEAD GENIUS

My Joe Sonntag mysteries grew from a fond memory of the old Dragnet TV series, with Jack Webb. I wanted to create a gumshoe detective who gets to the heart of things with interrogation and a keen grasp of human nature. So a lunchbucket cop, Detective lieutenant Sonntag, was born. He's operating in late 1940s Milwaukee, and takes the streetcar to work each day.

In the next Sonntag mystery, The Dead Genius ( Tekno Books, Five Star, publication August 10) the detective pays his respects to a little genius who pioneered forensic document examination, and put all sorts of forgers, bank robbers, and sharpers in jail. It was an ordinary death: a heart failure of a diabetic. But something about it troubles Sonntag's superior, Captain Ackerman, who insists that Sonntag take a close look at the death, and also find out why the document examiner had no known past. Gradually, what seemed a routine death from disease begins to look like something far more sinister.

I've just self-published another Sonntag mystery, Night Medicine, which is available on Kindle and from CreateSpace. Here is another mysterious death. It's summer, 1948 in Milwaukee. A lovely young woman is found dead at the Washington Park zoo, her body lying in a bed of ferns, her arms folded in repose, as if she were lying in state. Nearby, a lioness prowls her cage. Sonntag and his detectives soon are plunged into the world of illegal medicine, where compassion runs contrary to the law, and a cop with any sensitivity wishes he didn't have to call some things a crime, or pursue people whose purpose was kindness.

I'm writing a fourth Sonntag mystery, built around the violent labor crises that tore Milwaukee apart in the 1940s, a time when the mob was infiltrating labor unions (the Kefauver hearings came a couple years later), and Reds were manipulating the unions for their own purposes. The ones who got hurt were the working men who depended on a strong union for a good wage and a few benefits. And then a scab was shot; and later, the head of the machinists union. Look for it in the fall.

Axel Brand/Richard S. Wheeler

Marty Greenberg

I remember phone calls with my friend Marty Greenberg in which we discussed Tekno Books business, the Three Stooges, the Chicago Cubs, Marty's daughters, an old sf magazine I'd talked about previously, the latest Seinfeld episode rerun, wholesale prices for the books we were publishing and the newest jokes about George W. Bush. All in one call. And this went on virtually every day for twenty-seven years.

Marty and Isaac Asimov had been best friends for years and called each other just about every day, including a few days when Isaac was overseas. When Isaac passed Marty and I started talking every day.

I met Martin Harry Greenberg (not to be confused with that other Martin Greenberg of ill repute) when I began selling him stories around 1983 or so. I sold him quite a few and got to know him in the process. We had the same pathetically deranged sense of humor as well as the same ambitious plans to create interesting literary projects.

There was a time early on when I didn't know him all that well it turned out. He made frequent trips to New York for many years and called me from there to tell me how it was going with agents and editors. One night when he called and I asked him what he was doing and he asked me if I could keep a secret. Naturally I said yes (I'm like George Costanza—I put it in the vault). Well, he said, he had a couple of hookers in his room and couldn't talk very long. But please keep this to myself.

Of course I mentioned this to my wife Carol and said you know people always surprise you She was surprised, too. Marty always talked about how much he loved his wife Roz and depended on her. Hookers just didn't fit.

When he called the next night we talked for awhile before I asked him if he had hookers tonight. At first he didn't know what I was talking about and then he laughed that great Marty laugh. He'd forgotten. "Jesus Christ," he said. "that was a joke."

Marty bought out fifty per cent of Mystery Scene magazine (from our friend Bob Randisi) which made us business partners because I owned the other half. Only Marty's generosity kept the magazine going. We never did make any money with it but as Marty always insisted owning the magazine brought us to the attention of people in the publishing business. It gave us a brand. We also co-edited many books with the help of Roz, Larry Segriff, Denise Little and John Helfers, the killer Tekno team. We even had a small publishing house called G&G books which he insisted stood for "Greenberg and Greenberg." He was laughing as he said it of course.

I've had three other business partners in my lifetime. I ended amiably with none of them. Marty was the model business partner. I say this without exaggeration. He had more good ideas in one morning than I had in a month. And in the publishing world of the eighties and nineties and on into the new century he knew who to take those ideas to and what to do with them. One other important element in our business partnership was that Marty genuinely liked people, liked conventions and sitting around getting to know people. I'm not anti-social but I've always been pretty insular. In all the years we knew each other I only met Marty face-to-face on three occasions. Obviously it was his warmth and savvy that made the sales.

Tekno Books prospered. His anthologies became proving grounds for an innumerable number of writers who went on to notable careers. In addition to business acumen he was a generous supporter of writers in financial trouble. I know of one writer he supported for the last years of his life. I know of another writer whose house he helped save from foreclosure. There are a lot of stories like that.

But mostly he was just Marty, the best friend I've ever had. Until he got sick with pancreatitis, just about every conversation had at least one bit of lore about show business, a subject we both loved.

Marty's great obsession was the history of Jews in show business, everything from the New York vaudeville to the Catskills to the history of the William Morris Agency to the alleged mob ties of Lew Wasserman. This extended to a poor soul named "Strauss the Mouse" a club fighter who set a record by having as many as four fights in a single night. The Mouse, God knows how, kept this up for nearly a decade. Marty also loved the all the stories about Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohen (as did the Coen Brothers in their under-appreciated film "Barton Fink")who had once supposedly remarked that "the world would be a better place without the Jews or the Irish." As one of his writers said that was because all of Harry's writers were Jewish or Irish. Like all Hollywood moguls, Harry despised writers.

He had other interests as well, of course. The only one I had no interest in was sports. I'm not a sports fan so I always joked that I was setting the phone down when he started doing a sports rap up. He took the Green Bay Packers so seriously that he'd get depressed for a day if they lost. When I first met him I was still a boxing fan but after seeing a boxer die I gave even that up.

My goal in most of our conversations was to make him laugh. Carol always said that hearing him laugh made her happy. It had the same effect on me. And luckily I got to hear it for more than a quarter century.

In January of this year Roz called and told me that the doctors had found a massive tumor on Marty's brain. They felt certain that it was malignant and so it was, even more than their worst fears in fact. Roz nursed and nurtured him for longer than a year, having little life of her own. If there's such a thing as secular sainthood, she should receive the honor.

Marty was never the same after the operation. We talked four times a week or so, no longer every day, and some days he had difficulty focusing. A few times he was incoherent. A month or so before he died he said to me "I'm not the same anymore am I?" I lied and said that of course he was. But we both knew better.

Roz and his three wonderful daughters and I had known that he was going to die. We prepared ourselves for it. Or thought we had, anyway, until the day he passed. He taught me more, influenced me more than any other person in my life.

In addition to the melancholy I feel there's the practical matter of wanting to tell him about all the things that I liked in a given day and all the things that made me mad. He had to put up with a lot of my Irish rants. Five times a day I want to pick up the phone and make him laugh and then make him sit still for one of my angry political bursts. That's the hardest part of all. Glancing at the phone three or four times a night knowing it'll never be him calling.

So long old friend. I hope heaven turns out to be the Hollywood of the Thirties and Forties. When you come right down to it, who'd want to spend eternity any other way?

-Ed Gorman

America's Drunkest Writer

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America's Drunkest Writer (from The Daily Beast)

F. Scott Fitzgerald was kept in champagne in the '20s, already a crumbling alcoholic in the '30s, and dead by the end of '40. The great American novelist's boozy writings are compiled in a new collection reviewed by Jimmy So. Plus, other famous writings on drink.

by Jimmy So | July 16, 2011 10:30 PM EDT

"My vision of the world at its brightest is such that life without the use of its amenities is impossible," F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in 1930 in a letter to Oscar Forel, the Swiss psychiatrist who was treating Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda, who had suffered a breakdown. "I have lived hard and ruined the essential innocence [sic] in myself that could make it that possible [sic], and the fact that I have abused liquor is something to be paid for with suffering and death perhaps but not renunciation." By some accounts Fitzgerald did renounce, not even touching a drop—at least so long as his lover, the gossip columnist Sheila Graham, was with him—during the last year of his life, although it was too late by that time. There is a spate of such letters and other evidence. Fitzgerald, to put it simply, felt that it was man's duty to enjoy drink, as well as his right as a writer to dramatize and self-dramatize the power of drink.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896, famous by 1920, forgotten by 1936, and dead by the end of 1940. In the '20s, he introduced himself to party guests as "one of the most notorious drinkers of the younger generation," or as "F. Scott Fitzgerald, the well-known alcoholic." His friend Ernest Hemingway experienced such stagecraft firsthand when, during a trip with "Poor Scott," Fitzgerald was convincing himself that he was dying of "consumption of the lungs" and demanded that Hemingway find a thermometer to ascertain whether a fever boiled in his blood. "He did have a point, though, and I knew it very well," Hemingway wrote in A Moveable Feast. "Most drunkards in those days died of pneumonia, a disease which has now been almost eliminated. But it was hard to accept him as a drunkard, since he was affected by such small quantities of alcohol."

As Thomas Gilmore asserts in Equivocal Spirits: Alcoholism and Drinking in Twentieth-Century Literature and John Crowley corroborates in The White Logic: Alcoholism and Gender in American Modernist Fiction, the fable of Fitzgerald's Edgar Allan Poe–like low tolerance was likely just that—a fable, helped by an alcoholic's tendency to sometimes conceal consumption and sometimes boast about overconsumption. But whatever the legend of his drinking capacity (Hemingway himself witnessed another time when Fitzgerald drank far more than he ever saw and was completely fine, even telling articulately the story of his and Zelda's life), by the '30s Fitzgerald was not so much as capitalizing but clutching onto the persona of a washed-up alcoholic. He was obsessed with his great literary promise and the even greater subsequent disappointment, knowing that alcoholism was behind it but had not been the sole cause of a tragedy so immense (to him). At his lowest point, in 1935, he claimed to have "not tasted so much as a glass of beer for six months," which was likely untrue.

for the rest go here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles...

Top Suspense Group: Valley of Lights by Stephen Gallagher

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Sizzling Summer Read: VALLEY OF LIGHTS by Stephen Gallagher (Ed here: one of my all-time favorite novels and also much imitated)


I was within two blocks' drive of Paradise when the call came over the air. It was a 927, a general code meaning to investigate unknown trouble. The dispatch girl was offering it to Travis and Leonard, both of whom were checking IDs for warrants in the scrubby little park around the Adult Center on Jefferson; knowing that I could have them as backup in three minutes or less if the 'unknown trouble' turned out to be something bigger than anticipated, I cut in and took the call. Squad Sergeant responding, one minute or less.

Valley of Lights is a fusion of crime and horror, a dance between predator and prey in which the story twists, the stakes increase, and the tables are repeatedly turned.

It grew out of time that I spent in Phoenix, Arizona, researching the city and the desert and going on ride-alongs with the Phoenix PD. I was working on a novel that I never actually got to write. That novel idea was ambitious and sprawling. It was everything I ever wanted to say. It was art. It would have been as boring as hell. Instead, I wrote this.

It began as a simple idea for a short story and grew as I wrote it, in the way that no book had ever grown in my hands before. The story flew. All those days in the squad car with Lieutenant Dave Michels, the late shifts with Sergeants Tom Kosen and Jesse James, the flophouses and the trailer parks and the stakeouts in gaudy motels and the millionaires' houses in the Camelback Mountains - everything came together to feed the tale.

This is the book of which Dean Koontz wrote, "If thriller reading were a sin, Stephen Gallagher would be responsible for my ultimate damnation. His work is fast-paced, well-written, infused with a sense of dark wonder, and altogether fresh."

When I selected the title to present as my Sizzling Summer Read, fellow Top-Suspenser Ed Gorman kindly wrote, "I still think that Valley of Lights is one of the coolest - and most imitated - novels I've ever read."

Here's what Phoenix PD Sergeant Alex Volchak finds on his arrival at the Paradise Motel:
We came to the last of the units. Beyond this was some empty parking space and then a high cinderblock wall topped with wire. Not a place, on the whole, that I'd have cared to spend any time in. The desk clerk stood out front and gestured me towards the window as if to say take it, I don't want it, the responsibility's all yours. I was aware that, some distance behind me, one or two people had emerged and were watching to see if anything interesting was going to happen. I stepped up to the window and looked inside.

The sash was open an inch at the top, and some faint stirring of the air had caused the drapes to part down the middle. The bug screen and the darkness inside made it difficult to see anything at all, but as my eyes adjusted I began to make out shapes. Something that had at first looked like a bean bag resolved itself into a human form, slumped, halfway out of a low chair as if he'd fainted while sitting. The details weren't clear, but also in my line of sight across the room was the end of the bed with somebody lying on it. I could see a pair of soiled tennis shoes for this one, not much more.

Just drunks sleeping off a party, I thought, remembering the heavy breathing that was being picked up by the dislodged phone, and I turned to the clerk and said, 'Who's the room registered to?'

'A little s...' he began, but then he caught himself. 'A Hispanic guy. I don't think he's even one of them.'

'Well... all I see is people sleeping. I don't know what's so unusual in that.'

'For four straight days? It could have been longer. He registered weeks ago, he closed the drapes on day one and he musta sneaked the others in when no-one was watching.'

'What about the maid?'

'We're residential, maid service comes extra. She just leaves the towels and sheets outside, doesn't go in. What do you think?'

I felt a definite stirring of interest. I said, 'I think you should get your pass key so we can go inside and find out what the problem is.'

'And that's legal? I mean, I'm all square with the owner if I do what you say?'

'Get the key, all right?'

We went inside; or rather, I went inside and the little monkey in the technicolor shirt hovered in the doorway behind me. My first expectation, which was of the smell of opium smoke, turned out to be wrong; what hit me instead was a rank odor like bad breath and drains. I crossed the room and opened the window as wide as it would go, and then I turned to look at the place in the harsh angles of daylight.

Nobody had moved. There were three of them. Slumped in the low chair opposite the window was a man in a grey business suit, an expensive-looking summer lightweight with the pants stained dark where his bladder had let go. He was the one who'd fallen against the phone and dislodged the receiver, as if he'd been propped awkwardly and hadn't stayed that way. The soiled tennis shoes on the bed belonged to a short, muscular-looking man in his late thirties, while over in the other chair by the key-operated TV sprawled a black teenager in a leather jacket.

All three of them were inert, like corpses; but I checked for a pulse on each one, and they were all alive and steady. The arms of the man on the bed, who was wearing a T-shirt, showed no fresh needle marks or even old scars.

I said to the clerk, 'Did you move anything when you came in before?'

His face was that of an animal that had just been stunned prior to slaughtering. Perhaps he thought I'd read his mind; he probably didn't realise that he'd already given himself away.

'No,' he finally managed. 'I didn't move a thing.'
You can find Valley of Lights for the Kindle right here.
Posted by Stephen Gallagher at 5:18 AM 0 comments
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Labels: amazon, kindle, Stephen Gallagher, suspense
THURSDAY, JULY 14, 2011

Robert J. Randisi; Naomi Hirahara/TOP SUSPENSE GROUP

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(Bob Randisi's latest)

Now available as both a "real" book and an ebook is the 4th book in the Soap opera series by Eileen Davidson, SWINGIN' IN THE RAIN. Alex Peterson once again becomes involved in murder, this one even more personal as it's her ex-husband who has been killed. Against a backdrop of El Ninos (pl.?)and the Swingin' scene, Alex and her boyfriend, L.A.P.D. detective Frank Jakes, try to solve the case while keeping themselves alive. Ain't that always the way?

The ebook is available on Kindle, and the "real" book is currenlty available at Amazon.com and Createspace

--------------------TOP SUSPENSE GROUP
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SATURDAY, JULY 16, 2011

Today's Sizzling Summer Read -- Summer of the Big Bachi

by Naomi Hirahara

My first mystery novel, SUMMER OF THE BIG BACHI, is probably the most challenging one in my mystery series featuring cranky gardener Mas Arai. From start to publication, it probably took me fifteen years. It's a flawed book yet a very ambitious one. For all these reasons, it still remains my favorite.

Mas Arai (pronounced "awry," as in things go "awry") is an atomic-bomb survivor who has lived in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California for more than half a century. He lost his wife years ago. He is estranged from his daughter. Other than a beat-up Ford truck and a couple of good friends, he doesn't have a lot going for him. But, of course, there's more to Mas than meets the eye. He has a secret from his days in Hiroshima during World War II and, of course, that secret is now ready to unravel in Los Angeles 1999.

Why do I describe my first novel as flawed? This is not a finely tuned mystery novel, as sits probably in the middle of being a traditional mystery and literary fiction. Mas is very broken in this novel and not that likable at times. And I use a lot of dialect. BACHI, for instance, means "what goes around, comes around."

I feel that SUMMER OF THE BIG BACHI captures a community of people that you probably never knew existed. They have survived and thrived through experiences you couldn't imagine. This summer, spend a few days in Mas Arai's world. It will be a fresh, and unique experience and probably one you won't forget.

You can read reviews and a sample right here. Or if you're on Nook, here.

GO TO TOP SUSPENSE GROUP RIGHT NOW FOR MANY GREAT SUMMER READS-

http://topsuspense.blogspot.com/

Creepiest moments in Doug Hutchison's TV debut with teen wife

Creepiest moments in Doug Hutchison's TV debut with teen wife FROM SALON

ED here: Somehow this was one scandal I'd missed. But wow. This fits into Bill Maher's map of the states where you can marry your first cousin. Or your sister. :)

The 51-year-old actor and his child bride go on "Good Morning America" to show how in love they are. It backfires VIDEO
BY DREW GRANT

There is an awkward moment (just one?) during today's "Good Morning America" profile with Doug Hutchison and his wife, Courtney Stodden, when Lara Spencer just puts it out there. "There is that joke: 16 will get you 20 [years in jail]," say the interviewer. Hutchison, who starred in "The Green Mile" and played Hector on "Lost," seemed to mull this over before replying "16 will get you 20 ... if you're doing something illegally."

Doug married the aspiring country singer last month, and when Us Weekly picked up the story, it became an overnight media scandal. You'd almost feel bad for these two -- who really did do everything by the book to make sure their marriage was legit and had the blessing of her parents -- until they started using this uncomfortable nuptial announcement to get more media attention. It would be one thing if they were looking for privacy, out from under the public eye. But Courtney's got a singing career that she evidently thinks her 51-year-old husband can help her with, and there's a reality show they're trying to pitch. Besides, how else can they show the world how sacred their love is unless they go on TV and talk about it?

Below, the video from today's interview, along with the five most cringe-worthy moments from the whole affair.

1. Doug saying he was unaware of Courtney's age when she first hit on him. On the Internet. Which is where they fell in love.
2. Courtney telling the world that she's an old soul. And hasn't had any plastic surgery. And was a virgin until her wedding. She's just, like, the perfect Christian.
3. Courtney's mom's response to Doug: "I can feel my daughter's love for you. I can feel it inside of my heart." Doug is older that Courtney's father.
4. The part where they jokingly talk about how he's a pedophile and her parents are pimps and she's a whore. Ha ... ha?
5. The part where 39 states allow 16-year-old teens to get married to people who would otherwise be convicted of statutory rape for touching them. And the part where only six states allow gay people to marry.
Drew Grant is a staff writer for Salon. Follow her on Twitter at @videodrew. More: Drew Grant

Why Sam Fuller

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Ed here: I ran across this in Senses of Cinema and thought it was an interesting take on Sam Fuller.

Why Samuel Fuller?
by Tag Gallagher

Tag Gallagher is the author of John Ford and The Adventures of Roberto Rossellini and has appeared in Cinéma 0, Trafic, Cinémathèque and Cahiers du Cinéma. More of his work can be found on his website.



Why Samuel Fuller?

Many people will associate Samuel Fuller less for any of his films than for his "guest appearance" in Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou in 1965. Ferdinand Griffon (Jean-Paul Belmondo) runs into him at a Paris party and asks, "I've always wanted to know, what is cinema, exactly?", and is told, in English, that, "A film is like a battleground. It's love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word: emotion."

The reply was quadrupally appropriate. First, because Fuller was a warrior. Fuller had fought World War II as a private in the US Army, in a division known as The Big Red One, in Algeria, Sicily, Omaha Beach, the battle of the Bulge and the Falkenau death camp.

Second, because Fuller was famous for talking in headlines. He had started selling newspapers in New York when he was 11 and, by 17, was a full-fledged crime reporter and cartoonist. And his films have the feel of tabloid journalism: a bizarre story; violence; and a terse, hard-hitting approach that emphasizes action and conflict.

Third, because no one better than Fuller epitomized the sort of unsung filmmaker that critics like Godard and François Truffaut had been championing in the 1950s, at the moment that the 'heresies' of the politique des auteurs and Hollywood-as-art were making their biggest impact. Fuller's films were cheap. They exploited commercial genres. They made money and were despised – when they were noticed at all. But Fuller's success gave him independence. He not only directed, he wrote and produced. He was the complete auteur. And his movies shouted out powerful emotions of pain and despair, of the absurdity of a world without God, of looking into the heart of darkness of the wreck of post-war civilization. Fuller was thus in many ways an inspiration behind the first films of the Nouvelle Vague.

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http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2009/fe...