Ed Gorman's Blog, page 210

R.I.P., Uncle Leo

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I've mentioned before that the older I get the more I appreciate people in whatever calling who make life pleasanter for me. Jack Warden is my favorite character actor of all time but there have been dozens of others from Ted Knight (Ted Baxter) to Roland Young and Billie Burke in the Thirties. My favorite Seinfeld character was Uncle Leo. His working class viewpoint was a true (if sometimes annoying) contrast to the rather spoiled take of the four main characters. He improved every scene he was in. So long, Len.

Here's a salute to Uncle Leo. The link will take you to a sampling of his best scenes.

Matt WilsteinFounder, Gotcha Media
Posted: February 17, 2011 09:02 AM
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RIP Len Lesser: Uncle Leo's Funniest 'Seinfeld' Scenes (VIDEO)

Len Lesser, the actor who portrayed Jerry Seinfeld's Uncle Leo on Seinfeld, died yesterday at the the age of 88. Let's look back at some of the funniest ways he annoyed his nephew over the years.

More comedy videos at: GotchaMediaBlog.com

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-wi...

Forgotten Books: How Like An Angel Margaret Millar

How Like an Angel by Margaret Millar

I've always held the opinion that some writers are just too good for the mass market. This is a true of a number of literary writers but it's also true of at least one writer of crime fiction, the late Margret Millar. For all her many deserved awards, she never became the enormous commercial success she deserved to be.

For me she's the single most elegant stylist who ever shaped a mystery story. You revel in her sentences. She used wit and black humor in the direst of novels long before it was fashionable in the genre. And she was a better (and much fairer) bamboozler than Agatha Christie.

I recently reread her How Like and Angel and its richness, its darkness, its perverse wit make me repeat what I've said many times before--if this isn't the perfect mystery novel, it comes damned close.

The story, complex as it becomes is simple in its set-up. Private eye Joe Quinn, having gambled away all his money, begins hitchhiking from Reno to Caifornia. Along the way he sees the Tower, the symbol of a religious cult that eventually offers him not only shelter but a chance to put his skills to use. Sister Blessing asks him to find a man named Patrick O'Gorman. The man is dead. Which makes Quinn suspicious of why she wants him located.

Among its many pleasures is the way this novel, published in the early sixties, anticipates some of the fringe cults that would grow out of the flower power days. There's more than a touch of ole Charlie Manson in the Tower. Millar does world building here--not unlike a science fiction writer at work--giving us a look at a group of varied individuals who have been driven here because they could not cope with the world and its cruelty and deceits. Some are insane, some are sweet and pathetic and a few are diabolical. There is great strangeness here and Millar presents it with poetic force and humor.

The mystery itself is truly baffling. In following it down Quinn goes into a nearby town reconstruct the curious history of O`Gorman. Who was he really? The daylight town scenes contrast with the shadowy ones at the Tower but it is in the daylight that the true darkness of Quinn's journey is exposed. It always puts me in mind of the end of Whatever Happened To Baby Jane—when Jane escapes the gloom of their house to reach the beach—the searing sunlight crueler to her than anything her sister did. Night suddenly seems a blessing.

Just about everybody who's ever read Margaret Millar has wondered why she isn't known at least half as well as her husband Ken Millar/Ross Macdonald. In her own way she was certainly his equal.

"You Aren't Too Smart, Are You? I Like That in a Man"

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Ed here: Great post on the film on the TCM movie blog on the film "Body heat."

"You Aren't Too Smart, Are You? I Like That in a Man"
Posted by suzidoll on January 31, 2011

If this isn't my favorite line of dialogue in a film, it's at least in the top five. Fans of the modern-day film-noir classic Body Heat will recognize this oft-quoted line from the scene in which femme fatale Matty Walker first meets the clueless protagonist, Ned Racine. The line is not only witty but also reveals Matty's opinion of Ned and serves as a warning of her intentions to use him. That Ned ignores the subtext of her joke proves her opinion of him to be true. The line becomes richer upon repeated viewings of Body Heat because we know how Matty and Ned's story plays out. Clever viewers familiar with the film noir genre may not need repeated viewings to predict the end game. As soon as Matty strolls across the screen in her deceptively white dress, we know that she is the predatory femme fatale, and Ned's days are numbered. Her provocative line of dialogue merely clinches it. I recently watched Body Heat again, and it made me long for those days of well-crafted Hollywood films with appealing adult characters, particularly strong women—even if they were bad to the bone.

Unbelievably, this year marks the 30th anniversary of Body Heat, which introduced a new generation to film noir, launched the careers of stars William Hurt and Kathleen Turner, and marked the directorial debut of Lawrence Kasdan. With its brazen sex scenes, cynical tone, and rich atmosphere, Body Heat became a hit with modern audiences who had lost touch with the original noir cycle of the 1940s and 1950s. Kasdan, who had mined the serials and adventure films of the 1930s and 1940s to cowrite Raiders of the Lost Ark, similarly borrowed from the original cycle of film noir to construct Body Heat. The film's story of small-time lawyer Ned Racine who is seduced by Matty Walker into killing her husband for the money is classic noir wrapped in a new package.

http://moviemorlocks.com/2011/01/31/&...

Baretta Does Burbank

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Ed here: I've been telling you for years that one of the most sophisticated, interesting and memorable sites on the net is News From Me by Mark Evanier who has been involved in virtually every form of writing and show business far decades. An extremely bright, generous, unassuming man he charts show business old and new from angles nobody else even thinks of. And the writing is always polished and smart. Here's a post from yesterday.


Baretta Does Burbank

I didn't get to the Hollywood Show out in Burbank this weekend but friends who did report quite an event because of one guest...Robert Blake. Blake was there to sign autographs for money along with many other guests, including Angie Dickinson, Alan Thicke, Rich Little, June Foray and about five dozen others.

Saturday morn, Blake got into a yelling match with the show's organizer. Some thought it might escalate into a hitting match but it did not. The issue seems to have been that Blake was placed in a side area — a place where the event always puts one of its bigger attractions. He had a sizeable lineup of folks willing to shell out thirty dollars for a signed photo but it did not seem to him as long a line as, say, Angie Dickinson's. Blake felt he was being hidden away...I guess because of his notoriety or something. The organizers assured him he was getting the same treatment that stars like Henry Winkler and Mickey Rooney had received. At some point, the arguing reached the stage where security was called in and Blake was asked to leave. (One thing that didn't help Mr. Blake keep his temper in check: One person seeking Blake's autograph asked him to sign a couple of menus from Vitello's Restaurant.)

Blake was banned from the premises but Sunday afternoon, to the surprise of all, he was back. He apologized to those present and announced his intention to give out free signed photos to anyone who wanted one. This did not endear him to the other celebrities present who were trying to sell theirs. They watched as their lines disappeared and all the attendees flooded over to line up for Blake's freebees or at least to watch the drama. Blake was asked to leave again so he got up on a chair and proclaimed that he'd be giving out free pictures in the parking lot. The crowd moved out there with him and the remaining guests began packing to leave. Before long, hotel security and/or Burbank police officers were asking him to depart the parking lot. TMZ has more details and some grainy video.

So...anyone surprised by any of this?

Charles Bukowski...for Valentine's Day

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Nobody's poetry say Valentine's Day better than...Charles Bukowski's? I've been reading and admiring both his poetry and prose for more than thirty years. He explains the contemporary world just about as well as anybody I've read. But as a messenger for Valentine's Day? The following is from Jacket Copy in The Los Angeles Times.


Slake does Bukowski for (almost) Valentine's

The people at Slake magazine have teamed up with the Huntington Library to offer a special tour of the Bukowski exhibiton at 3 p.m. Feb. 13, followed by a private reception. That evening, Slake presents a love-and-Bukowski-themed reading at nearby Vroman's in Pasadena.

Those who pay $60 for the Slake tour will get admission to the Huntington Library, Gallery and Gardens and a guided tour of the Bukowski exhibit by its curator, Sue Hodson, who is the Huntington's curator of literary manuscripts. Tickets for the Slake tour are limited; the Bukowski exhibit's final day will be Feb. 14.

After the tour, attendees will be given a photographic print of Bukowski's manual typewriter, signed by photographer Anne Fishbein, and hustled off to the new Euro Pane Bakery for a private reception.

All that will be followed by a public reading at Vroman's to celebrate Slake's second issue. Called "Love and Bukowski," it focuses on the poet, who is the focus of pieces by Laurie Ochoa and Geoff Nicholson in the new Slake, and on love. But it promises to be anything but sentimental -- while he often wrote of love, Bukowski wrote poems such as "Prayer for Broken-Handed Lovers," "Love Is A Piece Of Paper Torn To Bits," "Inverted Love Song" and the poetry collection "Love is a Dog From Hell."

Phoenix Wordshop

Ed here: These are friends and co-workers of mine. I can't say I'm impartial in recommending them but I can say that given the years they've spent working as writers and editors--the latter including some very big names--I know that your experience with them will be of the utmost professionalism and editorial savvy. Between them they've worked with just about every publishing house and editor writers of every genre would likely submit to. And on top if it, they're nice people to work with. Here's how to contact them: http://www.phoenixwordshop.com/


Phoenix Wordshop

Home Page
About Us
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Our Process
Submission Form
Sample Editing Agreement
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Welcome to Phoenix Wordshop, dedicated to helping each manuscript be the best it can be.

We bring both passion and professionalism to every manuscript we edit. Our founders (John Helfers, Larry Segriff, and Rosalind Greenberg) have more than fifty years of combined experience working in the publishing industry and have edited or written hundreds of novels and non-fiction books—many of which have appeared on the New York Times bestseller list.

Whether you're looking to submit your book to a traditional publisher or self-publish it on your own, Phoenix Wordshop can help you to improve your work and increase your chance of success.

Content copyright 2011. Phoenix Wordshop. All rights reserved.

DAVE ZELTSERMAN - TWO REVIEWS

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Ed here: Two reviews of Dave Zeltserman's books. I read Outsourced in ms. before it was published and thought than
and think now that it is not only a major novel but also one that nails the American economic dictatorship. The second review is of an anthology Dave, Marty Greenberg and I put together to illustrate how certain kinds of western fiction are definitely noir.

The American dream turns to crime in Zeltserman's latest
By Ed Siegel
February 11, 2011

The middle-class dream has turned into a nightmare for Dan Wilson. From the outside his life looks pretty good — a nice house in the Boston suburbs, an attractive wife, two good kids, plentiful friends.

THE BOSTOM GLOBE
ED SIEGEL

OUTSOURCED
By Dave Zeltserman
Serpent's Tail, 313 pp.,
paperback, $14.95
But it's all unraveling. He lost his job as a software engineer when the company he worked for went out of business. And with the job went his insurance (this is pre-Obama America), making the onset of retinitis pigmentosa particularly dicey.

This is the setup for another of Dave Zeltserman's local hero or antihero novels, "Outsourced.'' Wilson, like one of the steelworkers in "The Full Monty,'' decides he and his friends should go into a different line of work, seeing that there isn't much calling for a 48-year-old software programmer in the States. His idea is a bit more radical than the stripteasing steelworkers, though. He decides that he and his friends should rob the bank that hired him and then outsourced the software development.

The book's another feather in the noirish cap of Zeltserman, though it was actually written in 2004 before "Pariah'' and "Killer,'' two volumes of his excellent ex-con trilogy (third being "Small Crimes''), and the even better supernaturally tinged "The Caretaker of Lorne Field.''

And here again, Zeltserman manages to tell a riveting story in the straightforward, personality-driven manner at which he's so accomplished. There's no purple in his prose even though he obviously has learned lessons of the genre from masters like Jim Thompson. His characters aren't as hard-bitten, which perhaps is why it's easier to identify with them.

There is, though, one uncharacteristic misstep in "Outsourced.'' The likable Wilson, no matter how desperate his circumstances, seems far too smart to surround himself with the psycho killers he ends up with, two of whom are also software engineers.

Zeltserman is no doubt having some fun here. He did, after all, give up his day job as a software engineer himself to pursue a life of crime, even if (presumably) he keeps his larceny limited to the written page.

But that's an in-joke. With friends like Wilson's it's no wonder that the robbery is fraught with problems and enough extreme manifestations of personality disorders to make Quentin Tarantino blush. (In fact, movie rights have been sold.) Wilson's cohorts — there's also a relatively normal Indian engineer in on the heist — threaten to drag down the book, particularly in the middle section, with their nutty behavior.

Fortunately, two other characters — a cop and a Russian mobster — are much more believable and interesting, so "Outsourced'' rights itself in the aftermath of the bank robbery as Wilson tries to stay one step ahead of the cop, the Russkie, and his increasingly suspicious wife, who had other things in mind when she told him he needed to bring in more income.

There are similarities to other films and novels about ordinary people running afoul of the forces of law and disorder, such as "A Simple Plan'' and "No Country for Old Men,'' though there's none of the existential pretentiousness of Cormac McCarthy here. Zeltserman seems to be after more concrete emotional resonances with Wilson's ultimate predicament, and this is where he really shines.

Will Wilson get away with it? Should we be rooting for him to get away with it? I think if he had had better taste in friends, those questions would be even harder for readers to wrestle with. But still, as the body count gets higher and you wonder how things are ever going to tie up satisfactorily, Zeltserman drives the plot forward with a craftiness that results in an ending as sharp as "The Caretaker'' or any of his other books.

You can outsource software engineering, but so far at least you can't outsource crime writing as good as Zeltserman's.

Freelance writer Ed Siegel can be reached at esiegel122@comcast.net.

© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.

THE LIBRARY JOURNAL

On Dangerous Ground: Stories of Western Noir. Cemetery Dance. Mar. 2011. c.404p. ed. by Ed Gorman & others. ISBN 9781587671920. $30. F
Masters of the macabre Gorman (Dead and Alive), Dave Zeltersman (The Caretaker of Lorne Field), and Martin H. Greenberg (The Dean Koontz Companion; Women of the Night) present this anthology of 21 Western-themed stories designed to leave readers screaming for more. Twists of fate and wisps of pure evil subtly wind throughout these chilling tales contributed by a variety of crime fiction and Western authors (Ken Bruen, Harry Shannon, Jeremiah Healy, Bill Crider, James Reasoner, and Robert Randisi). Unexpectedly, they spring forth as the reader (immersed in the virtues of right causes championed by rugged Western heroes) becomes aware of the fetid nature immersing them all. This is classic noir fiction at its very best.
Verdict This skillfully crafted anthology will have great appeal to fans of noir fiction, pulp fiction, and Westerns. The escapism provided through journeying into the bleak shadow-side of human nature allows readers to be guided into a more hopeful reality.—Melody Ballard, Pima Cty. P.L. Tucson, AZ

It's not me...it's him

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Jennifer Aniston (left) and Adam Sandler in "Just Go With It"

Ed here: I've seen maybe half a dozen Adam Sandler movies and thought all of them were poor. Junior high humor and stories built to accomodate gags rather than the other way around (I know, I know--the gags are the centerpieces of many good comedies but not in his case). I didn't even think he was funny on SNL. To me he was about one step up from David Spade, whose continued success baffles me more even than quantam physics. I used to think it was just me...but no, at least a few others find Sandler empty and annoying too. Anyway there's a piece on Sandler in Salon today that I thought was worth reading.

"Just Go With It": Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Nicole Kidman and a sheep
The comedian's latest film, "Just Go With It," offers poop jokes, boob jokes -- and Nicole Kidman hula dancing

BY ANDREW O'HEHIR

"Just Go With It" is an Adam Sandler comedy, which means it bears only a superficial relationship to the customary conventions of moviemaking, and also that there's no use getting all worked up about that. Now, those who collect pop culture effluvia in their heads (such as me) will be interested to know that this farce about a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who pretends to be married in order to get laid is in some sense a remake of the 1969 Walter Matthau-Ingrid Bergman-Goldie Hawn movie "Cactus Flower," which was itself based on a play by Abe Burrows which was itself based on a French play. (There will be a quiz.) In other words, Adam Sandler, despite all the all-American gags about poop and men getting kicked in the 'nads, is a cheese-eating surrender monkey who hates our freedom. Any further questions?

It's tempting to suggest that Sandler makes such horrifyingly vacuous films, in which absurd gags float around in a killing void resembling outer space, because he is cynical or does not care. I think this is verifiably false. On the contrary, the marketplace has repeatedly proven that the public prefers Sandler in laid-back, recovering-doofus roles where he barely pretends to act, and where such minimal plot and characterization as exist serve only to get us from one ridiculous comic setup to the next. Occasionally Adam gets the drama-school bug and works with some director who isn't his longtime crony Dennis Dugan, and the results, as in Paul Thomas Anderson's "Punch-Drunk Love" or James L. Brooks' "Spanglish," are hotly debated by film critics and ignored by everybody else.

for the rest go here:
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/mo...

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"With A Smile For The Ending" by Lawrence Block

In addition to writing fiction, I've spent the last quarter century reading fiction for anthologies I've edited or co-edited. Pretty cool duty given my affection for the short story.

Occasionally I'll pick up an anthology I had a hand in and reread some of the stories. Most of them hold up pretty well. A few don't read quite as well as they did originally but even more interesting--a few of them are masterpieces I failed to recognize as such at the time.

Lawrence Block's "With a Smile For The Ending" was first published in 1966 and I've never had the opportunity to republish it. I know I must have read it. Block is one of a handful of writers I hold as idols. But I must have read it in the period after I leapt off the roof of a thirty-story building and landed on my head, thus temporarily damaging my fragile literary sensibilities. I liked it but I didn't l-o-v-e it.

But last night as I read it I realized how rich it is in character, how masterful it is in structure and how apt it is in its observations about life, literature and death.

A young Irisher named Tim Riordan signs on as the work companion of dying novelist Joseph Cameron Bane. Riordan is thrilled with the job because he has long loved Banes' novels about life in this small town where Riordan now lives. The murder of a woman stirs Bane from his ongoing boozy stupor. These are the people he'd written about for decades (though he stopped writing some years ago) and he knows that somewhere in his town there is a murderer.

At this point Block cleverly sets up a Nero Wolfeian-Archie Goodwin situation. Riordan goes into town to dig up all the information he can on the men Bane has listed as suspects and Riordan then reports his facts and observations back to his employer. It is during these conversations that Block really shines. He's always struck me as particularly wise about the human condition and his wisdom is on full display here as Bane discusses what he sees as his failed literary life and his sensible if melancholy thoughts about death.

"With A Smile For An Ending" is Block ten years into his career. Everything is in place including the magnificent sentences and the stubborn need to look beyond the trite to the truth.

$1.99 for A Creative Kind of Killer by Sandra Scoppettone

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If you've been reading Sandra Scoppetone's blog, as you should, you'll know that Sandra has now started putting some of her fine novels on e books. A Creative Kind of Killer is a special favorite of mine. Fortune Fanelli is a great character and Sandra gives us an indelible portrait of Soho and environs.

Here's a review from The Library Thing:

Surprise after surprise assures a fast paced and suspenseful foray into the darker reaches of New York's art scene.

Fortune Fanelli, ex-cop turned private investigator (thanks to a smart investment) and a single parent of two, sets himself to the task of finding a young woman's killer, whose trail snakes along the underbelly of Manhattan's arty SoHo, where drug smugglers, runaway children, and legions of hustlers crowd.

http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Kind-K...

What're you waiting for? Huh?

All this and for one $1.99 on Kindle.