Ed Gorman's Blog, page 215

Little Fockers - Little Success

[image error]

[image error] ****************************

Ed here: This long paragraph from Deadline Hollywood http://www.deadline.com/2010/12/littl... tells you just how movies (and sausages) sometimes get made.


1. Little Fockers (Universal) NEW [3,536 Theaters]
Wednesday $7.2M, Thursday $7.1M, Friday $5M, Saturday $14.5M
3-Day Weekend $34M, Cume $48.3M

This was supposed to be the big get-out-the-audience Christmas weekend family comedy, and exit polling showed the audience was 57%/43% female vs. male, and 53%/47% under vs over age 30. Granted, the Christmas Day total was almost 3 times Christmas Eve. But these are Universal's own less-than-encouraging numbers as well as 3-day weekend and 5-day holiday cumes for this third in the Meet The Parents/Meet The Fockers franchise starring Robert de Niro and Ben Stiller, with the Friday and Saturday estimates for Little Fockers only about 75% of the take for the same exact play period of Meet The Fockers which also opened during the Christmas holiday. Watching the sausage being made when it came to this major studio laugher wasn't pretty. At one point, Universal contemplated replacing director Paul Weitz with producer-writer John Hamburg on The Little Fockers. But that would have resulted in a Directors Guild dust-up. Plus, Adam Fogelson had just taken over as Uni Pictures chairman and didn't want to throw the already traumatized studio into a worse funk. So the decision was made to fix the movie in post. Weitz, Hamburg, Stiller, and Jay Roach spent two months going through the footage and finalized a week of pickups with all the principal cast. So Universal scheduled more than half a dozen full-blown scenes, including 4 with Dustin Hoffman who originally had been written out of the threequel when the studio couldn't reach a deal with him. But Hamburg and Roach helped convince Dustin to reprise his role opposite Barbra Streisand and he didn't come cheap. This is now at least a $100M budget film. Universal continued to spin that Little Fockers could have gone out "as is" but the studio "wanted to make it better as an investment in the future of the franchise." I always thought this threequel would kill the studio's golden goose -- and with only 9% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and a "B-" CinemaScore, it likely did.

Richard S. Wheeler; Noirboiled Notes

[image error] ****************************

Ed here: I was going to quote parts of Richard Wheeler's piece from his Curmugdeon's Diary (http://richardswheeler.blogspot.com/2...) but it's done so well I'm reprinting the entire post. Thanks, Richard.

(HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!)

Into the Sunset by Richard S. Wheeler

Ron Charles, the Washington Post's gifted fiction reviewer, began a review of a literary story set in the West published by Little, Brown, with this:

By Ron Charles
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
When people talk about genre fiction, their list peters out somewhere after romance and sci-fi - long before they get down to westerns, those once-mighty bestsellers that now seem as quaint as leather fringe. (Quick: Who won this year's Spur Award?) You don't have to be all that old to remember an era when the sun rose every day on novels about cowboys and horses, but two decades after Louis L'Amour took his boots off, Bantam is publishing his books in "Legacy Editions," a sclerotic label if there ever was one. Cormac McCarthy has left horses for the apocalypse. And reviewing a Larry McMurtry novel last year, our reviewer said, "The prose seems summary in nature, imparting a 'let's get this over with' quality."

Them would be fightin' words if anybody still cared.

Richard: The novel he reviews is contemporary, ranch-oriented, and bears no resemblance to traditional western fiction. It should not be called a western at all. It is simply a rural story set in modern Arizona, with a woman author and heroine, which is what attracted Charles's interest.

He is certainly expressing a reality that can't be rationalized away. Only Pinnacle and Berkley have significant western lines, and these depend heavily on erotic fiction (Berkley) or gunman stories with high body counts (Pinnacle). The ranch western is pretty hard to find these days, as is the trail drive novel, as well as the mining camp story and the Indian Wars story. The subgenre fur trade story is about gone too. Mustangers, wagon train masters, gold-seekers, homesteaders, Pony Express, nesters, vigilantes, rustlers, scouts, buffalo hunters, pretty much gone.

The genre western isn't dead, and won't die soon, but don't expect any literary Viagra to change things.

---------------------------Noirboiled Notes

Here's a site that all stripe of noir fans should enjoy. David Rachels reviews the noirish world with brief punchy overviews that reveal an eclectic and highly opinionated mind. So far I only agree with about half of his judgements but he writes so well I have to credit his observations. A literate, lively site that will introduce new noir fans to the full spectrum of the the genre--and serve as a refresher course for long time fans like myself.

http://noirboiled.blogspot.com/

DANGER IS MY BUSINESS Lee Server

[image error]
*****************************************************************
[image error]


Ed here: Last night I talked about Lee Server's excellent biography of Robert Mitchum. Here's Lee's masterful take on the pulps.
Used copies are readily available. (From 2009)

DANGER IS MY BUSINESS by Lee Server

Before he became known for his excellent biographies of Robert Mitchum, Ava Gardner and Samuel Fuller, Server wrote and co-edited several books about noir. I collaborated with him on two of them. His knowledge of noir films made me feel like the tourist I am.

He also wrote one of the finest books on pulp fiction I've ever read, Danger is My Business. It's filled with full colors of cover from every genre of pulps and stories about the writers and artists and editors who made them so successful for two decades. Just one example--do you know how Myrna Loy got her last name? I didn't. It turns out the mysterious Peter Ruric, author of Fast One and several classic hardboiled Black Mask stories, gave it to her when she was still a dancer in a nightclub. Very little is known about Ruric who's real name was George Sims and who was born not far from Cedar Rapids.

Each genre gets it own chapter-horror, adventure-western, private eye, romance and sex, hero pulps and science fiction as well as a chapter on the so-called Fiction Factories that ruled pulp land.

The romance and sex chapter surprised me. These pulps took real risks given the prevailing morality of the era. Robert Leslie Bellems set the tone for the naughty hardboiled male writers while women turned in the real erotica.

Same with the horror pulps. Looking at the covers I'm struck by how many of them depicted female bondage. The scantily clad (and usually great looking) heroines were always tied up by some fiend.

We all know how a lot of blurbs work. One writer wants to help another writer so he praises the book. You can usually tell when the blurb writer is log rolling. "I don't think I've ever read a novel as stupendously suspenseful or as monumentally wonderful or as Nobel-worthy as Sure I Killed, I Killed Him Good. And there's print on every page! Honest!"

But here are two blurbs that ring true for sure.

"Danger is My Business Takes me back forty years to my beginnings. Thank God for the pulps!" Elmore Leonard

"Danger is My Business is pure gold. It is so much fun to read. Lee Server's enthusiasm is well-matched to a writing style so witty and a knowledge of the subject so wide-ranging that Danger I My Business is a total page-tuner, as involving as any of the magazines he's opened for us." Donald E. Westlake

This is a book that belongs in your library.

Robert Mitchum - Lee Server

[image error] ****************************

[image error]

I first got to know Lee Server by reading his books. He's written some of the finest work ever done on the worlds of hardboiled and noir. I was lucky enough to work with him on a few of them. One of his finest books is his biography of Robert Mitchum. I've started rereading it again and I'm learning a lot more the third time through. If you're interested in Mitchum, Hollywood or a career arc that defied categorizing, this fact-packed well-written biography is for you. This is an interview Lee did at the time of the book's publication. The entire thing is well worth reading.

LEE: Mitchum was never BIG box office like a John Wayne or . . . arggh . . . Harrison Ford or Stallone. He was never at the right studio, never got the "good" parts or the obvious prestige jobs. To people who know old movies only from catching one of those network "AFI Presents Tom Hanks Presents the Fifty Greatest Crying Scenes" specials he's a minor figure perhaps. But he has always had a strong and rather rabid following--and a diverse following, I mean from intellectuals to tough blue collar guys (and gals)--and there are folks who have found things in Mitchum as an artist and to an extent as a person, found someone who speaks to them, or for them--his persona, his style, his outlook on life. Of course all the great iconic stars offer some sort of instructional appeal but Mitchum I think is more complex, more poetic. You asked if I think his appeal will continue to last and grow. I think so very much. And my publisher and creditors hope so too.

ALAN: The Mitchum book presents an extremely paradoxical man. It appears that he was talented, charming, intellectual and well liked while conversely being a serial philanderer, alcoholic, crude, and occasionally cruel. Did your research and writing lead you to form any conclusions about Bob Mitchum, the man or do the facts simply speak for themselves?

LEE: Mitchum's life was an ongoing tussle--sometimes a bloody brawl--between these conflicting sides of his nature, the sensitivity, the poetry, the gracious, laxy [sic], live-and-let-live side of him and the darkness, the violence, the compulsion to piss, figuratively and--as readers of the book will know--literally, on everything. He was self-destructive and often just plain destructive. Often his behavior, his decisions and comments were inexplicable. People who knew him for decades, people who knew him well for his entire life, confessed they could not understand all that made him tick. I lay out all the various and possible motives for his behavior but I let the reader ponder the riddle of Mitchum without pretending I hold the solution. I wanted, in fact, this unresolvedness, this mystery, to hang over the reader at the end. Don't know if it worked, but I tried.

for the rest go here:
http://www.noirfilm.com/BC_Lee_Server...

Murder To Mil-Spec; Book Covers: Will They Matter For Much Longer?

[image error] ****************************


Ed here: Not a bad story in the bunch and several very good ones by people such as Brendan DuBois and Dorothy Francis. I apologize for being so late with this. If you saw my office you'd know how easy it is to misplace things.

Wolfmont's 2010 Charitable Anthology

This year, Wolfmont Press has changed its focus somewhat. We still respect and honor the work that Toys for Tots does to brighten the lives of disadvantaged and deserving children.

But this year's anthology, Murder to MIL-SPEC*, goes to a cause that tightens my throat every time I think about it: making it possible for badly-injured veterans to live normal lives when they return to the United States.

This year's anthology benefits Homes for Our Troops, one of the highest-ranked charities in Charity Navigator. Go by their site, and take a look at what they do for our returning vets who have been catastrophically injured.

As a military veteran of 12+ years, I saw a lot of bad things happen to men and women. Both in war and peacetime such events occur, but the past few years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have seen a marked rise in veterans with crippling disabilities, very often caused by IED attacks. These disabling injuries often leave vets in situations where their old homes are no longer usable. When you are required to use a wheelchair and your door is at the top of a flight of stairs, or your home has doors that are 28" wide, you're in a bad situation. When you require special accommodations to get in and out of the shower, use the toilet, or even do something as simple as cook a meal or wash the dishes, your original home may no longer meet your needs. That's where an organization like Homes for Our Troops comes in.

* In case you don't know, "MIL-SPEC" means "Military Specifications" and means designed specifically for the use of the military, within close tolerances.

This year's anthology

Murder to Mil-Spec is a collection of twelve short crime fiction pieces, each one featuring veterans or active duty military personnel. Crime doesn't stop at the edge of the base, and criminals have no respect for the service a military person may have given for his or her country.



ISBN-13: 978-1-60364-028-2
234 pp., trade paperback

Retail: $12.00

Where can I buy the book?

The twelve authors in this year's anthology (in order of appearance) are:

Terrie Farley Moran
Dorothy B. Francis
"Big Jim" Williams
Elizabeth Zelvin
Lina Zeldovich
Charles Schaeffer
Howard B. Carron
Brendan Dubois
Janis Patterson
Barb Goffman
S.M. Harding
Diana Catt
Each of these authors has contributed his/her work to this cause, and is receiving no payment. Publisher profits go to Homes for Our Troops.

From Huffington Post:

Book Covers: Will They Matter For Much Longer?

Some book covers have been so iconic that they become the logo for everything including the movie--think "The Godfather" and "Jaws"--and since the mid-1800s, they've often been what makes us walk toward a book in a store, pick it up, turn it over, open it and buy it. But in an age when the eBook and eReader are taking over and changing the way we shop, what will happen to the book cover and the extremely talented people who design them? They're such an integral part of the book buying and reading experience, it's hard to imagine life without them. Even when you buy an eBook, you can see a thumbnail of the jacket. But does that matter to you? Will we see this 150-year-old ornament to a book disappear within our lifetime? Watch this video below and let us know what you think.

Quick Poll
Do book covers have much longer to live?
Nope, they're goners
At least as long as I have to live

Richard Jessup

[image error]
[image error]
*****************************************************************

Richard Jessup

I played The Cincinatti Kid the other night and as I watched I thought about what a hard mile Richard Jessup, the author of the novel, had walked before hitting it big before his novel became a major film.

We first see Jessup in the early `50s when Gold Medal was promoting him as their own angry young man. The books were thick and dealt with social themes such as race and juvenile delinquency. I haven't read them in years but I remember liking them a great deal. His mainstream work always had a hard edge. And somewhere in here he wrote radio and live TV including the science fiction series Tom Corbett. I believe that he also wrote some juvenile sf as well. Two of his long Gold Medals became movies.

His next incarnation, after the angry young man phase ended, comes in the middle to late period of that decade. Jessup, under at least two pen-names, writes crime novels and westerns. After the James Bond boom he creates a spy series that people seem to love or despise. He had a good time kidding the form. Having never cared much for Bond in any form, I appreciated the joshing.


But then...

Jessup wasn't a one-hit wonder because he wrote three or four moderately successful novels after Kid. His publishers were careful to disassociate him from his genre work. I recall seeing an edition of Kid that gave the impression this was a first novel.

But he never came close to achieving another huge seller or one as culturally important as Kid. So what if he took The Hustler as his template and used poker instead of pool? Kid was indeibly Jessup just as Hustler was indeliby Walter Tevis.

It's difficult to learn what he did exactly after the success of Kid. There were the books I mentioned but as an old paperback original writer he seemed to have a lot of time on his hands. He'd done a fair share of TV work early on, maybe he went back to that, though IMDB doesn't show much.

In the early eighties he wrote two door-stopper size suspense novels both of which were damned fine novels. My sense is that they were moderately successful. Jessup was a fine craftsman who worked comfortably in at least three different genres.

I think what we're looking at here is the career of a working writer who got awfully lucky with the best book of his life but still was never recognized for much of the memorable (memorable to me, anyway) work he did early on.

Most of his books are great reads--he was a hell of a good western writer; and his Gold Medal Wolfcop is a fine hardboiled novel. He brought a precise, evocative style to all his books and at least once a novel he fried your brain. I'm thinking here of Wyoming Jones when Jones is caught with a young Indian woman who is betrothed to the Chief. Jones is tied to a post and prepared for being burned at the stake if the young woman doesn't prove to still be a virgin. An old Indian woman is to examine her. Chandler always said that you needed to work inside the formula, give it touches that only you could bring. Jessup did that frequently.

He died way too young of lung cancer. It made me remember all those dramatic author photographs of him with a cigarette between his fingers.

From Wikipedia

His first published novel was The Cunning and the Haunted published in 1954 based on his experiences in orphanages. In the same year Jessup wrote a teleplay for Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. The novel was filmed as The Young Don't Cry in 1957 with Jessup writing the screenplay for the film with Sal Mineo as the lead.
He began writing Westerns in 1957 with Cheyenne Saturday and finishing with Chuka where he wrote the screenplay for the film of the same name for actor and producer Rod Taylor. Jessup wrote a series of five Westerns featuring Wyoming Jones under the name Richard Telfair. With his Western series ending, in the same year he wrote again as Telfair for a series of spy novels featuring Montgomery Nash. He used the name Telfair for a novelisation of Danger Man called Target for Tonight in 1962.
Inspired by The Hustler, Jessup wrote a novel of poker playing called The Cincinnati Kid that was filmed with Steve McQueen. Another of his novels The Deadly Duo was also filmed.
In 1969 he wrote Sailor based on his experiences as a merchant seaman.
Otto Preminger bought the rights to his novel Foxway for filming, but the movie was never made.[2]
His final work was Threat published in 1981.
He died of cancer.

Noir 13 by Ed Gorman

[image error]
*****************************************************************
[image error]


From Pulp Serenade tonight:

"Noir 13" by Ed Gorman (Perfect Crime Books, 2010)

Recently published by Perfect Crime Books, Noir 13 collects thirteen stories by Ed Gorman, and there isn't a bad story in the bunch. Delicately crafted and emotionally perceptive, these stories capture the best qualities of Gorman's prose. A desolate spirit pervades the book, as does Gorman's characteristic unflinching but empathetic eye for human tragedy, folly, and misery. The stories aren't without humor, and the occasional, fleeting platonic warmth shared between two characters, but on the whole these stories pack an even bleaker wallop than some of Gorman's full-length novels.

Never one to confine himself to a single genre, Gorman opens with a daring, unexpected choice. "The Baby Store" is a distopic science-fiction tale about the emotional and psychological weight of a child's death in a world in which children can be customized and made-to-order. It may be set in the future, but the reality is wholly recognizable, and the parents' trauma relatable.

"A Little Something to Believe In," co-written with Larry Segriff, follows two lost kids whose belief in a fantastic, alternate existence is the only hope in their day-to-day lives. The conclusion offers a chilling twist to the title, making it one of the coldest stories in the collection. Contrasting this is "Flying Solo," about two geezer vigilantes who use their last days alive to right the wrongs they see around them. It's a touching relationship, and a moving reflection on mortality and the necessity of human connection, two of Gorman's most important themes that he returns to time and again.

In "The Long Way Back," Gorman revisits another important theme in his work: a man who seeks atonement for failing his family in the past. In this story, successful businessman Giff Bryant returns to his hometown to try and help his alcoholic brother and his struggling family. It's a beautiful but haunting story, words that could describe many of the stories in this collection. Another standout is "That Day at Eagle's Point," which chronicles the life-long tension between childhood friends – two boys in love with the same girl – that culminates in an event as ironic as it is tragic.

Closing the collection is one of the best, "Such a Good Girl," another title that is given a dark twist by a shocking conclusion. This one is about a daughter who sacrifices everything for her cocaine-addicted mother. Here, Gorman shows that the darkest aspects of noir have nothing to do with trenchcoats and fedoras, and that the worst crimes are committed within the home by those closest to you. It's heartbreaking and all-too believable.

As despondent as the stories may be, I'd rather end this review on one of the more hopeful notes in the collection. It is a quote from "Flying Solo" that says a lot about Gorman's insight and his faith in people's good nature

"There isn't much to say when you get to this point (cancer). You just hope for as much decent time as you can get and if you've been helping people here and there you go right on helping them as long as you can."

Noir 13 is available here from Perfect Crime Books.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

[image error] ****************************

[image error]

Ed here: Whenever anybody begins arguing for or against crime fiction being real literature various titles are always put forth immediately and vociferously. It seems the same book can be used by either side. I am personally tired of the argument but I will say that one of the books I'd use to demonstrate how noir can compete in the class of world literature is They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McCoy. This is crime fiction's version of The Great Gatsby, a perfect utterance. There is no other novel in the canon like it and it is as savage today as it was in the Thirties. (To me the film was a corny Hwood failure.)

What prompts this post is a recent review of its reissue by Laura Wilson in the UK's Guardian. Quick and deft.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, by Horace McCoy (Serpent's Tail, £7.99)

Forget Raymond Chandler and his overrated ilk – Horace McCoy's 1935 novel (filmed in 1969, under the same title) is the best example of American noir ever written. Set in the great depression, amid the desperation, barbarity and pathos of a dance marathon, it is an extraordinary achievement and every bit as shocking and moving today as it must have been for its original readers. Gripping from the beginning – when we are given to understand that the narrator is being condemned to death for an unknown crime – it's the story of two losers stumbling endlessly round a grotty Hollywood ballroom in a grotesque and ultimately futile struggle for survival. The characters are both more, and less, than human, the writing is tersely perfect, and the ending almost unbearably moving. This timely reissue comes complete with an excellent introduction from the veteran British crime writer John Harvey.

Bob Levinson-Blake Edwards; Dave Zeltserman, Robert W. Walker; Vince Keenan

[image error] ****************************

Here's an email from Bob Levinson, a fine writer and true gentleman:

Hi, Ed...

A few quickie thoughts--

The Blake Edwards obits all stress his comedy work. He was equally brilliant in the crime genre, in radio, TV and film, e.g., Richard Diamond, Private Detective," "Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar," "The Lineup," "Peter Gunn," "Experiment in Terror"... At an MWA-SoCal event at the Friars Club, where we presented Blake with a lifetime achievement award, he made a point of stressing that, while he produced and directed, he considered himself a writer above all ... He couldn't make the NY Edgars ceremony in '02, to accept an honorary award, so Bill Link and I had the pleasure of presenting the Edgar to him at his home (and me the added enjoyment of sitting back and listening to those two icons trade war stories) ...

[image error]

-------------------------THREE RECOMMENDATIONS

Be sure to read Dave Zeltserman's fascinating interview with himself.
http://nigelpbird.blogspot.com/2010/1...

Robert W. Walker offers many thoughtful and intriguing insights into writing and publishing.
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/

I've mentioned before Vince Keenan's TREMENDOUS fresh take on "On The Waterfront." I believe this will be not only read but discussed for years to come. It's that original and fresh. Now you can read it for free on the Film Noir Foundation's website.
http://www.filmnoirfoundation.org/

Blake Edwards R.I.P.

[image error]
[image error] ****************************


Ed here: Blake Edwards was another person whose work gave me great pleasure over many years beginning with "Peter Gunn" and including not only the sentimental favorite "Breakfast at Tiffany's" but also the early "Pink Panthers". Here's Nikki Finke, excellent writer and Hwood overseer, talking about the night Edwards appeared at the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' latest tribute.

"The entertaining evening featured a liberal dose of clips of The Pink Panther (1964), 10 (1979), Breakfast At Tiffany's (1961), The Party (1968), and Victor Victoria, the 1982 farce that ironically brought Edwards his one and only Oscar nomination -- for his screenplay adaptation. Of course, the Academy gave him an honorary statuette in 2003 (which he accepted in his signature slapstick style: by rolling across the stage in a wheelchair). Host Walter Mirisch (whose company produced Panther and Party) then led the director through a series of observations and anecdotes about his long career. The highlights included a tale about the Paramount exec who, following a preview of Breakfast At Tiffany's, told Edwards to get rid of "that fucking song", which of course turned out to be the classic Oscar-winner "Moon River". Edwards said Audrey Hepburn told the exec, "Over my dead body." Edwards also talked about what "a pain in the ass" Peter Sellers was while confessing that the unpredictable comic genius could be schizophrenically charming at the same time. "What can you say about a guy who had nightly conversations with his dead mother?" Blake noted. Surprisingly, there were no behind-the-scenes stories about his notorious 1981 anti-Hollywood satire S.O.B. even though it was chosen to be shown in its entirety after the discussion. Blake and Julie obviously saw this as a very personal film about a producer who makes a huge musical flop starring his wife -- a Julie Andrews-style beloved star played by, well, Julie Andrews -- and then reshoots it as a soft core flick focusing on Andrews' rack. The film was inspired by Edwards' battles with Paramount over his disastrous 1970 flop Darling Lili. Everything about Edwards was bigger than life: the movies and the man and the laughs.