F.C. Schaefer's Blog, page 13
November 19, 2018
1986's VAMP: An Urban Fairy Tale or a big old piece of 80's cheese.
Two princes go on a journey to find some princesses for a ball, they go to a road house where they’ve been told the princesses can be found, but they meet an evil, blood drinking Queen instead. That’s an urban fairy tale, a premise of a cult movie, and great piece of '80s cheese.
I have heard it stated that over 600 horror films were released in America during the 1980s, sometimes more than two or three a week, and when asked to name their Top Ten list from that decade, few if any horror film fanatics will put 1986’s VAMP on their list. Despite this being a Golden Age for horror, the old school monsters – the werewolves, vampires, and ghosts – made few appearances in that decade. Two werewolf classics, THE HOWLING and AN AMERIAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON came out in 1981, and two fondly remembered films featuring the immortal undead, FRIGHT NIGHT and THE LOST BOYS would come along later in the '80s, but they were often exceptions that proved the rule. After HALLOWEEN, came FRIDAY THE THRITEENTH, and then NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, and movie screens were awash with slasher films, while ALIEN kicked off a boom in movies where some very nasty beastie eviscerated unwary humans, resulting in a lot of body horror films. And of course there were flesh eating zombies. But VAMP, which came and went very quickly in July of 1986, is one of genre those mashups that seems to have stuck in the memory of all who did bother to seek it out at the time, making it one of those “bad” movies that when you sit down and think about it, you realize was pretty damn good in its own way, or at the very least, unique.
First of all, this movie is about as '80s as it could get, a real time capsule, from the hair styles, to the clothes, to the music on the soundtrack. The lighting in the night scenes, where everything is drenched in green and red, brings to mind some of the more tacky music videos playing on MTV at the time. The two protagonists, Keith and AJ, a couple of college guys trying to rent some strippers for frat party, are right out of any raunchy teen sex comedy of the era, and for much of the first act, it looks like this is going to be another T&A epic, that is until the guys go to an out of the way club in a very bad part of LA with the intention of hiring a couple of the girls for a few hours. But when AJ slips into one of the backrooms to get it on with one of the performers, the fangs come out, and the movie takes a real turn, basically becoming AFTER HOURS with vampires, as Keith, and waitress Amaretto, desperately attempt to escape the neighborhood alive, only to repeatedly fail and end up right where they started. Meanwhile, AJ has been made a vampire against his will, and their sidekick, Duncan, just wants to get laid.
The second thing that makes VAMP so memorable is the characters, starting with the awesome Grace Jones as Katrina, the owner of the strip club, who appears to have been at it since ancient Egypt (a tip of the hat to Anne Rice?). Jones, an icon of the time, utters not a single word, she doesn’t have to, she does it all with those expressive eyes, and a very wicked cackle. It’s a great example of how not to overdo a Big Bad in a small movie. But VAMP is filled with some great supporting characters, starting with Vic, an old school show biz guy from the '50s who emcees the club. He’s portrayed by Sandy Baron, who would go on to play Jack Klompus on SEINFELD. Vic gets a couple of good scenes and some of the movie’s best lines. There is also Billy Drago, who would go on to play Frank Nitti in THE UNTOUCHABLES, as an albino street gang leader; Drago usually sounded like he was high on something in most of his roles, and this one is no exception. Gedde Watanabe, the infamous Long Duk Dong from SIXTEEN CANDLES, is Duncan, a character best described as “horny Asian geek.” Watanabe is clearly the comic relief, a role he played in most every movie, and if you find this character racially offensive, then this is not your movie. The film is also helped by the likability of the two leads, Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler as fraternity pledges, Keith and AJ. Makepeace is best remembered today for the excellent MY BODYGUARD, and makes for a good every guy lead. Rusler’s has a memorable scene with Makepeace where the newly transformed AJ asks his friend to stake him, this leads to one of the movie’s best jokes whose punch line is “Formica.” Amaretto is played by Deedee Pfeiffer, Michelle’s sister, the resemblance is obvious. It must be said that many of the scenes between the three young leads appear as if they were shot without any rehearsal or a read through ahead of time. That is part of VAMP’s charm. The movie actually made a small profit and the end certainly left open the possibility of a sequel, “Big Vampire on Campus.”
Almost every online review of VAMP mentions its plot similarities to FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, and they are clear to see: both movies center on a group of unsuspecting characters who stumble into a strip joint that is a front for a nest of vampires ruled by an evil female. And though it has never been determined if Quentin Tarantino used VAMP as an inspiration, I think horror fans found the premise to be an irresistible one, both in 1986 and ten years later. But what I think cemented VAMP’s reputation with its fans and earned it a true cult following is that somehow it managed to bridge the divide between teen sex comedy and horror and strike the right balance, something RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, another of my favorites, did very well. They don’t make films like this anymore, or even try, the popular culture has become too snarky and Meta, or to some us, just plain mean. The kind of fun Keith and AJ were looking for is now considered sexist and misogynistic by many. That said, and though I tire of seeing classics getting unnecessary remakes and reboots, I would not be averse to seeing a 21st Century remake of this 1986 cult classic. Until that happens we are left with what might strike some as a big piece of '80s cheese, but if it is, then it is Kraft all the way. Who can really hate a movie that ends with Domenico Modugno’s singing “Volare?”
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
I have heard it stated that over 600 horror films were released in America during the 1980s, sometimes more than two or three a week, and when asked to name their Top Ten list from that decade, few if any horror film fanatics will put 1986’s VAMP on their list. Despite this being a Golden Age for horror, the old school monsters – the werewolves, vampires, and ghosts – made few appearances in that decade. Two werewolf classics, THE HOWLING and AN AMERIAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON came out in 1981, and two fondly remembered films featuring the immortal undead, FRIGHT NIGHT and THE LOST BOYS would come along later in the '80s, but they were often exceptions that proved the rule. After HALLOWEEN, came FRIDAY THE THRITEENTH, and then NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, and movie screens were awash with slasher films, while ALIEN kicked off a boom in movies where some very nasty beastie eviscerated unwary humans, resulting in a lot of body horror films. And of course there were flesh eating zombies. But VAMP, which came and went very quickly in July of 1986, is one of genre those mashups that seems to have stuck in the memory of all who did bother to seek it out at the time, making it one of those “bad” movies that when you sit down and think about it, you realize was pretty damn good in its own way, or at the very least, unique.
First of all, this movie is about as '80s as it could get, a real time capsule, from the hair styles, to the clothes, to the music on the soundtrack. The lighting in the night scenes, where everything is drenched in green and red, brings to mind some of the more tacky music videos playing on MTV at the time. The two protagonists, Keith and AJ, a couple of college guys trying to rent some strippers for frat party, are right out of any raunchy teen sex comedy of the era, and for much of the first act, it looks like this is going to be another T&A epic, that is until the guys go to an out of the way club in a very bad part of LA with the intention of hiring a couple of the girls for a few hours. But when AJ slips into one of the backrooms to get it on with one of the performers, the fangs come out, and the movie takes a real turn, basically becoming AFTER HOURS with vampires, as Keith, and waitress Amaretto, desperately attempt to escape the neighborhood alive, only to repeatedly fail and end up right where they started. Meanwhile, AJ has been made a vampire against his will, and their sidekick, Duncan, just wants to get laid.
The second thing that makes VAMP so memorable is the characters, starting with the awesome Grace Jones as Katrina, the owner of the strip club, who appears to have been at it since ancient Egypt (a tip of the hat to Anne Rice?). Jones, an icon of the time, utters not a single word, she doesn’t have to, she does it all with those expressive eyes, and a very wicked cackle. It’s a great example of how not to overdo a Big Bad in a small movie. But VAMP is filled with some great supporting characters, starting with Vic, an old school show biz guy from the '50s who emcees the club. He’s portrayed by Sandy Baron, who would go on to play Jack Klompus on SEINFELD. Vic gets a couple of good scenes and some of the movie’s best lines. There is also Billy Drago, who would go on to play Frank Nitti in THE UNTOUCHABLES, as an albino street gang leader; Drago usually sounded like he was high on something in most of his roles, and this one is no exception. Gedde Watanabe, the infamous Long Duk Dong from SIXTEEN CANDLES, is Duncan, a character best described as “horny Asian geek.” Watanabe is clearly the comic relief, a role he played in most every movie, and if you find this character racially offensive, then this is not your movie. The film is also helped by the likability of the two leads, Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler as fraternity pledges, Keith and AJ. Makepeace is best remembered today for the excellent MY BODYGUARD, and makes for a good every guy lead. Rusler’s has a memorable scene with Makepeace where the newly transformed AJ asks his friend to stake him, this leads to one of the movie’s best jokes whose punch line is “Formica.” Amaretto is played by Deedee Pfeiffer, Michelle’s sister, the resemblance is obvious. It must be said that many of the scenes between the three young leads appear as if they were shot without any rehearsal or a read through ahead of time. That is part of VAMP’s charm. The movie actually made a small profit and the end certainly left open the possibility of a sequel, “Big Vampire on Campus.”
Almost every online review of VAMP mentions its plot similarities to FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, and they are clear to see: both movies center on a group of unsuspecting characters who stumble into a strip joint that is a front for a nest of vampires ruled by an evil female. And though it has never been determined if Quentin Tarantino used VAMP as an inspiration, I think horror fans found the premise to be an irresistible one, both in 1986 and ten years later. But what I think cemented VAMP’s reputation with its fans and earned it a true cult following is that somehow it managed to bridge the divide between teen sex comedy and horror and strike the right balance, something RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, another of my favorites, did very well. They don’t make films like this anymore, or even try, the popular culture has become too snarky and Meta, or to some us, just plain mean. The kind of fun Keith and AJ were looking for is now considered sexist and misogynistic by many. That said, and though I tire of seeing classics getting unnecessary remakes and reboots, I would not be averse to seeing a 21st Century remake of this 1986 cult classic. Until that happens we are left with what might strike some as a big piece of '80s cheese, but if it is, then it is Kraft all the way. Who can really hate a movie that ends with Domenico Modugno’s singing “Volare?”
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
October 25, 2018
The Alternate History race for President in 1964.
In my novel, ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964, I write about the Presidential election that never happened, the one where John F. Kennedy ran for re-election. In my book, it is a battle royale with the President’s enemies doing anything and everything to ensure his defeat, and to be fair, the Kennedy forces respond in kind. As the campaign unfolds, a wealthy Texas oilman is determined to defeat the 35th President by digging up any and all dirt that can be found on JFK, and as we all know now, there was a lot of dirt to dig in back in those days. In the following excerpt, Wade Harbinson, a Texas millionaire, has been offering some big bucks to certain individuals who have knowledge and proof of the Kennedy brothers’ dealings with the Mafia, along with JFK’s very secret and very active sex life in the White House, learns that the Kennedy brothers are putting money on the table themselves, and that he will have to up the ante if he wants to get his hands on the evidence that will seal the political doom of the Kennedy dynasty. To do that, Harbinson goes looking for potential allies with deep pockets.Excerpt:
If I were going to up the ante and compete with Kennedy money, then I would need to bring in some big artillery myself. My first call was to H.L. Hunt, a fellow Texas oilman, and someone truly after my own heart; he hated Kennedy almost as much as he hated Communism and he was most interested in what I had to say. The other was to a mutual associate who would pass a message along to the head of the United Brotherhood of the Teamsters, James R. Hoffa. I have no use for unions and the lowlifes who populate them, but if there was anybody in this great country who hated the Kennedys more than Jimmy Hoffa, I don’t know who they would be.
Mr. Hunt was quite enthusiastic after I described the details of the material Harlow had presented me, but he wanted to see the real thing before he committed any dough. Mr. Jimmy Hoffa was quite cagey at first. I had to go back and forth with some underlings, but with Bobby Kennedy’s justice department trying to send him to the Big House for a long, long stretch, he couldn’t afford to let pass a chance to take down the Kennedy brothers. And after I finally got a face to face meeting in Nashville the week Kennedy got re-nominated, I got an assurance of generous support, no doubt from the Teamsters’ pension fund. I never had a worry that I could get both Hunt and Hoffa to commit; you’re not a success in the oil business in Texas without being a good salesman.
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
September 24, 2018
The Gone series, my favorite YA books.
I am way more than a few years out of the prime demographic for the GONE series, six YA books that has been described as “LORD OF THE FLIES with super powers,” not to mention more than a little of LOST. But as I have said, a good story is a good story, no matter what the genre, and nine years ago, when I glimpsed the first book, GONE, on a table in a Barnes & Noble with a Stephen King reference on the cover, my interest was instantly piqued, and after reading the short synopsis on the back, it immediately went on my must get list for Christmas. I have been a lifelong reader of comic books and a sucker for a story where a sundry group of characters are cut off from civilization and must fend for themselves or unite or perish in the face of an adversary. In the ensuing years, I devoured the first book and its successors – HUNGER, LIES, PLAUGE, and FEAR – and enjoyed each one thoroughly, believing them to be, not only the one of the best YA series I have ever read, but one of the best scifi/fantasy series as well. In this, I have to give all credit to author Michael Grant, who has given us not just another trope ridden teen dystopia, but an epic with great and compelling characters, filled with virtues and flaws, and who undergo interesting arcs. Grant also comes up with a central premise that hooks the reader from the get-go: in the middle of a bright sunny day, every person over the age of 15 simply vanishes in a 20 mile radius from the little southern California beach town of Perdido Beach, leaving the teens and the younger children completely on their own due to an impenetrable barrier that keeps them in and the outside world out. The area within the barrier is dubbed the Fallout Alley Youth Zone or FAYZ for short. Bullies are now free to terrorize without consequence, while others can party day and night, drinking and smoking whatever they want with no worries about parents. What’s more, some kids soon start exhibiting mutant powers – the ability to shoot killing light beams from their hands, telekinesis, super strength, super speed, the ability to heal with a touch – along with mutating animal life, which includes flesh eating parasitic bugs and a pack of super nasty intelligent talking coyotes. Sides are formed, friendships are made, while others are ruptured, enemies square off as guns are drawn and used as the battle for survival begins to stretch into a week, then a month, and then a year. Meanwhile a disembodied evil alien intelligence, who appears to be responsible for the whole state of affairs, sits at the bottom of a mine shaft and plots to escape. Grant does not shy away from the violent aspects of his story; in fact, he wants the reader to be shocked by the image of a child carrying a rifle taller than themselves and using it against other children. Kids die in these, some in terrible ways, and while Grant does not dwell on the gore, you know what is going on; as an author, he clearly trusts his readers, and trusts that the teens whom these books are aimed at can more than handle some strong stuff.
One of the things I really liked about these books is that Grant treads on ground that other YA authors tiptoe around, making it plain that these young characters have sex lives, and that faith is truly important to some of them. There is more than one religious argument, and I like it that the author shows respect for all sides, and allows traumatic events and turns of fate to test the beliefs of believer and skeptic alike without ridiculing either side. And though the cast is multi ethnic, I never had the feeling that Grant had resorted to the kind of box checking diversity that seems so common in pop culture now. Albert and Dekka are black, Sanjit is from India, and Edilio is Hispanic, but their ethnicity is not what makes them stand out, it is their personalities and what they do that makes them so memorable, whether it is Albert’s ability as an entrepreneur that helps keep everyone fed, or Edilio’s courage and leadership when things get tough despite him being an illegal immigrant and the ultimate outsider at the beginning. The strong emphasis on characterization, more than anything else, is what makes the GONE series work and what sticks in the readers mind afterward. Sam, the hero of the books, might be a natural born leader, but is often overwhelmed and pushed to the breaking point; his girlfriend, Astrid, might be a genius, but she can’t figure a way out of the FAYZ; Quinn is Sam’s best friend, but fear and jealously propels him toward an act of betrayal; Orc is the bully who becomes a literal monster and is overcome with regret; Lana can heal with a touch of her hands, but then has to flee the pain of her patients; Cain, Sam’s twin and rival, is a private academy bad boy, and does anything and everything to make himself a king. All of them, and many more, a rise and fall and rise again to the challenges the story throws at them, only the psychopathic sadist, Drake, could be considered an irredeemable bad guy without possibility of redemption. Michael Grant was well past 50 when these books were written, yet he has no problem writing totally believable 21st Century teenagers.
Another secret to the success of the GONE series is Grant’s writing style, for the man knows how to keep things moving while giving us just enough description and background to paint the picture in our minds. Most of his scenes are relatively short, and he masterfully jumps POV’s multiple times in a chapter, but never lets us forget whose eyes through which we are viewing the action. He never confuses the reader or fails to let us know where we are in the story, which constantly shifts locales, no small feat for a writer to pull off. Each book is built around a standalone crisis inside the FAYZ, such as the possibility of starvation in HUNGER, or a deadly flu in PLAGUE, and he sets a clock at the start of each book and lets it tick down chapter by chapter, until the confrontation and resolution at the end – a great way to generate and keep up the suspense. I have taken up the keyboard and written a few novels myself, and published them online, and I am incredibly impressed with the way Grant pulls it all off; he writes a sprawling story with a massive cast of characters and keeps it all together in a way any aspiring writer should want to study.
I must admit that the series finale, titled LIGHT, sat on my shelf a few years, as other book reading projects grabbed my attention. I will also admit to being a little wary, because bringing a great story in for the landing can be very difficult for an author, and extremely frustrating, and potentially disappointing for the patient reader. Simply put, a great premise does not automatically guarantee a perfect resolution, as commercial concerns and reader expectations sometimes lead good writers astray. Grant has done a great job of building up the suspense and dread, and in the Giaiphage (the fusion of alien virus and human DNA) he has created a truly formidable villain. After taking over the body of the infant daughter of Cain and Diana at the end of FEAR, Gaia, as she calls herself, is a growing monstrosity, imbued with all of the mutant powers inside the FAYZ and hell bent on killing every single survivor before freeing itself and spreading destruction to the outside world. At the same time, the outside world can now see inside the barrier, and has gotten an idea of what’s going on in there, and it does not like what it sees, causing us to fear for Sam and the others who have been forced to do terrible things to survive. The adults will never understand is the unspoken dread hanging over the FAYZ. Sam and Cain are forced to work together against Gaia, Drake is reanimated (yet again), and dreams of whipping Astrid to death, Albert has run away to an island, and Quinn can’t find enough fish to keep everyone fed, and it falls to Edilio to try and hold things together in Perdido Beach.
I am happy to say that Michael Grant rose to the challenge he had set for himself and delivered an ending that satisfied; though there is a lot of suffering and death before hand, there is also redemption and sacrifice, and a farewell between two lovers that will surely bring tears to some eyes. I am also glad that Grant lets some of our characters get the fates they have earned, although some favorites do die before it is all wrapped up. If I have any criticism, it would be that Grant may have let this series run one book too many, as a lot of scenes, especially the ones where Sam, Astrid and Edilio are desperately trying to figure out how to confront the impending doom and arguing over what potentially suicidal choice they will have to make. I also applaud him for forthrightly tackling the subject of teen sexuality head on in this book, not shying away from showing safe sex between our heroes, and implying that unprotected sex between the villains is responsible for the birth of a monster. All of this would have been verboten in YA fiction a couple decades ago, and it is a welcome and stark contrast to Stephanie Meyer, who could barely write the words when it came time to acknowledge that Bella and Edward Cullen had consummated their relationship.
After the success of the Harry Potter films, and with Hollywood looking for hot YA properties, there was talk a few years back of a possible movie or TV adaptation of the GONE series. It was sold to Sony in the early 2010’s, but nothing has been green lighted. Though I like the thought of Sam and company being portrayed in a live action show, I think much of the material; especially a literal adaptation of the book, with its violence and gore inflicted by and upon children, is problematic in an era of school mass shootings. It might rub too many sensibilities the wrong way. One problem with a TV series or multiple movies would be that a young cast would rapidly age out of their roles. In an interview, Grant talked of meeting with producers who immediately wanted to make all the kids older than fourteen, more like high school seniors so they can then hire twenty something actors to play kids like they did on THE MAZE RUNNER or just about every teen show on the CW. Seeing the GONE books get the CW treatment is the last thing any fan wants to see, but with Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon producing shows right and left, anything could be possible. Shout out to Amber Grey, who did the cover art for the books, thanks to her, we already know what all the principle characters look like.
In the end, it was hard to say goodbye to Sam and Astrid, Cain and Diana, Edilio, Brianna, Quinn, Drake, Lana, Dekka, Albert and all the rest, but as every faithful reader knows by now, Michael Grant has returned to the universe begot by the FAYZE; MONSTERS, published last year, is the first part of a proposed trilogy where the alien virus that created the super teens and monsters of the GONE books has returned. I know what I’m getting for Christmas.
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmgS2
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
August 31, 2018
My thoughts on Stephen King's FINDERS KEEPERS.
In his first novel of the Bill Hodges trilogy, MR. MERCEDES, Stephen King dedicated the book to James M. Cain, in the second novel of the series, titled, FINDERS KEEPERS, the dedication went to John D. MacDonald, two great authors of crime and mystery fiction; and though King clearly admires both men’s work, he is not in their league. But as I stated in my review of MR. MERCEDES, I think King does a fine job channeling Alfred Hitchcock in these books, which are a change of pace for him, and not always to the liking of many of his diehard fans who eat up his horror epics.In FINDERS KEEPERS, the constant reader is given way more information than the characters in the story, but King uses it well to create suspense, as the unsuspecting charge ahead into harm’s way, not knowing what lies in wait for them, but we do. That there is evil lying in wait for the unwary seems to be the subject of the novel. But the true theme of FINDERS KEEPERS is the love of books, or more to the point, the love of a good story and a great character, and how they can get hold of a reader and never let go. In the opening pages, set in 1978, we meet John Rothstein, once one of the most prominent writers of post WWII America, a kind of a cross between John Updike and J.D. Salinger, who walked away from the public spotlight and became a recluse, depriving his multitude of fans any more novels featuring Jimmy Gold, a young man in search of himself in mid century America. But one of those fans, a youth named Morris Bellamy, invades Rothstein’s home, steals the many moleskin notebooks Rothstein has been using for years to hand write the further adventures of his hero, and then kills the author before leaving. In a twist of plot, Bellamy commits rape while in a drunken black out, and goes to prison for life before he can read the notebooks he has carefully buried behind his mother’s house. There they lay for decades, until 2010, when they are discovered by Pete Saubers, a kid whose family has fallen on hard times, and not just from the Great Recession, but also from the fact that Pete’s father was badly injured by Brady Hartsfield when he plowed into that crowd of job seekers at the beginning of MR. MERCEDES; the cash Pete finds in the buried trunk comes in handy after he comes up with an anonymous way to help his financially and emotionally beleaguered parents, but after a few years, the money runs out, and young Pete must find a way to turn the stolen notebooks into a windfall. Meanwhile, Morris Bellamy is paroled, and he comes out of prison meaner and crazier than ever, and the one thing he has thought about every day of his sentence is what he would do when he got out and dug up the buried treasure that only he knows about.
It is obvious from that brief synopsis, that there is a lot of plot, and a lot of twists, more than a few of them improbable, as many reviewers pointed out, so too some of the character motivations, but so what, King works very hard to create a great setup, where young Pete and mean old Morris are put on a collision course, one I could not wait to see play out. This is where King fell down on the job in my view, as the middle part of the book loses some of its momentum; and the plotting is downright clunky at times. The main problem is that the trio of Bill, Holly, and Jerome, who were central to the first book, but in FINDERS KEEPERS, have to be shoe horned into the story mid way, and as much as I liked them the first time around, they often felt like walk-ons in the story of Pete and Morris, which is a shame, because I really liked these characters, more so because their relationship is such an unlikely one. Lots of King’s fans have expressed their dislike of Bill Hodges for reasons I cannot understand, I think it’s great to have a hero who had been around more than a few blocks more than a few times, and is the wiser for it.
Pete Saubers and Morris Bellamy are two faces of the same coin; Pete is the reader who learns to love a story and a character for what it is, and what it means to them, and to find the pleasure and joy of discovering literature that speaks to something deep inside, while Morris is the toxic fan whose love becomes obsession, who wants to possess the creations of others, make them flesh and blood real, but only for themselves, only for an audience of one. And yes, I get it that King is visiting familiar ground again, as it is obvious that Morris Bellamy and Annie Wilkes would find much in common, but only after Annie had washed his cockadoodie dirty mouth out first.
In the end, I will say that FINDERS KEEPERS, along with the other Bill Hodges books, are certainly not in the class of THE STAND or THE SHINING, or even up to the level of 11-22=63, but after finishing this latest book, I do not feel that vague sense of disappointment I felt after finishing DOCTOR SLEEP or REVIVAL. And if his crime fiction does not produce characters enduring as Travis Magee, Philip Marlowe, or even Mildred Pierce, he can still spin an entertaining yarn, and on level, FINDERS KEEPERS is a winner.
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
July 30, 2018
The Hustler: The Great American Movie. My review.
THE HUSTLER is one of the essential American films of the 1960’s, right up there with BONNIE & CLYDE, THE GRADUATE, and THE WILD BUNCH, a cultural touchstone for years after its release with scenes that defined a generation. If its luster has faded in the past few decades, maybe it is because B/W films were not favorites of the MTV generation and the millennials that followed, but I think it is The Great American Movie the way The Great Gatsby is The Great American Novel, in that it is a film that challenges the viewer to consider just what makes a person a success, a failure, and how does one gain the character to become the former and avoid the latter. It is also a damn good piece of film making, filled with subtle touches that vividly bring to life a time and place, and the marginalized culture of the big city pool halls.
Most know the plot, of how cocky young pool hustler, Fast Eddie Felson, comes to New York City to challenge the legendary champ, Minnesota Fats, to a game of straight pool in Fats’ regular haunt. It’s youth challenging experience, and though Fast Eddie may well have the raw talent to beat Fats, he does not have the sense to know when to quit while he is ahead, and Fats utterly humiliates Eddie after a 25 hour marathon series of games, stripping the challenger of $18,000 in winnings and leaving him exhausted and drunk on the floor. It is a hard fall, and as brutal as any suffered by any gladiator in the arena, and the middle part of the film concerns Eddie’s quest to get back on his feet, earn enough money, and take on Fats again. Along the way, he meets, Sarah Packard, a damaged young woman and begins a relationship with her, and ultimately makes an arrangement with Bert Gordon, a sharpie with a fat wallet who is willing to stake Eddie because he knows he has talent, if not character. But while Eddie has a chance at love with Sarah, his real passion is the game, and Bert is determined to protect his investment by getting rid of the competition. It does not end well for Sarah, and the sadly wiser Fast Eddie gets what he wants, a rematch with Fats, and a settling of accounts with Bert. In the end, Eddie Felson is a success, but was the price worth it, that is the question the movie asks and it has been challenging audiences ever since.
More than its weighty themes, THE HUSTLER is a masterpiece of subtle film making, and its centerpiece is Eddie and Fats’ initial clash around the pool table, a sequence that takes up nearly a quarter of the film’s more than two hour running time. The genius of it is that you don’t have to know much about the game to follow what is happening, but it is the interaction between the characters that is what bears watching, as money changes hands, signals are sent, liquor is drunk, and how simply the washing of hands, the putting on of a coat, and the picking up of a pool cue is tantamount to putting on a sword and a shield and going into battle. It is in the way Bert Gordon sits like an Emperor in the Ames pool hall, and how he gets up and moves his chair two inches and then sits back down when a drunken Eddie tells him to move somewhere else. More than that, it is in the scene where Eddie has his thumbs broken after he hustles the wrong crew, thus making him a “cripple” like Sarah, and for the first time, he is dependent on someone else, and they both become better people for it. The picnic scene where Eddie talks to her about his love of the game and the satisfaction he gets just playing it better than anyone is a paean to true success, the kind that comes from within. There is the party in Louisville sequence, where the vapid and empty character of the well to do is made plain by the way they ignore a drunken Sarah as she lies on a bed, rolling her out of the way to retrieve a coat, or the how the homosexuality of the aristocratic Findley is suggested in the statues of satyrs and Greek Gods in his basement.
The heart and soul of THE HUSTLER lies in the casting of the four principles and the career best performances they give. Simply put, this is the film that made Paul Newman a superstar, it happens the moment when he flashes that great Golden Boy smile in the cold open scene. Fast Eddie Felson was a different kind of movie protagonist, the first of the wary anti heroes that would grace America’s movie screen as the 50’s faded into the rear view mirror and the popular culture began to more reflect the tensions in American life. Newman makes being tough and being vulnerable look sexy, and does things with this role that Frank Sinatra and Bobby Darin, who were considered for the part, could never have done. He was the front runner for the Best Actor Oscar that year, but lost to Maximilian Schell’s performance in JUDGMENT AT NUREMBURG, he would have to wait a quarter of a century before getting the award, which many consider a consolation Oscar, when he reprised Fast Eddie in Martin Scorsese THE COLOR OF MONEY. I think he should have gotten it the first time around. For those who only know Piper Laurie only as Carrie White’s mother, this movie will be a revelation, her Sarah Packard is Eddie’s true love, a lame woman who clings to her man even as she is losing him; her final scene in the hotel room with Bert, where a vile sexual act is committed, is not to be forgotten. Sarah was a role many big stars of the time would have passed on as inappropriate for their images. Laurie was rewarded with a well deserved Best Actress nomination for taking the risk. This was George C. Scott’s third movie, his Bert Gordon is shrewd and intelligent, but with no moral center whatsoever, he is the Satan of this particular hell, and Scott brings all his skills to the role, with that great voice getting to deliver some equally worthy dialogue; and nobody ever leaned in better than George C. Scott. Jackie Gleason was simply a force of nature, very familiar to audiences in 1961 from his time on TV, especially from THE HONEYMOONERS, but he had spent his many years honing a larger than life persona, and a reputation as a man who enjoyed the finer things in life. All of that is in his portrayal of Minnesota Fats, and it reminds us that this man who’s other great movie role is Buford T. Justice, was one hell of a dramatic actor, if there are any doubts, just watch him in REQUIM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT, made the next year. Murray Hamilton, who will forever be Mayor Larry Vaughn from JAWS, is the smarmy Findley; some might remember that he and Myron McCormick, who plays Eddie’s partner, Charlie, were in NO TIME FOR SERGEANTS only a few years before. And there is a direct Scorsese connection in that the Raging Bull himself, Jake LaMotta, has a cameo as a bartender.
There are some behind the scenes heroes of THE HUSTLER, starting with the director and screen writer, Robert Rossen, who spent some time in the 50’s away from Hollywood because of the McCarthy blacklisters. A onetime member of the Communist Party, he had appeared before Congressional investigators and named names. Some of this finds its way into the story in the way Fast Eddie must make a deal with the devil in form of Bert in order to do what he loves to do best. Rossen had been something of a pool hustler himself in his younger days, long before finding success as a script writer at Warner Brothers and directing such classics as BODY AND SOUL and ALL THE KING’S MEN. This project was his big comeback and he made the most of it, turning it into his greatest critical and financial success. Sadly, it would be his last one, as he made only one more movie before dying much too soon in 1966. And THE HUSTLER would be nothing without the contribution of pool champion Willie Mosconi, who taught the game to Newman before production started, did some of the trick shots himself with the help of editor Dede Allen, and has a cameo as “Willie,” the man who holds the money at Ames Pool Hall.
Scorsese’s sequel, which came out in 1986, picked up the story of Fast Eddie 25 years later, and though it took its title, THE COLOR OF MONEY, from Walter Tevis’s official follow up novel, the sequel did not use the plot of the book, but instead told the story of an older Fast Eddie, who is drawn back to the game he loves when he meets a talented kid, played by Tom Cruise, who is just as deficient in character as Eddie was at his age. My only complaint about Scorsese’s follow up, is that it had so few call backs to the original film, that many young viewers in the 80’s and later would watch MONEY over and over completely unaware that Fast Eddie had first made his appearance on the scene in 1961; their loss.
And after all these years, THE HUSTLER still speaks to us, especially to those who see it for the first time. Don’t be turned off by the B/W, watch it and meet Fast Eddie and Minnesota Fats, Bert Gordon and Sarah Packard. They still have a lot to tell us.
I discuss this movie with James Hancock on his Wrong Reel podcast, which can be found here: https://wrongreel.com/podcast/wr407-f...
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords
You can get BIG CRIMSON, my vampire horror series, on Amazon at:
https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
https://amzn.to/3XxjT2m
https://amzn.to/3EHXAQU
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmgS2
Most know the plot, of how cocky young pool hustler, Fast Eddie Felson, comes to New York City to challenge the legendary champ, Minnesota Fats, to a game of straight pool in Fats’ regular haunt. It’s youth challenging experience, and though Fast Eddie may well have the raw talent to beat Fats, he does not have the sense to know when to quit while he is ahead, and Fats utterly humiliates Eddie after a 25 hour marathon series of games, stripping the challenger of $18,000 in winnings and leaving him exhausted and drunk on the floor. It is a hard fall, and as brutal as any suffered by any gladiator in the arena, and the middle part of the film concerns Eddie’s quest to get back on his feet, earn enough money, and take on Fats again. Along the way, he meets, Sarah Packard, a damaged young woman and begins a relationship with her, and ultimately makes an arrangement with Bert Gordon, a sharpie with a fat wallet who is willing to stake Eddie because he knows he has talent, if not character. But while Eddie has a chance at love with Sarah, his real passion is the game, and Bert is determined to protect his investment by getting rid of the competition. It does not end well for Sarah, and the sadly wiser Fast Eddie gets what he wants, a rematch with Fats, and a settling of accounts with Bert. In the end, Eddie Felson is a success, but was the price worth it, that is the question the movie asks and it has been challenging audiences ever since.
More than its weighty themes, THE HUSTLER is a masterpiece of subtle film making, and its centerpiece is Eddie and Fats’ initial clash around the pool table, a sequence that takes up nearly a quarter of the film’s more than two hour running time. The genius of it is that you don’t have to know much about the game to follow what is happening, but it is the interaction between the characters that is what bears watching, as money changes hands, signals are sent, liquor is drunk, and how simply the washing of hands, the putting on of a coat, and the picking up of a pool cue is tantamount to putting on a sword and a shield and going into battle. It is in the way Bert Gordon sits like an Emperor in the Ames pool hall, and how he gets up and moves his chair two inches and then sits back down when a drunken Eddie tells him to move somewhere else. More than that, it is in the scene where Eddie has his thumbs broken after he hustles the wrong crew, thus making him a “cripple” like Sarah, and for the first time, he is dependent on someone else, and they both become better people for it. The picnic scene where Eddie talks to her about his love of the game and the satisfaction he gets just playing it better than anyone is a paean to true success, the kind that comes from within. There is the party in Louisville sequence, where the vapid and empty character of the well to do is made plain by the way they ignore a drunken Sarah as she lies on a bed, rolling her out of the way to retrieve a coat, or the how the homosexuality of the aristocratic Findley is suggested in the statues of satyrs and Greek Gods in his basement.
The heart and soul of THE HUSTLER lies in the casting of the four principles and the career best performances they give. Simply put, this is the film that made Paul Newman a superstar, it happens the moment when he flashes that great Golden Boy smile in the cold open scene. Fast Eddie Felson was a different kind of movie protagonist, the first of the wary anti heroes that would grace America’s movie screen as the 50’s faded into the rear view mirror and the popular culture began to more reflect the tensions in American life. Newman makes being tough and being vulnerable look sexy, and does things with this role that Frank Sinatra and Bobby Darin, who were considered for the part, could never have done. He was the front runner for the Best Actor Oscar that year, but lost to Maximilian Schell’s performance in JUDGMENT AT NUREMBURG, he would have to wait a quarter of a century before getting the award, which many consider a consolation Oscar, when he reprised Fast Eddie in Martin Scorsese THE COLOR OF MONEY. I think he should have gotten it the first time around. For those who only know Piper Laurie only as Carrie White’s mother, this movie will be a revelation, her Sarah Packard is Eddie’s true love, a lame woman who clings to her man even as she is losing him; her final scene in the hotel room with Bert, where a vile sexual act is committed, is not to be forgotten. Sarah was a role many big stars of the time would have passed on as inappropriate for their images. Laurie was rewarded with a well deserved Best Actress nomination for taking the risk. This was George C. Scott’s third movie, his Bert Gordon is shrewd and intelligent, but with no moral center whatsoever, he is the Satan of this particular hell, and Scott brings all his skills to the role, with that great voice getting to deliver some equally worthy dialogue; and nobody ever leaned in better than George C. Scott. Jackie Gleason was simply a force of nature, very familiar to audiences in 1961 from his time on TV, especially from THE HONEYMOONERS, but he had spent his many years honing a larger than life persona, and a reputation as a man who enjoyed the finer things in life. All of that is in his portrayal of Minnesota Fats, and it reminds us that this man who’s other great movie role is Buford T. Justice, was one hell of a dramatic actor, if there are any doubts, just watch him in REQUIM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT, made the next year. Murray Hamilton, who will forever be Mayor Larry Vaughn from JAWS, is the smarmy Findley; some might remember that he and Myron McCormick, who plays Eddie’s partner, Charlie, were in NO TIME FOR SERGEANTS only a few years before. And there is a direct Scorsese connection in that the Raging Bull himself, Jake LaMotta, has a cameo as a bartender.
There are some behind the scenes heroes of THE HUSTLER, starting with the director and screen writer, Robert Rossen, who spent some time in the 50’s away from Hollywood because of the McCarthy blacklisters. A onetime member of the Communist Party, he had appeared before Congressional investigators and named names. Some of this finds its way into the story in the way Fast Eddie must make a deal with the devil in form of Bert in order to do what he loves to do best. Rossen had been something of a pool hustler himself in his younger days, long before finding success as a script writer at Warner Brothers and directing such classics as BODY AND SOUL and ALL THE KING’S MEN. This project was his big comeback and he made the most of it, turning it into his greatest critical and financial success. Sadly, it would be his last one, as he made only one more movie before dying much too soon in 1966. And THE HUSTLER would be nothing without the contribution of pool champion Willie Mosconi, who taught the game to Newman before production started, did some of the trick shots himself with the help of editor Dede Allen, and has a cameo as “Willie,” the man who holds the money at Ames Pool Hall.
Scorsese’s sequel, which came out in 1986, picked up the story of Fast Eddie 25 years later, and though it took its title, THE COLOR OF MONEY, from Walter Tevis’s official follow up novel, the sequel did not use the plot of the book, but instead told the story of an older Fast Eddie, who is drawn back to the game he loves when he meets a talented kid, played by Tom Cruise, who is just as deficient in character as Eddie was at his age. My only complaint about Scorsese’s follow up, is that it had so few call backs to the original film, that many young viewers in the 80’s and later would watch MONEY over and over completely unaware that Fast Eddie had first made his appearance on the scene in 1961; their loss.
And after all these years, THE HUSTLER still speaks to us, especially to those who see it for the first time. Don’t be turned off by the B/W, watch it and meet Fast Eddie and Minnesota Fats, Bert Gordon and Sarah Packard. They still have a lot to tell us.
I discuss this movie with James Hancock on his Wrong Reel podcast, which can be found here: https://wrongreel.com/podcast/wr407-f...
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords
You can get BIG CRIMSON, my vampire horror series, on Amazon at:
https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
https://amzn.to/3XxjT2m
https://amzn.to/3EHXAQU
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmgS2
July 13, 2018
CARRION COMFORT: a review.
After first reading THE TERROR, then SUMMER OF NIGHT, and now CARRION COMFORT, I can honestly say that I am a huge Dan Simmons fan. The man writes horror like no one else, and that is because he is able to take the genre and expertly mash it up with others, giving us something truly special. THE TERROR has elements of historical fiction and the best of Jack London in it, while SUMMER OF NIGHT taps into Baby Boomer nostalgia as good as anything Stephen King has written, along with being a great coming of age in a small town story. But CARRION COMFORT is nothing like those first two, making it plain that Simmons is a truly versatile writer, and a master of many subjects.CARRION COMFORT is Simmons’ epic take on vampires, and I do mean epic, as my paperback copy clocks in at 767 pages. There are no fanged bloodsuckers to be found anywhere on those pages, instead, Simmons gives us his own take on them, his creatures of the night have no problem walking in the day, and instead of blood, these are vampires who feed on the minds of others, stealing their thoughts, emotions, and personalities, ultimately hollowing them out completely and taking control of their bodies. This is often portrayed in horrifying detail, although there is little real gore. And like true vampires, they are very long lived, becoming cold and cruel, utterly incapable of empathy on any level. They are among the most truly evil villains I have ever encountered in any piece of fiction, and as all of us horror fans know, if the author gets the bad guys right, half his work is done.
As I noted, CARRION COMFORT is a long book and sprawling book, with a large cast of characters, with the action jumping to multiple locations. Though some reviewers have complained about the length, I am one of those readers who crave the deep dive into character and plot, and as there is a lot of action, and many POV’s from interesting characters, for me, the story never seemed to drag. Simmons begins his novel in a Nazi concentration camp in the waning days of World War II, where a protagonist and antagonist is introduced, and then jumping the story ahead to the year 1980, where the main action takes place as a meeting of a secret society of these mind vampires, or Users, takes a bad turn, resulting in some major carnage, and putting an unlikely trio of heroes on a mission of revenge against an enemy a million times more powerful than themselves. Though the good guys get a lot of space, this is one book where we really get to know the villains well. One of the Users, Melanie Fuller, is given the singular honor of having a first person POV, and the result is that the reader is treated like one of the Users themselves, as Melanie calmly explains herself, and the atrocities she inflicts upon the truly innocent, as though she is confiding in her own kind. It is a great technique to draw us into the story. On the other side, no book could have a better hero than Saul Laski, a Jewish survivor of the Nazi horrors who has never given up on finding the User who tormented him in the camps. We also meet a young black woman determined to avenge her father; a good old boy Southern sheriff who is anything but a caricature; a sleazy Hollywood producer who literally uses women; a deputy director of the FBI who is anything but a public servant; a Washington power broker whose real power is a horrific secret, and then there is the Oberst, a sadist with delusions of grandeur, capable of putting his former Nazi cohorts to shame. There is a rich cast of supporting characters, some good, some bad, some just victims in the wrong place at the wrong time, as this book does have a high body count by the end.
CARRION COMFORT was written in the 80’s, and published in 1989, and one can see some of that decades cultural touchstones in the novel, as it as more shoot outs and action scenes, involving semi and automatic weapons, helicopters, fancy sports cars, and explosions than a Schwarzenegger movie. One character is clearly modeled on some of that decade’s more prominent, and shameless, TV televangelists. Simmons does manage to avoid getting bogged down in info dumps or unnecessarily long scenes where back story is inserted; his writing is cramped with detail – he paints a picture well – but for the most part, you always feel like the story is going somewhere.
Of particular interest to aspiring, or even successful writers, is the introduction Simmons included in my edition, where he relates his early struggles as a writer to get CARRION COMFORT completed while still holding down a job as a school teacher, along with the subsequent battle with an editor at a major publishing house, one that ended with him buying back his own book rather than put up with this person’s abuse anymore. It is no doubt some score settling, but it is also an interesting look at the creative process and the machinations of the publishing business.
CARRION COMFORT is a book that should be read by every lover of good horror fiction, yet I think far too few have ever heard of it, which is a shame. It takes an original approach to an old horror trope, and the best thing I can say about is that you never are sure which way the story is going on any given page. We are always wondering what will happen next, and for me, that is the highest praise I can give a book. It is what makes it such a page turner despite its length. And what a movie it would make in the right hands, I would love to see what David Cronenberg could do with it, or even Steven Spielberg. I’m sure it would turn out better than READY PLAYER ONE. May I suggest Richard Dreyfuss as Saul and Jessica Lange as Melanie.
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
July 8, 2018
ANT MAN AND THE WASP: A review.
After the emotional carnage of INFINITY WAR, the MCU needed to allow us fans to catch our breath and decompress, and ANT MAN AND THE WASP allows us to do just that in a movie that is essentially a partial sequel to CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. It takes part in that corner of the MCU occupied by Scott Laing, whom we last saw fighting alongside Cap at the Berlin Airport in what might still be my favorite scene in any Marvel movie to date. Missing from that throw down was any mention of Hank Pym and Hope Van Dyne, the father and daughter duo who came up with the technology that allowed Scott to become Ant Man in the first place. In the opening act A & W, which has a lot of set up and catching up, we learn just what everyone has been up to and why Scott was MIA in INFINITY WAR.
The plot of ANT MAN AND THE WASP turns on a dangling plot thread from the first Ant Man film, mainly the possibility that Hank’s wife and Hope’s mother, Janet, is still alive in the Quantum Realm (a microverse below the subatomic level), having been presumed lost there many years earlier during a mission with her husband. The three main protagonists, who have become estranged after the events of CIVIL WAR, are now forced by events to reunite on a mission to rescue Janet, but they are soon being pursued by two different sets of villains with two very different agendas with the common goal of obtaining Pym’s technology for their own use. Then there is the FBI, which has had Scott under house arrest, making any involvement by him in any of Pym’s plans very problematic. This sets up a very straight forward narrative, where the heroes have to break into and break out of various tight spots, getting captured at least once along the way, not to mention a number of chase sequences and fight scenes where the CGI gets to shine. This leads to a finale where everything is on the line and multiple characters are in serious peril, both in this world and the Quantum Realm; pretty much your typical Marvel movie.
And that is just fine, as this installment of the MCU keeps the stakes small, sometimes literally, as the world is never in danger, and there is no super Big Bad out to rule or ruin. There is a lot of easy going humor that rises out of character and situation – many laughs are had at the expense of Scott’s problems with his malfunctioning Ant Man suit, leaving him the size of child or a giant at inopportune times. There is the welcome return of Michael Pena as Scott’s ex-con partner in a new security business; Pena takes a part that could have been nothing more than comic relief and does something so much more with it. The action scenes, especially the chases through the streets of San Francisco, are a true highlight as the laws so physics are thrown out the window while speeding vehicles go from normal size to matchbox and back again. This is one of those times where they don’t try to overwhelm us with CGI, unlike INFINITY WAR and DOCTOR STRANGE where you can clearly see where actors spent all day going through their motions in front of a green screen. If the super sized ants are less than realistic, the producers clearly let us know it is all right with a wink to the audience by having a certain sci fi classic from the 50’s be conveniently playing on a TV set in one scene.
If I do have a complaint, it is that A & W lacks a strong villain, as it would have been a great opportunity to showcase Marvel’s ample rogue’s gallery. But The Ghost (played by Hannah John-Kamen), a former assassin for SHIELD who can phase through solid matter, is given a strong motive for her actions, one directly linked to Hank Pym’s past, which allows the audience to empathize with her. The other villain, a technology thief, is played by Walton Goggins with oily Southern charm, who is more comical than threatening, which is okay, but if you are a Goggins fan, then you know he is capable of so much more.
But the rest of the actors are perfectly cast, starting with the returning Paul Rudd as Scott Laing, a part that allows one of the most charming actors in the business to do what he does best, and in Evangeline Lilly’s Hope Van Dyne, he gets a partner to expertly play off of in their best scenes. Old pro Michael Douglas returns as Hank Pym, one of the essential characters of the Marvel Universe and in The Avengers history. What is so great in this installment is that Douglas’s Hank is paired with Michelle Pfeiffer in the role of Janet, another great Marvel legacy character. Last year saw the return of Michael Keaton to comic book movies in SPIDERMAN: HOMECOMING; and it is fitting that this summer sees the best Catwoman ever follow in the steps of the best Batman of them all. Welcome back Michelle Pfeiffer, it has been too long. Speaking of welcome, Laurence Fishbourne turns up as Bill Foster, the Giant Man of that great run of Avengers comics from the 80’s. Randall Park is FBI agent Jimmy Woo, another longtime Marvel character, my only problem is that Park plays him for laughs, a departure from the Jimmy Woo of the comic books.
One of the continuing themes that many might not pick up on is the relationship between fathers and daughters, and the unbreakable bond it forms, whether it is between Scott and his precocious Cassie, Hank and Hope, or the one between Bill Foster and Ava, aka The Ghost.
Of course there is the requisite mid credit scene, and the elephant in the room when it starts is INFINTIY WAR and the consequences of Thanos’s victory; suffice to say that this scene delivers on its promise and leaves Scott in a most precarious situation, one that may be resolved in the next Avengers film; I wonder if a throwaway line about time displacements in the Quantum Realm is a clue to how Scott might be rescued. I thought we might get a scene that also lets us know the fate of Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton as well, as he was also absent from INFINITY WAR, but the whereabouts of Hawkeye remains a mystery.
And I do wonder if I was the only one who thought we might get a hint at the existence of the Micronauts when Hank Pym first enters the Quantum Realm, you really have to be old school Marvel to remember them.
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmgS2
The plot of ANT MAN AND THE WASP turns on a dangling plot thread from the first Ant Man film, mainly the possibility that Hank’s wife and Hope’s mother, Janet, is still alive in the Quantum Realm (a microverse below the subatomic level), having been presumed lost there many years earlier during a mission with her husband. The three main protagonists, who have become estranged after the events of CIVIL WAR, are now forced by events to reunite on a mission to rescue Janet, but they are soon being pursued by two different sets of villains with two very different agendas with the common goal of obtaining Pym’s technology for their own use. Then there is the FBI, which has had Scott under house arrest, making any involvement by him in any of Pym’s plans very problematic. This sets up a very straight forward narrative, where the heroes have to break into and break out of various tight spots, getting captured at least once along the way, not to mention a number of chase sequences and fight scenes where the CGI gets to shine. This leads to a finale where everything is on the line and multiple characters are in serious peril, both in this world and the Quantum Realm; pretty much your typical Marvel movie.
And that is just fine, as this installment of the MCU keeps the stakes small, sometimes literally, as the world is never in danger, and there is no super Big Bad out to rule or ruin. There is a lot of easy going humor that rises out of character and situation – many laughs are had at the expense of Scott’s problems with his malfunctioning Ant Man suit, leaving him the size of child or a giant at inopportune times. There is the welcome return of Michael Pena as Scott’s ex-con partner in a new security business; Pena takes a part that could have been nothing more than comic relief and does something so much more with it. The action scenes, especially the chases through the streets of San Francisco, are a true highlight as the laws so physics are thrown out the window while speeding vehicles go from normal size to matchbox and back again. This is one of those times where they don’t try to overwhelm us with CGI, unlike INFINITY WAR and DOCTOR STRANGE where you can clearly see where actors spent all day going through their motions in front of a green screen. If the super sized ants are less than realistic, the producers clearly let us know it is all right with a wink to the audience by having a certain sci fi classic from the 50’s be conveniently playing on a TV set in one scene.
If I do have a complaint, it is that A & W lacks a strong villain, as it would have been a great opportunity to showcase Marvel’s ample rogue’s gallery. But The Ghost (played by Hannah John-Kamen), a former assassin for SHIELD who can phase through solid matter, is given a strong motive for her actions, one directly linked to Hank Pym’s past, which allows the audience to empathize with her. The other villain, a technology thief, is played by Walton Goggins with oily Southern charm, who is more comical than threatening, which is okay, but if you are a Goggins fan, then you know he is capable of so much more.
But the rest of the actors are perfectly cast, starting with the returning Paul Rudd as Scott Laing, a part that allows one of the most charming actors in the business to do what he does best, and in Evangeline Lilly’s Hope Van Dyne, he gets a partner to expertly play off of in their best scenes. Old pro Michael Douglas returns as Hank Pym, one of the essential characters of the Marvel Universe and in The Avengers history. What is so great in this installment is that Douglas’s Hank is paired with Michelle Pfeiffer in the role of Janet, another great Marvel legacy character. Last year saw the return of Michael Keaton to comic book movies in SPIDERMAN: HOMECOMING; and it is fitting that this summer sees the best Catwoman ever follow in the steps of the best Batman of them all. Welcome back Michelle Pfeiffer, it has been too long. Speaking of welcome, Laurence Fishbourne turns up as Bill Foster, the Giant Man of that great run of Avengers comics from the 80’s. Randall Park is FBI agent Jimmy Woo, another longtime Marvel character, my only problem is that Park plays him for laughs, a departure from the Jimmy Woo of the comic books.
One of the continuing themes that many might not pick up on is the relationship between fathers and daughters, and the unbreakable bond it forms, whether it is between Scott and his precocious Cassie, Hank and Hope, or the one between Bill Foster and Ava, aka The Ghost.
Of course there is the requisite mid credit scene, and the elephant in the room when it starts is INFINTIY WAR and the consequences of Thanos’s victory; suffice to say that this scene delivers on its promise and leaves Scott in a most precarious situation, one that may be resolved in the next Avengers film; I wonder if a throwaway line about time displacements in the Quantum Realm is a clue to how Scott might be rescued. I thought we might get a scene that also lets us know the fate of Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton as well, as he was also absent from INFINITY WAR, but the whereabouts of Hawkeye remains a mystery.
And I do wonder if I was the only one who thought we might get a hint at the existence of the Micronauts when Hank Pym first enters the Quantum Realm, you really have to be old school Marvel to remember them.
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
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June 1, 2018
A look back at CON AIR, and a vanished era.
I recently had the pleasure of listening to Chad Dukes discuss CON AIR on his podcast and it prompted me to get out my own DVD copy and watch it again for the first time in many years and was pleased to discover that it was just as great as the first time I saw it back in the theater in that long ago summer of 1997. But seeing it again made me a little sad, as it is now a stark reminder that the old cliché is very apt in this case: they just don’t make them like this anymore.
Looking back now, it’s clear CON AIR was the high water mark of the Golden Age of the Action Movie, the era that gave us SPEED, THE ROCK, AIR FORCE ONE, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and the first couple of DIE HARD sequels; the kind of films that made Jerry Bruckheimer a fan favorite. These movies were cheerfully over the top in the way good comic books are; filled with great dialog, scenes of mass destruction where every explosion looks like a huge gas tank going up along with tough guys trying to annihilate each other with everything from bullet spewing automatic weapons to wicked looking knives, and if nothing else, their fists. These were movies based on a ridiculous and improbable premise that served as a perfect hook for an easy to please audience yearning for good entertainment.
The hook for CON AIR was Nicholas Cage’s Cameron Poe, a good man who caught a bad break which landed him in a tight situation where he has to be a hero if he wants to get home to his wife and daughter. Poe, a hero of the Persian Gulf War, accidentally kills a drunken lout in a bar fight and inexplicably ends up in Federal Prison; when he finally wins parole, Poe gets a ride home on a prison flight filled with some of the worst criminals ever put in solitary confinement. Things go south in mid air when John Malkovich’s Cyrus Grissom, a brilliant criminal mastermind leads the rest of the very hardened criminal passengers in a successful plan to take over the plane and escape across the border. On the ground, US Marshall, Vince Larkin, played by John Cusack, is desperately trying to find a way to get the plane back, the prisoners recaptured and do so despite the incompetent interference of superiors and co-workers. This sets off a convoluted plot filled with narrow escapes just in time, epic confrontations, ambushes, double crosses, and a showdown on the Vegas strip that is wonderfully over the top as Simon West’s script works overtime to top itself.
The big pull for CON AIR has always been the violence, which is excellently staged, not only in the fore mentioned Vegas Strip finale, but especially in the middle section of the film when the plane puts down at the isolated desert airport. But every true fan of the film knows that the movie’s real strength is the performances, which gives some great actors plenty of scenery to chew and spit out. Cage was at the height of his stardom in the mid 90’s, having just won the Oscar for LEAVING LAS VEGAS, and was considered a serious actor at the time; Cameron Poe gave him a great opportunity to use some of his best tricks, starting with an affected Southern accent that is impossible to forget. At first, the laid back Cusack seemed an odd choice for an action blockbuster, but it proved to be a piece of inspired casting as Cusack’s distinct style of cool intensity proved to be perfect fit with the overwrought eye rolling of his co stars.
By some accounts, Malkovich was less than happy with his villain role and the project itself as a whole, if so, it doesn’t show up on the screen; he commits totally to the role of Cyrus the Virus, letting us never forget that his greatest weapon is his super intelligent mind, a mind that bends a plane filled with sadistic criminals to his will by words alone.
Then there are the great acting contributions by Ving Rhames, Nick Chinlund, Danny Trejo, Colm Meaney, the young Dave Chappelle, Kevin Gage, M.C. Gainey, Conrad Goode, Ty Granderson, Rachel Ticotin, Mykelti Williamson, and two great character stars: Don Davis and Dabs Greer. But the icing on the cake is still Steve Buscemi as Garland Greene, the detached serial killer who sits back utterly amused at it all; his conversations with Poe are classic bits, as is Greene’s unnerving “tea party” with the little girl. How great is it that the worst of the worst seems to be the sanest of the lot, and is the only one to actually get away in a great final scene. I consider CON AIR to be a direct descendant of the those great 60’s films, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, THE GUNS OF NAVARONE, THE GREAT ESCAPE, and THE DIRTY DOZEN, where a bunch of great actors were given roles that played to their strengths and just turned loose on the screen.
Yet watching CON AIR now makes me painfully aware of the passage of time, I agree with those who point out that if it came out today, the ridiculous plot twists and over the top action pieces would be picked apart on social media Friday night of opening weekend while Millennials would no doubt be horrified by some of the crude racial epitaphs thrown back and forth by the inmates. In the post 9/11 era, the action movie would become darker and much more serious, Cameron Poe would be replaced by Jason Bourne and a movie about a plane hijacked by criminals would not be considered fun. Even the villains would change, where in the 90’s, great bad guys like Cyrus the Virus were cousins of Hannibal Lector, while now they are some variation on a terrorist. Though Nicolas Cage had a great summer in 1997, starring in both CON AIR, and that other action classic, FACE OFF, in the years ahead, a series of bombs and bad role choices along with an increasing tendency to over act would turn him into a punch line. The economics of movie making would change so much that a script like CON AIR, with its many speaking parts for many actors, would no longer be green lighted today unless it was a superhero epic like CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. And our entertainment would become so somber that in the 21st century, even Superman could barely crack a smile in a two and a half hour movie. Personally, I’d take Cameron Poe over Zach Snyder’s Big Blue any day.
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
Looking back now, it’s clear CON AIR was the high water mark of the Golden Age of the Action Movie, the era that gave us SPEED, THE ROCK, AIR FORCE ONE, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE and the first couple of DIE HARD sequels; the kind of films that made Jerry Bruckheimer a fan favorite. These movies were cheerfully over the top in the way good comic books are; filled with great dialog, scenes of mass destruction where every explosion looks like a huge gas tank going up along with tough guys trying to annihilate each other with everything from bullet spewing automatic weapons to wicked looking knives, and if nothing else, their fists. These were movies based on a ridiculous and improbable premise that served as a perfect hook for an easy to please audience yearning for good entertainment.
The hook for CON AIR was Nicholas Cage’s Cameron Poe, a good man who caught a bad break which landed him in a tight situation where he has to be a hero if he wants to get home to his wife and daughter. Poe, a hero of the Persian Gulf War, accidentally kills a drunken lout in a bar fight and inexplicably ends up in Federal Prison; when he finally wins parole, Poe gets a ride home on a prison flight filled with some of the worst criminals ever put in solitary confinement. Things go south in mid air when John Malkovich’s Cyrus Grissom, a brilliant criminal mastermind leads the rest of the very hardened criminal passengers in a successful plan to take over the plane and escape across the border. On the ground, US Marshall, Vince Larkin, played by John Cusack, is desperately trying to find a way to get the plane back, the prisoners recaptured and do so despite the incompetent interference of superiors and co-workers. This sets off a convoluted plot filled with narrow escapes just in time, epic confrontations, ambushes, double crosses, and a showdown on the Vegas strip that is wonderfully over the top as Simon West’s script works overtime to top itself.
The big pull for CON AIR has always been the violence, which is excellently staged, not only in the fore mentioned Vegas Strip finale, but especially in the middle section of the film when the plane puts down at the isolated desert airport. But every true fan of the film knows that the movie’s real strength is the performances, which gives some great actors plenty of scenery to chew and spit out. Cage was at the height of his stardom in the mid 90’s, having just won the Oscar for LEAVING LAS VEGAS, and was considered a serious actor at the time; Cameron Poe gave him a great opportunity to use some of his best tricks, starting with an affected Southern accent that is impossible to forget. At first, the laid back Cusack seemed an odd choice for an action blockbuster, but it proved to be a piece of inspired casting as Cusack’s distinct style of cool intensity proved to be perfect fit with the overwrought eye rolling of his co stars.
By some accounts, Malkovich was less than happy with his villain role and the project itself as a whole, if so, it doesn’t show up on the screen; he commits totally to the role of Cyrus the Virus, letting us never forget that his greatest weapon is his super intelligent mind, a mind that bends a plane filled with sadistic criminals to his will by words alone.
Then there are the great acting contributions by Ving Rhames, Nick Chinlund, Danny Trejo, Colm Meaney, the young Dave Chappelle, Kevin Gage, M.C. Gainey, Conrad Goode, Ty Granderson, Rachel Ticotin, Mykelti Williamson, and two great character stars: Don Davis and Dabs Greer. But the icing on the cake is still Steve Buscemi as Garland Greene, the detached serial killer who sits back utterly amused at it all; his conversations with Poe are classic bits, as is Greene’s unnerving “tea party” with the little girl. How great is it that the worst of the worst seems to be the sanest of the lot, and is the only one to actually get away in a great final scene. I consider CON AIR to be a direct descendant of the those great 60’s films, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, THE GUNS OF NAVARONE, THE GREAT ESCAPE, and THE DIRTY DOZEN, where a bunch of great actors were given roles that played to their strengths and just turned loose on the screen.
Yet watching CON AIR now makes me painfully aware of the passage of time, I agree with those who point out that if it came out today, the ridiculous plot twists and over the top action pieces would be picked apart on social media Friday night of opening weekend while Millennials would no doubt be horrified by some of the crude racial epitaphs thrown back and forth by the inmates. In the post 9/11 era, the action movie would become darker and much more serious, Cameron Poe would be replaced by Jason Bourne and a movie about a plane hijacked by criminals would not be considered fun. Even the villains would change, where in the 90’s, great bad guys like Cyrus the Virus were cousins of Hannibal Lector, while now they are some variation on a terrorist. Though Nicolas Cage had a great summer in 1997, starring in both CON AIR, and that other action classic, FACE OFF, in the years ahead, a series of bombs and bad role choices along with an increasing tendency to over act would turn him into a punch line. The economics of movie making would change so much that a script like CON AIR, with its many speaking parts for many actors, would no longer be green lighted today unless it was a superhero epic like CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. And our entertainment would become so somber that in the 21st century, even Superman could barely crack a smile in a two and a half hour movie. Personally, I’d take Cameron Poe over Zach Snyder’s Big Blue any day.
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
May 8, 2018
The man who saw our America coming and tried to warn us.
A new subgenre of book has emerged in recent years, one I would call “the inside story of the making of…” In place of the ellipsis, I would place a movie title, a good example of what I am talking about is Glen Frankel’s excellent book about John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS, which came out a few years back, Frankel has followed this up with a book on HIGH NOON; similar treatments have recently been given to 2001: A SPACE ODYESSY, GIANT, and just this month, the publication of Chris Nashawaty’s recounting of how CADDYSHACK came to be. These books are not necessarily a treatise on the greatness of a particular movie, but often an argument that the story of what went on behind the cameras, and what occurred before and after said movie was made is just as interesting, if not more so, than anything an audience paid to see in the theater. They are not necessarily about the movie stars we remember, but often center on the gifted and creative person, usually a writer or a director, who became enamored with a story, or simply with an idea or truth that they just had to tell, and were willing to do the very hard work to get the movie made and before the public.Dave Itzkoff’s MAD AS HELL, tells the inside story of the making of the 1976 film NETWORK, and the creative man who made it happen, that man being Paddy Chayefsky, a writer who had earned considerable fame in the early 1950’s by writing dramas for live television, an industry then in its infancy. Chayefsky was short, but powerfully built, a proud Jew with a short fuse who channeled his anger into his writing. He was a veteran of World War II and a political liberal at a time when liberals were proud to be tough guys; Chayefsky had a knack for writing dialogue, giving his characters, often common men and women, a special eloquence; this was on full display in his first big network hit, MARTY, the story of a lonely Bronx butcher, the movie version of which won Chayefsky his first Oscar for screen writing in 1955. It was a Golden Age and it did not last, soon Chayefsky was working in Hollywood putting his talents to use in the movie business, and television was no longer putting dramas with the quality of MARTY on the air, but were now serving up the likes of THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES every week. As the 60’s gave way to the 70’s, Chayefsky observed these changes, and it stoked his anger.
Itzkoff’s book is story of how this anger became an idea, the idea became a story, the story became a screenplay, and the screenplay a movie. The finished product would be a profane look at the inner workings of a fictional TV network’s news division, where corporate interests and the desire for higher ratings (which meant higher add revenues) have forced the scraping of old standards, causing the vaunted profession of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite to be turned into just another entertainment show to attract the attention of an America shell shocked by assassinations, an unwinnable war, riots in the streets, epic corruption in government, and an energy crisis. At the center of the movie is Howard Beale, a venerable TV anchorman who has a break down on air, starts telling it like it is, and becomes a ratings sensation, one the suits at the network, and their ruthless female programming executive, are more than happy to exploit. Scene by scene the movie is both a condemnation of what TV had become, and a warning at what yet could be. What I enjoyed most about Itskoff’s book is the recounting of the creative process that brought all this about; especially the pages discussing Chayefsky’s writing process, how he had to have an office to go to everyday and sit alone and write for at least four hours, and how the finished product bore little resemblance to the first draft. Chayefsky was extremely protective of his words, and on the set, had the clout to resist actors and director’s attempts to rewrite or dumb down his work, a position many script writers would surely envy.
Itzkoff also introduces us to the other talents who made NETWORK such a success, starting with director Sidney Lumet, who had a knack for this kind of material, coupled with the ability to handle prickly talent, both in front of and behind the camera. The book makes the case for Lumet being the indispensable man behind NETWORK; the time it went from a screenplay to finished movie was remarkable, and a lot of that credit is given to producer Howard Gottfried, a friend and partner of Chayefsky, who knew how to get things done. The principle photography took place in January and February of 1976, on location in New York and Toronto, with the movie opening in November. Itzkoff gives us a day to day breakdown of which scenes were shot and in which order, which should be of great interest to anyone interested in getting into the movie business, we also get some great behind the scenes info on how the editing went, including some obvious mistakes that were deliberately left in the picture.
Of course we get some background on the casting, and the actors who were ultimately hired. One gets a good understanding of why Faye Dunaway has a reputation for being difficult; then there was Ned Beatty, who bluffed his way into the role of Arthur Jenson, after Roberts Blossom, who had been hired to play the part of the corporate big wig, was let go early in production. We learn why George C. Scott passed on the part of Howard Beale, a role that he would have been a natural for, and that Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck and even James Stewart were considered for the role that Peter Finch ultimately made his own. One of the best things about the book is Finch’s story; he was a British born, Australian raised actor who had made a career out of being in movies in which his leading ladies – Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Julie Christie – were bigger stars than him. Like his fellow Brits, Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton, Finch had a fondness for alcohol, but unlike the other two, he often brought that certain masculine charm distinct to actors from the Land Down Under to many of his roles. By the mid 70’s, Finch was pushing 60 and thought that the best years of his career were behind him, and was settling into semi retirement in Jamaica with his second wife and young children. Through his agent, he got a chance to read for the part of Beale for Lumet and Chayefsky, and the role of a lifetime was his. The iconic “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore” scene was only shot once because Finch was too exhausted and had to quit half way through a second take. Nevertheless, he knew his career had been given a new lease on life even before NETWORK opened; he become the front runner for the Best Actor Oscar, and began practicing his acceptance speech in front of a mirror. He also moved his family back to Los Angeles as the phone began ringing with offers of other roles. But a cruel fate intervened.
Even crueler was the fate of William Holden, who played Max Shumacher, the head of the news division who is still trying hang on to his integrity, while having an affair with Faye Dunaway’s Diana Christenson, the soulless programmer. By 1976, Holden was no longer the handsome leading man of the 1950’s as years of heavy drinking and a history of depression had taken their toll, but like Finch, NETWORK gave him a great part that played to his middle aged strengths and the air of weariness he could project like no one else; and as Itzkoff tells it, Holden had to use much of his talent to be believable in a love making scene with Dunaway, who proved to be every bit the diva, then and later. Holden would get a late career Best Actor nomination for his performance, but ultimately, and so sad for his many fans, his demons would get the best of him. Dunaway would win the Best Actress Oscar, and it proved to be the high point of her career; NETWORK would net Chayefsky his third Oscar for screen writing, it would prove the be his greatest success, and his final triumph. In fact, NETWORK makes a good case for the Oscar jinx.
Itzkoff’s book is only 243 pages long, but it packs a lot of information; as expected, the final section attempts to put NETWORK in perspective. Though he did not live to see the proliferation of cable channels and the 24 hour news cycle, much of what Chayefsky foretold has come to pass. At the time of its release, NETWORK was frequently called a satire by critics, while others referred to it as a “black comedy,” while many others took Chayefsky to task, calling him a has-been, bitter at the industry where he’d done his best work and then dispensed with his talents. Nobody used the word “prophet,” but now in the age of FNC, MSNBC, and CNN, and the fractured world of information delivery, much less the vast number of news and opinion websites online, nobody can look at NETWORK now and not feel that Chayefsky was looking into the future.
Yet, MAD AS HELL left me wanting more, if for no other reason than because it came out four years ago and missed the tumultuous 2016 Presidential election where we saw a man elected who could fairly say he’d taken a page out of Howard Beale’s play book in articulating the public’s rage and anger. But where Beale was just plain crazy, Donald Trump was crazy like a fox, at least when it came to his manipulation of the voters and the media. It was not for nothing that during that year, many people referenced Elia Kazan’s A FACE IN THE CROWD, and NETWORK, as the two movies that perceptively saw the future decades before it arrived.
In the end, Itzkoff calls Paddy Chayefsky the “angriest man in movies,” but as he makes clear in his book, it was not a resentful anger directed at scapegoats, the kind we often see on the public airwaves today; for Chayefsky believed that an angry American was a good American, that silence was truly unpatriotic and to do nothing but sit on the coach in front of the television made him the angriest. He pointed his finger at his fellow Americans and said that if you think the country is going to hell, it’s your fault for keeping silent about it. Many speculate that if Chayefsky could come back today, he would say “I tried to warn you.” That he might, but the man in Dave Itzkoff’s book would then immediately get busy writing, for he would have a lot to say.
My book, BIG CRIMSON 1: THERE'S A NEW VAMPIRE IN TOWN, can be found on Amazon at: https://amzn.to/3GsBh2E
and on Smashwords at: https://bit.ly/3kIfrAb
My alternate history novel ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964 can be found on Amazon at: http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m
and on Smashwords at: http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmg
Visit my Amazon author's page at: https://amzn.to/3nK6Yxv
April 30, 2018
Marvel's very own EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
We were warned that AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR would be like none of the previous Marvel Cinematic Universe movies that had preceded it, and they were right, in fact, I would say they underplayed it, for the finished product is a true gut punch for us fans. Marvel and Disney have been laying the groundwork for this ever since the end of the first Iron Man movie when Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury turned up in a post credit sequence and asked if Robert Downey Junior’s Tony Stark might be interested in something called the Avengers Initiative. And this payoff, coming nearly ten years later, is striking in that it does not give the audience what it wants or expects, for unlike most of the 18 other films in the MCU, this is not a straight up gang of misfit super heroes take on a seemingly unbeatable Big Bad, and manage to vanquish him in the final act story. Many of those other film’s plot points and beats are present in INFINITY WAR, but this time things go in a very different direction, and the movie is all the better for it. I have not walk out of the theater this happy in many years, maybe not since THE DARK KNIGHT.
I know a lot of fans may be very disappointed in the outcome of INFINITY WAR, many others are surely devastated by it, and I won’t argue with them, or tell them that their reaction isn’t valid, but my joy at the end of INFINITY WAR comes from the enormous risks the Russo brothers took with the material, and the fact that they are willing to go there, to kill off beloved characters, to up the ante on emotional involvement, to ask a lot of an audience and a rabid fan base, and to do it in a big popcorn franchise American movie, shows me that the creative exhaustion of Hollywood may not be quite as complete as we thought it was.
We have been seeing hints of the villain Thanos ever since the post credit sequence in the first Avengers movie, and his scheme to obtain the six gemlike Infinity stones has been touched on in the other movies, at the end of THOR: RAGNOROK the survivors of Asgard encounter Thanos’s ship, and it is on that cliffhanger that INFINITY WAR opens as the big bad purple man and his Black Order (all super creepy) now take direct action to get their hands on the stones, which together, will give the owner of them near omnipotent power.
To stop Thanos, heroes from every end of the MCU must come together at last, and for us die hard and long time Marvel fans, this is what we have been waiting for; from the moment Doctor Strange meets Tony Stark on the streets of NYC, to Thor’s rescue by the Guardians of the Galaxy, to Steve Rogers and company’s arrival in Wakanda (and a reunion with Bucky). This plays out like a great comic book story, as characters we know like the back of our hand meet for the first time and get to know each other in scenes that hit the right note every time. I don’t know what was better, Tony Stark and Stephen Strange’s big egos trying to coexist in the same frame, or Peter Parker and Peter Quill’s battle of the pop culture references. Teams split apart as heroes who were strangers only minutes before must now find a way to fight together; loved the trio of Thor, Rocket and Groot, and their crash landing in the middle of the battle of Wakanda was the very definition of bad ass. It is a tribute to the great script that this massive cast of characters manages to come together and flow so well, and without the feeling that someone’s favorite was badly short changed. That is unless you are a Hawkye or Ant Man fan.
But if this movie belongs to anyone, it is Josh Brolin’s Thanos (in a motion capture performance), which is quite a departure in making the villain the central character. This seems to make up for all the criticism of MCU and its underdeveloped bad guys i.e. the first Doctor Strange film and THOR: THE DARK WORLD. They give Thanos a motivation that makes sense to him, and is true to the adage that the villain is always the hero of his own story. Thanos does not want to rule the universe, he wants to save it from itself. And to do this, he needs the six infinity stones, hidden on earth, or in the case of the Soul Stone, in an obscure corner of the universe. The scene where he goes to claim it is the central one of the second act, as he pays the price to obtain the stone at the expense of his daughter, Gamora, and the tear he sheds at this prospect is the true revelation of his nature. The unexpected brief reappearance of the Red Skull at this point was a pleasant surprise.
For me one of the pleasures of this movie was the way it lets our heroes and villains brawl, none of that shooting energy beams at each other until someone just gives up. Not only the battle Wakanda, but the epic fight on Titan’s moon where the team of Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Spider-Man, and the Guardians of the Galaxy go head to head with Thanos in an attempt to get the Infinity Gauntlet off his hand in a plan that cooked up by Peter Quill is the high point. It’s a play on the tried and true trope where at the end, all the heroes combine their might and take down a heretofore unbeatable foe. It worked in Dragon Ball Z when the Z Fighters took on Cell, and the same in X-MEN: APOCALYPSE. But it has been done so many times that it is now beyond a cliché, and just when it appears as if it is working on Thanos, Quill goes and ruins his own plan by acting impulsively upon learning the fate of Gamora. This is followed by face offs between Thanos and Captain America and Thor in Wakanda that show us once and for all what Marvel heroes are made of. I would give them bonus points for not trotting out the old energy beam up to the heavens as a means of a portal for the villain’s hordes to attack earth; Thanos’s Dark Order use nice big clunky space ships and that’s just fine.
There are so many little touches and casting choices that help make INFINITY WAR work, like the surprise appearance of Peter Dinkledge in a truly offbeat role; that FOOTLOOSE joke; Thor calling Rocket a rabbit; the true sense of the Marvel Cosmic Universe that expands it light years beyond anything we saw in the GUARDIANS movie; all the actors who have always brought their A game in the previous Marvel outings, but who bring their A+ game here: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Benedict Cumberbatch, Chris Hemsworth, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Tom Holland, Don Cheadle, Zoe Saldana, Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Elisabeth Olsen, the voice work of Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Tom Hiddleston, Danai Gurira, Benedict Wong, Idris Elba. It has the feel as if The Magnificent Seven, the Dirty Dozen, and The Wild Bunch had come together in one ultimate epic. I’m sure Cinema Sins will post a half hour video on You Tube in about a month, nick picking the whole thing to death, but I won’t care
Of course, the thing everyone is going to talk about is the finale, which is true to Jim Starlin’s original story, in which the ranks of our heroes are decimated after Thanos uses the Infinity Gauntlet to fulfill his plan, and fan favorites, in fact, multiple fan favorites, disintegrate before our very eyes. Like I said, it is a true gut punch of an ending, and nobody in the audience is going to walk out unscathed. For me, the sight of Tom Holland’s Peter Parker telling Tony Stark, “I don’t want to go,” was the one that hit the hardest. I look at it as Marvel’s version of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.
Pay attention to the interaction between Tony and Stephen Strange on Titan’s Moon, especially after Strange has surrendered the Time Stone to Thanos in exchange for Tony’s life. It points to directly to the second movie and what the heroes have to go through in order to win. So to the end credits scene, which hints at the introduction of another major Marvel hero we have not seen before. Somebody has to get the Infinity Gauntlet off Thanos's had in the next movie and reset the universe. And what about Adam Warlock, he was hinted at in the end of GOTG2, and supposedly will be in the third movie in that franchise, but could he be in INFINITY 2?
But if INFINITY WAR is EMPIRE, is the second movie, scheduled for 2019, to its JEDI? I don’t know how Kevin Feige and the Russo brothers will top this, and maybe they shouldn’t try. This second movie could turn out to be what the second DEATHLY HOLLOWS was to the Harry Potter series, a corrective that restores a new status quo. And every good Marvel reader knows, nobody stays dead except Uncle Ben.
But there is one thing: in the trailer they put out months ago, they show the Avengers in Wakanda charging through the jungle in what is clearly the prelude to an epic fight. It looked royally bad ass, but that scene, as presented in the trailer, is not in the movie; more to the point, it features one prominent member of the team who is MIA for most of the movie, and is nowhere in sight during the finale in Wakanda. In the words of that noted cinephile, Annie Wilkes, “They cheated us…”
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmgS2
I know a lot of fans may be very disappointed in the outcome of INFINITY WAR, many others are surely devastated by it, and I won’t argue with them, or tell them that their reaction isn’t valid, but my joy at the end of INFINITY WAR comes from the enormous risks the Russo brothers took with the material, and the fact that they are willing to go there, to kill off beloved characters, to up the ante on emotional involvement, to ask a lot of an audience and a rabid fan base, and to do it in a big popcorn franchise American movie, shows me that the creative exhaustion of Hollywood may not be quite as complete as we thought it was.
We have been seeing hints of the villain Thanos ever since the post credit sequence in the first Avengers movie, and his scheme to obtain the six gemlike Infinity stones has been touched on in the other movies, at the end of THOR: RAGNOROK the survivors of Asgard encounter Thanos’s ship, and it is on that cliffhanger that INFINITY WAR opens as the big bad purple man and his Black Order (all super creepy) now take direct action to get their hands on the stones, which together, will give the owner of them near omnipotent power.
To stop Thanos, heroes from every end of the MCU must come together at last, and for us die hard and long time Marvel fans, this is what we have been waiting for; from the moment Doctor Strange meets Tony Stark on the streets of NYC, to Thor’s rescue by the Guardians of the Galaxy, to Steve Rogers and company’s arrival in Wakanda (and a reunion with Bucky). This plays out like a great comic book story, as characters we know like the back of our hand meet for the first time and get to know each other in scenes that hit the right note every time. I don’t know what was better, Tony Stark and Stephen Strange’s big egos trying to coexist in the same frame, or Peter Parker and Peter Quill’s battle of the pop culture references. Teams split apart as heroes who were strangers only minutes before must now find a way to fight together; loved the trio of Thor, Rocket and Groot, and their crash landing in the middle of the battle of Wakanda was the very definition of bad ass. It is a tribute to the great script that this massive cast of characters manages to come together and flow so well, and without the feeling that someone’s favorite was badly short changed. That is unless you are a Hawkye or Ant Man fan.
But if this movie belongs to anyone, it is Josh Brolin’s Thanos (in a motion capture performance), which is quite a departure in making the villain the central character. This seems to make up for all the criticism of MCU and its underdeveloped bad guys i.e. the first Doctor Strange film and THOR: THE DARK WORLD. They give Thanos a motivation that makes sense to him, and is true to the adage that the villain is always the hero of his own story. Thanos does not want to rule the universe, he wants to save it from itself. And to do this, he needs the six infinity stones, hidden on earth, or in the case of the Soul Stone, in an obscure corner of the universe. The scene where he goes to claim it is the central one of the second act, as he pays the price to obtain the stone at the expense of his daughter, Gamora, and the tear he sheds at this prospect is the true revelation of his nature. The unexpected brief reappearance of the Red Skull at this point was a pleasant surprise.
For me one of the pleasures of this movie was the way it lets our heroes and villains brawl, none of that shooting energy beams at each other until someone just gives up. Not only the battle Wakanda, but the epic fight on Titan’s moon where the team of Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Spider-Man, and the Guardians of the Galaxy go head to head with Thanos in an attempt to get the Infinity Gauntlet off his hand in a plan that cooked up by Peter Quill is the high point. It’s a play on the tried and true trope where at the end, all the heroes combine their might and take down a heretofore unbeatable foe. It worked in Dragon Ball Z when the Z Fighters took on Cell, and the same in X-MEN: APOCALYPSE. But it has been done so many times that it is now beyond a cliché, and just when it appears as if it is working on Thanos, Quill goes and ruins his own plan by acting impulsively upon learning the fate of Gamora. This is followed by face offs between Thanos and Captain America and Thor in Wakanda that show us once and for all what Marvel heroes are made of. I would give them bonus points for not trotting out the old energy beam up to the heavens as a means of a portal for the villain’s hordes to attack earth; Thanos’s Dark Order use nice big clunky space ships and that’s just fine.
There are so many little touches and casting choices that help make INFINITY WAR work, like the surprise appearance of Peter Dinkledge in a truly offbeat role; that FOOTLOOSE joke; Thor calling Rocket a rabbit; the true sense of the Marvel Cosmic Universe that expands it light years beyond anything we saw in the GUARDIANS movie; all the actors who have always brought their A game in the previous Marvel outings, but who bring their A+ game here: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Benedict Cumberbatch, Chris Hemsworth, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Tom Holland, Don Cheadle, Zoe Saldana, Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Elisabeth Olsen, the voice work of Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Tom Hiddleston, Danai Gurira, Benedict Wong, Idris Elba. It has the feel as if The Magnificent Seven, the Dirty Dozen, and The Wild Bunch had come together in one ultimate epic. I’m sure Cinema Sins will post a half hour video on You Tube in about a month, nick picking the whole thing to death, but I won’t care
Of course, the thing everyone is going to talk about is the finale, which is true to Jim Starlin’s original story, in which the ranks of our heroes are decimated after Thanos uses the Infinity Gauntlet to fulfill his plan, and fan favorites, in fact, multiple fan favorites, disintegrate before our very eyes. Like I said, it is a true gut punch of an ending, and nobody in the audience is going to walk out unscathed. For me, the sight of Tom Holland’s Peter Parker telling Tony Stark, “I don’t want to go,” was the one that hit the hardest. I look at it as Marvel’s version of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.
Pay attention to the interaction between Tony and Stephen Strange on Titan’s Moon, especially after Strange has surrendered the Time Stone to Thanos in exchange for Tony’s life. It points to directly to the second movie and what the heroes have to go through in order to win. So to the end credits scene, which hints at the introduction of another major Marvel hero we have not seen before. Somebody has to get the Infinity Gauntlet off Thanos's had in the next movie and reset the universe. And what about Adam Warlock, he was hinted at in the end of GOTG2, and supposedly will be in the third movie in that franchise, but could he be in INFINITY 2?
But if INFINITY WAR is EMPIRE, is the second movie, scheduled for 2019, to its JEDI? I don’t know how Kevin Feige and the Russo brothers will top this, and maybe they shouldn’t try. This second movie could turn out to be what the second DEATHLY HOLLOWS was to the Harry Potter series, a corrective that restores a new status quo. And every good Marvel reader knows, nobody stays dead except Uncle Ben.
But there is one thing: in the trailer they put out months ago, they show the Avengers in Wakanda charging through the jungle in what is clearly the prelude to an epic fight. It looked royally bad ass, but that scene, as presented in the trailer, is not in the movie; more to the point, it features one prominent member of the team who is MIA for most of the movie, and is nowhere in sight during the finale in Wakanda. In the words of that noted cinephile, Annie Wilkes, “They cheated us…”
I am an indie author and my latest novel is ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: AN ALTERNATE HISTORY OF 1964. It is available at the following:
http://amzn.to/2jVkW9m on Amazon
http://bit.ly/2kAoiAH at Smashwords
Visit my Goodreads author's page at:
http://bit.ly/2nxmgS2
