The Back of Beyond

As 2011 inexorably wound down to its final days and notifications of notable deaths pinged up on Twitter on an almost daily basis, at some point after Harry Morgan and before Bert Schneider, we collectively learned of the loss of writer and journalist Gilbert Adair. I have to admit that I had never been a huge fan of Adair's writing but, prompted by a lovely obituary in the latest issue of Sight & Sound magazine, I rooted around for my copy of Adair's book Flickers: An Illustrated Celebration of 100 Years of Cinema. I'm glad that I did.

Published in 1995 to mark the centenary of cinema, Adair selected 100 images - one per year, from 1895's La Sortie des usines Lumière to Tim Burton's Ed Wood in 1994 - and wrote an accompanying essay. Browsing through the book yesterday, I found myself with a new appreciation of Adair's writing. Joni Mitchell nailed it - we don't know what we got 'til it's gone. Idiosyncratic and defiantly personal film journalism is an increasingly rare commodity. I've banged on before about my frustration with the overpowering glut of generic, homogenous words sprayed online as just another cog in the marketing machine. Critical rigour and independent opinions have become subservient to the demands of Search Engine Optimization and picking the carcasses of dull press releases.

But Adair's writing is imbued with a love of film. As he writes in his introduction, film is "flickering like a great fire in the grate of the cinema screen, around which millions of us have warmed ourselves, gazed dreamily into the flames and occasionally got burnt".

I mentioned in my last post that I had watched 290 movies last year. The last one I watched was Fritz Lang's Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Riffling the pages of Adair's book, I serendipitously discovered that he had selected that very film to represent the year 1956. It was a fine way to cap the end of 2011. This is what he had to say about it. Thank you, Gilbert Adair, and take it away. The floor is yours...

Two men sitting in an automobile. Two men outfitted in the felt hats and boxy, double-breasted suits and soberly immaculate collars and ties that, for most of us, have come to evoke the Hollywood cinema of the thirties, forties and fifties rather than any real, still recollectable time or place. This photograph, I admit, isn't "interesting"; its composition isn't eye-fetching; it might have served indiscriminately to epitomize scores of thrillers and dramas and police procedural movies made in Hollywood between, let's say, 1930 and 1960. Precisely. For it's perhaps time to acknowledge the extent to which the textural specificity of the American cinema is contingent upon what might be called its "urbanality". Putting it more crudely, it's all very well talking about The Ten Commandments and Gone With the Wind and Casablanca and Rio Bravo, but what going to the cinema during those years really meant was watching near-identical men in near-identical suits and hats sitting in near-identical apartment rooms and bars and black, bulbous automobiles; was watching movies that were, paradoxically, like nothing so much as books - books without illustrations. And therein, in a way which is difficult to communicate to the uninitiated but which no true cinéphile will ever need to have explained, can be found the medium's metallic poetry.

The film in question is Fritz Lang's Beyond a Reasonable Doubt and the two men are Sidney Blackmer and Dana Andrews. Its plot is exactly that - a plot - hatched by the newspaper publisher played by Blackmer and the journalist played by Andrews, a plot whereby the latter will deliberately implicate himself in an unsolved murder in order to demonstrate the ease with which circumstantial evidence can lead to wrongful conviction. There is, I should add, an eleventh-hour twist; but it's a twist only until the instant it's revealed; in the very next instant one realizes that the film could not have ended any other way. Jacques Rivette called it a theorem, a tabula rasa. It is, in any event, the rigorous purification of a genre to which Lang and certain of his fellow émigrés, Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger and Edgar Ulmer, had given of their best: the film noir.

There is, though, a most curious paradox in the film noir. I yield to no one, as they say, in my love of the genre and I recognize the pertinence of much that has been written about its inherent pessimism. Yet I must confess to never having found that pessimism very convincing. No one in the forties ever went to see a film noir with a sense that he was about to submit to a harrowing but salutary dose of existential nihilism (a nihilism that isn't just a matter of critical interpretation but is quite perceptible in both narrative detail and visual texture), just as no one ever need recoil from watching one on television now. Films noirs are great fun, for God's sake, great fun primarily because they never really do persuade one that the despair that they portray is ultimately a truth of the human condition - in the way that, at least while one is experiencing it, a film by Bergman does, or a novel by Kafka, or an opera by Berg. For most of us, I suspect, their fabled negativity is precisely that: a negative (in the photographic sense of the word) of the fundamental American positivity and optimism. The people who made them (and who were usually, as I've said, European exiles) loved America, just as did the people who watched them. Secretly, I believe, they were not even meant to convince.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, however, was meant to convince. As has seldom been the case in Hollywood's history, it's a film, a visually drab and unyielding film, about absolutely nothing else but its own subject. Two men in hats and suits sit in an automobile and hatch a plot, two men whose white faces and crisp white shirts stand out against the enveloping darkness like the white chalkings of a mathematical formula on a blackboard, a tableau noir.

Six Minutes To Midnight

Hello, 2012! Before I start biting large bloody chunks out of the New Year, let's nail the coffin lid down on the year just gone.

2010 was a tough year for me that culminated in a perfect storm of banal details (cumulative long-term sleep deprivation; an icy pavement; sub-zero temperatures and a quiet street) that collided to almost end me. I headed into 2011 recovering from my near-death experience feeling tired, gun-shy and burned out. So, for the first time, instead of beginning a year with plans and schemes and wishlists of life goals to be accomplished, I decided to try a different tack. I was trying to do too much. I needed to streamline and simplify my life. I needed a year to lie fallow, retrench and regroup. And that's how I began 2011 with a complete lack of ambition. That way, I thought, I'd have a smoother ride through the coming year.

Well, that didn't work. 2011 was just as tough. Maybe tougher. I may have wanted to take it easy, but the world had other plans.

What I did do in 2011 was sit through 290 movies. Some were great, more were bad, most were forgettable. The important part of that last sentence is "most were forgettable". I wasted time. I have absolutely no intention of sitting through anywhere near as many movies in the next twelve months. Time to stop being a passive consumer of largely disposable entertainment. Less observation, more participation. Turning the tap off on the input, flicking the dial to ramp up the output.

I'm going to be 40 this year. I've got things to do. Let's get on with it.

Wake Up and Smell the Rice

Today, the Criterion Collection are releasing DVD and Blu-ray editions of Seijun Suzuki’s delirious masterpieces Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill.

Would you like some reading material to accompany this visual treat? Of course you would. Good News: In 2004, Wallflower Press published 24 Frames - The Cinema of Japan and Korea, which includes my essay on Branded to Kill. I’d love to point you to a couple of places where you could buy this book, but...

Bad News: A bit of rudimentary Googling reveals that it appears that this volume is now out-of print. All is not lost, though, because...

Good News: I did, however, discover that my chapter is available in its entirety on Google Books. In fact, almost all of the book is there for your reading pleasure. There’s a lot of good stuff in that book from people far smarter and more reputable than me.  I don’t claim to understand the whys and wherefores of Google Books, so I can’t explain why you can read the whole of my chapter on Branded to Kill, but not a single word of my later chapter on Battle Royale.

I’m desperately trying to avoid the usual authorial caveats about material I wrote almost a decade ago. You know the kind of thing I mean. The bits that I re-read that made me cringe, or where I spotted a different way of saying things that were more insightful or useful. Oh well. That book is receding some way off in my rear-view mirror now. Dive in and browse away by clicking here. Enjoy!

Write Around the Corner

I don’t believe in the woolly nebulous idea of Writer’s Block. Whenever I get stuck, it’s usually because the problem is what I’m writing or how I’m writing it, not a blanket inability to get the words out. When that happens, I stop and write something completely different and that usually gets me back on the yellow brick road. (My real problem tends to be Writer’s Cockblock - when external factors or people prevent me from getting shit done).

I’m also wary of Advice for Writers. There are things that work, and things that don’t work, and those things aren’t necessarily the same for everyone. Having said that, there are times when I stumble upon a different perspective or a juicy comment that casts a new light on something that I’m beating my head against. No point keeping it all to myself, though, so here are a few things I’ve tripped over on my journeys around the Internet recently.

“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.”
Orson Welles

“You’re going to change your mind a thousand times. That’s a good thing. Only imbeciles never change their minds.”
Anna Rascouët-Paz speaking at San Francisco, Creative Mornings

William Goldman’s “Ten Commandments on Writing”
(from the perennial essential Adventures in the Screen Trade)

1. Thou shalt not take the crisis out of the protagonist’s hands.

2. Thou shalt not make life easy for the protagonist.

3. Thou shalt not give exposition for exposition’s sake.

4. Thou shalt not use false mystery or cheap surprise.

5. Thou shalt respect thy audience.

6. Thou shalt know thy world as God knows this one.

7. Thou shalt not complicate when complexity is better.

8. Thou shalt seek the end of the line, taking characters to the farthest depth of the conflict imaginable within the story’s own realm of probability.

9. Thou shalt not write on the nose – put a subtext under every text.

10. Thou shalt rewrite.

Korea Best

The 55th BFI London Film Festival is in full flow and, judging by the vigorous churn of my Twitter stream, it’s getting full and thorough coverage. Go and stick the #LFF hashtag into Twitter Search and you’ll see what I mean. I’ve got no interest in adding to the LFF noise. I’m more excited at the prospect of the forthcoming 6th Annual London Korean Film Festival which arrives on the 3rd November and continues until the 24th. Plenty of other people want to talk about Kevin, I’d rather nock something else against my bow string - the festival’s opening night film Arrow, the Ultimate Weapon (or, as it seems to be increasingly known, War of the Arrows).

Director Han-min Kim’s third feature hits the ground running. Literally. The first images you see are pounding feet. The first sound you hear is laboured breathing. And that swiftly sets you up for the subsequent 122 minutes - a breathless, exhilarating, thoroughly enjoyable historical action movie. I found myself comparing it favourably to Apocalypto a couple of times.

The year is 1636, during the Second Manchu invasion of Korea. Chung soldiers (led by dour professional Seung-yong Ryoo, delivering the film’s standout performance) invade a village and kidnap Ja-In (Moon Chae-Won) on her wedding day. Her brother, the aimless and bitter Nam-Yi (Hae-il Park), is determined to rescue her, armed with nothing but his trusty bow and a quiver of arrows with distinctive red fletchings. The chase is on.

Han-min Kim’s sound design is glorious: lots of creaking bows, whining bow strings pulled taut and whooshing air as the arrows fly. The beautifully choreographed action sequences are leavened with well-judged moments of occasional slapstick humour, and everything builds inexorably towards a final reckoning.

The Opening Night Gala and European Premiere of Arrow, the Ultimate Weapon takes place on 3rd November at the Odeon West End in Leicester Square, followed by a Q&A with the soft-spoken and personable Han-min Kim and wrapping up with a K-Pop performance.

As usual, the festival programme is broad, varied and definitely worth exploring. I’m not going to copy-and-paste the contents of a press release here, so click here to head over to the festival website for further information.

Into the Mud, Scum Queen!

I’ve got a tin ear for poetry. Always have done. And I’ve tried, believe me. But, as with any rule, there’s an exception - one single, solitary poet that manages to stir something within me. John Lillison, England's greatest one-armed poet. If I’m not mistaken, he was the first person ever to be killed in a car crash, in 1894.

With your indulgence, I’d like to share Lillison’s two greatest towering achievements with you. I hope you enjoy them as much as I always have.

Pointy Bird
O pointy birds, o pointy pointy,
Anoint my head, anointy-nointy.


In Dillman's Grove
In Dillman's Grove my love did die,
and now in ground shall ever lie.
None could ever replace her visage,

until your face brought thoughts of kissage.

Peeking under the hood of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive

"I used to make movies. Sexy stuff. Some critics called them European. I thought they were shit." - Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks) in Drive

I can understand the overwhelming allure that Drive must have held for Nic Winding Refn. An existential crime movie set in L.A.? I’d be pretty damn excited too. But maybe he got a little bit too excited, going hog wild front loading the thing with references, nods or homages to a bunch of his favourite movies. I really, really liked Drive, but I would’ve enjoyed it a lot more if I didn’t keep getting distracted by the memories of the movies that it borrows so heavily from. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should probably stop reading now. If you have, then let’s pop the hood on this baby and see what makes it purr:

Taxi Driver - When he’s not behind the wheel of his hack, the simmering soft-spoken Travis Bickle struggles alternately with the impenetrable obstacles of emotions, human interaction and Albert Brooks. There’s only one thing for it - let’s splash the walls with blood! Interesting bit of trivia - Paul Schrader’s original script was set in Los Angeles, not New York. The decision was made to relocate the action as taxi cabs were far more common in New York than L.A. at the time. And whilst we’re on the subject of Schrader...

American Gigolo - The second installment of Schrader’s “night workers” quintet that began with Taxi Driver. (The last three films to date in this loose, unofficial series are Light Sleeper, Bringing Out The Dead and The Walker). The scene in Drive set in the strippers’ dressing room reminded me of the scene in the opening montage where the titular manwhore Julian Kaye (Richard Gere) visits his tailor. Lots of light, mirrors, reflections. Lots of red.

Drive’s 80s-inflected electro score also clearly alludes to Giogio Morodor’s synthpop soundtrack. But that’s not all. Check out the opening titles: Blondie’s Call Me soundtracks a man, a road, a car and a very familiar cursive font.

Thief - James Caan is a master jewel-thief with a very fixed structure to his life in Michael Mann’s little-seen crime thriller. Sound familiar? A lot of Drive’s plot machinations echo those of Thief, but I don’t want to get into further specifics without getting too spoilery. (Did I mention that it’s “little-seen”? Worth seeking out if you are a Thief virgin.) Actually, a lot of the visual style of early Michael Mann ripples through Drive - a little bit of Manhunter, a flash of Miami Vice (the show, not the shitty movie). Also: Tangerine Dream are on synth duty.

Irréversible - Not all of Drive’s touchstones are American. Gaspar Noé’s brutal reverse-chronology headfuck looms large, and not only because of the graphic scenes of visceral bone-cracking violence and human heads being obliterated in sprays of copious gore. There’s also the colour scheme. Here comes that red again.

Le Samouraï - Yet another precise, methodical perfectionist with a rigid personal code. Yet another professional whose life is unexpectedly complicated by his relationship with a woman. (This is starting to sound like Genre Fiction 101. Granted, sometimes a trope is just a trope. But they endure for a reason, and these are the mental flashes I kept getting whilst watching Drive. See also Léon, John Woo’s The Killer, etc, etc.)

Hitman Jef Costello (Alain Delon) wears his trenchcoat like the Driver wears his scorpion jacket. Like a uniform. The similarities go deeper than that, though - there are certain narrative and visual cues from Jean-Pierre Melville’s minimalist masterpiece that crop up in Drive. For example, the moment when the Driver strides purposefully down the narrow corridor searching for Cook made me flash on this:

The Driver - This is the big one. If you asked me who my favourite director is, I would vacillate for a minute between John Carpenter and Walter Hill before plumping for the latter, and The Driver is one of the many reasons why - cinema pared down to it’s most basic raw components. Terse, tense, fast, relentless and perfect. Ryan O’Neal is the Driver. Bruce Dern is the Detective. Isabelle Adjani is the Player. And I can’t be remotely objective about it, so I’m not even going to try. Bruce Dern put it best: “You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna catch me the cowboy that's never been caught. Cowboy desperado.” Cue squealing rubber for 91 glorious minutes.

To Live and Die in L.A. - Say, that would be a pretty good alternate title for Drive, donchathink? Wang Chung wield the synths this time, and I’d argue that the car chases in William Friedkin’s movie easily surpass those from his earlier The French Connection. Robby Müller’s cinematography here is just gorgeous. Also, those colours again - lots of oranges (tangerines?) and reds.

Does this make it sound like a didn’t enjoy Drive? I hope not. I kinda loved it. I just kept getting pulled out of the film and into my memories. Also, I’d love a 1973 Chevy Malibu for Christmas. Failing that, I’ll settle for a satin scorpion jacket.

Word on the Street

Browsing my bookshelves this morning, my eyes kept getting drawn to the same thin volume, so I pulled it down, blew the dust off it and cracked the spine. The book was Breakdancing - Mr. Fresh and The Supreme Rockers Show You How To Do It! It was a helluva way to start the day. Because it's far too good to keep to myself, I wanted to share my favourite chapter with you, a glossary of breakdancing argot circa 1984. Is it fresh or is it wack? You decide!:

 

If you don't want to completely embarass yourself, then don't tell your friends you just heard "a really outstanding song." Don't say, "That girl is really dumb." And if you're having a great time, going nuts with all your friends, don't say you're all "going nuts". 'Cause that's wack.

And if someone tells you that they have a friend who's a really BAD dancer, don't think he's not a good dancer. And Breakdancers don't "hang around."

Tell your friends you just heard a new song and it's really fresh. And you met this girl who's wack. And that you and your friends were buggin' out. And if someone does a BAD King Tut, then their Tut is fresh. And if you're maxin', you're relaxin'.

So if you don't wanna be wack and have a heart attack, pay attention to the following words and you'll be awesome.

Amaze 'em. This is how you win a dance battle. "You amaze 'em."
"How do you amaze 'em?"
"Easy. You just amaze 'em."

Awesome. Breakdancers don't need much of an excuse to say awesome. Some nights everything is awesome.
"Wow, look at that Adidas suit. Awesome."
"We're goin' to the Roxy tonight. It's gonna be awesome."
"I got the continuation of my Windmill. Awesome."
"I met some fresh girls. Awesome."
"Look at that cheeseburger. Awesome."

Bad. Bad is real good. In other words, if it's good enough, then it's bad.
"When we get our new Chinese suits, we'll be bad."
"Man, I saw this two-month-old kid doing the King Tut, and he was bad."
"Those Gazows are bad."

Bite. When someone bites one of your moves, then they steal it. Bite only has one very exact meaning, and this it. Biting moves is really wack, but everyone does it. Biting is little bit like cheating in a card game. If you see someone biting one of your moves, you can pretend you're biting you're finger, as a sign that you know they're biting. The most interesting thing about biting is that it shows how really individual Breakdancing is. Your moves are used to win battles, so if someone bites one of your moves, then they can use it against you in a battle.

Bugging Out. When you're going crazy, you're bugging out. Or if you get confused or mess out you say you're bugging or bugging out. Or if you see something or someone that really catches your eye and really stare, then you're bugging out.
"Man, we got on the subway and we were bugging out."
"What's the matter with you? You're buggin'."
"Man, those guys were buggin' out."

Chill. Good, O.K.
"His Pop is chill."
"You wanna go to the movies? That's chill."

Chillin'. Relaxing. Hanging out. Laying back.
"Hey, what's up?" "Chillin'."
"Hey, what's up?" "Chillin', willin', maxin', and relaxin'." or "Maxin' and relaxin', chilling, willing, and able."

Fresh. This is the big word. This will get you through a lot of tough situations. Fresh means original, good, or real good. And to say it right you always accent the word fresh.
"Our new routine is fresh."
"I heard a new record. It was fresh."
"He's too fresh."
Fresh is used in so many instances and so often, as long as you use it for anything good, you'll be fresh.

Juice. If you got juice, you got pull with someone who counts.

Maxin'. Relaxing. Or use max out.
"What's your beef?" "Maxin'."
"I'm tired, I'm gonna max out."

Power. If you're a dancer and you're really rocking, you're in power. When someone is in a position of authority, power or respect, you say that they're in their power - a very common term. For example, Michael Jackson is in his power. The Beatles were in their power in the 60's and 70's. Afrika Bambaataa, one of the most respected persons in Hip Hop, is in his power. Sometimes when a dancer feels like he or she has the audience bugging out, they'll do a dance move with a closed fist to indicate a state of power.

Rock. When you're really getting down dancewise, you're rocking.
"How'd it go?" "Man, we were rockin' shit."

Take out. If you win a battle, you take the other dancer out. If someone beats you, they take you out.

Wack. The opposite of fresh. Bad, not bad. Everything bad is wack.
"Man, you wack."
"He dances wack."
"Look at that Calvin Klein outfit. "Yeah, it's wack."

Ephemera

"In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day."  - Tom Waits

Which is to say that I might not be here, but I am around.

"You don't go down Broadway to get to Broadway! You zig! You zag!" - Ray Liotta in Cop Land

Hell Up In Harlan

“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” – Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules of Writing

Nothing that “Dutch” Leonard writes sounds like writing. It sounds like eavesdropping.

Elmore Leonard writes stories the way Howard Hawks used to make movies. It’s not about three acts, beginning-middle-end and all that Syd Field stuff. It’s about stacking great scene after great scene until you have a helluva story. Plots can be fun, but sometimes nothing beats a run of great scenes. It doesn’t even really matter where the story is going, as long as you enjoy the ride. And nothing makes a ride go smoother than being in the company of seasoned raconteurs with a nice line in salty dialogue.

“Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.” – Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules of Writing

There was a time when the overwhelming majority of Elmore Leonard adaptations failed miserably. The people who snaffled up those books as “properties” for adaptation misunderstood their appeal by foregrounding the least important component (the plot) and fudging the stuff that really makes his work sing (the characters and the dialogue). That finally stopped happening with the one-two punch of Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown and Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight, paving the way for the small-screen arrival of Graham Yost’s Justified.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens first appeared in Leonard’s novels Pronto and Riding the Rap before easing further into the limelight with the short story Fire in the Hole, which serves as the springboard for Justified. Working out of South Florida, Raylan Givens is an anachronism. Imagine a cowboy wandering through an episode of Miami Vice. Deceptively unassuming with the soft-spoken manner of a true Southern gentleman and his ever-present stetson, if he ever has cause to draw down on you, you can be damn sure that bullets will fly. A questionable shooting gets Raylan booted back to Eastern Kentucky and the town of Harlan where he grew up, having to face up to the family and friends he thought he’d left behind. And that’s your basic set-up. Not so much “fish out of water” as “fish thrown back in the pond he’d been desperately trying to get out of.”

Leonard trades in the archetypes of crime and Western fiction: thieves and murderers, lawmen and gunslingers, all manner of colourful scumbags. But it’s never as clear cut as black hats and white hats and it’s not straight genre fiction. He’s much more interested in letting the characters speak for themselves as they navigate that large murky wedge of grey that we all live in. Which brings me back to the dialogue again.

All my favourite moments in Justified are the two-handers between Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan and his childhood friend, nemesis, extremist and explosives expert Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins). The verbal parrying between Olyphant and Goggins crackles in an ambiguous, complex brew of mutual respect, affection and enmity. It is the stuff that slash fiction is made of (and some of the “Brokeback Justified” videos I stumbled across on YouTube seem to bear that out.)

Although, running a close second in the favourites stakes, there is a killer moment in Season One when Raylan, sitting in a bar trying to get quietly shitfaced, turns and silences the raucous guffaws of a bunch of redneck boors with the line: “I didn't order assholes with my whiskey”.

But this is starting to sound a little bit too much like “Justified's Greatest Hits”, and that’s not the way to truly soak up the heady moonshine brew of the show. Justified is deep into the guts of Season Two right now. If you haven’t yet had the opportunity to sample the downhome, deadly delights of Harlan County, it’s time to play catch-up.