The Amazing Leigh Brackett

Consider this--Leigh Brackett wrote or cowrote the following films:

Howard Hawks' classic private eye flick THE BIG SLEEP
Robert Altman's revisionist PI flick THE LONG GOODBYE
Hawks' John Wayne western classic RIO BRAVO
The Hawks/Wayne remake of RB, El DORADO
and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

That's a heap of different tones and textures, genres and genre-revisionism to come from the typewriter of one person.

I have a new piece up about Brackett over at Criminal Element called Adventures In Screenwriting. Check it out.

You might also like this, a pretty-damn delightful personal essay Brackett wrote at the time of her first publication in the sci-fi mag AMAZING STORIES. The first line sets the tone: "In quite undramatic fashion, I began by being born."

Carl Theodor Dreyer

For me the work of some artists is an ever-replenishing well. I can return to it again and again--not just for entertainment (though, that's part of it, of course) but for something like spiritual nourishment. I'm thinking of the work of Orson Welles, Emily Dickinson, Johnny Cash, Krzysztof Kieslowski, and James Baldwin. I'm thinking of Beethoven and Bergman. And I'm thinking of Carl Theodor Dreyer.

Dreyer is best remembered today for his 1928 classic THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC. It's an amazing, intense experience quite unlike any other I can think of, but it's only one of the films that I love from the director. The 1943 DAY OF WRATH is a powerful witch-buring parable made under the noses of the Nazis. My favorite of his films might well be 1955's ORDET, about two pious families with differing religious beliefs. These films contain depths that my paltry summations don't even begin to touch. They are meditations on belief, disbelief, and the way individual human psychology informs and malforms religious dogma. They're not for everyone, but I love them.

I bring up Dreyer here to point the way toward an excellent website dealing with his life and work. Carl Th. Dreyer is a first rate resource for anyone interested in this invaluable artist--it provides articles, biographical research, and much more. I wish that every artist I love had such an impressive website. Go check it out. 

A Beginner's Guide to Studying Crime Fiction

I have a new post up at Criminal Element in which I've put together what I think is a nice beginner's guide to some of the critical/historical literature that's sprung up around crime fiction over the years. This isn't a comprehensive list, just a nice jumping off place for fans of the hardboiled stuff. 

You can click here to read Pulp Nonfiction: A Guide to Studying Hardboiled Crime. 

Edward A. Grainger on Wyatt Earp

Western powerhouse Edward A. Grainger, aka David Cranmer, has a new piece over at Criminal Element called "All My Earps: The Many Film Faces Of Wyatt Earp." It's a smart, idiosyncratic overview of perhaps the most famous lawman of the old west. 

I differ on only a couple of points on the list. First, I've never been a big fan of TOMBSTONE. Despite the almost universally high regard in which that film is held, it's always left me a little cold. (I've always preferred the widely derided Costner/Quaid epic WYATT EARP which was released around the same time.) And I'm a far bigger fan of MY DARLING CLEMENTINE--which is on my shortlist of favorite John Ford movies--than Cranmer appears to be.

But disagreeing on the finer points of these things is half the fun. Check out Cranmer's list. Then go check out some Earp flicks.

The Murder of William Desmond Taylor

Quick, what does King Vidor (director of classics like the 1928 THE CROWD) have in common with Kimberly Peirce (director of the brilliant 1999 BOYS DON'T CRY)? Both of them tried unsuccessfully for years to film a story about the murder of another director, the silent film pioneer William Desmond Taylor. What is so fascinating about the murder that two directors, decades apart, would attempt to wrestle the mystery into a movie about sex, betrayal, and fame? I suppose the answer is in the question. The murder of Taylor shook Hollywood to its core, and the bizarre circumstances around the case seemed to touch every power center in LA from the studios to the press and all the way into the upper reaches of the the LAPD.

Check my essay on the case over at Criminal Element.   

Sex and The Swamp Thing

I have new piece over at Tor.com about Alan Moore's legendary run on THE SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING from 1983 to 1987. I really don't think that comix get much better than Moore's work with artists Stephen Bissette and John Totleben on this series. Together this creative team turned SWAMP THING from a horror story into a densely layered and emotionally resonant romantic fantasy. Moore expanded Swampy's universe and his mythic meaning. He also gave him a sex life that remains unparalleled in most superhero comix.

I am sure that for some readers this transition was a bridge too far--for some the whole thing must have seemed too trippy, weird, indulgent. And I mean to take nothing away from the work of writer Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson (both of whom I greatly admire), who created Swamp Thing.

I'm not interested in whether Moore's Swamp Thing is better or worse than the iterations of the character it either succeed or preceded. I'm interested in what he did on his run. I think it ranks among his best work and can stand alongside such acknowledged masterpieces as WATCHMEN and V FOR VENDETTA. Check out the piece "Sex and The Swamp Thing" over at Tor.

ENEMY (2014)

I've been having a good time at the movies over the last few weeks. One of my favorite new films is ENEMY, a kind of slow-boiling surrealist thriller from director Denis Villeneuve, based on the book by Jorge Saramago. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a history professor (the movie never says, but he has that adjunct look to him) named Adam Bell who discovers, quite by accident one day, that he has an exact double walking around. His double (also played, in a bit of seamless moviemaking magic and topflight acting, by Gyllenhaal) is a callow Z-list actor named Anthony Clair.

The plot involving doubles has been done many times, probably to greatest effect in Kieslowski's THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE. Kieslowski took "the double" as way to dramatize one of the central tragedies of life--that we have but one life to live. The idea of the double is so strangely haunting because it taps into some fantasy part of ourselves--that "who would I have been if I had been born somewhere else" mind game we sometimes play.

ENEMY is a darker look at this idea, though, because it puts the doubles in opposition to one another. Both Adam and Anthony have reason to want to escape their lives. Adam is depressed, stuck in a job that is just a loop of giving canned lectures to bored students, and stuck in a go-nowhere relationship with the lovely Mary (an excellent Melanie Laurent) that consists of sex and little else. Adam, meanwhile, has a pregnant wife named Helen (an equally excellent Sarah Gadon) who doesn't seem to trust him--in fact, she doesn't even seem to like him very much. We suspect that both Mary and Helen are right to be unhappy with these men. Adam is empty, incapable of joy or any real happiness. And there's something that's too aggressive about Anthony, something too entitled and angry.

One can't help but thinking that Adam and Anthony might, together, form one whole man. Maybe that's the appeal of "the double" plot--the sneaky suspicion that we're all missing something. What if all those questions we ask ourselves in private--Why can't I be smarter? Why can't I be more assertive?--what if those questions could have a physical expression? 

In some ways, ENEMY reminded me of the 1948 HOLLOW TRIUMPH starring Paul Henreid. In that film, an ex-con on the run from the cops stumbles across his double and decides to murder the man and steal his life. ENEMY takes this kind of ridiculous plot and embraces its lunacy by approaching the material with surrealist flair. This is not a "realistic" movie in any sense. There are visions here that appear randomly like something out of David Lynch, or even further back--there's a spider here that reminded me of the "god as spider" vision in Bergman's THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY. And the final scene of this film, which I would not dare ruin for anyone, made me laugh with unexpected joy at its boldness.

Every movie sets its own rules for an audience. ENEMY requires both a rapt attention and an up-for-anything acceptance. I found those things very easy to provide. This is a great time at the movies.