My love of the movies largely began with ABC's Monday Night at the Movies when I was five or six or so. The funny thing was that I wasn't allowed to stay up late enough to ever finish anything they showed, with the exception of Star Wars (which I eventually saw in the theater, the summer after seeing The Empire Strikes Back). So I saw the first half or so of Young Frankenstein and the Carpenter version of The Thing multiple times without knowing how they ended until years later. When I moved to Michigan, however, there was a great UHF channel that showed blocks of everything from the classics to utter trash, and in a time range where I'd get to finish them. If memory serves, it was there that I first encountered James Bond, in the form of Roger Moore in Live and Let Die (1973), which coincidentally was Roger's first turn as Bond.
And yes, yes, I know, only Sean Connery was Bond, and Roger gets blamed for everything cartoonish about the series. But I'd suggest you revisit the last couple of Connery's and Lazenby's one go, and see if you can still tell me straight-faced that it wasn't already headed that way. Granted, I'll give you Moonraker (1979), as the apex of ridiculousness...in any event...to an eight or nine year old, Live and Let Die was (and mostly still is) a thrilling adventure, worth it if only for the boat chase scene and what's still one of the best Bond theme songs.
...and one of the best Bond posters thanks to Robert McGinnis.
The books, on the other hand, tell a different story as it were. Thanks to VHS and a helpful father, I had seen all the Bond films by the time I was in my teens, but not until my 20's did I actually pick up any of the source material. Figuring that Goldfinger (1964) was the gold standard in Connery's run as Bond, that was the first book I picked up. About halfway through, I was baffled that one of the most exciting of the movies was one of the dullest books I'd ever read. If it wasn't for the internet, I likely would have never picked up another one, but several reviews of Fleming's canon said much the same, and made their own rankings and suggestions as where better to dive in. Since then I've read and enjoyed several of the original Bond adventures, both novel-length and short story.
So this past week, as you may have already figured out, I delved into Fleming's second Bond adventure, Live and Let Die (1954). In it, rare gold coins have been turning up in New York City pawn shoppes, and the U.S. government has contacted the British government over several of the pieces which have been traced to Mr. Big, a Harlem gangster. Bond is sent in to join American agent Felix Leiter in tracking the source of the coins, believed to be the treasure of the infamous pirate Henry Morgan, and distrupt Mr. Big's operations. Big, a practitioner of Voodoo, seems to have an infallible eye and network set up to stop the super-spy from foiling him.
Not my copy, but one with a far cooler cover.
When looking at any of the Bond books, you have to put aside your memory of the movies (if you've seen them obviously), because the books are far more straightforward action/suspense tales and feature far fewer gadgets and hilariously named henchmen than the movies...well, some hilariously named henchmen, but not as many. Having done that, this book makes for a decent adventure and does a great job with atmospheric description to build some fine suspense. One thing I have noticed, though is that Fleming seems to have trouble holding up the middle. The first third and last thirds of the books are usually action-packed, but a drag always sets in before the finale. The main problem with the plot, however, was that it was very similar to a later Bond novel that took 007 to the tropics, Dr. No (1958), which I had already read. The biggest difference was that Dr. No was a far better developed villain, whereas Big is only dealt with enough to make him intimidating but not very well rounded.
Which leads to a very important point: in today's politically correct world, this book will likely be offensive to new readers. I mention it for two reasons. The first is how far the PC trend has gone: that Huckleberry Finn either gets whitewashed or banned for its coarse racial language and I've read reports of To Kill a Mockingbird being banned for RACISM. It's more than a little horrifying to become so sensitive so as to miss the point entirely. Are Fleming's somewhat frequent references to "negroid features" and his use of stereotypical "negro" dialect in the dialogue racist? Absolutely. But other than pointing out the usual (it was a different time, etc.), I won't make any apologies for it. It is what it is. Big is an interesting villain in that he's physically imposing, cunning, ruthless, able to pray on superstition and fear to subjugate others, philosophical and highly intelligent. In terms of at least three dimensions, he gets a pass. Unfortunately, that's not enough to bolster how more or less stereotypical every other black character around him is.
Believe or not...far less offensive than what's in the book.
Ultimately, it stirred in me the echoes of a great class I took in college on the representation of minorities in film, taught by the great Charles Ramirez-Berg. At the start of the semester, the professor posited an interesting query: in today's sensitive and politically correct world, can you have a villain? His point being that no matter who you cast as an antagonist, chances are it will ruffle someone's feathers in one way or another. But he also countered it with the wonderful point that at the same time that didn't mean you couldn't see value in a work just because it had elements that could be construed as racism, nor would every moment or character that might be racist invariably make a negative mark on the mind of the viewer about this or that group. And so, through that lens, I was able to enjoy what was enjoyable about Live and Let Die and lament what was lost to a less considerate age.
Norman Saunders (1907-1989) was a part of my life long before I ever knew it.
Take that Rockwell! (Norman...not Sam)
In elementary school in the 1980's, most of the kids had gone absolutely nuts over Garbage Pail Kids. Every recess the disgusting trading cards with silly names came out: trades were made, new ones were shown, and some kid always got to show off with cards from the rare and vaunted first series. In between series, the other card companies were quick to compete for the youthful attention and dollar, among them Wacky Packages. There was something about this satirical send-up of advertising that appealed to me far more than the adolescent gross-out of the Garbage Pail Kids. Don't get me wrong: I had complete sets of the 2nd-4th series of the Kids. But there was something one-note about the jokes, whereas, and I had no idea at the time, many of the Wacky's were jokes that were 20 years old at that point...and still going.
I eventually gave a way my Garbage Pail Kids...but I still have the Wacky Packs cards, and Norman Saunders painted more than just a few of them.
Despite having a distinctive style, a publishing record in the thousands and an indelible mark on pop culture, Norman Saunders, like so many great illustrators, never got the respect he deserved outside of his peers and fans of his work. In 2009, his son, artist and pulp historian David Saunders put together the monograph that his father had always deserved. This is no minor task as pulp painting originals as well as the magazines and paperbacks they were printed on have become very rare and highly collectible. And, I'm happy to say that I finally got my hands on a copy of one. (On a funny side note, one of the postcards inside the book was for a collector offering rewards for Saunders' originals.)
Remember to R.S.V.P!
Starting as a freelance cartoonist for the ribald Captain Billy's Whiz Bang magazine, Norman Saunders soon had a career doing pulp covers and interior art for Fawcett Publications in Minnesota. In them days, as the saying goes, an illustrator often began in the pulps while angling to get into the "slicks", the higher-end glossy magazines. Though he would try time and time again, Saunders found little luck in the slicks. In the pulps, however, he had a veritable bonanza in a variety of genres. Saunders always prided himself on sticking to a distinctive style of painting rather than being tied to any one subject, which allowed him to work on westerns, sci-fi, horror, and the hardboiled among others
I know, I know: Frazetta = Conan. But this is still a first.
When the initial run of pulps began to fall by the wayside, paperbacks became the new medium, and Saunders moved into them painting the cover to the first paperback printing of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Conqueror. Saunders also painted a variety of covers for a number of different comic books, and eventually became one of the kings of the Men's Adventure magazines. It was through Taschen's wonderful book of cover images from these that I became reacquainted with Saunders, and then discovered his late work in trading cards. Wacky Packs were only one of many series he painted having rendered one of the most iconic series of all time: MARS ATTACKS!
I would've gone to more carnivals if this was the prize instead of an off-color stuffed Pink Panther.
If you haven any interest in this sort of work, I can't recommend this book highly enough. The multitude of high quality images, both published and originals, makes it quite a find. David Saunders keeps the writing short and congenial, conveying just the right amount of biographical information and enjoyable quotes to let the art speak for itself. Overall, it's a very fine quality book for an often criminally overlooked American genre of artwork.
For a first stab in some time at a music review, it's tough to imagine a better candidate for putting an author at ease than Harry Nilsson.
That's Harry on the Left.
In recent times, Harry's finally gotten some well-deserved recognition, but for many years he was one of those ultra-creative guys who was more a part of the pop culture unconscious than the conscious: the familiar voice of that "who sang this song, again?" guy. Ironically, for all of the man's amazing amount of output, it's for two cover songs, "Everybody's Talking" and "Without You", that Nilsson is perhaps now best known for. Before listening to his stuff for myself, I mostly heard his name floating about in conversations with hardcore Beatles fans, which makes sense, since who would revere a guy more than the Beatles did than fans of the Beatles. Some know Harry for his bawdy and boozy part in John Lennon's wild "Lost Weekend"period, which lasted for about eighteen months (1973-74), while Lennon was separated from Yoko Ono.
Though I have a fair cross section of his catalogue, it was Nilsson's 1973 album, A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, that I most recently began listening to. This record finds Harry in the seemingly elderly part of his mature phase and quite a way materially from his early psychedelic Tin Pan Alley days, or does it? The set list, during which one arrangement blends smoothly into the next creating an album long medley of sorts, is a solid set of standards and showtunes, and by including numbers like "It Had to Be You" and "Makin' Whoopee," Harry's heart still lies deeply with whimsy., even if it's not the childlike, pop-sensible whimsy of The Point (1971). (I highly recommend seeking out this album, or the accompanying animated special of it. An amazing delight for children of all ages.)
If you think his thumb's hot, you should see the piano after a session.
The album is not a grabber, and if you're waiting for it to kick in, you're in for a disappointing listen. A Little Touch... seems meant for late night listening, for either a night on the balcony or for getting some after hours creative work done. And though it features the heavily orchestrated arrangement of any number of Easy Listening records (performing just this sort of slate of songs), Harry's light touch and laidback approach to the material keep it from being the bombastic overproduced affair that many aging pop stars seem to churn out. In all, Nilsson delivers a record full of numbers with just enough of the dust blown off of them to sound airy and fresh, but not too much to lose that well-worn and familiar feel.
(If you search it out, be sure to pick up a version with the bonus tracks from the sessions which blend right in with the rest of the album, including a lovely take on "Over the Rainbow".)
As much as I hate to say it, the trailer for Cosmopolis (2012) has been one of the absolute few to stir any feeling of excitement in me to go to the cinema. In fact, though I haven't seen them all (close but not quite), David Cronenberg is one of the very few directors left whose newest work alway generates a sense of anticipation. His horror work in the 80's always stood out from the rest for the level of depth it contained compared to the teen-camper hacking that was so prevalent around it. It still amazed me that though Videodrome (1983) was a prediction of the future of television, it was remarkably prescient about trends and directions the internet would take early on (And now, TV and internet are slowly becoming one and the same).
I've equally met his more dramatic work with equal anticipation...though I'll admit, Cronenberg lost me for a few years when I was still a youth and he was ready to move away from a more visceral horror for a more psychological one. I recently revisited Dead Ringers (1988), which, I must admit, as a story about the mental breakdown of twin gynecologists, sort of lost something on me as a teenager, but I found it to still be a shocking and surprising film today. However, I was perfectly ready and excited by Cronenberg's crossover success with A History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007).
However, when a friend related to me his recent experience of seeing Cosmopolis in the theater, and the hostile reaction by the portly woman seated next to him...something like "That was bullshit!" at the film's conclusion, led me to remember a story of my own bewilderment at a Cronenberg screening. I was in college in Austin when Cronenberg's Crash (1996) came out. The one about sex & car crashes based on the J.G. Ballard novel, not the silly overwrought one about racism. After over an hour and half of bizarre and extreme sexual exploration, people started leaving when James Spader and Elias Koteas shared a few kisses ten minutes before the end. And all I could think was, "You sat through all that...and this...this is what freaks you out? Sheesh."
Cosmopolis is not easy. Two-thirds of it takes place in the claustrophobic dark confines of a futuristic stretch limo with its protagonist, billionaire Eric Packer, having conversations with the various people who meet him along his route across town to get a haircut. It's philosophical. It's obtuse. And the characters don't seem to be talking to each other as much as absent-mindedly jabbing you with the tines of a fork representing their intellectual positions. I don't have to stretch my mind far to see where it would be a difficult experience, and yet I couldn't help but find it fascinating.
Pattinson is an excellent choice to play Packer. He embodies the cold stoicism of a marble statue, yet, all the while has a highly calculating mind and a predatory ferocity just under the surface. He plays Packer's slow meltdown in a subtle note-by-note change rather than let it devolve into histrionics. The supporting cast, including Jay Baruchel, Samantha Morton, and Juliette Binoche, among many other fine performances, create a sort of personality pantheon each coming for a few moments of conversation or fornication with their Zeus. Packer's eventual confrontation with Benno Levin (Paul Giamatti) has the feel of a one-act play of its own, a sort of mini-film within the film. However, I'd rather not say too much at this point. Talking about the details of movies 20 years old is one thing, but I'd like to see people give this one a chance before I give away too much.
My final note is that I've seen a number of reviewers criticize the less than seamless nature of the "rear-screen projection" look of the world passing by the limo. Now, I've never been an apologist for chintzy effects, but this one never once bothered me. I kept thinking about how in this climate of 1% v. 99% having heard so many anecdotes of people who've never opened their own door or fed their children, etc. So to me, in that attitude, it seemed like an appropriate way for a guy like that to see the world: as though it were all happening somewhere else to other people even when they're rocking his own limo. And if you think that's a load of bullshit, I'll refer you to the movie's discussion of shutting out city noise.
This week, I received a wonderful surprise in the mail. My mom, while exploring an estate sale, found me a copy of the Pocket Paperback of Our Man Flint, one of my favorite of the 1960's James Bond knock-offs. Ultimately it was a bit of a letdown, as I was at first excited thinking the movie had been based on a book I'd not heard of, only to find out that it was a novelization of the screenplay.
Mine, unfortunately, doesn't look quite this nice.
Well, let's just say that Jack Pearl isn't Ian Fleming...and, well, it's not as though Fleming was the best novelist in the world. I still find it one of the great ironies that one of the greatest Bond films, Goldfinger (1964), was one of the dullest books I've ever read. Now, in many ways, the movie is very faithful to the events of the book, but the movie doesn't waste nearly the same amount of time on a golf game between protagonist and antagonist. I'm happy to report, however, that while I almost gave up reading another Fleming afterward, I have sense consumed and enjoyed several of the other Bond adventures and short stories.
Back to the matter at hand: The fun thing about novelizations is that they frequently give glimpses of material in the screenplay that didn't make it to the screen. And in many cases, this alternate material is far wilder than what was eventually filmed. Pearl's book had a few of these but the writing was fairly pedestrian and by the numbers. The most hilarious part was the frequent mention of female bosoms and buttocks heaving and flexing under whatever "thin" fabric they happened to be wearing.
The fantastic poster by Bob Peak
Reading the book spurred me to revisit the film, which I hadn't watched in some time. In an article, I wrote many moons ago I discussed the slew of Bond knock-offs that populated the 60's, and the fact that there's a reason why James Bond is still the best known and only survivor of the jetset spy genre. Now with the Cold War behind us and tough times still ahead, Intelligence has never been more important, but we've all seen that it's definitely not the glamourous affair of strong-arming an informant at a state dinner to find out who put the hit out on the Duke of Wherever.
The Superspy owes a debt to the Surrealists.
Derek Flint was to be the American answer to Bond: hence the explanatory "Our Man" in the title. An early scene has Flint eschewing the Walther PPK and the myriad of other weapons associated with the movie spygame as barbaric. Flint is every bit as sophisticated and intelligent as Bond if not more so, and the publicity for the film shows him tackling armies of girls at a time. The plot concerns a cabal of scientists who are controlling the weather to bring about unilateral disarmament of the world powers. Flint chases them through exotic locations to their underground paradise of drugged guards and pleasure units (read: hot chicks).
James Coburn is at his charming best as the world class worldly superspy, and he uses his toothy rogueish grin to get him in and out of hot water. In fact, it's largely Coburn's charisma that helps us overlook Flint's biggest flaw as a protagonist: he's flawless. It's never compelling storytelling when a hero comes off invulnerable, but Coburn keeps Flint completely watchable. Lee J. Cobb is also enjoyable as Flint's supervisor Cramden, though he and Coburn would have far more fun in their respective roles in the sequel, In Like Flint (1967). Flint's beauties are a bit on the stiff side, but Gila Golan is both alluring and fun as the turncoat beauty, who lures Flint in only to succumb to his charm.
The only thing preferable to Miller Time.
The sets are big, flashy and ridiculous. The action features a lot of gymnastics and fisticuffs (Coburn was one of Bruce Lee's famous students). The stock footage and model shots are typically shoddy, but fun. The pace lags a bit in place, since, like I said, Flint rarely seems to be in any kind of eminent danger. On the flip side, there's a good dosage of humor...and an eagle that only attacks Americans! In all, it's a colorful and enjoyable way to pass a couple of hours in the Movie World of superspy-dom.
I'm a child of the 13th, and I couldn't tell you whether the bad luck on various birthdays has had anything of whether or not my party fell on a Friday or not.
The interesting thing about superstition is whether or not it's worth crossing it, and that endless loop of what-if's it creates concerning various outcomes if you had waited or just done something on that day. But what if what you were thinking of doing was bad anyway, and no matter what day it was, someone was likely to get hurt? Today's review is about a book that puts on the thumbscrews pondering just that sort of thing: Black Friday by David Goodis.
David Goodis is one of the lesser known of the crime fiction greats. In fact, after his death in the late 60's, Goodis' work went out of print in the U.S., and survived mainly in reprints by the lovers of all things noir, the French (Anyone ever see Moon in the Gutter (aka. La lune dans le caniveau, 1983) starring Depardieu, the French cult classic based on Goodis?). Like so many of his crime lit brethren, Goodis' works returned to his native soil in the late 80's, thanks to publisher Black Lizard. In a similar vein to Jim Thompson's ties with the Oklahoma and Texas underworld, Goodis too benefited from time spent in seedy nightclubs and bars in his favorite location to fictionalize, Philadelphia. Sadly, Goodis is perhaps best known today for his famous lawsuit against the 60's TV staple, The Fugitive, for allegedly being lifted from his novel Dark Passage, which unfortunately became more a case about whether his book was in the public domain than whether the ideas were stolen.
Black Friday is a fun pressure cooker of a book. A fugitive named Hart hops off the train in Philly to avoid capture when he encounters a man dying from a gunshot wound. The man unloads a wad of stolen money on Hart which leads to his being captured by the team of professional thieves that did the shooting. The plot covers the week before their next heist, which unfortunately falls on Friday the 13th. The team can't let Hart go, even though he can't go to the cops anyway, but they also can't decide whether they can trust him despite his story of being a pro-criminal himself. The suspense it ratcheted up bit by bit as squabbles break out and romance develops in this little house full of unsavory characters as the clock winds down to go time.
Now, this book may not feature enough crime for fans of modern crime fiction. It functions much better as a study in personality mechanics, where a new cog is dropped into a smoothly running machine, and with each turn all the paths deviate farther from their standard courses. So while it delivers on suspense, it's not exactly thrilling per se, and the ending, while appropriate, may not be the climatic stand off you were coming to expect (see: The reaction to the conclusion of No Country for Old Men (2007).) What's undeniable however is the strength of Goodis' ability to turn dialogue into a fencing match of words and wits, and an atmosphere that makes you appreciate the shelter of a lion's den to stay out of the cold, hostile, white world outside.
As a kid, I was mostly a Spider-guy and an occasional X-man.
I remember going with my mom to take my great-grandmother grocery shopping, and each time we went, Great Grandma Johnson would buy me a three pack of Spider-man comics which came in a plastic bag with two-tone representations of the web-slinger on the top tab. Later, between the 7-11 at the corner and a Target-esque store called Gemco (I think...haha), I started raiding the spinning racks at for a book or two. That's where the X-men came into the picture.
Seeing as how this never happens inside, is the statute of limitations up for suing over false advertising?
But when I had whatever was still on the rack, I'd buy stuff purely on the drawing on the front. In the late 70's and early 80's, comic books excelled at the deceptive covers that promised something wildly not contained between its covers. That was how Thor and Daredevil first joined my ranks. Daredevil #183 seemed a weird place to start as it appeared that The Punisher was blowing away the titular hero, but that was the first one I ever bought.
Though I watched Superfriends and had seen the first two Superman movies as well as a fair share of reruns of the Batman TV show, I never took much to DC heroes. It wasn't until I was in my early teens that I returned to DC and picked up backissues of Alan Moore's bizarre and beautiful run on Swamp Thing. So I was still a long way from the superhero polity of these simpler, more mythical titans of truth and justice. Still, the occasional DC character still slipped into my growing stack of colored pulp in my closet.
Enter Blackhawk.
In the era of Big Wheels, call the War Wheel kiddie catnip for my young brain
I didn't know who he was, but I figured that whatever a War Wheel was, it had to be pretty badass.
Just as I was growing some sense of maturity in the 80's, I stumbled right from the usual superhero comics right into the crazy and creative world of Epic comics, Marvel's specialty creator-owned line. Some of what I found there is still among my favorite comics: Blood: A Tale, Elektra Assassin, Stray Toasters, Alien Legion and Marshall Law among others. Sadly, Epic only lasted for a decade and half, and while DC toyed with stranger properties like Swamp Thing and a few others, it wasn't until Epic was folding that their own specialty line was launched as Vertigo (which, ironically, would go on to reprint many Epic series as graphic novels).
I still occasionally get the bite to root out books from this era, as they're the closest I would say comics in America got to an artistic maturity, and not just the mature label on the cover that usually only indicated the comic would have some titties and a prodigious amount of swearing. It's sort of a hilarious irony that having comic characters do all the things real adults do instantly renders them and their stories even more infantile. Anyhow, like I said, there was an air of amazing possibility that these books still hold.
So despite the lack of War Wheels, I ran down all three issues of the 1987 rebirth of the World War II fighting ace, Blackhawk, as reimangined by Howard Chaykin. In the tale, Blackhawk is in the midst of a falling out with the U.S. government as a possible Communist sympathizer, which his Nazi rival, British traitor Death Mayhew (that's right, a bad guy just named straight up Death), is using to steal an early atomic weapon. The adventure sends Blackhawk chasing across Europe and the Middle East to recover the bomb and clear his name before Mayhew lives up to his strange moniker. It's fine pulp pulled from the pages of old Men's magazines rendered in exquisite square-jawed style by Chaykin.
Chaykin began working in comics in the 1970's for both DC and Marvel, and if there's one thing he's always excelled at it was a sense of classical adventure. His artwork walks an amazing line between traditional realist comic depiction to the more modernist and avant garde, but always with that air of the era of the man's man...though his women are usually just as smart and just as tough as his leading men. He's also one of the only comic artists that's ever pulled off ink pointillism as a shading technique that I've ever seen.
This series of books is exciting fun, and features a number of period details that lend it an air of authenticity often missing when the comics resurrect one of their long dormant titles. Blackhawk made his first appearance in 1941 in the pages of Military Comics printed by Quality comics. DC took over the character, and like most of the traditional war and western titles, he had a rocky off-and-on publishing history, which even featured a period where they tried to turn Blackhawk and his team into goofy superheroes. Like Speilberg and Lucas did with a serial-style hero like Indiana Jones, Chaykin is able to appeal to the nostalgia of the modern age, while still telling a story far more complex than those of the era he originally appeared in.
Though beautifully illustrated and well-written, it does take a little getting used to in following what's going on when and who's talking in some of the more ambitious transitions. Also, don't expect much exposition as to time, place, or character, as you're sort of just dumped into the world of Blackhawk and it's up to you to catch up. Nevertheless, it was a good trip back to one of my favorite times in comics, and well worth seeking out. As a side note, I particularly enjoyed Chaykin's reinterpretations of period newspapers and propaganda in the various inserts throughout the book.
We'll see what I track down next, when the desire for this era takes me.
I sit around most days and create. I've written 4 books (2 available through my site or Amazon), a small stack of screenplays, and a bunch of ad and web copy. When not using words, I paint and draw quite a fair bit. Occasionally, I'm paid for doing this. I like paper, pens, india ink, celluloid and alcohol. I hope you enjoy a little of what I've made for you, my love...my storm...my anonymous public...
