Ed here: This is a really fine piece
written by the
always insightful Kevin Burton Smith from
Mystery Scene magazine and now available
on the
MS website.
Kevin Burton Smith:
(Above) Robert Culp in the sadly
neglected noir gem Hickey & Boggs (1972), which he both directed and
starred in. Photo courtesy of United Artists.
Actor Robert Culp passed away in March
and the tributes were immediate and heartfelt. Culp was, by all accounts, that
rarest of Hollywood items: a genuinely nice guy. It helped, of course, that
he's best remembered for his role as the amiable, dashing tennis pro/secret
agent Kelly Robinson in I Spy, the 1960s TV show. Culp and co-star Bill Cosby,
who posed as Culp's "trainer" (and cracked television's prime-time
drama color barrier along the way), played two suave, wisecracking,
globetrotting doofuses who somehow managed to save the world on a regular
basis. Culp made numerous other appearances over his long career on television,
many of them crime-related, including a starring role as the driven Texas
Ranger in Trackdown (1957-59), and guest spots on everything from 87th Precinct
and Cain's Hundred to Diagnosis: Murder and Columbo.
But for my money, Culp's greatest
achievement was Hickey & Boggs, an obscure but deliciously nasty little
film noir from 1972. Culp not only starred in it (along with Cosby) but also
directed it, based on a screenplay by rookie screenwriter Walter Hill. Frank
Boggs (Culp) and Al Hickey (Cosby) are two small-time Los Angeles private eyes
in an almost complete role reversal of their beloved TV personas. Gone are the
aw-shucks idealism and glib heroism of I Spy (and, indeed, of much private-eye
fiction of the time), replaced by a dark brew of rage, cynicism, and almost
crippling impotence (Culp laments, variously, that he needs a better car, a
bigger house, and, tellingly, a bigger gun). They're burnouts, losers barely
there for themselves, never mind each other, latching onto one last case: Find
a lawyer's missing girlfriend. But what seems like a fairly routine job soon
descends into a morass of lies and deceit and brutal violence involving Chicano
radicals, bank-robbery loot, black activists, and the mob. Even as bitter,
alcoholic Boggs swears they must "try to even it up, make it right,"
there's the sinking feeling that nothing he or Hickey do will make much
difference. Outmaneuvered, outnumbered, and outgunned, the two are less
catalysts than bystanders; pawns whose ability to survive may be more a
consequence of their own unimportance than anything else.
for the rest go here:
http://www.mysteryscenemag.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3142:
eyewitness-beautiful-losers&catid=24:filmandtv
&Itemid=191
2 comments:
Kevin,
I've been on the Hickey & Boggs bandwagon for years. Always in my top 6 P.I. movies.
RJR
Nearly let this one slip by.
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