Recent Reads

THE WORLDS OF JACK WILLIAMSON (Haffner) is a massive handsomely made book that is a centennial tribute to the writer Arthur C. Clarke put on a level with both Asimov and Heinlein. The book is also a tribute to science fiction and fantasy as well because by the he passed at age 98 in 2006 Williamson's history was the field's history. He did everything from the Gernsbackian "scientifiction" of the Thirties to comic strips to juveniles to adult novels that set standards for decades to come. Here you'll find one of his swashbuckling Legion of Space tales; an example of his more thoughtful and elegant work "Afterlife"; and, my favorite, the short novel version of Darker Than You Think, a stunning dark fantasy later turned into the novel of the same name. A novel as strange and compelling as it was back in the Forties. With essays on aspects of Williamson's work, appreciations by Fredrik Pohl and James Gunn, this book is a graduate course in the history of science fiction. And a great read as well.

CRUCIFIXION RIVER (Five Star) is the first time Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini have collaborated on a western. A powerful story of a confrontation at a stage station where passengers are holed up because of an impending storm, the short novel is told in brief segements by various travelers. This has the deep emotional truth of a classic Ernest Haycox piece and yet is is enriched and improved by the superb talents of Muller and Pronzini. Revenge was never so chilling. And don't just take my word for it. The short novel won the Spur for best western story this year. Several other stories ranging from traditional westerns to appearances by Sharon McCone and the Nameless Detective fill out this fine collection that needs to be in every library, home and public alike.

HOUSE OF WHISPERS by Margaret Locke (Juno) is more proof that the publisher has its own special take on supernatural and urban fantasy. This is a haunted house whodunit that works on both counts--the special effects are creepy, the mystery's a good one. Locke can write. The prose is nimble, the people real. With all the same old same old going on in mass market supernatural fantasy these days, it's refreshing to hear a new and different voice and to get caught up in wry tale ably told.

Stuff

Stuff

Very good Levitation Man (Iron Man) trailer on You Tube. A witty extended sequence with Robert Downey. This may be one of the few comic book book movies I like.
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Alberto Gonzales on food stamps? The LA Times reports that no law firm wants to hire him. How would you feel if you were told that the attorney in charge of your case was Alberto Gonzales? I'd think he could hire out as a lap dog. He's had plenty of experience at that.
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Watched one of my all-time favorite films The Driver this afternoon and almost wish I hadn't. I carried it for years in my mind as a perfect work of B movie art. Maybe it was my mood but I had a hard time getting past the ridiculously arch dialogue and the straight lift from Point Blank where Ryan O'Neil demolishes a car in a parking garage.
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Roger Ebert writing film reviews again. I didn't know until today that his last cancer surgery left him unable to speak.
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Though I never cared much for his acting when TCM reran a Robert Osborne interview with Heston I found him smart, charming, funny and loaded with interesting industry gossip.
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J. Kingston Pierce was kind enough to make my novel Sleeping Dogs-Pierce's Pick of the Week

Unleashing a new series, Gorman gives us political speechwriter and sleuth-by-necessity Dev Conrad. He’s just signed onto the unexpectedly troubled re-election campaign of a U.S. senator, and must deal with dirty tricks, campaign sabotage, a suicide and his increasing suspicions about the very man he’s supposed to be helping stay in Congress.










http://www.ramblehouse.com/index.html

John D. MacDonald

Tonight Martin Edwards on his fine blog talks about the facts that 1) He's never read anything by Joh D. MacDonald or Ross Macdonald 2) That's he's reading a book about JDM written by Hugh Merrill called The Red Hot Typewriter. He's also reading David Geherin's book about JDM.

"The Red Hot Typewriter is the rather good title of a book published eight years ago by Hugh Merrill, an American journalist. It’s a study of the life and times of John D. Macdonald, of whom we are told: ‘He was a crime writer who managed to break free of the genre and finally get serious consideration from critics. Seventy of his novels and more than five hundred of his short stories were published in his lifetime. When he died in 1986, more than seventy million copies of his books have been sold.’

(more)

"Coincidentally, I’ve also picked up another book about JDM – this time by David Geherin – which again emphasises the author’s views on the way mankind threatens the natural world. He suggests that JDM was something of a polemicist, and I tend to think that using your books as a vehicle for expressing your opinions is tricky territory, unless you remember at all times that your first duty as a writer of commercial fiction is to please the reader. All the same, I’m keen to give Macdonald a try. It’s obviously long overdue."

Ed here: From what I can see JDM's career is falling into shambles. Or already has fallen into shambles. The McGees are among the few of his books to be found in the chains. The much better stand-alones have just about vanished in new editions.

I've mentioned here before that a few years after his death I put together a Collected Stories proposal with the help of his friend Walter Shine. Kent Carroll, then at Carroll and Graf, was very enthusiastic about it. He offered $25,000. I took this to his agent--a guy I like a lot actually--but he wasn't interested. For reasons I've never understood, JDM chose a movie agent to handle his estate. I'm pretty sure that to a movie agent 25K doesn't sound like big money. I contacted John's son, another guy I like based on a few brief letters, but he left it up to the agent.

I think the massive story collection Walter and I had in mind would have gotten JDM some serious notice. Reviewers need to remind their readers that he was a masterful storyteller. And he as as good if not better a short story writer than a novelist.

Given all the dead people whose new books are being ghosted (there's a Twilight Zone episode in there somewhere) John stands tall. He would have allowed no such foolishness. Just how many notes for future novels did V.C. Andrews leave behind anyway?

As for the two studies of JDM that Martin mentions, for me the Geherin is far superior to The Red Hot Typewriter. Better organized, better written and far more interesting as a take on the man's career.

Serious books about popular writers can be written and written well. The brilliant study of Ross Macdonald by Tom Nolan is the best example. JDM wasn't in the same league as Macdonald but I think his books had more of an impact on popular culture.

Any of you biographers out there care to write the book John deserves?

Stanley Kamel; Day Keene

From news.obits@latimes.com

Stanley Kamel, a veteran character actor who appeared most recently in the USA television network series "Monk" as detective Adrian Monk's psychiatrist, has died. He was 65.

Kamel was found dead of a heart attack Tuesday at his Los Angeles home by his longtime agents and friends Donna Massetti and Marilyn Szatmary, publicist Cynthia Snyder said Wednesday in a statement.

Often cast as unsavory characters in TV dramas, Kamel got attention as the suicidal Bruce Teller in the Fox prime-time soap "Melrose Place" in 1994, Dylan McKay's scheming father-in-law Tony Marchette in Fox's "Beverly Hills, 90210" in 1995 and creepy psychiatrist Dr. Graham Lester in the ABC crime series "Murder One" in 1995-96.

He also had a memorable role as Mark Gilliam, an activist attorney with AIDS, on "L.A. Law."

more on news.obits@latimes.com

Ed here: Mr. Kamel was one of the great pleasures of our favorite TV series, Monk. He played Monk's shrink--a thankless task--and he played him believably. Even Gabriel Byrne's great talent can't lift his HBO shrink out of the suds of the scripts: One Life To Live Goes Freudian. Kamel's shrink was professional, warm and sometimes agreeably frustrated with his difficult client. He was a small but vital part of the show's succes. So long, Mr. Kamel.

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Day Keene

Last rainy night I was looking through some old books and found a copy of a 1960 Gold Medal called Take A Step To Murder by Day Keene. I hadn't intended to read it but I got hooked after two pages. I've got about thirty pages to go and what's remarkable is that its energy never lags. The reader (and writer) gets all his daily essential storytelling vitamins in one short book.

Back when I did my long piece on paperback writers I think I undervauled Keene. He wasn't of the first rank but in books like this he showed that he offered one thing many first-raters didn't--you didn't read his books, they assaulted you. He was in touch with his inner loser, he turned place description into character and he mananged to comment wittily on his times without slowing the story. Are you listening Travis McGee?

Much more of his work should be in print.

Only Two Can Play

IMBD:

"This is a terrific example of a number of little English gems that Sellers made before his international stardom as Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther. The writing and directing are wonderful as is the great black and white cinematography that captures a dismal Welsh mining town. See it if you can find it."

The movie here is Only Two Can Play starring Peter Sellers and Mai Zetterling. I remember seeing this way back in `62 and was curious to see how it held up. Well, the film holds up a lot better than I have.

Sellers plays a small-town librarian who feels saddled with wife and children (one critic describes him as "henpecked" but since the worn but pretty wife is trapped with two squalling kids in a three room flat I don't think her irritability is unjustified). Zetterling plays the glamorous (and she is glamorous) wife of a local futzy pol who is just as bored as Sellers. The difference seems to be that she frequently does something about her boredom.

The interesting thing here is that for all the merriment--the suspense is provided by frequent situations in which the two would-be lovers are nearly caught at it--there is an undertow of the kitchen sink realism for which British movies were then known. A few scenes could have come straight from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning or Look Back In Anger.

You can sense Seller's talent getting ready to explode internationally. He doesn't play his librarian quite as broadly as he did some of his later and more famous characters but that wouldn't work here. Humbert Humbert remember was a mystery man. Our librarian is all too familiar--all of us who've felt trapped in our twenties and thirties and set about trying to amuse ourselves.

The only thing that bothers me is the image of the wife and kids in that grim little flat while Sellers is out rolling around with the sumptuous Ms. Zetterling. In my twenties this was all great fun to see. Now it looks sad to me and I like the Sellers character slightly less for doing it.

Ruth Jordan; Thomas Cook

Thanks to Sarah Weinman's Confessions of an Indiosyncratic MInd

Central Crime Zone
An extension of the Crimespree Magazine website this is place for us to put extra stories and reviews related to the magazine. We are happy to hear your thoughts and comments.

Ed here: A wise column by Ruth Jordan

Apr 2, 2008
THE GLASS CEILING
Sometimes the words come and sometimes they don’t. sometimes the narrative passages are there and sometimes they aren’t. Just tonight I heard the comment “Michael Chabon was nominated for an Edgar Award because the M.W.A. wants credibility. They want their award to be a literary award”.

Pfui, as a certain cerebral detective used to comment. Much has been made of what is and isn’t on this year’s Edgar Award list. The fact that I did at least 30 “happy dances” while reading the award nominations says a lot. The fact that when people began pointing out who didn’t make the list, I began to question, means perhaps even more. This isn’t about the judges. This year’s Edgar Awards embrace everything I covet within my own little realm of mystery. I know the judges this year are all readers. You can tell from the lists of nominees. But the comment, off hand and uttered amongst true fans, bothers me a little and worries me a lot.

For, and I’m saying this with a straight face, we are snobs!! Reverse snobs and so, therefore worse. Can someone just send me back to a John Hughes movie please. What am I talking about? I’ll give you two instances of recent “Jordan” conversation along with a recent posting thread on 4MA and ask you think about this. Talk about it, blog about it and if you post a response to this blog, this is one time when I will respond (usually I just cut and run)

Time and time again you hear the genre versus literature argument. Time and time again, I myself have said it’s a good two hours but no …. (plug in fav “literary” or “mystery” author here). Frankly I’m bored and a little disappointed in both sides. This is a world where the person who reads 300 books a year is reading the same percentage of published books as the person who reads two, and by that I mean 1% of all published novels. It’s about time we get off our high horses here. Because, for a book to be noted as literary it has to continue to be read. This applies to all novels, no matter how they are originally branded by the marketing departments that release them. Did anyone really imagine we’d still be reading about Holden Caulfield who read the first print run of CATCHER IN THE RYE? That the ophthalmologist billboard in THE GREAT GATSBY would resonate to this day?

for the rest go here http://centralcrimezone.blogspot.com/2008/04/glass-ceiling.html
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Ed here: A serious and seriously entertaining mystery writer

Master of Crisis and Crime
by Jordan Foster -- Publishers Weekly, 4/7/2008

Thomas H. Cook, the prolific crime writer, says that he’s always believed that crime writing “can be meditative. It’s all about resonance.” Cook’s work—from his breakthrough 13th novel, Edgar-winning The Chatham School Affair (Bantam, 1996), to his 22nd, and latest, Master of the Delta, coming this June from Harcourt—explores moral dimensions that reach far beyond the crime. In fact, he often makes use of dual story lines that enable a character to look back on a past traumatic event in order to sort out the ethical implications.

“When you have a character looking back, you’re not talking about the action anymore,” he says. “You’re talking about the consequences of that action in the moral universe that the person continues to occupy. That’s what happens in Master of the Delta.”

Talking about his earlier work, Cook looks almost apologetic when reminded of the similarities between 1995’s Breakheart Hill (Bantam) and Master. “They do have similar gimmicks,” he admits, though each book ends with a different—and shocking—conclusion. In fact, many of Cook’s novels end with a twist. Does he know the surprise ending before he begins? “Sometimes I do,” he says, and he cites as example 2005’s Red Leaves (Harcourt). “But mostly I just have an idea. I like classic themes.”

His stories, he says, depend on atmosphere and setting. “I couldn’t imagine Breakheart Hill anywhere but the town I grew up in, and I don’t think Chatham could have taken place the same way outside of New England.” Born in Alabama in 1947, Cook has lived in New York City since his graduate student days in the late 1960s. His New York experience accounts for a good deal of the gritty, urban feel of his work.

Of course, the designation of being a crime writer or mystery writer, no matter how expedient for readers, presents its problems for the writer. When asked about genre, Cook observes, “It’s always a struggle, what you call yourself. I think it can be snooty to define yourself as something other than a crime writer. I’ve written mainstream fiction. But essentially I write about people in crisis, and crime is usually what propels that crisis. So the label doesn’t bother me. It’s a balance.”

for the rest go here http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6547972.html

William Goldman Meets Richard Widmark

From Variety

Widmark left indelible impressions
William Goldman remembers the acting icon
By WILLIAM GOLDMAN

I only met Richard Widmark once, and briefly, a third of a century ago, but I'm not going to forget him.
I was in London, working with the director John Schhlesinger on a novel and screenplay of mine, "Marathon Man." Schlesinger, unquestionably brilliant, had won the best directing Oscar a few years earlier for his work on "Midnight Cowboy." He had also been nominated for "Darling" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday."

And he was, at this time, terrified he was dead in Hollywood. He had finished a movie, "The Day of the Locust," that he was convinced would destroy him. So he accepted "Marathon Man" -- a thriller -- for salvation.

We had a marvelous cast -- Dustin Hoffman, Roy Scheider, William Devane -- and the very great Laurence Olivier.

Who was sick, and maybe dying.

I asked our producer, Robert Evans, if Olivier was set and he replied: "Is he set? Is Oliver set? He's so set you wouldn't believe it." Then he paused, finished up with this: "Of course he isn't set-set."

OK, I am staying at a hotel, working in Schlesinger's house, and I ring his doorbell on this special day, and he answers, looking very surprised indeed.

"Richard Widmark is coming over -- he wants to read for Szell," the Olivier part.

for the rest go here:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117983521.html?categoryid=1349&cs=1

Bill Crider; Richard Matheson; Politics

As much as I like hardboiled I like equally fiction that deals realistically with the everyday most of us face. Realistically is a loaded word of course. One person's realism may sound like fantasy to someone else. But it seems to me that the traditional mystery novel in the right hands is ideally equipped to give us snapshots of life in our time.

One of my favorite traditional series is Bill Crider's novels about Sheriff Dan Rhodes and his travails in Blacklin County, Texas. The latest, and one of the best in the series, is Of All Sad Words. It's a perfect illustration of what I mean by realism. The main storyline is a gripping puzzle about a trailer blowing up following suspicions that it was a meth lab. What was really going on there?

Bill makes the town itself a character with a history, running resentments and large cast of folks who range from the innocent to the murderous.

Bill is a fine writer and an excellent plotter and the investigation keeps you turning the pages. But as always the charm of the series can be found in the very real minutia that real life sheriffs face. In this case one of the problems Rhodes must confront is the commisioners' decision to make him oversee the county website. Wry, sly, pointed these scenes show us my generation at the mercy of computers they can't begin to comprehend. I laughed out loud several times. I recognized myself in Rhodes.

Bill has long deserved major attention. Both in short form and long, he's one of the best storytellers working today. This is novel you'll enjpy and remember. Then read your way back through the entire series. Not a bad book in the bunch.

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The Los Angeles Times has an article on Richard Matheson that is well worth reading.

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-et-book5apr05,0,3411373.story

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Every once in awhile I feel the need to be directly political. I'm prompted to do this tonight because of two Sunday morning talks shows I caught today.

To dismiss the most easily dismissable figure, Tim Russert, when is he going to start using his "gotcha" tactics on John McCain? I saw them together last week and I had the sense they were holding hands under the table. Today he bully-boyed Governors Rendell and Casey about Hillary and Obama respectively. How dare they take all this money? And how dare the Clintons make so much money?

When he "interviewed" McCain he didn't point out that the senator is one of the biggest lobbyist whores in DC. All eight of his major advisors are full-time lobbyists.. Or how about the speeches McCain gave citing Chalalibi as a great patriot and friend of the US (he was likely an Iranian spy). And remember all those twinky uniforms central casting designed for Chalabili and his soldiers (read looters and child killers). Where were the questions about those topics?

The only show I like much is George Stephanopolous' on ABC. He's a good and even-handed interviewer. The problem I have is some of the pople he invites. If there's a lamer observer of DC than Cokie Roberts I don't know who that would be. She grew up in DC and is political royalty herself. Her fondness for herself is troubling to watch. God knows what she does in front of a mirror.

Today one of the guests was Dan Senor. A very sleazy guy. Senor, who comes off like an excitable college computer nerd, was Paul Bremer's best boy in Iraq for a few years. You remember Bremer. Disbanded the Iraqui army and strangely can't account for NINE FUCKING BILLION DOLLARS that accompanied him to Iraq. He dismissed responsibility for this by sneering "We didn't have time for American accounting." Henry Kissinger recommended Bremer to Bush as the Iraqui due and need I say more?

This morning Senor was even more slimy than usual (not an easy trick). He said that when withdrawls came "the adults had to be in charge" he meant McCain. He claimed that Obama doesn't know anything about "the realities." Then he told us how well the surge is working and what a swell guy Bush is.

One of my real heroes Katrina Vanden Heuvel sat next to him. I was surprised she didn't bitch slap him when he made some of his more outrageous comments. She settled for a lot of sighing and pursuing of lips.

The same with Pat Buchanan. I don't know how many of you read his truly sickening piece about Obama and race last week but it is one of the most racist tracts I've ever read. I was stunned by it.

Buchanan is an anti-Semite and racist of long-standing. Yet there he blithley sits day after day offering his elitist opinions. A writer friend of mine e mailed me after he got particularly ugly with one of my favorite people Rachael Maddow. She said that with Buchanan Rachael lost three different ways--she's a woman, she's Jewish and she's gay. That's exactly right. When he talks to her his contempt is obvious.

Here's Buchanan:

"First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

"Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

"Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream."

Why are people like Buchanan and Senor on TV?

There's an excellent piece on Salon about a new book that discusses the effect of comedians on our politics:

"Topical comedians," says Peterson, "keep finding new ways to tell us what we already 'know' about politicians." And because they harp so remorselessly on candidates' individual quirks -- ignoring the hard, complex, often maddening substance of policy -- they declare, in effect, that every choice is equally bad and that the system itself is "an irredeemable sham." "Election after election," Peterson writes, "night after night, joke after joke, they have reinforced the notion that political participation is pointless, parties and candidates are interchangeable, and democracy is futile."

"There are good and sound economic reasons for this, of course. Someone as focused on numbers as Jay Leno is not about to sacrifice half his viewers for the sake of bringing down George W. Bush's immigration policy. Johnny Carson never even mentioned the Vietnam War. True satire can take root only in the exurbs of cable, where comic pioneers smoke out the vipers in democracy's den. Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert -- in Peterson's cosmology, these are the true heroes of late-night, because they ground even their harshest commentary in "a faith in the political process." And on that score, nobody has ascended higher than the "Lincolnish" Colbert, whose Gettysburg Address coincided with the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association dinner, a normally inane and self-congratulatory affair prodded into fretful life by Colbert's assault. Afterward, the dragoons of the press corps (Chris Matthews, Wolf Blitzer, Richard Cohen) fell over themselves declaring that Colbert had bombed. In fact, he'd been throwing bombs. Right into their laps.

"Here's how it works," Colbert explained. "The president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home ... Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know -- fiction!"

Ed here: I remember the reaction to Colbert's address. He had told the press the truth about themselves and they weren't about to stand for it. But he's right. Most national TV correspondents are way too close to the people they cover. Watch NBC"s Kelly O'Donnell get the vapors when she's interviewing McCain. It's a good thing Mrs. MccCain and her expensive designer suits are along with him otherwise Kelly Might Find Love.

We're about to face one of the most important elections in our history and the mainstream media, for all sorts of reasons, isn't up to guiding us through it. I get my information from people like Josh Marshall and David Kurtz and their staff at Talking Points.com. I recommend you do likewise.

Why God Why

Before we get started this evening let me steer you to my home page. Thanks to the talents (and patience) of Deb Adams there are finally new graphics on the home page and a greatly enhanced Links column on this page. After working with me for some time Deb is now under a doctor's care and resting in a home filled with people who have contracted the dreaded and probably incurable Working On Computers With Ed Gorman disease. Yes, I really AM that stupid. Thanks, Deb.

Why God Why--

--Does the new Entertainment Weekly list four of Richard Widmark's best movies but fail to include Night and The City?

--Did Graham Greene get so much talent and me so little? If you want to read a perfect crime novelette that also happens to be true literature read The Fallen Idol.

--Do people think eBay is so cool when it's inflated prices beyond reson in many cases?

--Doesn't somebody tell Mariah Carey that less is more, that her videos look like direct to video porn with a moderately attractive sex object trying way too hard to the point of parody?

--Does the Amerian working class generally vote against its own economic interests time and again?

To Die For

I watched To Die For this afternoon, third or fourth time I've seen it. Though I'm not much of a Gus Van Zant fan, I think he created a minor masterpiece with this film. Equal credit goes to the ravishing and psychotic woman played by Nicole Kidman. In fact each time I see it I'm amazed that the entire cast including Matt Damon, Joaquin Phoenix, Kydia Mertz, Illeana Douglas, Dan Hedaya, Wayne Knight are to a person flawless in creating characters who stay in the mind long after the film is over.

From IMDB:

Suzanne Stone (Maretto) knows exactly what she wants. She wants to be a television newscaster and she is willing to do ANYTHING to get what she wants. What she lacks in intelligence, she makes up for in cold determination and diabolical wiles. As she pursues her goal with relentless focus, she is forced to destroy anything and anyone that may stand in her way, regardless of the ultimate cost or means necessary. Written by Tad Dibbern

Ed here: I believe this was one of those films that got Kidman praised as a serious actress. And well it should have. To pull off a deranged but stunningly beautiful woman who manages to function in society despite that the fact that she clearly belongs in psych hospital is a comment on how glamor can blind us to reality. And we welcome being blinded by it.

There's a line that appears two or three times in the film (paraphrase) You're nobody unless you're on TV. This is updating Nathaniel West's Day of The Locust. Getting yourself on screen back then was difficult. But with cable and the net anybody can be a star.

I catch Talk Soup every once in awhile. I like the kid hosting it Joel McHale. He smirks just the right way about the material. My favorite segment is his roundup of clips from reality shows. The one he seemed to think deserved Sleaze Hall of Fame status today was when two girls argued about which of them had showed her vagina to the TV camera (I believe they got snockered on couldn't remember). One of the battlers (they started physically attacking each other eventually) said that it wasn't true and she didn't want her parents to ever hear it (guess she didn't realize that when you're on TV PEOPLE ARE WATCHING).

Nicole Kidman is elegant, sexy, refined and would never think of flashing. Still and all she's the godmother of all these sad low rent people who just wanna be on the tube.

Writers as celebrities

As I remember it John D. MacDonald once spent five grumpy minutes at the tail end of a Johnny Carson show complaining that writers like himself should be given more time than they received. He was never on Carson again. Of course.

Tales of TV and writers abound. My own relates to the time Barry Gifford hauled my then current novel on to the Today show where he was guesting as the screenwriter of Wild At Heart, a very hot film at the time. I could glimpse my book resting on a table. And just before commercial I knew that the next small segment would see my book held up to the millions who would make it a bestseller. Well, Al Roker, windier than ever, ran long and when the interview was resumed basically all that was said was goodbye.

Barry did very well on the tube. Al Collins does very well. So did Evan Hunter. But face it folks most of us just aren't that exciting or even interesting to the masses because the masses don't read books. If you wrote your book in a whorehouse; or while driving a Nascar; or while having sex with a starlet--then maybe you'd be ready for TV. Otherwise forget it.

I thought of this tonight when I read Ruth Jordan's excellent piece on John Ball in Crimespree #16. In The Heat of The Night had an impact few genre novels ever have. And Ball would have been great TV because as Ruth details the guy packed enough occupations into his years to make you wonder if he wasn't four different people.

That's why non-fiction writers are in demand in radio and tv. They come with hooks. You know, how to lose weight, how to cheat your business partner without him knowing it, the real secret life of Dick Cheney (God spare me the details).

About fifteen years ago a Japanese magazine did an article about my Jack Dwyer novels. Big splashy full color magazine. The woman who wrote the piece even flew to Cedar Rapids to spend a day with me. She did a very nice job and I was thankful that she made me seem a lot more interesting than I am.

The one thing we laughed about was my life history. I wish I could've come up with a few years of mountain climbing and cancer research and having an affair with Princess Di. But as I told her except for four years when I wrote and produced commercials and documentaries all I've done with my life is sit in a variety of rooms and type.

And that sure ain't gonna get you on the Today show.

Bullets Over Hollywood; Jim Harmon

When my buddy John McCarty published his fine book on American gangster movies I gave it twenty-seven stars. Or maybe twenty-eight. It's packed with intelligent observation, lots of insider stories and a look at how gangster films reflect American reality as much as more mainstream fare.

Now John's done a trailer that's almost as good the book.

http://video.google.com:80/videoplay?docid=-4089571980051692401

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x28XDOTTW_Y

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THE MAN WHO MADE MANIACS & SILENT SIREN

Last night I wrote about Robert Bloch's love-hate relationship with Hollywood.

Back in the late Fifties and early Sixties when I was publishing a science fiction fanzine the fans most envied were those who were starting to sell their stories to the professional magazines of the day. Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg had made the leap a few years earlier. Several others were slowly walking the path blazed by brilliance of those two.

One of those writers was Jim Harmon. He was definitely one of Us. Fanzine-publishing. Convention-going. And writer of increasingly notable sf stories in the magazines.

He was five years or so older than my group and one industrious guy. He not only excelled at sf he excelled at the soft-core porn of the day--i.e., real novels with prim sex scenes as ballast. The soft-core market coincided with three or four people in my group (Illinois people) heading for Hollywood as their majority approached.

One of those was Ron Haydock, a notable fan, nice guy and talented writer. I lost touch with him after he landed in LA though various fanzines noted that he was getting involved in motion pictures. He also managed to keep his rock band, which got some very nice reviews, in steady work for a time.

Here's Wikipedia's take:

In the Hollywood B-movie industry, Haydock was an actor and screenwriter, working with director Ray Dennis Steckler, and he also worked as a magazine editor. Haydock used a variety of pseudonyms -- Arnold Hayes, Lonnie Lord, Vin Saxon, Don Sheppard, Jerry Lee Vincent. As Vin Saxon, he was the author of adult fiction paperbacks during the 1960s and 1970s. As Arnold Hayes, he wrote graphic stories for Warren Publishing.

Haydock's life came to an end in 1977, when he was struck by a truck while hitchhiking after visiting Steckler in Las Vegas. He was buried without any publicity. Norton Record's Miriam Linna has written extensively about Haydock for liner notes, magazine articles and the book Sin-A-Rama (2004).

Ed here:

I thought of Ron as I was reading the Jim Harmon novels because, published in 1961, they reflect The Dream as it was defined in those days. Harmon is not only a good storyteller and a hipper version of Carter Brown, whom he resembles in these books, he's a pretty funny observer of the Hollywood scene. Easy to imagine Ron and a few of the other fans who disappeared into LA playing out a few of these moments.

The Man Who Made Maniacs and Silen Siren are available in handsome editions with randy covers by Gavin O'Keefe from Ramble House. They're a lot of fun and weirdly nostalgic. Even then La-La Land was a sink hole of sorts but as Art Carney's private eye character Ira Wells says to LillyTomlin in The Late Show about his generation of Hollywood folk, "We did it better back then."

Shooting Star and Spiderweb

Though Robert Bloch made his reputation with horror or horrorific stories and novels, he worked steadily throughout his career in the mystery and crime genres. Shooting Star, one half of the new Hardcase Crime double book (more of these please), is not only crimonious it's also set in Hollywood, one of Bloch's abiding fascinations.

The hook here is novel for those of us who can remember how actor William Boyd bought up all his Hopalong Cassiday movies when they fell from popularity in th Forties and later sold them to TV. Buy low sell high. They brought him millions. Failed literary agent Mark Clayburn, now paying the bills as a private eye, is hired to prove that a Boyd-like actor wasn't the decadent man the press revealed him to be following his murder. The man who hires Clayburn bought up the dead star's Hoppy-like movies and expected to make a fortune. But since the films are aimed at kids...who wants to see a hero whose tastes off-screen were, to be gentle about it, sleazy.

In Spiderweb failed actor Eddie Haines is hired to be a "psychiatric consultant" to the stars by a rather arch villain named Professor Hermann. By blackmailing Eddie, Hermann has found the perfect tool for his racket. There are moments that reminded me of Nightmare Alley throughout the book and more than a few scenes that move the novel into the kind of realistic horror of Psycho. Shooting Star is driven by its mystery storyline; Spiderweb, though the storyline is less focused, depends on shock material to keep you turning the pages.

Neither of these novels is major Bloch but both deserve reading. For one thing they encapsulate a good deal of the obsessions, sociologically, of the Fifties. For another we see the dark side of Bloch's obsession with Hollywood. In such masterpieces as his short story The Movie People we see his almost innocent sense of what the movies gave to him as a youth. When he speaks of Chaplin and Keaton and Lloyd it's as if he's speaking of secular saints. The movies of his boyhood are holy to him.

In these novels and many short stories he deals with the business side of Hollywood. The voice becomes by turns sardonic and angry as he witnesses the passion and beauty of the great films and film artists reduced to power plays and dishonest deals rendered by men who have no idea what they're defiling.

I enjoyed both of these books enormously.

Movie Movie

From Roger Freidman's great column copyright 2008 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,342109,00.html

Richard Widmark: 'I Don't Have a Great Movie'

Richard Widmark died on Wednesday at age 93. I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing him in January 2002 at his home in Connecticut with my friend John Connolly.

The consummate actor and gentleman, Widmark should have been given a Lifetime Achievement award by the Oscars a long time ago. He was only nominated once, in 1947, for his debut as Tommy Udo in "Kiss of Death."

He laughed when we talked about that film — and the famous scene in which he pushes wheelchair-bound Mildred Dunnock down a flight of stairs.

"You make 50 movies over a lifetime and that’s the one they remember you for," he chuckled.

He told me that he never had "a great movie," but I differ. He had several: "Night and the City," "Pick Up on South Street," "The Street With No Name" and "No Way Out" are all classics. Today, you can see a lot of Widmark in Viggo Mortensen’s face. He was the king of film noir; Mortensen seems sometimes to be echoing his pathos.

Widmark was married for 50 years to the same woman, his beloved Jean. When she died in 1997, he married one more time to Susan Blanchard, the third wife of the late Henry Fonda. They were friends and neighbors. It was through Peter and Becky Fonda that I got to talk to Richard; Peter still considered Susan his "mom." I am so grateful it worked out.

Here are a couple of things he told me for our interview: Karl Malden was his oldest friend. They’d met in 1938 doing radio work. About his contemporary, Robert Mitchum: "I liked old Bob but he was a real bullshitter. We were in different worlds. He was in the booze world."

Bette Davis, he said, was "tough." Marilyn Monroe "was a ding dong. I liked old Marilyn. No one could get her out on the set."

Widmark’s last film was "True Colors" in 1991. After that, he didn’t see the need to continue. His favorite actors? "Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart. I’d go back to work if I could work with those guys. I loved them."

Just a great guy, and such a wonderful actor. His death marks the end of an era.

GRAND HOTEL

We watched it on TCM last night. Despite the barqoue qualities of the script (both dialogue and plot) it did present the Old World in such detail that at moments it had the qualities of a documentary. James Wolcott nailed it all this morning:

Crystal Blue Persuasion

"Watching Grand Hotel on TCM, it occurred to me, not for the first time, that the world was never more beautiful than it was in classic Hollywood black and white. Certainly women never were. Black and white gave their eyes and skin a glisten, their hair a backlit aurora, that now seems to belong to some now-gone mechanical age of the gods. Grand Hotel seems all ink and ivory, with little intermittent gray. The image of Garbo's ballerina, crumpled on the floor, her tutu a luminous tissue paper white, intercut with John Barrymore's profile as he tenderly spies on her, his presence shielded in shadow--it makes you wish the movie could dispense with the Old World weariness of the dialogue and just keep on contemplating itself. (Dinner at Eight, so much more fun.) In Joan Crawford's scenes with Wallace Beery, you can see each eyebrow, mouth corner, pupil, and shapely ankle individually doing its dramatic bit to create a composite portrait of a secretary to a tycoon type leveraging her assets while maintaining a cool deposit of pride and reserve. Inspired by the Siren's Joan Crawford birthday wishes, NYCweboy unveils his shrine to Cukor's The Women, where Crawford and Shearer had their memorable slag match over some dope named Steve."

for the rest go here
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/blogs/wolcott

Night and The City

Vince Keenan and I have been trading a few letters about Richard Widmark in the astoundingly good Night and The City. I made the point that it's rarely included on Top Twenty noir lists because it doesn't employ any of the standard noir conventions.

Vince followed up with a savvy little review of the picture:

"I think you nailed it, Ed. Night and the City may be the perfect distillation of noir's mood, but without the staples. There's not much real crime on display, for instance. Just the petty betrayals of everyday life, the lies we tell ourselves and our loved ones.

"On the splendid Criterion DVD of the film, there's an interview with director Jules Dassin that includes a fact that always amazes me. The film was rushed into production before Dassin could be blacklisted. It came together so quickly that Dassin didn't read Kersh's novel before he started shooting. He claims he still hasn't read it."

Emerald Hell

Mike Mignola's Hellboy is one of the great comic book-graphic novel creations of the past two decades. Christopher Golden has written several exceptionally fine novels in the Hellboy world and he's now joined by Tom Piccirilli whose Emerald City is a delightfully dark take on the mystical and mythical South of Manly Wade Wellman and Robert E. Howard.

Here's what the publisher has to say: "Hellboy comes to the crossroads in Enigma, Georgia, a small town beset by strange occurrences. Sent to keep an eye on Sarah Nail, a young girl hiding from the curse of her family, Hellboy becomes entangled in the blood debt of evil mystical preacher, Brother Jester. Stuck between human malice and the mysteries of the occult, Hellboy comes up against an intrigue of ghosts, demon trees, talking bullfrogs, and a race of lost mutant children."

Here's what the publisher doesn't say: Tom Piccirilli is becoming one of the most compelling stylists in current fiction. He possesses the gifts of a true poet as you'll discover simply by opening the book at random. He couples this with his ability to show us people we've never met before. They're Piccirilli people, exclusively so. And to take us places we can never quite escape. They stay with us long after we close the book.

This book is rich with a variety of pleasures.

John Hughes; Letters

From time to time I wonder whatever DID happen to John Hughes...

Whatever Happened To John Hughes?
LA Times | Patrick Goldstein | March 25, 2008 08:30 AM

JOHN HUGHES hasn't set foot in Hollywood for years, but his influence has never been more potent. The king of 1980s comedy, Hughes now qualifies as something of a Howard Hughes-style recluse -- he doesn't have an agent, doesn't give interviews and lives far away, somewhere in Chicago's sprawling North Shore suburbs where most of his films were set.

But he has an entire generation of fans in the industry who grew up infatuated with his films, especially a string of soulful mid-1980s teen comedies that helped capture the eternal drama of modern teenage existence. They include "Sixteen Candles," "Pretty in Pink," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "The Breakfast Club," which no less an authority than Courtney Love once called "the defining moment of the alternative generation." Any number of successful actors and filmmakers, from Judd Apatow and Kevin Smith to Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller and Wes Anderson, are fans, having soaked up Hughes' keen observational humor, love of mischief and shrewd dissection of social hierarchies.

"John Hughes wrote some of the great outsider characters of all time," says Apatow, the writer-director-producer whose new film, "Drillbit Taylor," is loosely based on an old Hughes story idea. "It's pretty ridiculous to hear people talk about the movies we've been doing, with outrageous humor and sweetness all combined, as if they were an original idea. I mean, it was all there first in John Hughes' films. Whether it's 'Freaks and Geeks' or 'Superbad,' the whole idea of having outsiders as the lead characters, that all started with Hughes."

Hollywood is full of older masters who've been mentors to younger acolytes. But Hughes, 58, is the only one who's disappeared without a trace; he quit directing in 1991, moved back to Chicago in 1995 and has basically stayed out of sight ever since.

for the rest
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/25/whatever-happened-to-john_n_93247.html

LETTERS

Dear Mr. Gorman,

Thank you for sharing your enthousiasm for mystery writer Margaret Millar on your blog. I discovered this highly original author some years ago and since then I have been searching for her novels. I admire Millar not only for her dazzling plots but also for her very economic style of writing, her lively and real dialogue and the way she creates atmosphere: from the first to the last page you have the feeling something very uncomfortable is lurking somewhere in the background and there is an unseen plot working between the lines of her stories. Her work stands firmly on its own feet and it always irritates me that she is mostly only mentioned as Ross Macdonald's spouse. She deserves better than to be a foot note to Macdonald.

I also do not understand why the books of Millar don't have a greater reading public, when I discuss crime literature with fellow readers I always recomend Millar but since so few people have heard of her, my efforts are mostly in vain. Still, I keep trying, perhaps the fact that you have to look for her books between the paperbacks dating from the 1950s and 60 in second hand bookstores (at least here in The Netherlands), doesn't help to increase her popularity.

Well, for me she is the real thing, her work gets better with a second or even third reading. There are still some of Millar's books I haven't read (difficult to find) but I know I will eventually get them and I also know I will not be disapointed.

Kind regards,

Mr. Peter Eykelenkamp
The Hague / The Netherlands

Hi Ed,
I know i begged you years ago for more Sam McCain books. Will you be
doing another soon? I have read them darn things at least 6 times each
and of course I am now begging for more.
Thank you for the ones you have written,

Doug Trombley

Ed here: There'll be one published in 09. It's yet to be written. Thanks for your loyalty to the series. I really appreciate it.

Ed,

Your recent comments about Moorcock and Clarke were interesting because
I rarely read new SF, and so the old hands from the '60s and before --
Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Moorcock (liked his WARLORD OF THE AIR
pastiches, not so fond of his New Worlds stuff), Brackett, Dick, Laumer,
Farmer, Harrison, Anderson -- are the ones I mostly remember, along with
a lingering fondness for the even older names -- Burroughs, Verne,
Wells, Stapledon, O.A. Kline. Other than Ben Bova, Jerry Pournelle,
and Joe Haldeman, I can't think of any SF writers who hit their stride
after 1970 whom I've sampled to any extent.

I don't feel qualified to knock modern SF because I've read so little of
it, aside from sporadically keeping up with the familiar names (I read
and liked Haldeman's latest novels), but the plain fact of the matter
is, it doesn't generally grab me. I don't have enough interest in the
Luke Skywalker mythos (or in further lining George Lucas' pockets) to
pick up the endless STAR WARS novelizations and spin-offs. Gung-ho
military space operas don't appeal to me as a rule any more than
military thrillers do. The stuff that seems to have higher-brow appeal,
China Mieville and the like, leaves me shaking my head when I flip
through the pages; whatever wavelength it's on, it doesn't compel me to
invest any time or money.

Same in regard to fantasy. How many female vampire hunters can the
market carry? How many books can Mercedes Lackey write?

Makes me wonder -- am I simply getting old, and I'm not the generation
these guys are writing for? Has the market itself changed so much? Are
there books that I would like as much as the ones I liked at age 16 or
18 if I just looked harder? Would I like the books about vampire hunter
chicks if I gave them a chance?

I'm encouraged that some of the older stuff gets reprinted occasionally,
but I suspect that it will be the last go-round for the
second-tier-sales guys like Laumer, who, however good, lack the brand
name of a Heinlein or Bradbury.

Fred

Ed here: There's a lot of good stuff being published today, including some of the takes on vampirism. I read in just about every sub-genre of sf and fantasy but my "sense of wonder" days are long behind me I'm afraid. Nothing will ever match the thrill of first reading Bradbury or Matheson or Heinlien or Asimov or Clark. What's the cliche--the golden age of science fiction is thirteen? I think that's probably true.

The Glass Key

As much as I like and admire The Maltese Falcon, I've always felt closer emotionally to The Glass Key. I've always had the sense that the conflicted hero Ned Beaumont was the closest Hammett ever came to writing directly about himself.

While I occasionally miss some of the sardonic qualities of Falcon, Key is the more powerful book. Virtually every scene is charged with anxiety, anger and a fatalism not evident in any of Hammett's other novels. This is ultimately a book about doom.

I happened to read several Raymond Chandler stories before I picked up Key. At this point in my life I see Hammett as the more talented and true of the two icons. Chandler is certainly the more pleasing of the two as far as style goes. But when you compare his skills as a social observer you realize (I realize I should say) how false most of his stories are, the B movie done in high style. The exception for me, in addition to numerous short stories, is The Long Goodbye where he finally comes close to the reportorial skills of Hammett. He's confronting life not scenes from other books and movies.

I don't mean to set up a false contest here. My opinion doesn't matter, number one. And number two they are both seminal figures and fathers to us all.

But I was struck, this time through, with the bitter ruthless truth of The Glass Key.

And my Mom likes it too!

Pub Date April, 1 2008

Sleeping Dogs
Ed Gorman. St. Martin's Minotaur/Dunne, $23.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-312-36784-8

“Shamus-winner Gorman puts his experience as a political speechwriter to good use in this entertaining first of what appears to be a new series…While Gorman presents our electoral choices and processes in an often dispiriting and unflattering light, readers will hope his appealing hero will return in future outings beyond the current real-life political campaign season.’’
Publisher’s Weekly

“Veteran Gorman provides rewardingly dry-eyed political savvy without the bloat of most novelists who patrol this turf. The prose is pared so close to the bone that it makes Elmore Leonard look positively garrulous.”
Kirkus Reviews

“Ed Gorman, seasoned veteran of the mystery genre, returns with the ingenious Sleeping Dogs…This political satire appears just in time for the election. Let’s hope that reality doesn’t mirror fiction!” [LM]
Mystery Lovers Bookstore

(Dev Conrad’s) internal conflicts, moral complexity, and wry, self-deprecating sense of humor make him an outstanding character and Gorman’s other characters are equally well-developed. Written in Gorman's terse style…this well-written story moves quickly and is compelling reading.”
Mystery Scene

“Sleeping Dogs, a hard-hitting,suspense-filled ride…an innovative, wry, and hard-edged novel that arrives just in time as a timely diversion (and a bit of comic relief) from the currently performing three-ring circus in American politics: the presidential primary season.”
Bookloons

Worst motion pictures

Joe Queenan is one of those gadflys who can be amusing even while he's irritating you. Like Christopher Hitchens he traffics in the risible. He's literate, clever and many times dead on. Here's a pretty funny piece from a recent Guardian.


Joe Queenan braves Paris Hilton, porcophilia and men who eat themselves to death as he goes in search of the worst movie of all time

Friday March 21, 2008
The Guardian


Painful ... The Hottie and the Nottie


The release of the Paris Hilton vehicle The Hottie and the Nottie has revived the debate as to which is the worst motion picture ever made. Because the film logged in with some of the worst receipts in history - $250 per screen on opening weekend - there is a temptation to accord it the mythical status of such universally ridiculed motion pictures as Attack of the Killer Tomatoes or Plan 9 From Outer Space, to welcome it into the dark, Bizarro World pantheon inhabited by phantasmagoric disasters such as Showgirls, Ishtar, Heaven's Gate, Battlefield Earth, The Postman and, most recently, Gigli and Swept Away.

That is not fair. It is not fair to Kevin Costner, it is not fair to Jennifer Lopez, and it is certainly not fair to Madonna. Though it is a natural impulse to believe that the excruciating film one is watching today is on a par with the excruciating films of yesterday, this is a slight to those who have worked long and hard to make movies so moronic that the public will still be talking about them decades later. Anyone can make a bad movie; Kate Hudson and Adam Sandler make them by the fistful. Anyone can make a sickening movie; we are already up to Saw IV. Anyone can make an unwatchable movie; Jack Black and Martin Lawrence do it every week. And anyone can make a comedy that is not funny; Jack Black and Martin Lawrence do it every week. But to make a movie that destroys a studio, wrecks careers, bankrupts investors, and turns everyone connected with it into a laughing stock requires a level of moxie, self-involvement, lack of taste, obliviousness to reality and general contempt for mankind that the average director, producer and movie star can only dream of attaining.

for the rest:
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2267064,00.html

News You Can't Use

From Cinema Blend.com

Clint Eastwood has come a long way from the rough-and-tumble action and Westerns star we all first loved. Now he’s Oscar’s favorite person in the world, and is busy directing prestige projects and taking small roles in them rather than kicking ass and taking names.

…Or is he? Variety announced yesterday that Eastwood would be directing and starring in Gran Torino, a movie set for release this December but with absolutely no plot details. All we had to go on was the fact that a Gran Torino is a 1972 Ford car, kind of a classic of the era (you can see more images of it here.)

Now Ain’t It Cool News has a scoop on the plot, and it may be a dream come true for Eastwood fans. Because what do Clint Eastwood and the 1970s mean to most people? That’s right, Dirty Harry.

http://www.cinemablend.com/news.php?cid=35

--Sallis Novel To Be Filmed

20 March 2008 Copyright Empire Online
Marshall Set To Drive With Jackman
Source: Variety

Although there was some disappointment over the performance of his latest movie Doomsday in the US, director Neil Marshall is hopping right back in to the driving seat. Or at least he'll be putting Hugh Jackman in the driving seat.

Marshall has signed a deal with Universal to direct Jackman in Drive, an adaptation of a book by James Sallis. Jackman will play a stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway man in heists. His already quite exciting life gains a new edge when he discovers that there's a contract out for his life.

Marshall tells Variety that he plans to shoot this by summer, which probably means that it's going into production before Sacrilege, a Western horror that he also recently set up at Universal.

--Heavy Metal Lives!
From Daily Variety

Par, Fincher put pedal to 'Metal'
Eastman, Miller to direct animated segments
By MICHAEL FLEMING

Paramount Pictures will make an animated film inspired by the '70s sci-fi fantasy magazine Heavy Metal, with director David Fincher spearheading the project.

"Heavy Metal" will be stamped by the erotic and violent storylines and images that remain the trademark of a magazine that debuted in the U.S. in 1977. The mag introduced the works of American artists and writers such as Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison and H.R. Giger.

The film will consist of eight or nine individual animated segments, each of which will be directed by a different helmer.

Fincher will direct one of the segments; Kevin Eastman, the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" co-creator who is now owner and publisher of Heavy Metal, will direct another. So will Tim Miller, whose Blur Studios will handle the animation for what is being conceived as an R-rated, adult-themed feature.

Vince Vaughan

In the course of my young and innocent life I've been fortunate to be spared seeing--let alone participating in--a flame war. You know, where somebody is really taken down. For that reason I rarely look at comments following a news story. Too much ugliness. Niki Finke is a Hollywood reporter and columnist and (to me) one of the best. Here's her story about Vince Vaughn leaving his talent agency followed by some of the comments from readers. I have to admit I don't understand how Vaughn ever got work. There's something so seedy about him he's repellent to me. Personal taste. But as the following responses indicate, he has as many admirers as detractors. I don't know if this is an actual flame war but it'll do till the real thing comes along.

From Nikki Finke:

I've confirmed that Vince Vaughn has axed both his manager Eric Gold and his agency United Talent. Someone close to Vince just told me he did it by cell phone. He's still with his attorney Debbie Klein. He'd been a UTA client since 1993 (three years before his breakout Swingers, which was partly filmed in the apartment of an agency assistant) and a Gold client since 2005's Wedding Crashers. Vaughn's last movie, Fred Claus did little business. A $20 million a pic star, he recently pacted for a two-year, first-look producing deal with Universal and his Wild West Picture Show Productions which is run by his sister.
UPDATE: Vaughn is telling people today that he made the moves because his manager and his agency "didn't get along at all" and it was too much drama in his life. However, I've heard from a lot of moguls in Hollywood that Vaughn was quite adept at making his own off-camera drama on nearly every recent movie he did.


Letters:
1.

vince is a lunatic. his reputation as the most insane, difficult guy to work with in town, is well earned. uta started his career and made him a $20m star. he needs to look inside and get it together; he’s a mess, regardless of who represents him.

Comment by ts — March 18, 2008 @ 10:50 am
2.

Why isn’t this hack in rehab yet?

Comment by 40yearoldstitzer — March 18, 2008 @ 11:16 am
3.

he’s a drunk, bitter, pathological, paranoid, republican


Jeez, what a bunch of bitter gripes. The guy’s funny and fun to watch and has had a bunch of big grossing movies. What he may be like on the set (good, bad or indifferent) doesn’t matter.

Comment by Richard — March 18, 2008 @ 1:34 pm
8.

What is with all of the hatred on all of these asinine entertainment blogs? You’re all losers! How pathetic that you feel the need to spew your sh*t on the internet.

Comment by MB — March 18, 2008 @ 1:48 pm
9.

Vince is rad. You people are morons…or are you just bitter UTA employees who will no longer get that sweet 10%?

Comment by Common Sense — March 18, 2008 @ 1:54 pm
10.

Vince, were you forced to make ‘The Breakup’?
No!
Then why did you do it?
For the money?
I think it was supposed to be a comedy, but it sure didn’t come out that way.
And that thoroughly fake romance with Aniston, Puh-Leeze!

Just what is it with all these stupid actors that take it out on their agents & managers for the crappy choices they made both in choosing the movie & the wretched acting style in that movie?

Comment by Unindicted Co-conspirator — March 18, 2008 @ 2:14 pm
11.

I agree with Richard. Vince is fun to watch and has been in some great movies. Too much jealousy out there. My Momma always said, “If you have nothing nice to say, keep your mouth shut.” Vince, if you read this and need a new manager email me at phildaleduckie@aol.com. We would welcome you to our team.

Comment by phil dale duckie — March 18, 2008 @ 2:19 pm
12.

Who cares!!! He isn’t the first actor to do this. I’m sure he’ll be fine and so will his ex-manager and ex-agent. Sometimes people need a sense of new and improved energy.

Comment by ND — March 18, 2008 @ 2:22 pm
13.

No, Vaughn is an example of the grotesquely inflated, unjustifiable salaries earned by actors that damage the industry at large. There’s nothing to show for it either except bad offensive movies.

Get over yourselves, Vaughn defenders on this site. Tell your buddy you posted a good word for him and be on your way.

Comment by Exec — March 18, 2008 @ 2:31 pm
14.

Vince Vaughn may be ok as a character actor, but as a lead? Puh-leeze. Hope that romance with Aniston was fake - how could she touch him? Echh.

Comment by Viewers — March 18, 2008 @ 2:50 pm
15.

Yeah Phil, I’m sure Vince will get right on that. Especially since we all know how reputable management firms are that shill for new clients on the message boards of entertainment industry gossip sites. He’ll be calling you within the hour…

Comment by JB — March 18, 2008 @ 3:11 pm
16.


Comment by buddysattva — March 18, 2008 @ 3:27 pm
19.

none of you guys have a clue how hollywood works do you?

Comment by ghostface — March 18, 2008 @ 3:30 pm
20.

as a director who has worked with him and having heard first hand his nasty, long-winded rants about every other working actor in the business this seems like typical behavior for a star gone out of control

Comment by TP — March 18, 2008 @ 3:40 pm
21.

fuck him, move on asshole.
there’s a lot of us out here that will work for half.
I didn’t see him out there with our fellow strikers.

Comment by richie rich — March 18, 2008 @ 3:58 pm
22.

wow. vince vaughn leaves uta after he makes a bomb. what a surprise. i have worked in this town for 20 years and if any of you could hear what uta agents and gold had to go thru to expain this guy’s behavior, you wouldn’t believe it possible. vince is a very bad boy and he knows it. yes, he is an original talent but life is way too short.

Comment by noway — March 18, 2008 @ 4:00 pm
23.

I’m sure there are plenty of agents foaming at the mouth to get him on the roster, so don’t shed any tears for him.

Comment by Wendy — March 18, 2008 @ 4:28 pm
24.

he is vin diesel in one minute

Comment by zz — March 18, 2008 @ 4:29 pm
25.

I will never understand why people keep hiring this asshole, and that he made it to the $20M level. He never makes it to the set on time, he never shuts the fuck up, doesn’t learn his lines (so he can improv his shtick) and sexually harrasses everyone (women AND men.)

He needs to go away for a while. Or longer.

Comment by Client # 9 — March 18, 2008 @ 4:43 pm
26.

does Mr Vaughn remember where he was before UTA nowhere
maybe he made 3 million a pix he makes 20 million now
i would say UTA and its agents made him a star
even thoug he looks and acts like a unkempt drunk
low life


the real fuck up here is Eric Larry Gold, he is talentless (he convinced VV to do Fred Claus, nice)
parasite chronic pot smoker who sucked off all the sweat and blood that
Jimmy Miller put into Jim Carrey, then when Jimmy couldn’t
stand being around toxic (hey Ellen nice work having such a woman hating manager on your team) Eric anymore and they split. Jimmy has rightfully gone on to a well deserved career as the biggest comedy manager and film producer in the biz. This is eating Eric Larry alive
and driving him to smoke even more pot and other shit
than before. For whatever VV short comings might be,
he has saved his career by stepping off.

Eric try not to pop a vein you can’t afford another open heart surgery again.

Comment by Anonymous — March 19, 2008 @ 1:18 pm
32.

Well, thank God there are no moronic, untalented, sexist, egotistical, loud-mouthed, hypocritical, back-stabbing, unjustifiably rich and ungrateful Democrats in LA.

Richard Neely (originally published Nov. 2005)

I happened to read The Damned Innocents by Richard Neely last night. Kiny crime pulp circa 1970s. Enjoyed it very much. Thought I'd repost this piece on Neely.


Richard Neely (originally published Nov. 2005)

The first time I ever spoke to Richard Neely, suspense novelist extraordinaire, he kept trying to place my name. "It's so damned familiar--wait a minute, you're the guy who called me the de Sade of crime fiction."

Loose lips sink ships. So can old reviews. I figured that our busines would sink if he ever remembered that long ago review. But he laughed. "I think I was just ahead of my time."

Actually, I'd meant that remark as a compliment because I was pointing out that Neely, despite the Irish name, took a very French approach to the psychological machinations of sex in his books. Three of his books became French movies. Somebody apparently agreed with me

Neely, a very sleek and successful advertising man, is gone now and so, undeservedly, are his books. The Walter Syndrome, his bestselling suspense novel, was almost ruined for me when I guessed the ending on page two, something I never do. But I pressed on and it was well worth it. This was a take on Psycho set in Thirties and the storytelling is spellbinding. The voice is worthy of Fredric Brown at his best.

I was thinking of Neely last night because I was finishing up his novel The Plastic Nightmare, which became an incomprehensible movie called Shattered. Neely loved tricks as much as Woolrich did and Plastic is a field of land mines. He even manages to spin some fresh variations on the amnesia theme. It's as noir as noir can be but mysteriously I've never seen Neely referred to on any noir list. My theory is that his books, for the most part, were presented in such tony packages, they were bypassed by mystery fans. They looked mainstream.

The Damned Innocents became a fair French flick. What it missed was the sorrow. Neely always caught the sorrow of sexual betrayl with a kind of suicidal wisdom. While his books aren't kinky by today's measure, they're dark in the way only sexual themes can be. Love kills, baby.

Not that he didn't have a sudsy side. He wrote a couple of big sexy workplace novels that I could never plow through but he also wrote The Ridgeway Women which was SUPPOSED to be a big sexy workplace book that was undermined in a good way by the riveting neuroses and desperation of all his best books. This was Arrested Development played as drama.

A Madness of The Heart suffers from a style Neely seemed to have invented from scratch for this particular novel. It's another dazzler--a really convincing story about a rapist and the human debris he leaves in his wake--but the prose gets in my way every once in awhile. It isn't that it's fancy-schmancy, it's just that it gets labored sometimes. And gives us more information than we need.

I liked Neely, man and writer, and I liked his books, too. Somebody should bring him back. He's my kind of noir writer--down and out in the dark underbelly of the success-driven American middle class, like non-Trav John D. MacDonald only doomed without hope of salvation.

The Resurrectionist

"Jack O'Connell has labored in obscurity for many years; this will be the novel that garners him widespread sales and critical acclaim. The Resurrectionist—a brilliantly tuned, mesmerizing labyrinth of a quasi-real world as only a master artist could draw it—will jazz you, floor you, grab you and shake you and leave you hung out to dry in that world. A brilliant break-through novel."
—James Ellroy

The Resurrectionist

Sweeney is a druggist by trade; Danny, his son, is in a persistent coma, the victim of an accident. Hoping for a miracle, they have come to the Peck Clinic, a fortress-like haven in a post-industrial city overrun by gangs. Doctors there claim to have resurrected two patients who were similarly lost in the void.

Gradually, Sweeney realizes that the cure for his son’s condition may lie in “Limbo,” a fantasy comic-book world into which Danny had been drawn at the time of his accident. Plunged into the intrigue that surrounds the clinic, Sweeney searches for answers and instead finds sinister back alleys, brutal dead ends, and terrifying rabbit holes of mystery.

Full of puzzles and surprises, The Resurrectionist is a surreal, gothic meditation on identity, the nature of consciousness, the power of stories, love, mad scientists, circus freaks, and ultimately forgiveness—both giving and receiving.

Ed here: I've been reading Jack O'Connell since the 90s. With his first novel BOX NINE O'Connell staked out turf that is very much all his own. While the "cyberpunk Hammett" description is useful as a a hook it doesn't do justice the dazzling assaults O'Connell makes on language, reality and the political structures and structures of our time.

It also doesn't do justice to the fact that with all the Philip K. Dickian terra-forming you find especially in The Resurrectionist, the novel works most profoundly on the level of sheer great storytelling. It's a great and moving tale about a father and son.

Jack was kind enough to answer some questions.

1. Jack, I have the sense that the central drama of the book came to you first--the father and son. That you built everything else around it. I say this because it could easily have been a polemic but it's not. It's a powerful and in some ways simple story.

My son was 5 or 6 years old when I started working on the book. He turns 13 next month. So, all the while I was noodling away on the story, I was also, always, brooding about the endless intricacies of fatherhood. You’re exactly right: so much of this story just grew, organically, out of that relentless sense, really, that worry, that you’re not up to the immensity of the task of protecting, shaping, understanding. Of course, in the end, none of us are. And that may be the only reason we’re all able to find our own identities.

2. The way you've worked out the storyline for "Limbo" makes me wonder what you think about our society's obsession with gaming and giant movies that don't bother with character or any kind of emotional reality.

Well, as you know from e-mails we’ve swapped over the years, I never feel more elderly than when I go to the Cineplex. (I particularly can’t bear the way action movies are edited – it’s just plain perverse to me. As if some insane person started teaching film classes about 10 years back and told the future cutters: make it as obscure as possible; make the perspective utterly illogical; and cut so fast that no one can follow any POV. Okay, rant over.) I mean, it’s undeniable, just self-evident, that characterization has been sacrificed on the altar of spectacle. I think back to a conversation I had about 15+ years ago when a friend said his kids couldn’t sit through High Noon because it was too slow. All I could think of was the first time I saw High Noon – that sense of slowly mounting dread, that sense of inevitably fate rolling toward you. I felt what it was like to be in Cooper’s skin. And to me, that was a triumph of popular art. That ability to use story to make our understanding of our own humanity fully visceral. That was the achievement, the big grace, the heart and the art and smart of that film.


3. The Peck Clinic certainly plays into our fear about secret and deadly forces at work in our society. Your novels have been called "paranoid" but given the present administration's taste for shredding constitutional guarantees, do you feel that you may not be paranoid at all?



Ha! What was that bumpsticker we used to see on microbuses – “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” Yes, I’m a functional paranoid. But one would have to be ferociously ignorant of, blind to, recent history to deny the rabid, geometrically growing lust for all manner of technological social control exhibited by both the state and the (probably more frightening and problematic) transnational congloms. My gut says we’re racing toward some pretty ugly decisions in the near future. And concurrently, our capacity for ethical courage – not to mention depth of thought -- seems near empty. Most saddening is the rise of the idiocracy – we’re more literate than ever, have fairly easy access to an abundance of real information – and civic discourse races for the gutter every day.

4. The Resurrectionist is certainly your most daring and accomplished novel. How long did you work on it and what was it like trying to balance family, work and writing (and I mean this) a masterpiece all at the same time?

Took me a full 5 years to write this one. Longer – by double – than any of my other books. (For a while the title was “The Book That Killed Him,” because I figured that’s how my kids would refer to it in years to come.). The fact is, looking back, I didn’t balance any of those things that make up my life. You know, you just sort of see which fire is most in need of some put-out each day. But as tends to happen for me, the process of composition is the thing that allows me to gradually understand what my story is really about. In a lot of ways, that ideal balance to which you refer is in the marrow of this book. And writing the story helped me to learn to accept, maybe even embrace, a truth that is always somewhat less than the ideal. In a funny and unexpected way, I think writing the book helped me to understand my real priorities and, once I’d done that, to integrate aspects of my life that had been fairly compartmentalized.

Blurb-0-Matic

Stephen King's new column in Entertainment Weekly takes up the subject of blurbing. One of his better columns, I think. He tries honestly if ruefully to deal with how established writers can help promote worthy books and films without turning into a whore. Not always easy in this age of Blurb-0-Matic.

As he notes, movie blurbists are the worst. Esquire once ran an article about a handful of blurbists the studios can always rely on. King comes up with two more names, Earl Dittman (which sounds made up) and Pete Hammond. These guys have apparently never seen a movie they didn't like. And they like everything in !!!!!!!! exclamation points.

Time, health, crankiness have slowed my own willingness to read manuscripts in order to blurb them. And sometimes I feel guilty about this because when I started out so many writers were so damned nice to me and so willing to give me quotes, sometimes when I didn't even ask for them.

One thing I always say to writers who ask for blurbs is that I don't know how helpful my name will be. In the grand scheme of things I'm nobody and so while it's probably all right to have " " on a cover I don't know how useful it is when consumers ahve never heard of the young writer or me.

For the novel I'm hopefully wrapping up soon I was planning on asking Mr. King for a blurb but I'm sure he's too busy. Does anybody have an e mail addrss for Earl !!!!!! Dittman?

City of Beasts

Black Gate Staff
From the Black Gate website

City of the Beast
By Michael Moorcock

A Review by Ryan Harvey

Copyright 2007 by New Epoch Press. All rights reserved.

Planet Stories (160 pages, September 2007, $12.99)

“I enjoyed it enormously. It was kind of a holiday for me,” Michael Moorcock once remarked about writing the “Kane of Old Mars” series. Reading the first of these novels, City of the Beast, is exactly like taking that holiday with Mr. Moorcock. Imagine chucking all your possession so you can buy a fancy red convertible and then tearing out to Florida without a care in the world. That’s City of the Beast. It has that “hell with it, let’s go for a ride!” feel. The book is a rare case of genuine escapism, and one of few times I can use the word “escapism” without thinking that I am ducking my responsibilities as a reviewer.

The hero of City of the Beast and the two following novels (Lord of the Spiders and Masters of the Pit) is the valiant Michael Kane. Kane is an incarnation of Moorcock’s Eternal Champion, but readers do not need to know anything about this overarching concept to enjoy the book. Kane’s science-fantasy adventures on a quaintly impossible Mars unabashedly imitate Edgar Rice Burroughs’ tales of John Carter, with dashes of other early pioneers of scientific romance like Leigh Brackett.

for the rest http://www.blackgate.com/articles/review_moorcock_city_of_the_beast.htm

Ed here: There may be another writer who enjoys the esteem of both high and low lit people to the degree that Michael Moorcock does but at the moment I can't think of any. Many of his novels are shelved along with contemporary masters; some, as with City of Beasts, appear next to Edgar Rice Burroughs. Seemingly odd company, that, for a man who was a key figure in the evolution of science fiction's New Wave back in the Sixties and Seventies.

I've heard varying versions of how much time was spent on each book in the trilogy. It averages out to be about a week per book. Believable given Moorcock's output in his early years.

I read the above review awhile back and just happened to bump into a copy of City of The Beast (as by Edward Bradbury) at Half Price. I finished it about an hour ago and enjoyed the hell out of it.

It makes no pretense to be anything other than an ER Burroughs-like romp through the Mars that Burroughs and Brackett gave us. There is no spectrally beautiful moment such as John Carter in that cave in Arizona being summoned to Mars and there is no invention quite the equal of Brackett's dangerous canal towns. But there is a Dumas-like splendor in the derring-do and the elegant maidens and these decsriptions of the soaring marble buildings catching the last of the red planet's daylight..

Many of the adventure books of my youth are difficult to go back to now. Too many flaws. But City of The Beasts works just fine because of its wit and refusal to take itself seriously.

Comedians; Smoking your last; Pigeons from Hell

Comedy is hard

In today's NY Times Matt Weiland givs a mixed review to Richard Zogolin's Comedy At The Edge, a study of the comedians who emerged in the seventies. Here's a sample of the well worth reading longish review.

"Still, Zoglin is a clear and informative writer and a good synthesizer. (In these qualities he is the very definition of what he is: a Time man.) His book starts with Lenny Bruce, but once the floodgates for free speech in public are open, Bruce comes across as less imitated than admired. George Carlin and Richard Pryor, by contrast, stand out as the crucial influences on the others. Zoglin hails Carlin as “the indispensable role model” in carrying on Bruce’s “crusade against hypocrisy, cant and social injustice. ... His early takeoffs of D.J.’s and TV commercials set a gold standard for scores of media satirists to follow, and his jokey newscasts provided the template for news parodies from ‘Saturday Night Live’s’ ‘Weekend Update’ to Jon Stewart’s ‘Daily Show.’ His riffs on schoolroom pranks and bodily functions and the little absurdities of language showed the next crop of ‘observational’ comics that nothing was too trivial or mundane — or tasteless — to become fodder for smart comedy.” And Pryor’s out-of-control persona, his self-destructive appetites, his ambivalence — even animosity — toward the audience, his obsession with selling out, and his crossover success in concert albums and comic and serious film roles became a touchstone for a whole generation of comedians. It is strange, though, that Zoglin doesn’t rate Woody Allen, a virtual contemporary of Carlin and Pryor, in their company. The schlemiel as hero, the rapid neurotic delivery, the mix of philosophy and pop culture, the angst over emotional, career and relationship success, the shift in the ’70s from stand-up to writing, acting and directing — is any comedian of the period more influential?

"Zoglin is good at describing the appeal of the white Everymen: Albert Brooks, Steve Martin, Robin Williams and Andy Kaufman. Their styles may have varied from manic to comatose, cerebral to brainless, but they shared similar suburban backgrounds, and they brought a studied irony into the comedy mainstream. He recounts how Williams thrived when the mike went dead at the Laff Stop in Orange County in 1976, and how appealing was his “deconstruction of our overstimulated, media-dominated culture.” Kaufman was so original he was the only person Lorne Michaels deemed not cuttable from the first episode of “Saturday Night Live” in 1975."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/books/review/Weiland-t.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin


Smoke smoke smoke that cigarette:

I've noted several blogs taking poor Patrick Swayze to task for continuing to smoke as he fights pancreatic cancer (and saying that he looks awful--he's being bombarded with chemo, folks. That don't exactly make you pretty.) I say this seriously A) There is no time more difficult to quit smoking than in a crisis (remember Lloyd Bridgess mocking this notion in Airplane) and B) The stats on surviving apncreatic cancer aren't very good.

Jeffery Wells on Hollywood Elsewhere made this point:

"You're on the ropes with a life-threatening illness and it doesn't look good, what difference does it make if you have a cigarette? It's a tough situation, but if I was Patrick Swayze's best friend and he pulled out a smoke and lit up, I'd shake my head but my main attitude would be, "Whatever, man.""

Ed here: for those who suffer mutliple myeloma, the incurable cancer I have, there's a website that tells you, among other things, the symptoms that will tell you're starting to die. I'm not trying to be morbid. I hope I've got many good years left. But I'll tell you when death is no longer in the rear view mirror but right in front of me up the road...I've told Carol not to be surprised if I started buying Lucky Strikes by the carton. And I met several other guys at Mayo a few summers ago who said the same thing. Haven't smoked for thirty, forty years they said--but man lead me to them there Pall Malls.

Good luck with it all, Patrick.

A book by any other name:

I ordered a copy of a Robert E. Howard book called Piegons from Hell, that being one of my four all-time favorite REH stories and one of the finest horror tales I've ever read. And guess what? The book shows up without the story Pigeons inside. I've been wanting to read it for months, having misplaced mine awhile back. I wonder which Howard book I order to get Pigeons included.

The Seventh Victim

l'll say again, even though I've never known anybody to agree with me, that The Seventh Victim is the finest of Val Lewton's pictures.

I say this because its sense of evil is pervasive. And because the evil is suggested rather than demonstrated until the very end. Even the first act, which is essentially a detective story, concludes on a darkening note despite the setting of the cosmetics business for which the sister worked. There's a decadence to the business itself.

I don't want to spoil the story so I'll say that what fascinates me on third and fourth viewing is how subtly the theme is played out--the young woman hoping against hope that the evil she suspects doesn't exist--and the forces against her who have dedicated their lives to discovering evil and feeding on it. And then the reverse--it is the young woman who understand real evil and the Diabolists who are pathetic pretenders.

Kim Stanley had a troubled career. For me she was too smitten with The Method. But this was apparently before acting school got hold of her. She does excellent work here.

I like enjoy and admire all the Lewton pictures and watch them over and over. But this one has stayed with me as none of the others have.

Here are a few notes from IMBD:

The story as filmed:

Mary Gibson, a naive orphan, goes to Manhattan to find her missing sister Jacqueline. Her investigation leads her to Jacqueline's secret husband, and also to a strange cult of Diabolists who are also hunting Jacqueline. Written by Ken Yousten {kyousten@bev.net}

The story that wasn't filmed:

The original story for the film (outlined by DeWitt Bodeen) was to be about an orphaned heroine caught in a web of murder against a background of the Signal Hills oil wells. If she didn't find out the killer's identity in time, she would become his seventh victim. Producer Val Lewton wanted the story to go in a different direction and called in a second writer to help reshape it.

largest assemblage of crooks, morons & liars - house

I don't usually run political stuff but you gotta read this. From TPM the finest pol site aorund. These bastards are making laws for US.

TPM

Pelosi Gets Reform Bill While GOPers and Some Dems Kick and Scream
By Paul Kiel - March 12, 2008, 11:23AM
Last night, the House passed an ethics reform bill, which will create an outside panel to review ethics complaints against lawmakers. It's a noted improvement over the current setup -- which isn't saying much since the House ethics committee has been a punchline for many years.

The outside panel, which will have six members (3 GOPers, 3 Dems), won't have subpoena power. And it will simply forward recommendations to the actual House ethics committee for further action after investigating. That's why some critics like CREW's Melanie Sloan call it a "paper tiger." Other good government types have given their support on the theory that something is better than nothing.

As The Hill reports, the Dem leadership pushed hard for the reform bill despite Republicans and a number of senior Democrats digging in their heels and doing what they could to prevent the vote. As The Washington Post reports, "Even with two House members under indictment, two others sent to prison, and several others under federal investigation, nearly half the House did not want to submit the body to the scrutiny of a panel not under its control." Some of the choicer quotes from last night's debate:

Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS): "If you have a single ounce of self-preservation, you'll vote no."

Mighty reform foe Rep. John Murtha (D-PA): “We have a New York governor in the news right who shows that you can’t legislate ethics. It always comes down to the individual.”

And most quotable of all:

Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, registered his displeasure with the proposal by using a parliamentary tactic to delay the vote. Just after 8 p.m., Abercrombie forced a vote on a motion to adjourn, which only served to delay the vote on the ethics resolution until an hour later. The vote failed 177 to 196, with 14 Democrats voting in favor of it.
Afterward, Abercrombie railed against the proposal to resounding applause on both sides of the aisle.

“With this proposal we are indicting ourselves, yielding and retreating to those who would tear this House down and denigrate us as crooks and knaves and hustlers…we cringe before our critics,” he said. “If we have no respect for ourselves—how to we expect it from anybody else?”

Tess; Jack Warden

A sad day here. I finally forced myself to take eighteen year old Tess to the vet and have her put to sleep. She'd lost half her weight in the past three months and had stopped eating the past few days. She was the scamp of the Gorman cats. We came home one day to find that she'd jumped from the mantle of our fireplace on to a hanging plant. She was just a kitten and not greatly skilled in such matters so she was splayed out across the plant and unable to get down. One of dozens of Tess stories.

I had to make the decision myself. Carol's in Poland as a visiting writer. The cell phone contact she was reassured we'd have doesn't work. Today she visited Auschwitz. We usually e mail back and forth but tonight she's traveling. She'll be home Friday.

One of my favorite writers, John O'Hara, describes it as the funeral age, that point in life when people beginning falling away, when you see old frinds only in churches and mortuaries.

Of course O'Hara, a grand Irish drunk who had to give it up because it almost killed him by age thirty, had other ages, too. I recently read an autobiography of the man. One night at the old 21 Club in NYC he got loaded and got himself goaded into a fist fight with a midget. All us alkies, practicing or recovered, know how insane things like that can happen sometimes.

Staying with my melancholy mood, I've recently seen three pictures with one of my all-time favorite character actos Jack Warden in them. I thought I'd reprint what I said on his death.

JACK WARDEN

Back in the days when I had my own blog, I noted the deaths of actors who’d given me hours of particular pleasure. Ted Knight, Robert Mitchum, Teresa Wright were among my favorites. We need all the momentary pleasures we can find in this vale of tears. And even though I didn’t know any of the people I bade goodbye, I felt the loss on an almost personal level.

Tonight I’m saying my goodbye to Jack Warden, certainly one of the two or three best character actors of his generation. While the movie sites are listing all the A+ movies he appeared in, I have my own list of his great performances – BYE BYE BRAVERMAN; USED CARS; SHAMPOO; THE SPORTING CLUB; THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ, to name just a few.

And ... for true Jack Warden fans ... his CBS-TV Sunday night series Crazy Like A Fox. I know – it wasn’t The Rockford Files. It was TV-lite. But he made it wonderful. Carol and I would tape the shows so we could see them again the very next night. Just to watch him act. He was a wonderful comic actor as well as a powerful dramatic one. He had a particularly great line when his frustrated son told him that his office was a mess as was his life. Harry Fox: “Son, you gotta learn to rise above the details.” That is the wisdom I live by. I rise above the details every day.

Hours and hours and hours of Jack Warden dating back to the the mid-1950s and live TV. Never saw him phone one in or not know exactly how to inhabit the character. So long, Jack and thanks for all pleasure your immeasurable talent gave me.

—

Sleeping Dogs Plugola; Sex and Scandal

I've got a new novel called Sleeping Dogs coming out from St. Martin's in three weeks. Here be the first of several plugs.

Publisher's Weekly:

Sleeping Dogs
Ed Gorman. St. Martin's Minotaur/Dunne, $23.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-312-36784-8

Shamus-winner Gorman (Fools Rush In) puts his experience as a political speechwriter to good use in this entertaining first of what appears to be a new series. Dev Conrad, a cynical yet idealistic political consultant, signs on for the re-election bid of Sen. Warren Nichols of Illinois after Nichols's longtime consultant and ally, Phil Wylie, leaves in a bitter dispute with the candidate and later commits suicide. Nichols, facing right-wing conservative Jim Lake, finds himself in a tightening race with a major debate looming. The race becomes nasty with dirty tricks, blackmail and even campaign sabotage likely emanating from inside Nichols's staff. While Gorman presents our electoral choices and processes in an often dispiriting and unflattering light, readers will hope his appealing hero will return in future outings beyond the current real-life political campaign season. (Apr.)

From Kirkus:

"Gorman provides rewardingly dry-eyed political savvy without the bloat of most novelists who patrol this turf. The prose is pared so close to the bone that it makes Elmore Leonard look positively garrulous.""

SEX AND SCANDAL

Over at Cinema Retro tonight you can learn all about the latest Hwood scandal trial. The article comes replete with a large illustrative photo of the fatale femme mentioned here.

"The corruption trial of "private eye to the stars" Anthony Pellicano heated up with the testimony of his assistant, a sexy bombshell who seems right out of a Dashiell Hammett novel and whose name sounds like that of a James Bond girl. Tarita Virtue (we're not making this up) testified that she transcribed conversations from wiretaps placed by her boss."

For the rest go here: http://www.cinemaretro.com/index.php

Doris Day

I saw a lot of movies in the late Forties and early Fifties. Crime and westerns when my Dad chose, musicals and comedies when it was my Mom's turn. So my movie going sort of coincided with the rise of Doris Day. She had one of those studio careers that are entertaining to read about because the moguls were so sure-footed (for once) in bringing her to prominence. I'm talking about her first career. The later one with Rock Hudson was a very different one. Philip French is an excellent biographer and essayist. Here's a portion of his take on Doris Day.

Philip French's Screen legends
No 7: Doris Day 1924-

Philip French
Sunday March 9, 2008
The Observer

She was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1924 as Doris von Kappelhoff and first made her name as a teenage singer, fending off the advances of musicians while touring in the big-band era. In her early twenties, she attracted the attention of Hollywood and was put under contract by Michael Curtiz, top director at Warner Brothers.

He directed her as a tough, gum-chewing chanteuse in It's Magic (aka Romance on the High Seas, 1948), which made her a movie star and for some years she alternated between playing band singers, usually exploited by the men she worshipped (as she was in real life) and serving as Warner's resident 'girl next door', a freckled ingenue with corn-fed charm. Her screen persona came to reflect the tug between professional independence and domestic submission that characterised postwar life in the Western world.

One of the best vocalists of her generation, as adept at mournful ballads as at cheerful, upbeat numbers, and a natural comedienne, she developed rapidly as an actor, holding her own with Cagney, Sinatra and Gable. A couple of her 1950s films were tough stuff: the 1951 melodrama Storm Warning in which she plays the shabby, abused wife of a Ku Klux Klan man in the Deep South (in effect A Streetcar Named Desire turned into a Warner Brothers social-conscience picture), and the 1955 biopic of Ruth Etting, Love Me or Leave Me, where Cagney played her abusive lover.

For the rest go here http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2263661,00.html