"Six Authors in Search of a Character, Part 4: Mickey Spillane" in ZYZZYVA

 The fourth installment of my ongoing essay series in ZYZZYVA Literary Magazine is now live––the series is called "Six Authors in Search of a Character" and it explores the unusual and complicated psychology of writers portraying on screen characters they created in print. Part 4 analyzes Mickey Spillane's tackling of the role of his iconic private eye Mike Hammer in THE GIRL HUNTERS (1963). If you missed the first three installments of the series (on Stephen King's appearance in CREEPSHOW, Richard Wright's role in NATIVE SON, and Irvine Welsh's role in TRAINSPOTTING, you can read them here).

Only now does it occur to me... STORYVILLE (1992)

Only now does it occur to me... a few things about STORYVILLE.

STORYVILLE is the only feature film to be written and directed by Mark Frost, co-creator of TWIN PEAKS. I watched it because I am a TWIN PEAKS die-hard. Here's what I learned:

#1. It can't decide whether it wants to be a John Grisham-style courtroom drama or a Cannon Film. Think that sounds ridiculous? Then just let me lay the plot synopsis on you, and you can tell me the exact point where Grisham gives way to Golan-Globus:

Clay Fowler (James Spader) is a young Louisianan whippersnappuh and ace lawyer running for Congress.

There's all sorts of corruption and family history and bayous and rockin' chairs and microfiche––


Most films of this kind make you wait about an hour for the microfiche montage sequence, but STORYVILLE delivers it in the opening shots of the movie!

and there're backroom deals and suspenders and an irascible performance by Jason Robards,

and pathos exuded by Woody Strode in browline eyeglasses,

but then––ladies and gentlemen, just when you think you're watching THE CLIENT or THE PELICAN BRIEF, James Spader finds himself in hot water (literally) when he is blackmailed after being videotaped having sex with a martial arts instructor in her studio's (ninja) hot tub:

And this is after they've already 'sexy-sparred' like Grace Jones and Christopher Walken in A VIEW TO A KILL.


A VIEW TO A KILL meets A TIME TO KILL?

Allow me to reiterate two things. One: I am not making this up. Two: ninja hot tubs are a staple of 1980s cinema, and I don't know why. I call them "ninja" hot tubs and not "martial arts" hot tubs (or even "jiu jitsu jacuzzis"), because they first appear in the Cannon classic REVENGE OF THE NINJA, where three separate hot tubs involving ninjas are made integral to the plot. In Cannon's NINJA III: THE DOMINATION, a ninja hot tub makes a notable appearance as a site of possessed ninja murder. In BLIND FURY (not a Cannon film, but starring Cannon's Sho Kosugi), there is a climactic martial arts and swordfighting duel over a hot tub. Later on in STORYVILLE, Spader returns to the scene of the ninja hot tub and battles a martial arts assassin. What does all of this mean? I was hoping you could tell me.



#2. If you're looking for TWIN PEAKS, you found it... (kind of).

There's a small town, quirky characters, and a dead body floating in the water in the opening scenes.

He's dead... Wrapped in... the clothes he was already wearing, I guess. 

It shares with TWIN PEAKS its casting director (Johanna Ray), cinematographer (Ron Garcia), production designer (Richard Hoover), set decorator (Brian Kasch), second-assistant director (Randy Barbee), and co-producer (Robert D. Simon).  It features a small, weirdo role for Catherine Martell herself, Piper Laurie:

and a villainous turn (obviously) by Renault brother Michael Parks:

 

who is sort of playing the same corrupt cop he played in THE HITMAN, though in this role he is permitted both the Cannon flourish of beating up James Spader while wearing a terrifying mask:

as well as the Grisham flourish of testifying in a courtroom that the judge "will not allow to turn into a circus!"

Michael Parks was a national treasure, by the way.

In closing, this is a strange (and, I'll be honest, often mediocre) little movie that may find appreciative viewers among TWIN PEAKS enthusiasts, hot tub fans, Grisham die-hards, and, I daresay, aficionados of the Southern Fried Crawdad-Lickin' Sleaze-O-Rama genre.

Only now does it occur to me... STORM WARNING (1951)

Only now does it occur to me... I never thought I would see Hollywood dancing legend Ginger Rogers being brutalized by members of the Ku Klux Klan...

...and that said tableau would not be "kitschy," but instead would function as a small part of a wider, more profound, and all-too-relevant whole. 

Stuart Heisler's STORM WARNING (1951) is a noir-ish message picture and a late entry into the "B-movies depicting the dangers of hate groups in America" genre, which includes films like BLACK LEGION (1937), NATION AFLAME (1937), and LEGION OF TERROR (1936).

Ginger Rogers plays a dress model who's passing through the small town of Rockpoint, USA to visit her newlywed sister (Doris Day). That the studio chose Ginger and Doris to portray key figures in a serious assessment of American hate groups (which is, for the record, not a musical in any way, shape, or form) feels like kind of an artistic coup. [If you'd asked me two weeks ago if there existed a movie where Ginger Rogers was bullwhipped by Klansmen, I would have been incredulous. Even now, I can barely conceive of the idea.] In any event, Ginger is in town for approximately three minutes when she witnesses the Klan murdering a journalist.

 

For a film about the KKK, the aspect of racial prejudice exists mostly as an implication; we only explicitly see the KKK harming white people who threaten to expose or destroy them. It is an obvious blind spot for the film, but as far as old Hollywood goes, the fact that they are willing to spend 93 minutes attacking a hate group instead of 165 minutes glorifying it (see: 1915's A BIRTH OF A NATION, among others) shows definite progress.

When she goes to tell her sister about it, she recognizes her new brother-in-law as one of the Klan murderers. Using a melodramatic framework that recalls the Blanche DuBois/Stella/Stanley Kowalski dynamic in a STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE,

Doris Day as the suffering, dutiful wife, darkened by the shadow of her abuser (Steve Cochran)...

a man who uses power dynamics and outright intimidation...

...to extend his sphere of abusive influence,  illustrated through Elia Kazan-esque theatrical blocking.

Ginger struggles between the ideas of spilling what she knows to the relevant authorities and lying to protect her sister's domestic purgatory. And did I mention that the relevant authority in this instance––the district attorney who's trying to destroy the Klan once and for all––is portrayed by none other than an eyebrow-indicating Ronald Reagan?

Facing external threat and familial guilt, Ginger stays quiet for a while, and the film takes advantage of her uncertainty to twist the knife; laying out an excellent case for why hate groups must rely on secrecy, the threat of violence, the silence of the good, and the indifference of the rational.

Here's a Klan member condescendingly explaining all the "good" they do:

And here's two Klansmen fearing what will happen if Ginger testifies:

And here's national press coverage illustrating the depth of the mistrust of outsiders and intellectuals, a sentiment that boils down to––"don't tell me what to do in my backyard, especially if they're lynching people in my backyard."

When Ginger refuses to testify and it looks like the case is all but lost, the locals cheer Reagan's defeat from outside the courthouse. Then we're privy to a stirring, Capra-style plea on behalf of rationality and tolerance:

All of this builds to a vivid conclusion, rife with madness and Klan imagery.

Films like this ought to be in the dust-bin of history, to be extracted for purposes of derision, at how uncivilized we used to be. They used to burn books? They used to collect in mobs and wear bedsheets and follow tyrants? They needed to be told that was wrong? What a quaint, dumb, superstitious and intolerant people! And yet STORM WARNING has outlived this movie-of-the-week shelf life. It says, in vanilla terms, and with the most vanilla stars imaginable––Doris Day, Ronald Reagan, and Ginger Rogers, for godssake!––the vanilla message that kindness and moral responsibility are American qualities, and that narrow-mindedness, harassment, lying, and intimidation are anti-American. But these days, that feels like a "contentious" message. The hoods have come off, and the Klansmen are emboldened to ply their poison trade by daylight, and under more innocuous flags. The image in the film that sticks with me is this; a fleeting shot of a child whose parent has dressed them up in Kiddie Klan gear:

This image, and the film that contains it, is a 66-year-old plea. To quote Ronald Regan's D.A.: if the good do nothing, "They're gonna rip up the old laws and make new ones. They're gonna do every rotten thing they can think of doing..."

Only now does it occur to me... A WOMAN'S FACE (1941)

Only now does it occur to me... oh, just watch this––it's a little ditty I call "Joan Crawford is Having None of Your Unflattering Light Sources."

Sean Gill's "Cranberry's Last Dance" in Akashic Books

My latest short story, a Midwestern crime tale entitled "Cranberry's Last Dance," may be read online here as part of a shortform noir series from Akashic Books called "Mondays Are Murder."

Film Review: THE BIG EASY (1986, Jim McBride)

Stars: 3.5 of 5.

Running Time:  minutes.

Notable Cast or Crew:  Dennis Quaid (ENEMY MINE, FAR FROM HEAVEN), Ellen Barkin (DOWN BY LAW, THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI), John Goodman (BARTON FINK, THE BIG LEBOWSKI), Ned Beatty (SUPERMAN, DELIVERANCE), Grace Zabriskie (TWIN PEAKS, WILD AT HEART), Marc Lawrence (MARATHON MAN, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN), Soloman Burke (Rock n' Roll Hall of Famer and "The Bishop of Soul").  Written by Daniel Petrie, Jr. (BEVERLY HILLS COP, TURNER & HOOCH).

Tag-line:  "Police ACTION at its best!"  (If ya know what I mean.)

Best one-liner:  "If I can't have you, can I have my gator?"

Sweet crawdad-lickin', bayou-sweatin', gator-chompin' lordy o mine!  It's time to kick off this three part series of Southern-Fried Sleaze-O-Rama!

What? You may be thinking.  THE BIG EASY is a fairly respected, medium-to-high-budgeted 80s Neo-Noir classic, or at least a near-classic.  It's got a respectable acting pedigree, Ebert loved the hell out of it, and for as much as we use the AFI for anything other than the occasional snide remark, they shortlisted this flick for their "Greatest American Mysteries" list and for their "Greatest American Love Stories" list.  So what are you thinking, placing this crawdad-lickin' gem in your series dedicated to unintentional camp and hilarious perversity?

Well, as much as I genuinely enjoy THE BIG EASY, I must spring something on you.  A pop quiz, to be exact.  Don't worry, though– there's only one question.  I want you to think hard, and tell me what the answer is, because honestly, I don't even know.  The question is this:

Q:  What is the most unexpectedly bizarre moment of Mardi Grassin', cajun-spicin' wackadoodle to appear in THE BIG EASY?

Is it, A:  Ned Beatty's spectacular get-up during a front-porchin' Crescent City shindig,

which includes a rather chic felt crawdad hat, a pair of suspenders, and a Tabasco™ sauce tee-shirt, which proudly (and accurately) labels Beatty as "HOT STUFF."

Is it, B:  Grace Zabriskie's bug-eyed, Creole-accented turn as Dennis Quaid's mother,

a matriarch so fierce that she can demolish old ladies with a soul-blasting Medusa glare:

It's a performance which probably inspired David Lynch, who would later cast her in WILD AT HEART as an accented hitwoman carrying out a job in New Orleans.

Is it, C:  John Goodman, looking nowhere near "skinny," but certainly younger and svelter than I've seen him this side of C.H.U.D.

Hint: it's not C.  C is pretty normal.

Is it, D:  The comically disturbing semi-implied, semi-explicit salad-tossing scene between Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin



which nearly made me spray my beer through my nose.  (And don't you worry, this series with make an extremely tasteful recurring motif of this particular proclivity.)  I feel as if this demands a new euphemism.  "The Bayou Tosser?"  "Mason Licksin'?"  "Jambalaya Jammin'?"


Is it, E:  Jambalaya Jammin'.  Nevermind, nevermind, THIS is "Jambalaya Jammin'":


Or, as longtime goosing aficionado Burt Reynolds might call it, "The Stroker Ace."

Or is it, F:  Dennis Quaid going undercover and on the lam as notable "Hall and Oates" member,  John Oates.

John Oates heartily approves.

And you really must watch the following clip, which truly functions best when viewed entirely out of context:

So there you have it– I have posed the question.  I pray that you, my valued readers, can provide me with the answer.  So here's hopin' you beat the heat, and stay tuned for more crawdad-lickin', Southern-fried Sleaze-o-rama!

–Sean Gill