From today's New York Times:
At its heart, “TITLE REDACTED” is a book about a marriage and the journey through grief that a widow [name redacted] makes after the death of her husband, [name redacted], also a rock star of the book world.
You know this book, right? The title, author and link after the jump.
It makes sense that David Denby, who writes film reviews for The New Yorker, is himself a New Yorker. But a clichéd New Yorker? Really, with transcontinental flight and teevee and the internets, I thought stupefying idoicy about Los Angeles was something most New Yorkers had left behind. Yet consider this opening line of Denby's review of The Black Dahlia:
New York, rising high, eliminates its past with a wrecking ball; Los Angeles, spreading out, broods over its history until it rots.
Let's quickly acknowledge that leading with NY to review a movie (and book) that never treads east of Nevada is shaky at best. And now to the truth of the matter: Los Angeles knocks down its history with a vigor and frequency entirely beyond New York's wanna-be destructo dreams. As NY's Plaza Hotel went condo, Los Angeles' historic, defunct Ambassador Hotel was bulldozed to make way for a public school. Heck, we even tore down the cheap and boozy bowling alley that was the setting for The Big Lebowski. In LA, history is an embarassment; no building is sacred.
See, to shoot the 1940s-era exteriors for The Black Dahlia, the cast and crew had to fly all the way to Bulgaria.
I couldn't take Denby's review seriously. Instead I re-read the book and headed out for a bargain, hungover matinee. I don't recommend this -- the book re-reading, that is. Hangovers are fine in my book if you earn them in good fun.
Anyway, if you were thinking you might want to read The Black Dahlia before seeing the movie, don't bother. You'll spend the first half of the movie swimming in the narrative of the backstory: you go from glee of recognizing why they bust a guy to disappointment that his fate -- heading to the electric chair -- isn't big enough to make the film. And I honestly can't be sure if the film flows well for the first half, because it's so faithful to the book. At times I marvelled at how well it was sticking with Ellroy's story.
It looks beautiful. The costumes and makeup and interiors are almost perfect. The Bulgarian exteriors -- well, they didn't fool me, but I was happy to go along for the ride. Atmosphere, tone, story: it was all good. While I'd feared Josh Hartnett was too pretty to play one of Ellroy's ex-boxer cops, I thought he did just fine. Aaron Eckhart, too.
But the movie jumps its shark midway, as Hartnett trails his partner, Eckhart, to a meeting at a deserted building. This is where it diverges from the book; this is where De Palma gets really grisly (the first time). This is where the film sashays into camp, and if you think De Palma means the funniness that comes with camp, then you'll love it. Part of me would like to believe that De Palma was only kidding when he directed that, in a heated rush, Hartnett whip the tablecloth off an elaborately set dining table to make way for his coupling with Scarlett Johanssen. But the swooping music says it isn't a joke. The camera that pulls back discreetly from the window says it isn't wink-wink exploitation: it's drama. Award-aspiring drama. And as drama, it falters about halfway through.
Other than the melodramatic tone that sets in as the plot teeters like a drunk matriarch, the movie's greatest failure is Hilary Swank's accent. That is, unless she was trying to portray someone who invented a snobby accent but couldn't stick to it with any consistency.
The book The Black Dahlia didn't just revive an old, grisly LA murder; it blew out the walls of the detective genre. College kids, punkers, ironists and literati (a few) read it and liked it. With its freakish, iconic girl-cut-in-two as a lynchpin between crime, cops, the underbelly of Hollywood and one wealthy family, it had massive movie potential: Raymond Chandler but with modern gore, modern sex, modern brutality. But the book's ending was flawed, and it needed a brilliant hand to guide it into something grand on screen. Unfortunately, not De Palma's.
This is the as-packed-as-possible crowd that turned out to see literary theorist (turned Law School dude) Stanley Fish do his fantastic rhetoric dance Thursday at Pitt. Fish is there, in the short sleeved blue oxford, talking to the woman in white; if you gave him a visor he'd look like the guy who counts the take in a noir film. (My class in film noir was adjourned early so interested students, and our professor, could attend). From what I remember of my literary theory -- which, admittedly, isn't much -- Stanley Fish was the only lit theorist who made me laugh out loud.
He engaged the quiet, awed and/or confused crowd in an exercise in logic and rhetoric about argument itself that was beguiling. It begins:
1) Has my conviction that X is true been reached in the course of a particular education (mine) and career trajectory, complete with mentors, influences, substantive commitments,religious, ethnic and political attachments, etc? - YES
2) Is the history by which I arrived at my conviction its author? - NO.
And goes on for 7 more pages, which I will not retype, since I've already quoted without permission from Señor Fish* despite the warning on the handout not to do so. Anyway, during his talk, two things were clear: he's so deft with his rhetoric that to disagree with him, or even to take issue, makes one feel entirely irrational; and he could have wound up at the exact opposite of his actual conclusion and been equally convincing. Supremely gifted.
Also funny. He illustrated one of his terms, "giving accounts," by saying "During the old Hollywood studio system, Tom Cruise would have either been shut up or killed." Hee. He said Tom Cruise.
My favorite question was "In the game of argument, whose rules are you following? Artistotle's? Kant's?" because it proved that I am really in grad school. So what if I can't define what Kant and Aristotle's rules of argument might be -- someone in that room could, and took them very seriously. Not Stanley Fish so much, who's answer was something like "no rules." Which made me happy to be in grad school, too.
*Señor Fish serves topnotch fish tacos in Los Angeles.
Welcome the birth of Dzanc Books, a new nonprofit dedicated to publishing and promoting literary fiction. They'll also give a hand to literary journals -- which, of course, rule -- but could also use a few more readers.
Dan Wickett of the Emerging Writers Network and Steve Gillis, the founder of 826michigan, are the men behind the Dzanc curtain. They've got loads of energy and a huge love of books, and are sure to make Dzanc a successful venture.
Now, if they can just tell us how to pronounce the name...
Friday I showed up at 7:30pm to be one of about 100 punk club scene extras in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. The short version: Peter Sarsgaard is indeed a babe, Sienna Miller is even tinier than you'd think, and geniune punks will smuggle beer into a film shoot. The snark, and spoilers, after the jump.
Continue reading "mysteriouser and mysteriouser pittsburgh" »
As noted by Bookslut and Largehearted Boy, Friday there's an open casting call for the movie version of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Here, in, of all places, Pittsburgh, where they will be shooting the film.
So I promptly read the book, because I plan to show up at the open call. We're supposed to dress early/mid 1980s. Which is a little funny, because while the book was written then, it isn't really set then, except perhaps for its cavalier, pre-AIDS sexual mores. So I've been thinking about 1980s style. And, well, Adam Ant.
While Adam Ant does make an appearance in the book (via lyrics), I admit I watched more than one of his old videos, entranced by the true original Jack Sparrow. Actually, I meant to be getting to some questions about the movie-i-zation of TMOP. Those questions -- including spoiler elements -- after the jump.
Continue reading "Mysteries of the Mysteries of Pittsburgh " »
• One book that changed your life. Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion, specifically the story "Goodbye to All That." It showed me that if you can fall in love with a place, it can also break your heart. And that when you feel that terrible emptiness, it's OK to leave. When she spoke at the LA Times Festival of Books this year, I was somewhat dismayed to learn that her broken-heartedness in NY mostly came from professional jealousy, while my 20-something self reading the story was facing one of those overwhelming 20-something existential crises. Anyway, a few months later I did pick up and leave.
• One book that you’ve read more than once. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. I keep writing papers about it.
• One book you’d want on a desert island. Uh, Macbook? Plus satellite internet hookup? No? Then I'm jumping on the Riverside Shakesepare bandwagon.
• One book that made you laugh. Shoot my if you must, literary elite, but A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers cracked me up. I was sharing a hotel room with my sister and she kept saying "what are you laughing at?" and I'd stop sniggering and quiet down and apologize. Then I'd laugh again and she'd snap at me again. Repeat.
• One book that made you cry. I cry far more at movies than at books. That said, I think Love In the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez got me all weepy.
• One book that you wish had been written. Seems to me that I will never, no matter how hard I try, be able to read all the books I'd like to. So I haven't dwelled much on what isn't around to add to the ever-growing list. Although if you'd asked me when I was 7, I would have asked for more Nancy Drew books.
• One book that you wish had never been written. Everything by "JT Leroy." Wouldn't we all be better off?
• One book you’re currently reading. The Nasty Bits by Anthony Bourdain. Ah, to be a punk rock world-traveling food writer with a penchant for dive bars and street food.
• One book you’ve been meaning to read. Infinte Jest by David Foster Wallace. Footnotes? Bring 'em on.
Already played, so many different books! About Last Night, AC, Dan, Danielle, Dorothy, Ed, Emily, Erin, Hobgoblin, Jenny, Jordan, Kate, Mark, Melissa, satyridae, Stefanie, Sylvia. And probably more that I missed.
Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s caught my attention when I read the mini-review in the New Yorker's Briefly Noted section. So much of Hollywood history is glossed over that these personal notes (from the secretary for Sam Goldwyn & Cecil B. DeMille) would have to be somewhat illuminating, I figured. And since my birthday was coming up, I popped onto Amazon and wishlisted it.
And I noticed that people who bought it also bought An American Heroine in the French Resistance: The Diary And Memoir of Virginia d'Albert-Lake. Similar books -- personal documents from women, sort of unhidden at the same time. But this book was reviewed in the same New Yorker Briefly Noted section. Now if you buy An American Heroine with Hollywood Secretary, you get a discount.
Are New Yorker readers really that predictable? Do we just blindly by what the New Yorker reviews? Well in fact we are. My highly unscientific survey reveals that
- if you buy Cellophane (July 24) you probably also will buy Water for Elephants (July 31)
- buy Water for Elephants and you'll also pick up the Whole World Over (July 24)
- buy the Whole World Over (July 24) and no doubt you'll get Theft: A Love Story (John Updike review, May 29)
Curiously (or maybe not so?) it seems to work best for fiction. People who buy The Parliament of Man: The Past, Present and Future of the United Nations don't care so much about The Prince of Marshes (Iraq) or The Sack of Rome. Despite an evident common thread.
So it seems that if you have a book reviewed in Briefly Noted, it can't hurt to have a nice buy-me sounding books reviewed with you.
The LitBlog Coop is discussing Skin by Kellie Wells, which was before my LBC time. So the best I can do is an excerpt:
The air in What Cheer, Kansas, is gardenia scented year-round, even in the chill, white anonymity of winter, a perfume so heady and redolent it sets noses to twitching and muddles the thinking, throws the clock of expectations plum off its tock, prompts folks to marry in December, die in June, fills them to their gasping gills with a barren hunger no fecundity can ever answer. Just beyond the city limits, the nostrils broaden to the sulphurous reek of industry, the reassuring odor of people engaged in the production of objects, and tensed muscles relax beneath skin that recalls once again how to act, as bodies drive large, soft-seated cars toward reachable goals.
For more about the book, please check out the LBC.
It's the summer of 1990 and I'm canvassing, knocking on doors and asking for money to stop the arms race, crying curbside when I don't reach my quota. My boss has taken pity on me and given me a good route, up in the hills. I walk down a long asphalt driveway, lumped with pine needles, and I hope, despite myself, that no one answers the door.
It swings open and I start my schpiel. The man is white-haired and shirtless, and has the most beautiful blue eyes I've ever seen. He interrupts me, says he'll give me some money, but I have to come in. He's got asparagus on the stove.
He's listening to NPR and he turns off the asparagus. I think that he must be 70, even though he doesn't seem 70. I go on with the schpiel but I'm distracted by the house. We're standing on the edge of a galley kitchen and beyond it is a great room with a few doors on the opposite wall. I'm transfixed by one wall of the great room that's all windows; beneath the windows is a long reflecting pool. It seems to flow along the very lip of the yard on the hillside. And just beyond it, the next thing you see, is Silver Lake, although there are a few hills between us and it's far below. It's framed as if it was placed there for this house alone. I think Frank Lloyd Wright, but I'm sure I'm wrong.
I drop the schpiel. I don't know how exactly, but we start talking about books. Is this what happens? I think it is that he asks what I have been reading and I say Henry Miller (I'm a punk rock college dropout, of course I'm reading Henry Miller). I think this is when he asks if I know Anais Nin, and I do but I haven't read her writing. I should, he says. He'll give me one of her books, he tells me, then he pauses.
It's pretty racy, he says.
Oh, I can handle racy, I say back.
He goes around a corner and downstairs, I think, and comes back up with Henry and June. He inscribes it to me.
For Carolyn
Finally the real story
the missing Anais
the passionate woman
- Rupert Pole
He is kind, not just for giving me the book (I thank him over and over), but for giving me enough money so I will make my quota and we can sit there and talk. He tells me about expurgated vs. nonexpurgated. He tells me that a movie of the book is on the way, and that more unexpurgated Anais Nin books are on the way, too. I am amazed by his beautiful secret house, by his bare-chested 70-year-old man making asparagus and listening to NPR, by his blue eyes, by his apparent happiness, by the sanctuary of it all.
For years, after I moved to Silverlake, I tried to find that driveway as I cruised to parties in the hills. Each time I thought I'd pinpointed it, I'd balk at walking down to see. What if it was the wrong house? What if he didn't remember me (why would he) and didn't want an intrusion this time? What if, worst of all, he was long dead, replaced by affluent hipsters?
This morning NPR did an obituary on Rupert Pole, who died at age 87 two weeks ago. He was 20 years Anais Nin's junior. They were married, but she'd never gotten unmarried from her first husband, so the marriage was murky. Rupert was, tho, her final caretaker -- both physically and of her literary legacy, especially putting the racy back in her diaries. He died of a stroke in his Silverlake home (which was designed by his half-brother Eric Lloyd Wright, Frank's grandson).
When I met him, Rupert Pole was 71. We should all be so cool at 71, daring young punks to keep up with our raciness.
www.flickr.com
|
