Down These Mean, Sunbaked Streets

This past Saturday's screening of Hickey & Boggs was a real treat. I'm very thankful to Cullen Gallagher and the rest of his Not Coming to A Theater Near You crew for inviting me up, as well as the 92Y Tribeca for hosting. The screening room was packed, and I think it's safe to say everybody had a good time with this downbeat slice of neo noir.

And yes, they showed an actual print, not a digital copy. And while the colors were slightly sunbaked and orange to my untrained eye, it was still a beautiful thing to behold, complete with crisp audio. Besides, all of my memories of the early 1970s are slightly sunbaked and orange anyway.

Someone asked if I'd be running my introduction on my blog. I honestly hadn't thought about it until then. I prepared about 700 words of loose notes, meant as a guide for my three or four minute talk. I definitely went off script, because I wanted to be informal. Friendly. Easygoing. You know, like the 1970s. I also added quite a bit of impromptu profanity, which is what I do when I'm nervous and speaking in front of a large crowd.

Anyway, here's what I prepared, in case you want a little intro before you stream Hickey & Boggs on Netflix or download it from iTunes...

Hickey & Boggs intro/Swierczynski

Raymond Chandler one described the classic private eye in this now-classic quote:

“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.” 

 In the early 1970s, the classic romantic, private eye—the kind Chandler was describing—well… he took kind of an ass-beating.

By who? I think you can point at finger at three movies:

Robert Altman’s 1973 film adaptation of The Long Goodbye, where Chandler's own Philip Marlowe is played by Elliott Gould as if he’d fallen asleep in the 1940s and woke in the early 1970s... and he doesn’t quite adjust until the last, bloody (and controversial) scene.

Night Moves, the 1975 Arthur Penn movie in which Gene Hackman plays an old school private eye who can’t figure out the mysteries of his marriage, let alone the case at hand… and ends up, quite literally, circling the drain.

And then there’s tonight’s feature, Hickey and Boggs, which to me is the high point – or low point, as it were – of the 1970s private eye ass-beating trend.

Hickey and Boggs was the first produced screenplay of legendary Walter Hill, of Alien, The Warriors, 48 HRS. and Streets of Fire fame, among many others. The film was directed by Robert Culp -- the only film he ever directed. Culp shot on location, all over L.A. He shot cheap, on a short schedule, with a very low budget.

The stars? Culp himself and Bill Cosby. One generation might remember Culp and Cosby from I Spy. Another might remember Culp as Agent Bill Maxwell from The Greatest American Hero, and Cosby as Cliff Huxtable.

Well, you ain’t going to see that Culp and Cosby.

And if you’re expecting a prototype Lethal Weapon, let me set you straight: there are no crazy Martin Riggs antics; Culp doesn’t once say, “I’m getting too old for this shit.” 

Bill Cosby cracks a smile exactly once, if I recall correctly.*

(*Note: I made this claim, but the film proved me wrong. Cosby smiles about four or five times.)

Hickey & Boggs opened October 4, 1972… and didn’t exactly set the world on fire. It’s safe to say Hickey & Boggs was kind of forgotten, except by diehard noir fans.

You can't blame me. I was about eight months old, and missed my chance to see it in the theater.

I first saw it thanks to a reference in a book by Alain Silver and James Ursini called L.A. Noir: The City as Character.

And I’ll admit it: it was the image of Robert Culp and Bill Cosby, guns blazing behind a shot-up car on a beach—yeah, that hooked me.

After a trip to L.A., and wishing I were still there, I saw H&B on iTunes and gave it try. It blew me away.

The film is as complex as any good crime novel. Maybe even a little too complex, but so what. Full of great sunbaked LA scenes—the ultimate daytime noir. My friend, novelist and screenwriter Terrill Lankford, says he shows H&B to actors to show them how to underplay a role.

It is downbeat; it is grim. And I haven’t been able to stop watching it. I see something new every time.

And since that first viewing almost two years ago, I’ve discovered a whole new legion of fans who now consider H&B a cult classic. The good stuff does have a way of sticking around.

Why the appeal?

Hickey & Boggs is somehow everything I love about the private eye genre—even as it turns Chandler’s idea completely on its head.

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

Well, Frank Boggs and Al Hickey are good men… but they are badly tarnished. As the film progresses, you will see them become afraid. And finally, they themselves become mean.

Real fuckin’ mean.

If Raymond Chandler watched this movie, he’d have kittens.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m proud to present Hickey and Boggs. Sit back and watch the classic private eye get his ass kicked hard.