My Love Affair with Mildred

 

You never forget your first.

First James M. Cain novel, that is. For me it was Mildred Pierce, which I first read back in February 1995 and promptly sent me off on a sloppy Cain binge (Postman, Indemnity, Serenade, The Butterfly). This was the time in my life when I was young and broke and trying to read every great hardboiled and noir novel I could afford. My supplier was Art Bourgeau, author and co-owner of Philly's legendary Whodunit bookstore. It must have been Art who turned me on to Mildred; I really can't imagine myself being lured in by that kinda dowdy-sounding title alone.

But that's the twisted beauty of a noir like Mildred Pierce. There are no crime lords, no fedoras, no snappy banter, no unsolved murders or any of the other things that readers associate with the genre. Instead Cain gives us a suburban California housewife hell-bent on providing a better life for her daughters, Veda and Ray. And like in every great noir, no good deed goes unpunished. The very sacrifices that give Veda a better life also mortify her; mother and daughter are locked in a classic inescapable Cain "love rack," and it's absolutely devastating.

Again: not the kind of thing you usually associate with noir.

This March HBO will be debuting its five-part mini-series adaptation of Mildred Pierce, directed by Todd Haynes. I can't wait. For some reason, I've never watched the 1946 Joan Crawford version; I think I've always worried that it would pale in comparison to the memory of the novel. (That, and I believe they threw in a murder, just to make it a more of a crime flick.) But enough time has passed, and I have a ton of admiration for the creators and actors involved -- including Kate Winslet, Guy Pearce and Hope Davis. Plus, HBO has proven it can do period pieces (Boardwalk Empire) like nobody's business. The trailer is so lush, I want to nuzzle the damned thing.

But you? You have a little more than two months. Pick up Mildred between now and then and give it a whirl. You might just fall in love, too.

The Secret Dead Blog Christmas Film Festival

If I were in charge of programming, say, a 10-movie Christmas movie marathon*, I'd fill it with lots of action, crime, noir, black comedy... and of course, some heart-warming classics. If I could program such a thing, here's what you'd be watching.

Opening Short: A Junky's Christmas (1993, directed by Nick Donkin and Melody McDaniel, produced by Francis Ford Coppola). William S. Burroughs and Christmas go together like Trent Reznor and... uh, Bing Crosby. Yes, this short is Claymation, which is pretty much the only traditional thing about this creepy-yet-oddly heartwarming short film. If your jaw hasn't dropped by the time our titular "junky" has opened the stolen suitcase, then you ain't human. (You can watch the whole thing on You Tube: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.)

After the jump, it's onto the main features, starting with a trip into the raunchy/noir savant mind of Scott Phillips...

The Ice Harvest (2005, Harold Ramis). Of course, the film is not as good as the book (that goes without saying, and if you haven't read the book, stop reading this blog and go buy/download/steal a copy immediately. It's essential.) But I first watched this at the original GoodisCon back in 2007, and every year since it's not Christmas unless I'm hanging out with John Cusack as he orders tropical drinks at a strip club, slips on freezing rain, and places the world's lamest Christmas presents ever under his ex-wife's tree.
 

Batman Returns (1991, Tim Burton). Yes, it was a big mainstream Hollywood superhero flick. But goddamn, what a weird movie. I mean, seriously. Deformed children sent to live in sewers. Intelligent packs of penguins. Starlets killed by bat swarms. Stuffed animals torn apart by garbage disposals. Toxic waste. Kentucky-Fried Christopher Walken. And Batman is hardly in the thing! I put this movie on a few weeks ago, and it made my seven-year-old daughter cry. Which reminded me how much I loved this flick.

Less Than Zero (1987, Marek Kanievska). Even Bret Easton Ellis has warmed up to this one. The whole "Brat Pack" thing (the early novels of Ellis, Jay McInerney, Tama Janowitz) caught me at an impressionable age: 15, and trying to figure out what college/adult life would be like. So I listened to the Bangles song ("Hazy Shade of Winter," which is still fantastic) and checked the novel out of the library and -- between Zero and The Rules of Attraction -- gave myself quite an education. And the movie, which I saw much later, takes me back to that time.

Which brings us to the centerpiece of the festival, and the most obvious selections: The John McClane Double Feature.

Die Hard (1988, John McTiernan). The Veuve Cliquot of 'splodey action movies: often imitated, never bettered. Every time I watch it, I catch new things to admire. Like the brief exchange between the flight attendant and John McClane as he's pulling a giant teddy bear down from the overhead bin. Not a word is spoken; the woman's eyes, and McClane's stunned reaction, say it all. Suddenly, we're crushing on him, too.

Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990, Renny Harlin). Even my 17-year-old self rolled his eyes when I saw the preview where John McClane has just ejected himself out of an exploding plane, mugging for the camera the whole time. And of course it doesn't hold a flaming air traffic flare to the first movie. But so what. It's our last chance to spent another Christmas holiday with McClane, since the next two sequels ignore this vital ingredient of the Die Hard formula. (Yeah, yeah, Live Free or Die Hard takes place over the Fourth of July, blah blah blah. It ain't Christmas.)

While your ears are still recovering from the gunfire and explosions, it's time to give you a...

Blast of Silence (1960, Allen Baron). Ed Brubaker turned me on to this movie, one of the last of the original noir cycle, and I'll be forever thankful. If the idea of wandering around 1959 New York City (Rockefeller Center, the Village, Harlem, the Staten Island Ferry) during the holidays inside the mind of a hitman who's slowly losing his shit appeals to you in the slightest... track down a copy right now. The Criterion DVD has great bonus features, including a "then-and-now" style NYC tour from Allen Baron, who wrote, directed and starred.

The Thin Man (1934, W.S. Van Dyke). I try to re-read Hammett's Thin Man during the holidays, because the action takes place during that long, strange week between Christmas and New Year's. This classic adaptation transports you there, no matter the time of the year. Just skip past the opening chapters, because it's painfully slow and sets up a central mystery which nobody gives a crap about. The central activities here are wise-cracking and drinking, as it should be during the holidays. That's not to say that we're dealing with an dysfunctional alcoholic couple in Nick and Nora Charles. You'd marry either of them in a heartbeat, because it seems like so much fun.

And finally, we end with a triple blast of  Shane Black Holiday Features. Nobody, and I mean nobody, does a Christmas action flick like Shane Black. As violent as it may be, I want to live in a Shane Black Christmas Village, where the femme fatales wear slinky Santa suits, people are routinely tortured, and shit may blow up at any given moment.

Lethal Weapon (1987, Richard Donner). This would have been the ultimate Christmas action movie if that pesky Die Hard hadn't shown up a year later. I've never spent the holidays in L.A., but thanks to this flick, this is how I'll always imagine it: a barefoot, bare-chested Mel Gibson, running down Hollywood Boulevard, desperate to beat the piss out of Gary Busey on a wet lawn.

The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996, Renny Harlin). Criminally underrated. Funny, mean, frantic and features the best Samuel L. Jackson line ever: "No, no, I sock 'em in the jaw and yell pop goes the weasel." Which is just one of many, many fucked-up and memorable lines. This is probably the funniest Black script, next to...

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2004, Shane Black). Back when KKBB first appeared, everybody in my crime writing circle went apeshit over it, and with good reason: it's a brilliant send-up/celebration of 1950s pulp detective series (most notably, Brett Halliday's Mike Shayne mysteries), buddy action flicks, and of course, Shane Black Christmas movies.

Okay, so that's my list. What would be playing at your film festival?

RELATED: Just noticed that Vince Keenan posted his own favorites yesterday, and there's a lot of nice overlap. Swear to God, I wasn't peeking at his list when I compiled mine.

(*Big thanks to Elizabeth Amber and Anthony Schiavino for inspiring this post on a Twitter exchange.)

Secret Dead Blog Recommends: Assassination and Senseless

Assassination of a High School President, Brett Simon's dark, weird and funny debut, is out on DVD this week. You all need to watch it immediately.

Sure, I'm a bit biased, since Brett and I have adapted my novel Severance Package, and someday soon (hopefully) Brett will be directing the thing. But Assassination is the reason I teamed up with Brett in the first place. I was sent a top-secret screener about a year and a half ago, and I knew right away Brett was a sick fuck, and I needed to team up with him as soon as possible. Assassination is about a high school journalist named Bobby Funke (pronounced "funky") who's dead set on breaking an S.A.T. scandal, only to be blindsided, betrayed, and -- in that great James Ellroy tradition -- tied, dyed and swept to the side. Like all great noirs, there's a femme fatale (Mischa Barton). There's a hard-ass, possibly psychotic authority figure (Bruce Willis). There's sex. Violence. Plenty of cursing. In other words, everything that made high school so memorable.

And in a weird bit of synchronicity, Senseless, the debut of director Simon Hynd, was released on the very same day. Hynd is the director who is adapting my novel The Wheelman, along with Allan "Sunshine" Guthrie. I watched a top-secret screener of Senseless... well, also about a year and a half ago (hey, what can I say, a year and a half ago I was privvy to all kinds of cool shit) and it made me squirm like you wouldn't believe. This is a good thing. Movies almost never make me squirm.

Mr. Hynd is a lovely man. I've dined with him. I've gotten drunk with him. I've met his lovely wife. And yet, I can say, without hestiation, that he is a sick, sick fuck. I mean, look at the cover. Look at the eyeball on the spoon. Though, to be fair, some of the blame rests with novelist Stona Fitch, who wrote the original novel, which is just as sick as the movie. Mr. Fitch is also a warm, lovely gentleman, so much so that he loaned my wife his coat on a cold night as we were headed off in search of another bar on a cold night in Manhattan. But still: he is a sick fuck. Just like Mr. Hynd. And that Guthrie guy... well, it goes without saying that he's a sick fuck, too.

Definitely put these two in your Blockbuster queue, or your Netflix thingy, or better yet, buy copies to own, especially if you're curious about the minds who will someday be putting The Wheelman and Severance Package to film.

Sick, sick fucks.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.