Pervy Clasics Illustrated

A few years back my good pal Joel Sanderson--artist, archivist, TV horror show host, filmmaker, etc. etc.--created this lovely cover for the comic the world still needs.

Barbara and the Iceman

Here's a novelty postcard I picked up in a small town in the Four Corners region of Colorado. It's from the Baxtone company of Amarillo, part of its Laff-O-Gram series of comical postcards. Like this example several of these were slightly risqué, but what appeals to me about this one is how Film Noir it feels.

 Barbara's relatively realistic, naturalistic depiction looks right out of a low-end romance comic, or a newspaper soap opera strip. Consider the raised hand, as though about to cover her mouth before she can tell hubby another lie, her sidelong glance, her back to her husband and the accusatory ice block:

 She looks like she's wondering how she can convince the amorous ice peddler to knock her old man off. And the poor cuckold of a husband seems to have been drawn by another hand entirely, a grotesque, cartoonish head awkwardly appended to a relatively realistic body:

I'd love to know who drew this.

Finally, the video....

Below is the link to the book trailer for Nocturne le vendredi, which came out November 2 in France. There will be an English version before the book comes out in the US next June. Ideally I will have  rerecorded the voice-over as I did a poor job the first time; this is all the more frustrating because Lane Davies, doing the voice of the psychopathic actor, gives a great performance.

The whole thing was edited by Jenna Marguerita, who also produced and co-directed the scenes with the actors, ably assisted by a group of students from the film department at Webster University. Thanks to them and to Jenna's company, Bitdepth Productions LLC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcnGPwYwQXA&feature=autoshare

(p.s.: Click the link above, not the pic below.)

New Book! And Trailer!

My newest book comes out in France today:

That's my eye on the cover, taken right in my publishers' office. It's part of a series of thirteen novels, all set in Paris and all taking place in part on Friday the 13th. (Nothing to do with the series of horror movies of the same name, although my friend Scott Phillips of New Mexico wrote a Jason tie-in novel a few years back, so this is really going to confuse the shit out of people.)

Three of the novels are already being turned into TV movies, and I'm hoping this will be the fourth. It's loosely based on a period in the early nineties when my friend Lane Davies and I were running around Paris trying to raise money for a movie. Lane was the star of a soap opera, "Santa Barbara," that was broadcast with great success during prime time in France, and was such a celebrity there that we were certain we could get this thing made. We didn't but hijinks ensued and when les Éditions la Branche asked me to write something for the series I asked Lane if he'd object to me depicting him as a murdering psychopath (in the novel, things go slightly more haywire than they did in real life).

Hell, no, I don't mind, he replied, can I play myself in the TV movie?

We just got done shooting a book trailer and are just starting to edit. Here's a shot of one of the sets, showing tireless cinematographer/editor Jenna Marguerita with indefatiguable grips Tony and Nathan, and seated at the bar, Anita Romero, playing Esmée, the femme fatale:

And here's the lovely Anita in character:

The book will be out in July of 2013 from Counterpoint Books under the title "RAKE," with one of the best covers I've ever had. Until then, you can get the French version here: http://www.furet.com/nocturne-le-vendredi-2084107.html

Noir at the Bar 2--the Anthology!

There's a trailer for the second Noir at the Bar anthology, edited by Jedidiah Ayres and, nominally, by me. Featuring a whole bunch of terrific writers and filthy stories!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1-5A1V0Oag&feature=youtu.be

Unfortunately Blogspot won't let me upload the video itself for reasons I don't quite understand. The music is by Modern Silent Cinema, also known as Cullen Gallagher! Here's the cover by Erik Lundy:

And it's available at Subterranean Books at 6275Delmar in St. Louis MO, or from the link below:

http://store.subbooks.com/product/noir-bar-volume-2

Scandal!

In the late fifties, "Confidential" was the magazine that named the names and dished the dirt. I'd read a book about the magazine's tumultuous legal history (they got sued a lot) but I'd never seen a copy.

 That's Lana Turner on the bottom!

 Look! Edward R. Murrow had a missing tooth! And there's another one of Liz Taylor's husbands!

Queer Shenanigans! Reducing Pills! Louella Parsons! Man. Those were the days.

The Cabinet of Dr. Sweeney, plus Bonus Ghost Sign

 A couple of years ago my filmmaker friend Mark W. Stone took me on a tour of the neighborhood where Dr. Francis Sweeney, almost certainly Cleveland's infamous Torso Killer, had his practice.

 Which building it was is impossible to say at this point, but these were the buildings that held those sorts of offices at that time.

 This one still houses some medical offices.

 On the right, a library converted into a chapel.....

 And here, windows both broken and boarded up.

And finally, a really nice Ghost Sign, in multiple languages (Czech?) advertising Mail Pouch tobacco.

PORT OF NEW YORK!

I don't know much about the movie, but the poster sure is purty,

Film Noir from Belgium!

All right, the film in question isn't Belgian, but the poster is:

 
Click on the image to see some real pretty mid-century lithography. The title translates as "White Slave Trade," more or less. I found this in, of all places, Mark Twain's boyhood hometown of Hannibal Missouri. The poster still has its original Belgian tax stamps affixed to it:


This is what I call villainy!

More Shameless Promotion: Misadventure!

Just out from McSweeney's: Millard Kaufman's last novel, Misadventure. Kaufman had a brilliant Hollywood career, helping to create Mr. Magoo, writing the screenplay for, among many other fine pictures, "Bad Day at Black Rock," and even serving as a front for his blacklisted pal, Dalton Trumbo. His acclaimed first novel, "Bowl of Cherries," came out when he was ninety, and sadly its follow-up is being published posthumously. But what a followup! Eddie Muller, the Czar of Noir, says:

"Millard Kaufman understands that in a noir world—like, say, Los Angeles in the 1980s—the only hope for sanity is a sense of humor. Having lived through the city's earlier and equally absurd mid-century mores, he is more than qualified to skewer and roast its later incarnation. For a man in his nineties, Kaufman writes with all the verve and venom of a precocious 25-year-old; his story is good—but his storytelling is a non-stop delight."

I believe the book was written circa 1980 (see Eddie's reference to its time frame) and updated shortly before Kaufman's death to set it between the two Gulf wars. Here's my blurb, which will, I guess, appear on the paperback, having been written too late to appear on the jacket:

"Though it's only Millard Kaufman's second novel, 'Misadventure' came after a lifetime of writing about the light and dark sides of humanity, and in it the dark side plainly has the upper hand. Fast, nasty and funny as hell, it's a brand new classic of the noir genre, and I wish the author had lived on to write ten more just like it."

Like I said, it's a gas! So head on out to your local independent bookseller and buy a copy already!

Tom Horn

I just watched William Wiard's "Tom Horn" for the first time since it came out in 1980. Written by Tom McGuane and Bud Shrake and starring Steve McQueen in his next-to-last role, it's a lot better than I remembered. McQueen plays Horn as both childish, trusting naïf and casual killer, a man who never really understands the forces allied against him. It's beautifully shot by John Alonzo, with appearances from Elishah Cook, Jr, and Slim Pickens, it's one of the last of the great westerns of the period.

There's an interesting comparison to be made with Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate," another elegiac treatment of Wyoming's range wars. (If you've been avoiding "Heaven's Gate" all these years because of the critical drubbing it took over the issue of Cimino's profligate spending, do yourself a favor and check it out--it's a textbook example of contemporary critical consensus getting it dead fucking wrong.)

A Bad Day for Sorry

I haven't posted any book stuff in a while, but since the last one I recommended got a well-deserved Edgar nomination (Megan Abbott's Bury Me Deep) I thought I'd mention another pal of mine who got a nod this year. Sophie Littlefield, who hails originally from Missouri, ventures into Woodrell country with A Bad Day for Sorry, a tale of revenge and bad luck and middle-aged country ladies bearing some serious fucking grudges. It's funny and nasty and all those other things I know you like, and plus the jacket art gave me a funny happy feeling in my pants. As did the book.

Have I said too much? I have, haven't I?

A blog you should be following

My pal Jeremy Trylch, who's living in China with his wife and son, is now publishing short stories on his blog. He's a terrific writer and if you're following this blog you'll find things there to your liking:

http://jeremytrylch.com/blog/