Looking ahead: The Folder Hunt—less complicated than it may sound

[This was edited in a minor way 6/4/12.]

After having dealt for some months with some bearish issues, I am still preparing some form of The Folder Hunt to be available to those who might want to buy it.

You may ask, Why prepare this product, when it is not even a novel I have wanted to publish for many years? Well, given some lemons, I try to make lemonade. Given a complex set of circumstances, I tried to come up with the most reasonable (or least goofy) prospect. Not that I expect many takers for this.

First, because a Google Books listing for The Folder Hunt popped up in October 2011, based on my having started a bibliographic listing for it in 2009, I felt I would come forth with an offer to square with the expectation, or notion, on the part of some that such a book was to be had. I first had this idea last fall or early winter; much has intervened since, occasionally making me wonder whether I should still offer the book. But in 2009, it had been editorially prepared for kind of release, and then sat idle. It was in pretty good shape “editorial-rescue-wise”; why not try to do something with it?

(The original bibliographic information in Google Books said it was published in 2010—not true. Google Books finally corrected this information. Further, through fall 2011, the BowkerLink file had the pub date as January 2012. This I changed to June 2012. In February 2012, I found that Google Books had the pub date as June 1, 2012 [though, I felt that if I kept to that month, it seemed doubtful the book would be ready precisely on the first of June].)

Google Books still has the page amount as 160, but I changed this detail in BowkerLink in recent months: it reflects the book is now 281 pages long.

Two alternative editions

I had also had an idea there could be two alternative editions to the book. Why?

Well, the original edition didn’t seem as if it would have much of a market. (This wasn’t a problem when I first prepared the book in 2009; with increased attention starting in late 2011, it seemed more of an issue.)

This original edition is what is now called the Folder Hunt straight-up edition; and it is what is available almost now. It contains a first part of: 161 pages of the novel, including front matter, preface, and the entire text with a set of end notes that go mainly into broad issues with the text. The second part, 120 pages, comprises the novel’s text again, this time with marginal notes that could not be reproduced with the first 161 pages (never mind the production issues that caused this). These marginalia go into a whole host of fun little details.

As I said, there would obviously be a limited audience for this, though readers might find entertaining the juxtaposing of my “23-year-old authorial voice” in the novel against my twice-as-old voice as an editor and critic of the book.

I had thought of a second edition, the “flower box” edition. This would have had “extras” of more current and widespread interest. [See update on September 24.]

The Folder Hunt/“flower box” edition. This would have been more variable and edgy. It was to contain a first part, as above, of 161 pages of the novel, including front matter, preface, and the entire text with a set of end notes going mainly into broad issues with the text. There would be no marginalia.

Then, the last 120 pages of the book were to be what I would call a “flower box”: it would contain small sections on different themes, several on things relevant to the novel, such as my (and today’s youth) repaying student loans; and a few other items, most of which had a marketing value that looked more debatable as time went on.

But I've thought that some would find one "extra" the most interesting extra in this package, and which yet would have had no obvious relevance to the themes of The Folder Hunt, except as part of it could relate to highly unusual workplace managerial moves resulting in extraordinary disservice to a worker. This extra is what I would call a health-care industry biopsy, a set of items showing how select, specific, financially related things might work, or how they might be considered, in light of the current Obamacare health-care reform efforts; and items reflecting how odd things can get in certain areas of the health-care-related industry.

Either alternative edition was to be kept rigorously at the 281-page length to keep production costs even: either alternative would have cost you (and me, for production) the same. This made a certain sense in terms of us being sure the price reflected some solid costs.

Alternative A is all that’s available; B is held in reserve

Alternative B is on hold. But because you never know what interesting projects might unfold in the wake of the Supreme Court’s pending decision on the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), it shouldn’t be completely abandoned. It will remain on hold—with its most interesting “flower box” component the health-care industry biopsy. This version probably won’t be available for several months.

So, for now, here’s what’s available: Alternative A, as described above. It is a print-on-demand affair, nothing fancy. Copies are made as orders come in. $40, including New Jersey state tax and shipping (other states’ tax issues can be addressed as needed; I can give prospective buyers details where needed). To get ordering information, e-mail to bootstrp@warwick.net (“bootstrap” without the “a”) for important initial information you need before you can order (you must supply mailing address for this). I will send you “prospectus” information you need to have before buying. If you e-mail me and I respond, the response would come from the address e1013710@warwick.net (never mind why; technical trivia).

NO RETURNS if you purchase the book.

Time to think after the squirrel stew: A follow-up to my review of Winter’s Bone

Two notes…

1. Drinking age

I didn’t think when I commented on Ree sitting out in Teardrop’s truck when he was in a bar—that she couldn’t go in because she wasn’t of age. That makes the social/familial awkwardness of the scene different, from my original assessment of Ree being the oddball in not going in. Still, if Teardrop (ignoring the drinking-age issue) is the real one at fault here, one can ask, Where is Ree’s social life? Why doesn’t she “go out somewhere” with friends, as with Gail? Not a big deal, but with this editorial note I thought I’d show I’d forgotten the drinking age was raised to 21 all over, a while back, hence my reading of Ree in this matter was a bit off….

2. Another point I could have made, in assessing Ree in her heroic aspect…

…is that the big problem with her corner of society, in addition to drugs shaping it a certain perverse way, is a failure of imagination, on the part of this society, that determines her being in the pathetic situation she’s in.

Movie break: The best Pink Panther film: A Shot in the Dark (1964)

There was an interesting review of the work of a deceased director, Blake Edwards, by The Star-Ledger movie critic Stephen Whitty recently (May 20, 2012, issue, Section Four, pg. 4). Many of today’s young viewers might not be able to fully relate to Edwards’ work, though they may know the name as associated with some famous films: the Pink Panther series; 10 (1980), with Dudley Moore and Bo Derek; Victor/Victoria (1982); and even something that might seem like from a million years ago (which it somewhat does to me, too), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961). The Pink Panther films might be what are most responsible for his fame (either in a positive or less-than-fully-positive sense), but what is interesting to me is a title Whitty omits, perhaps inadvertently.

I realize that when I write my more amateurish movie reviews, I am missing things here or there, too (for instance, sometimes when I quote lines from films, I truncate a set of lines that might be better fleshed out—readers may ask, Why did he leave out the next lines? Usually I don’t second-guess myself along these lines; I have my reasons, if not always so strong, for writing these things as I do). Whitty omitted mention of A Shot in the Dark (1964), which I think Pink Panther fans consider the greatest film in the series.

Also, I believe it was at an Oscar ceremony several years ago that Jim Carrey enthused about A Shot in the Dark as if it had been a major influence on him.

And it is a great film despite, and probably because, it varies from the other Pink Panther flicks in a few ways.

A Shot was made first, but rejected by the studio

I thought that I’d heard that A Shot in the Dark was the first Pink Panther film made, and that the initial Pink Panther installment (~1963) was made after it. (As support for this theory, if A Shot was released only about three months after the first Panther, as is shown by comparing the two Wikipedia articles on the two films, then given A Shot’s richness of script and so on, it seems it would have to have been made before it; having been made concurrently is unlikely, given how different the films are, with obviously different marketing aims.)

A Shot in the Dark was based on a French play, adapted by another writer; it was further adapted when Edwards and a partner wrote the movie’s script, with one or more characters—especially Clouseau, it seems—added by Edwards (see this brief Wikipedia article). The screenplay was cowritten by Edwards and William Peter Blatty, the author of the novel The Exorcist. The film thus had a complex provenance, which could well explain its richness.

It also featured characters that would become staples to the series, but who are not in the first Pink Panther: Commissioner Dreyfus, played by Herbert Lom, and Clouseau’s valet and karate sparring-partner Kato, played by Bert Kwouk. Yet when this film was finished, apparently the studio didn’t like it. Thus the first Pink Panther was made, which the studio did like.

The first Pink Panther features David Niven as the jewel thief who steals what is the movie’s namesake, a diamond called the Pink Panther. The character of Inspector Jacques Clouseau occupies a more subordinate, occasional role. Apparently the studio felt the real star of this movie should be Niven (see this article on the film). There was even a European-flavored suspense/romance-film touch, with a couple of female stars who are not widely remembered today, including one whose voice had to be redubbed by someone else. To me, the whole Niven/romance/jewel heist components of this film—which aren’t meant to be comic—are a bit tedious; but the comedic temperature, and the fun, go right up when Clouseau enters scenes with his trademark bumbling and un-self-aware dignity.

Perhaps it was when audience reactions to the film showed a taste for Clouseau that A Shot in the Dark was released the same year as the first Pink Panther. Support for the theory that A Shot was made first is suggested in another thing, which may strike viewers as odd: the theme music is not the famous tune written by Henry Mancini and present in every other Pink Panther film; it is still a Mancini tune, but is a sort of intrigue-adapted theme, with chugging rockabilly-like rhythm guitar that reminds you of the theme from Edwards’ TV show Peter Gunn. Mancini also wrote a more romance-oriented theme song for the film, “[something] in Paris,” that occurs variously in instrumental form and in sung-lyrics form (seeming as if made to be a radio single). It has a charmingly European and melancholic flavor (though it may seem a little trite). But these two themes don’t detract from the film so much as give a different theme-related flavor than does the familiar Pink Panther theme.

Oddly, the series featuring Peter Sellers as Clouseau didn’t continue in the 1960s; there was a movie titled Inspector Clouseau (1968), starring Alan Arkin as Clouseau (!) (and not directed by Edwards), that as far as I know wasn’t successful. The series was resumed starting in 1975, and it was in that decade that the series, I would presume, provided steady enough returns for whatever studio made the films, which helped kept it going. Also, for the longer term, the 1970s films further stamped the brand of Clouseau’s comic brilliance and fun on the popular imagination. (The Mirisch Company [or Corporation] produced the 1960s Pink Panther films, while the later films were done by other companies.)

Interestingly, the 1970s movies alternated not-(quite-so-)comic plot elements with Clouseau’s smart-slapstick comic scenes. This seems in line with the strategy of the first Pink Panther.

A Shot displays the best of the series; complex plot sets up tapestry of laughs

But interestingly, A Shot in the Dark seems to distill the best elements of the series into a single film that is the funniest simply because Clouseau is in almost every scene. There is no serious diamond-heist plot interwoven. The criminal plot elements that set up a framework for Clouseau’s incompetence comprise a tangled plot that also embraces, to an extent, one of Edwards’ trademarks—sexual comedy coming at you at unexpected moments (amid comedy or some other-toned material), which is all the funnier for being mischievously popped in (though the jokes may seem corny to today’s audiences).

A wealthy man in Paris reports a death at his mansion; a chauffer has been killed, and when Clouseau comes to investigate, it seems as if the maid Maria Gambrelli, played by the attractive but somewhat blocky Elke Sommer (who was Sellers’ wife for a time), a rather dopey but seemingly well-meaning-sort, had killed the chauffeur. Various people, including a butler at the house and, later, Clouseau’s boss, think Gambrelli is the murderer, but Clouseau, smitten by her, indulges in the apparent wishful thinking that it is not she who killed the man but someone else whom she is protecting. He is determined to investigate the crime on the assumption the killer is someone else.

The plot becomes a comedy of not errors, but of intrigue alternating with bumbling Clouseau investigating, while protecting Gambrelli; and meanwhile further people at the mansion are getting killed, while Gambrelli seems again the culprit. Clouseau’s boss, Dreyfus, is getting increasingly furious (and, more vividly, psychologically broken down) at Clouseau’s apparent stupidity in the matter, while the mansion’s owner has requested to have Clouseau on the case, astonishing Dreyfus, but making sense in terms of how the mansion’s owner wants to cover up the criminal goings-on, and wants the self-deluding, bumbling Clouseau on the case to keep things obscured.

Sellers develops his character so well that he even displays not simple bumbling but what would be considered signs of neuroticism, if not worse: he thinks people have said something when they haven’t, and sometimes he suddenly spins around to catch someone else “in the act” when there is no one there. He paints a vastly incompetent detective every way he can. The crime is finally solved, seemingly on the instigation of Clouseau’s arranging to try to explain the crime in a meeting at the mansion, but the solution is not at all what Clouseau had thought; and more broadly, things connected with Dreyfus spiral even more out of control, to a rather chaotic set of deaths near the film’s end.

Clouseau as centerpiece grounds the film’s value

The film mixes a sort of cynicism tied to, perhaps, a mild social commentary and Clouseau-style slapstick in such a rich series of laughs-in-almost-every-scene that perhaps audiences were put off by the anarchic side of this film—or at least the studio heads were. Once the Pink Panther series resumed in the 1970s, one could go back to A Shot in the Dark, see all the funniest elements of the series there, and appreciate that the true genius of the series, Sellers as Clouseau, was the heart and raison d’etre of the series—and a film with him in almost every scene isn’t too much. Sellers was also such a good comic actor that his timing—and his making a self-deluding character work as a source of laughs without seeming too crazy—mean that Edwards’ craftsmanly style could deliver good scenes without a lot of separate shots sewn together, as is so commonly done today. An actor, or well-mixing pair of actors, could play out their roles for minutes at a time in a given take and deliver the humor.

Sure, Edwards has been noted not only to alternate styles within a film, but also quality: he can alternate sequences of rapid-fire humor with more serious scenes (which might not be so interesting) or with musical set pieces (which could sometimes try patience). This film has its share of musical or interlude sequences—which I think are not too bad, though.

But anyone who is a fan of Sellers, and especially of the character Jacques Clouseau, and who moreover wants to appreciate an example of the high points of movie humor over the years should see this film.

Signpost 3: Qualifications and excuses

As I prepare some stuff to be plopped onto my blog for the weekend, the item I have the most trouble with is the Lavon Smith one. This entry originally seemed like it shouldn’t be a tough one to do. It dealt with a man I’d not had much to even think about for many years, but the Ozarks area theme that arose with my review of Winter’s Bone brought him to mind…as I groped and recalled the town of Fayetteville, Arkansas, which I remembered him as having written from, then located it on a map. And when I started the entry, it seemed (along with all else) a good chance to show (very anecdotally), for those out in the less metropolitan areas of the country, what it’s like to publish the work of someone from the Ozarks area—in terms of sheer industry peculiarities as well as the stark luck or unlikelihood of the whole thing.

But as I worked on the story of Lavon, it became clear I could not tell the story without talking about (pseudonymous) Lori, the editor of the magazine in which his work appeared, on which I also worked fairly extensively with Lori. My story about her is complex but, overall, positive. But this, in turn, made it inevitable I would discuss Cam, the editorial director at the company at which I worked with Lori. Cam in particular, I found, required a lot of discussion of the context in which she figured, and her story is less complimentary…and the emotions you never entirely lose related to such old business came up.

If people think I’m an unforgiving person with what publishing-related stories I have to tell, I don’t think so myself, but I would leave that for those who want to assess me (when I’m not within hearing distance). The point is: work in publishing results in stories; I myself am very much about developing stories; the two of these together mean attention to detail and strong emotions involved with the factual basis out of which arose the stories…. And as much as you learn from tough challenges and being screwed and whatever else, you would simply cease to be human if you didn’t have some of the old emotions come up.

When former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters was interviewed on 60 Minutes recently, should it have seemed so strange that interviewer Steve Kroft’s bringing up the topic of the group’s 1980s breakup would make Waters seem like he wanted to choke guitarist David Gilmour all over again? No, because that’s how the arts are. We create in them; we live and love in them; and we accumulate wounds in them. That’s how it is.

In the case of Lori, Cam, and the rest, this old experience from 1990-91 might not seem to have any relevance outside an account of what my career has been like, for those very limited few who might have an interest in it, except for this: some of the psychological dynamics, and more importantly the managerial stupidity, that might have seemed the province of only the peculiar All American Crafts (of 20-odd years ago) have reoccurred in other (in-house) work contexts I’ve been in, including as recently as in the last two or three years. It is foolish to say they shouldn’t be looked at if, say, people wanted to understand other, more accessible aspects of how the media work (in more recent years), which I can speak on because I’ve been exposed to them, and sometimes been complicit in them, as a much more seasoned professional.

I hope before long to plop the Lavon entry on my blog, and if/when I do, if you don’t want to read about all the intra-office political stuff, just search for Lavon’s name and read about him. In any event, even with such a dense bear of a story, I write it with a genuine wish to convey an interesting account that should be of value to others. And I write it because I have a good feeling about it. If I had to worry whether its digging up old anger (including mine and that of others) makes it inadvisable to publish it, why even be a writer at all? Writing is about coming to terms with the past and the present, for the sake of a better future.

Movie break: A thriller with unintended consequences, including an intro to female stalkers: Fatal Attraction (1987)

[On one level, another good film for limited thinking, just “basic entertainment” amid a night’s unhealthy snacks and beer or some similar fluid. On another level, food for important thought.]

[This review is updated/edited, 5/29/12, after I re-viewed the movie days after the original version of the posting. Edited a bit more 6/1/12.]

I meant this to be a fairly easy review on a movie I didn’t want to think about too much, or view anew too many times. It came out in fall 1987, while I was in grad school, and I recall (on seeing it shown in a DVD extra) my first impression of the film from the associated Time magazine cover picture of Michael Douglas and Glenn Close…I think I had the impression the movie was a fairly broad, and slightly preposterous, thriller. I think part of what made the initial-promo notion kind of wacky was the starring of Michael Douglas, who has long struck me as a simpatico, well-meaning, slightly nerdy guy [see end note 1]; for him to be presented as some kind of stud half of a couple in a steamy sex-related picture seemed off-kilter. That was what I thought when I was about 26; obviously, take it for a grain of salt. (I did not see the movie when it came out, but only years later; I’ve seen it, I think, twice over the years before this week; not sure when.)

All these years after 1987, and with diligent commentary from various parties on the 2002-released DVD, it would seem the movie stirred up hornets’ nests (not all so bad) on a few fronts: it upset feminists, with Close’s Alex character seeming a slur on single professional women (an earnest female producer, Sherry Lansing, admits being taken aback by this reaction, and identifies herself as a feminist, and even says she consulted informally with Gloria Steinem on the reaction). (Alex was even seen as a forerunner for Erika Christensen’s constricted-emotions character [also with an androgynous name] in the similar, youth-oriented stalker flick Swimfan of 2002.) The film led some to ask, as if it were in the direction of a clinically based treatise, what kind of problem did Alex have—borderline personality disorder? (My initial short answer: No.) It led to the popular concept of the “bunny boiler,” which seems especially used in Great Britain—a joking reference to a spurned woman in a romantic context. And of course, part of the reason the movie stimulated so much discussion and cultural ephemera is that it was (I think) the second biggest hit of 1987.

Another thing I associate with this movie is a sort of sniggering attitude, held in later years, toward Adrian Lyne, its director (a Briton), who seems quite astute about the film in DVD commentary. That is, when Unfaithful (2002) came out, it was “diligently” noted that its director (and producer) was the same Adrian Lyne who had directed Fatal Attraction—as if this fact were a sort of negative reference for the newer film. What I recall about Unfaithful, which I think I only saw once (when it came out), was the (intended) preposterousness of the sex scenes in a public restroom, particularly the sound, which (if I recall rightly) seemed more attuned to wildness in a stable with an invading bear than to humorously titillating, snigger-ready light porn. I don’t want to get into the issue of what is, or is not, good erotica, and how smart Mr. Lyne is about this; I think, in general, the sex aspect in Fatal Attraction, as the movie is overall, is handled with enough taste, in terms of making the movie stylish and giving it a sort of polish (as well as a healthy puncturing humor) as background to its eventual horror.

Two angles: blunt genre horror; and a more intelligent look at a kind of stalker

I am not a big erotica fan; and anyway I think Fatal Attraction is more notable for exploiting a sort of genre concept, particularly a kind of horror/thriller genre, and that related to psychological aberration, which makes it no more or less objectionable than, say, Psycho (1960) is about a man with (more or less) dissociative identity disorder (as the DSM now would label it). But also, FA treats a theme that is riper for serious modern discussion: the female stalker.

In the following, let’s first look at FA as an instance of psych horror. And here we can conclude that, first, Mr. Lyne does a serviceable enough job through most of the film (so that if it had its original, Alex-commits-suicide ending, it would have had a sadly, semi-European “study” integrity to it). (I viewed the original ending today, May 29, and found it surprisingly well done, technically.) Further, where the film caves in to prerelease audience-reaction demands, to add a goofy kill-the-monster scene, is where we assess how strong the movie is overall. (The kill-the-monster aspect probably makes it good enough for cheap holiday-weekend viewing.)

Story situates horror in familiar, cozy setting

The James Dearden screenplay is based on an earlier, more truncated story along similar lines (also by Mr. Dearden, for a British-TV film), which appealed to the two producers (also including Stanley R. Jaffe). Michael Douglas plays a lawyer (of a city firm) named Dan Gallagher, and his attractive wife Beth is played by Anne Archer. There is also a precocious moppet daughter with short hair that makes her look slightly boyish. The early scenes, orienting Dan and family in their city apartment, offer a kind of key framework to this kind of horror picture, produced by popularly-understood “red-label” Paramount: the family is upscale, with all sorts of cozy touches to the domestic life—which the film’s overall photography and set design make almost dreamlike, but more romanticized than fantastic. Coming about 20 years after Rosemary’s Baby (1968), and seven years after The Shining (1980), both of which oriented horror-type developments in domestic settings relatable-to by the middle class, FA maybe shows the high-water mark of this kind of film: the upscale home-nest maybe seems too idealized, too much a thing of high-end lifestyle-magazine photo spreads. But it’s exactly this sort of “how could you go wrong?” environment that helps set off how bad the horror to come is, especially when it’s developed by Alex Forrest, the unmarried associate editor of a book publisher, played by Glenn Close.

Dan is at a book-signing party—his firm has done all the legal work for the book publisher Alex works at—with his wife and a friend who is a fellow attorney. His friend gets a cold look when he flirts with Alex, and that—in the ever-so-subtle way Dan and Alex cross paths—is what sets up Alex’s connection to Dan. Later, Dan encounters Alex at a bar at the party, apologizes for his friend’s behavior, and does small talk to be nice. He heads out; no further strings attached are expected. Some day or so later, he finds Alex in a business meeting when he is at the book publisher, he as lawyer, and she there as an editor. This further builds her being intrigued by him. (Business talk, operating as a none-too-subtle plot indicator, about a Congressman suing the publisher over an affair’s being depicted in an apparent roman a clef, which he alleges being about him, offers some thematic resonance/foreshadowing within the story.)  So far, so typical for what sets up the initial tiny grounds for an affair, you might say. Things get more ambiguous when Alex and Dan meet for dinner while Dan’s wife is away.

Aspects of marital story are handled sensitively; Alex as a crazy varies

The whole story is pulp-ish, but the script, in terms of especially the extramarital affair—which can only be handled seriously in this kind of film—is articulate enough. And the acting is good throughout. Glenn Close especially handles her role well, which deviated from her previous types of roles, and for which she (the DVD extras indicate) consulted with psychiatrists to find out what kind of motivation lay behind Alex’s behavior. Up until the last violent scene (which, based on preview reactions, was a rewrite and reshoot of the film’s ending, which Close vigorously objected to before agreeing to do it), Close gives a tasteful performance that, early on, shows the normality of such a person seen at first, with touches of the imperious (“What happened? I wake up, you’re not here, I hate that!” and later her demand in a phone message “Don’t disappoint me!”). Through all this, including her insidiously cementing a close relationship with Dan (which she sees more herself as close and meant-to-be than Dan does), she seems consistent with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. (When she gets more cartoonishly violent, this is definitely less consistent with typical BPD. Also, actual slashing of wrists in an apparent suicide attempt is less frequent, I think, in BPD than is the phenomenon of "cutting," which is a matter of stress reduction or an expression of despair, and usually doesn't physically risk actual death.)

Later in the movie, especially when Dan confronts her in a knife-wielding scene at her apartment before the final, more operatic showdown, and Alex ends up sitting inertly against a wall, with a gone-goofy simpering expression on her face, Close is playing the character more as a “crazy” who is opaque: a movie crazy, someone who is more a plot device than someone we are invited to try to figure out as to motivation, and to sympathize with. And this is when the film becomes simple pulp, genre stuff: when she is more of a movie crazy—fitting the stock cinematic technique of “the mentally ill person just for pop-cinema purposes,” the most classic example of which is Norman Bates sitting in a police holding cell, with cannily glowering eyes and wicked, upper-teeth smile, while his mother’s voice is presented (as his thinking), incidentally showing what monstrosity he’s settled into, and his face eventually is melded with a superimposition of the mother’s corpse’s skeletal face, then there is fading in of the final shot of Marion’s car being towed out of the swamp. Other examples are the Stanley Kubrick crazies, giving an unambiguously menacing look—with Alex the delinquent/misanthrope in A Clockwork Orange (1971), or breaking-down Jack Torrance brilliantly played by Jack Nicholson in The Shining, or the bullied G.I. “Gomer Pyle” leering on a toilet in Full Metal Jacket (1987).

If all you want is basic horror, with a troubled female as the monster (without CGI, or demonic possession, or outer-space interlopers), I’ve touched on most of the points of note in the movie. One can consume it (with snacks of choice) as a cheap pastime, and be done with it.

Alex’s most important meaning today: as a female stalker; and with this, adultery theme gets overshadowed

Feminists were irked over its depiction of a single career woman in Alex, and for their own parts, even men didn’t like how Dan revealed aspects of their sex’s way of having an affair, to roughly sum what point Douglas makes in a DVD extra. Some less sexually partisan have criticized how Dan didn’t get quite the comeuppance he should have for consenting to the affair. (Indeed, he seems weak in how he lets Alex seduce him at a restaurant into a later steamy sexual encounter—while Dan’s wife is away in the country looking into possible property for them to move to for a new home.)

I think one thing that makes the film worth more than a cheap thrill is in bringing up the issue of the female stalker. Indeed, this probably was a very new concept in 1987—I certainly don’t remember talk from then about such a thing. And indeed, all the public consciousness of stalkers, and laws passed regarding same, has been a development of the past 20 years or less. As it happens, most talk today of stalking—following how any innovation in addressing certain human ills takes on a banal conceptualization among the less enlightened—is about men stalking women. But of course, women can stalk, too—not just stalk men, but also other women. (See this article for some clue into their being recent studies on this phenomenon.)

The theme of adultery also is brought home as a serious topic, and a point where Anne Archer engages in her best acting in the film, when she reacts with understandable tumult to Dan’s finally revealing his adultery, in order to explain the increasing craziness Alex is visiting on the family when Dan won’t cement a relationship with her, Alex, more to her obsessive liking. This is one thing touching about the film, and not merely soap-opera-ish. But of course, the film is primarily about a stalker, and the adultery theme—somewhat as it would be in real life, a sort of thing maybe this film doesn’t examine well enough—takes a back seat to the fact that the current threat to the family is a crazywoman, regarding whom Dan’s wife Beth ends up making common cause with him—first in a “ballsy” female warning to Alex on the phone, and later, finally, when it is Beth who puts the final stop—with a bullet—to the almost supernatural spectacle of Alex being hard to kill when Dan prodigiously tries to drown her in a bathtub in the couple’s country house.

Film’s different sides may appeal to different audiences

I’ve told a lot of plot points, and I’ve touched base on a lot of the broader features of the film. I don’t think I’ve spoiled it for those who haven’t seen it, by revealing the killing of Alex: this is one of the things the film is famous for, and it also has been controversial as being considered to mar an otherwise not-bad film. (The original ending is included with the DVD.) I think viewers can still go to this film and admire the craft and care with which it was made, by director and main actors. (Intriguingly, Fred Gwynne, who played Herman Munster in the TV show The Munsters, shows up as a lawyer colleague of Dan’s—Gwynne seems suited to this, as he plays a no-nonsense Southern judge in the amusing film My Cousin Vinny [1993]. But his scene is so short as almost to be a cameo, yet he is listed in the opening credits as if he has a semi-featured part.)

How this film impresses viewers may vary—depending on tastes—along the lines of its qualities as (1) a tastefully handled story on a familiar kind of marital problem, and (2) more pulpish fare, and (3) more boneheaded horror. But when it is good on what it treats, it’s definitely worth a viewing. And when its makers talk so earnestly on the DVD about what it took to get the film made, and so on, it isn’t like a group of now-much-older contributors trying to dignify (without complete success) a past pop-culture sometimes-self-parody, but it’s like a group of pros who, fitting with Hollywood’s familiar occasional prostituting of itself, had started to make what they might have felt was glorified genre stuff, but ending up serving multiple purposes despite itself, or having unexpected consequences: among them, grounds to discuss what it means to be a female stalker, and how well popular movies do, and should, treat this sort of thing.

End note 1.

I can’t do justice here to a discussion of Mr. Douglas, but I’ve long been aware of him—from his early days as the younger cop in the TV show The Streets of San Francisco in the mid-1970s to his later movie work. He, of course, is the son of actor Kirk Douglas, who had a long history in the movies before the 1970s (and one of his very best roles, I think, is in Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory [1957]). Michael Douglas produced the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest after his father had owned the movie rights for years, having first mounted the story on stage, and couldn’t get it filmed. Michael’s role as Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (1987) seems one of his most defining movie roles. But as illustrious as his career is, I’ve never followed him a whole lot—as I might Jack Nicholson or Robert DeNiro; he was never a Method-type actor who embodied the strongest emotions of the post-Vietnam viewing public. He seemed more chosen for a sort of “average guy” role or, somewhat surprisingly, “against-type” roles like that of Gekko or, one supposes, his role in FA. I’ve also found it puzzling how, in his personal life, he seems inevitably in the shadow of his father, in a way that even gets creatively used in the 2003 film It Runs in the Family, which I liked (partly because it reminded me of a Jewish family I know well). Here, in a story that is more than what one might suspect as a family vanity project, Douglas and his father (showing signs of having had a stroke) and Michael Douglas’s son play respective similar family roles in the film. One rather wonders if, when the very-old Kirk Douglas passes on, this will somehow be occasion for Michael Douglas to say whatever seems fitting to the fact of no longer being (in some dynamic sense) in his father’s shadow. If his father’s dominating will has long been an issue for him, the most likely post-death response would be anger, but this can come out in any of a number of ways, and who knows when: as manic self-re-definition; as quiet depression going on a little too long; or something else that seems a new, tough phase.

Movie break: Slobs and anger, cops and drug-conspiracy: The French Connection (1971)

[You want not to think for once. No “female problem” movie reviews; no fancy emotions, no artsy-fartsy stuff. “I wanna be stupid!” you say. “I want basic entertainment where the bad guys get a kick in the ass, to go with cheap chips and brewskis!” We hear you! Without further ado….]

[Edited 5/24/12, partly to offer a version without that weird placeholder YouTube-like thing in the May 23 version—I don’t know what it is, or why it gets there. The only notable difference between this and the May 23 version should be that I deleted one point that I thought better of.]

Let me try to keep this simple, and not fuss over every sentence as I do with some other entries (that call for that, for good reason). This movie should be fairly familiar to people about age 45 and older, and I would think among many younger ones too. It may seem old-hat and old-fashioned now (and certainly its style seems echoed in numerous police shows, starting I guess with Hill Street Blues, since), but it has a few distinctions:

(1) it is one of only two movies (the other being The Exorcist) comprising the basis for the reputation of its director William Friedkin, one of the directors who are lumped in with the “Second Golden Age of Hollywood” directors (like Scorsese, Coppola, Hal Ashby, Robert Altman, and others); (2) it made Gene Hackman a major star, after his only other notable role being that of Clyde Barrow’s brother in Bonnie and Clyde (1967); (3) it also jump-started the movie career of costar Roy Scheider, impressing Steven Spielberg enough that he made Scheider his shore police chief in Jaws (1975) (according to Jaws DVD commentary); and…

(4) It is perhaps the first major film of the seventies that introduced, in what Friedkin called its “induced-documentary” style, a sort of quick-shot, quick-edited style that seems geared to short attention spans. (Some discussion of what arduous work it took to make this film is in the book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls…[see end note 1]) This quick-moving style, I think, it what keeps it interesting on repeat viewings, while its dreary wintertime New York setting, tanky Vietnam-era cars (the type that occasionally could use starter fluid to get running), and suitably weary-colored cinematography may seem apropos for a story of dour, intrepid police business in a bitter winter, but may be like ashes in young people’s mouths today.

This movie (Wikipedia article here), of course, is based on a nonfiction book by Robin Moore, about a real-life police investigation and foiling of a major heroin-smuggling operation in New York City that was the largest such bust until that time (and perhaps for some years after). The two police who spearheaded the operation, which apparently was in the very early 1960s (about 10 years before FC was made), were Irish-stock Eddie Egan and Italian-American Sonny “Cloudy” Grosso; at least they became the basis for the two major figures in the fictional story.

The real-life investigation involved federal-level operatives as well as New York police; and I think, from what Friedkin says in his during-the-movie commentary on the DVD (worth checking out if you are really interested in this film), the movie—with some boiling-down aspects—represents the main features of the investigation pretty well (that is, the movie distills the story down quite a bit). (According to Friedkin in DVD commentary, there were considerably more operatives involved in the actual investigation than the four men involved in the movie—Popeye, Cloudy, Mulderig, and Klein. Also, I think the real investigation took considerably longer than the several weeks it seems to be in the movie.)

Two star cops anchor the story

The two New York policemen, of course, were apparently well enough represented by the two stars of the movie: for one thing, Egan, portrayed as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle who is played by Hackman in a porkpie hat and blue-collarish-guy manner, was, by all suggestions you gather from the movie and otherwise, a very dedicated, even slightly manic, policeman who was effective enough (if sometimes unorthodox) in his work. This dedication (and personal style) seem to have been essential to the successful outcome of this heroin bust. Grosso, portrayed as Buddy “Cloudy” Russo and by Scheider in the film, was a more subdued, seemingly more level-headed partner (the nickname “Cloudy,” a play on the real man’s name, was apparently inspired by his relatively saturnine personality); nevertheless he was also essential, I suppose, in giving some practical grounding to the more spirited, even somewhat rampaging style of Egan/Doyle.

Egan also has a role in the film, as Doyle and Russo’s supervisor, Walt Simonson, and Grosso has a role as federal-level helper Klein; he is the investigator who follows Alain Charnier (casually referred to as “Frog 1,” and played by Spaniard Fernando Rey), when he travels to Washington, D.C., to meet secretly with Sal Boca (played by Tony Lo Bianco).

There is plenty of background available on this movie—in the DVD, on the Internet, and in such a book as Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (end note 1). (On the DVD, there is even extras honoring policemen Egan and Grosso, as if the DVD was made as much for a NYPD market as for anyone else.)

There is some insider-speak one might be confused by in this film. The most common police slang is “make” or some variation on that—which means, here, “recognize.” It can be used in terms of both a cop “making” (recognizing) a criminal as what he is and a criminal doing similar with an undercover cop.

Hackman’s performance establishes a lot of the flavor of Popeye, which became iconic in the 1970s; [point that was here is deleted]. Hackman was a Midwesterner, and Friedkin makes a point on the DVD of saying that Hackman was by no means his first choice for the role; one actor he preferred was Peter Boyle, who had appeared in, among others, the film Joe (~1970). Friedkin had to ride Hackman hard when making FC to get the manic city-Irishman quality he apparently wanted out of him; this apparently became one key to the film’s success and to the ascent of Hackman’s career, partly because if Hackman is remembered for any character, it is this one.

One of the most well-developed scenes in the movie is when Popeye and Cloudy are in the nightclub after work, as the real-life singing group The Three Degrees is performing (they later had a radio hit with “When Will I See You Again?”). Popeye is shown to be prodigiously intuitive, as he is intrigued by, and examines, a table including an unsettling mix of characters: “two drug connections” whom Popeye “make[s]”; an apparent police functionary identified by Cloudy as “that policy guy from Queens”; an ex-con referred to as “Jewish lucky”; and a few others, including a man whom they eventually will identify as Sal Boca, who turns out to be the on-the-street point man for the big heroin case that is the focus of the movie.

It later becomes key to Popeye’s case that he presents to his supervisor Walt, in arguing for further support such as a wiretap, that Sal Boca is engaging in activity linked to Joel Weinstock, a figure who has an illicit banking role, who apparently had been involved in such activity in the past; according to some background info (maybe on the movie DVD), the fictional Weinstock character actually represented more than one person with the same kind of role in the real-life case. Also, it is interesting that the film does not spell out that some players in this drug conspiracy are members of the Mafia; such a term is never used in the film, though the overall story—what you would have expected in such a milieu and in 1961 or so—would seem to suggest their involvement. In fact, FC came out a year before The Godfather, which arguably was the film that put the concept of the Mafia squarely in the American popular consciousness, in all its aspects (“romanticizing” and otherwise, with accepted terminology and certain stock concepts like “sleeping with the fishes”). 

Dated, and race-related, qualities; car chase clinches excitement

It is interesting to consider that, while the real story of FC took place in about 1961 and was something of an unstated Mafia-related story, the issue of Blacks’ involvement in the story is different, as posing potential controversy. Even if a Black drug-using culture was part of the story in 1961 (which I’m not sure about), it is so conspicuously an aspect in the 1971 movie that, today, we would say this movie seems a bit racist in making it seem that the main beneficiaries of a huge heroin shipment that means “Everybody’s going to get well” are streetwise, big-afro’d Blacks who hang out in their own clubs, with occasional soul music emanating from a jukebox. This seems like a sort of early-1970s stereotype—as it would be in the eyes of Archie Bunker types—of what segment of the U.S. population was going to hell in such a way that it was the magnet for major Mafia-shepherded drug crime.

Meanwhile, from what I’ve heard, when Blacks first saw this film in 1971, they cheered as if at a gloriously redeeming expose, because it showed how abusive a white cop could be to Blacks, as Doyle is with those he accosts to press them for information, etc.

In a sense, Doyle with his angry persona not only was someone for an angry white audience to identify with, but the movie as a whole seems to echo anger across the board in the later Vietnam-War years: anger among Blacks; anger throughout society at how things seemed to come apart at the seams… And the chop-chop editing seems to mirror almost a fit-throwing way of relating a story that wasn’t meant to comfort, but was tailored to a spell of venting by—whoever.

Of course, if early-’70s viewers didn’t get enough easy “catharsis” from all the more typical frenetic police-thriller action in this film, there was the famous car chase, with Popeye driving the Pontiac whatever-muscle-car under the El train to catch up with Charnier’s ruthless right-hand man Pierre Nicoli, played by Marcel Bozzuffi. Made to top the famous car chase in the Steve McQueen thriller Bullitt (1968), this one was filmed over about two weeks, in conditions Friedkin was young and reckless enough to pursue (and which he seems to admit he would never try today). However many cars were used, and obviously a stunt driver and not simply Hackman was used to drive the car (though he does drive it in select places), this sequence remains exciting with each re-viewing, and shows what can be done without CGI; for one thing, those are real collisions the Pontiac has with vehicles whose drivers apparently weren’t expecting them.

Sequel

FC was enough of a hit that, in a new technique for Hollywood movies that weren’t narrow genre fare, it spawned a sequel, with Roman numeral in the title (French Connection II, without “The”), similar to The Godfather’s spouting a similarly titled sequel—FC II appearing in 1975. FC II is what today we would call a star vehicle; it doesn’t have nearly as much of a story as the first installment, nor as much suspense/interest. Hackman does a good job with a character study in this sequel—as he chases after and eventually catches Alain Charnier, again played by Spaniard Fernando Rey—Popeye traveling with big set of bags to Marseilles, France, to do the honors.

One aspect of the sequel that may put a pall on the viewing pleasure of some is a spell of withdrawal from heroin that Popeye undergoes, after having been addicted by baddie Charnier. Presumably this is to make you more sympathetically gung-ho in backing Popeye’s fierce mission to vanquish Charnier. The movie is well constructed, visually and editing-wise, by director John Frankenheimer—the director of the first Manchurian Candidate. But it is probably primarily for fans of the first FC, and then they might see it only once.

End note 1.

Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs, & Rock ’n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998).

Note on the blog Writer Beware’s recent awards

[Editorial note: A tweet linked to the Writer Beware blog a day or two before 4/26/13 says the blog was chosen again as among Writer's Digest's 101 best Web sites for writers. I suppose some level of congratulations is in order for Writer Beware, but in reviewing my note below, released last year, I would say its tone is a bit dark/hard, but content-wise it's within its rights. But on the front The Write Agenda, see also this recent blog entry of mine.]


I did not want to get in the middle of any spat between those announcing Writer Beware’s recently winning awards (and associated congratulations, etc., from its followers and friends) and those among its enemies who have been, in more limited forums, voicing condemnation of these particular awardings to that blog. My own position is that I do not congratulate Writer Beware on these awards, nor do I condemn the particular awardings to them (or the judgment or motivations of those doing these particular awardings).

It has seemed to me, from various inferences and educated guesses, tough enough for various Internet surfers to understand my position with respect to these opposed camps, as much as I’ve been consistent with my own messages rooted in the 2008 phase of the Bauer v. Glatzer lawsuit, and as much as I try to make clear my own voice as a writer and publishing professional who is independent of these camps. Nevertheless, in the echo of the cheers and jeers about the awards, to try to make my position clear I post below most of the statement on a flier I have started enclosing with some mailed queries for work. This is an update of a flier I started using in early 2011 then used only rarely.

Among the main changes to the new edition is what I redact from the version below, a comment at the end about the insurance company that insured SFWA and Writer Beware, at least regarding the Bauer lawsuit. (Boldface and italics follow the original, but type size varies on the original.) I believe the statement below is fair under a review of the relevant facts, and should not be read to "give any comfort to the enemy" or the like.

###

If you are curious about me and find intriguing information about me on the Internet, please do not contact the fantasy writer Victoria Strauss as if she is likely to be some kind of authority about me—as a writer, editor, or anything else. Why?

• Ms. Strauss and I would have no connection of any significant sort today if it were not for the Bauer v. Glatzer lawsuit, and if I hadn’t contacted Ms. Strauss in early 2005 in an informational exchange about my literary agent Barbara Bauer, after which I expected not to deal with Ms. Strauss again, though this contact ironically was a prelude to much further involvement with her in 2006 and afterward, usually not entirely friendly.
• In 2008, I received adjudication in the Bauer suit—meaning, a judge’s decision on my role as a defendant—on a motion I made (as a pro se litigant) that was a type based in good part on facts (a motion for summary judgment). Ms. Strauss has received no such adjudication in the suit, as the suit was dismissed against her and about 16 other defendants in 2010 because the plaintiff wasn’t following the court rules properly. However, the dismissal was without prejudice, meaning a complaint could be filed by the plaintiff against Ms. Strauss (and others) again. In short, a decision on my role in the nexus of issues raised by Bauer was decided, by a judge, based on motion papers I filed that obviously the court found acceptable; and of course I was sworn in during my involvement with the court. Hence, any idea that Ms. Strauss is a more trustworthy source of “my validity” as a professional than I am myself is ridiculous, just from the standpoint of the lawsuit.
• Ms. Strauss has very limited experience in the type of writing and editing that I have done the most, which is related to nonfiction. Ms. Strauss’s métier is fantasy writing, in which she has written books, and regarding which she has written reviews of others’ books, maintained a Web site, been a judge of contests, and had other roles. If I were a fantasy writer, maybe she would be a good means by which to vet me, but because I am not a fantasy writer, and she doesn’t have much or any experience in the areas of publishing in which I have functioned, she is not such an appropriate means.
• If Ms. Strauss were an intellectual giant like Norman Mailer, who wrote on a wide range of things, or Ursula K. LeGuin, the renowned sci-fi writer, perhaps she would have the credentials to judge me. But she has authored books at least two of which went (virtually) out of print within about 12 years (see her Writer Beware [http://accrispin.blogspot.com] blog entry of February 8, 2011, for more info). Also, she is not represented as if she is a major writer in her field in such a reference book as Fantasy Literature for Children and Young Adults: A Comprehensive Guide, Fifth Edition, by Ruth Nadelman Lynn (Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited, 2005). Only two of her books (The Burning Land, on p. 404, and Worldstone, on p. 560) are referred to there, among the now-eight she has published. So, as esteemed a writer as she has a right to be based on her work, she is not a writer who has such wide competence or renown that she is a good reference—certainly not the most important one—for your vetting purposes regarding me.
• Given all I have said above; and given actions of hers (in 2006 and before) regarding Bauer, who used to be a literary agent of mine; and given that she has not seen fit to congratulate me on my part in the lawsuit during, or after, all my tough dealing with it in 2008, which suit had the incidental effect of “softening up” the plaintiff for the purposes of Strauss and other remaining defendants, I find it not a little insulting that people would contact her as if she were an authority to be consulted on me, or to be given news about whatever I do in my professional life.

           

[last bullet-point redacted]

Movie break: Slobs and anger, cops and drug-conspiracy: The French Connection (1971)

[You want not to think for once. No “female problem” movie reviews; no fancy emotions, no artsy-fartsy stuff. “I wanna be stupid!” you say. “I want basic entertainment where the bad guys get a kick in the ass, to go with cheap chips and brewskis!” We hear you! Without further ado….)

Let me try to keep this simple, and not fuss over every sentence as I do with some other entries (that call for that, for good reason). This movie should be fairly familiar to people about age 45 and older, and I would think among many younger ones too. It may seem old-hat and old-fashioned now (and certainly its style seems echoed in numerous police shows, starting I guess with Hill Street Blues, since), but it has a few distinctions:

(1) it is one of only two movies (the other being The Exorcist) comprising the basis for the reputation of its director William Friedkin, one of the directors who are lumped in with the “Second Golden Age of Hollywood” directors (like Scorsese, Coppola, Hal Ashby, Robert Altman, and others); (2) it made Gene Hackman a major star, after his only other notable role being that of Clyde Barrow’s brother in Bonnie and Clyde (1967); (3) it also jump-started the movie career of costar Roy Scheider, impressing Steven Spielberg enough that he made Scheider his shore police chief in Jaws (1975) (according to Jaws DVD commentary); and…

(4) It is perhaps the first major film of the seventies that introduced, in what Friedkin called its “induced-documentary” style, a sort of quick-shot, quick-edited style that seems geared to short attention spans. (Some discussion of what arduous work it took to make this film is in the book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls…[see end note 1].) This quick-moving style, I think, it what keeps it interesting on repeat viewings, while its dreary wintertime New York setting, tanky Vietnam-era cars (the type that occasionally could use starter fluid to get running), and suitably weary-colored cinematography may seem apropos for a story of dour, intrepid police business in a bitter winter, but may be like ashes in young people’s mouths today.

This movie (Wikipedia article here), of course, is based on a nonfiction book by Robin Moore, about a real-life police investigation and foiling of a major heroin-smuggling operation in New York City that was the largest such bust until that time (and perhaps for some years after). The two police who spearheaded the operation, which apparently was in the very early 1960s (about 10 years before FC was made), were Irish-stock Eddie Egan and Italian-American Sonny “Cloudy” Grosso; at least they became the basis for the two major figures in the fictional story.

The real-life investigation involved federal-level operatives as well as New York police; and I think, from what Friedkin says in his during-the-movie commentary on the DVD (worth checking out if you are really interested in this film), the movie—with some boiling-down aspects—represents the main features of the investigation pretty well (that is, the movie distills the story down quite a bit). (According to Friedkin in DVD commentary, there were considerably more operatives involved in the actual investigation than the four men involved in the movie—Popeye, Cloudy, Mulderig, and Klein. Also, I think the real investigation took considerably longer than the several weeks it seems to be in the movie.)

Two star cops anchor the story

The two New York policemen, of course, were apparently well enough represented by the two stars of the movie: for one thing, Egan, portrayed as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle who is played by Hackman in a porkpie hat and blue-collarish-guy manner, was, by all suggestions you gather from the movie and otherwise, a very dedicated, even slightly manic, policeman who was effective enough (if sometimes unorthodox) in his work. This dedication (and personal style) seem to have been essential to the successful outcome of this heroin bust. Grosso, portrayed as Buddy “Cloudy” Russo and by Scheider in the film, was a more subdued, seemingly more level-headed partner (the nickname “Cloudy,” a play on the real man’s name, was apparently inspired by his relatively saturnine personality); nevertheless he was also essential, I suppose, in giving some practical grounding to the more spirited, even somewhat rampaging style of Egan/Doyle.

Egan also has a role in the film, as Doyle and Russo’s supervisor, Walt Simonson, and Grosso has a role as federal-level helper Klein; he is the investigator who follows Alain Charnier (casually referred to as “Frog 1,” and played by Spaniard Fernando Rey), when he travels to Washington, D.C., to meet secretly with Sal Boca (played by Tony Lo Bianco).

There is plenty of background available on this movie—in the DVD, on the Internet, and in such a book as Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (end note 1). (On the DVD, there is even extras honoring policemen Egan and Grosso, as if the DVD was made as much for a NYPD market as for anyone else.)

There is some insider-speak one might be confused by in this film. The most common police slang is “make” or some variation on that—which means, here, “recognize.” It can be used in terms of both a cop “making” (recognizing) a criminal as what he is and a criminal doing similar with an undercover cop.

Hackman’s performance establishes a lot of the flavor of Popeye, which became iconic in the 1970s; one thing that (personally) strikes me today is his pointing with his index finger, both in friendly contexts and not, which today seems rude or crude and strikes me as a bit of overacting on Hackman’s part, but apparently was acceptable enough as part of Popeye then. Hackman was a Midwesterner, and Friedkin makes a point on the DVD of saying that Hackman was by no means his first choice for the role; one actor he preferred was Peter Boyle, who had appeared in, among others, the film Joe (~1970). Friedkin had to ride Hackman hard when making FC to get the manic city-Irishman quality he apparently wanted out of him; this apparently became one key to the film’s success and to the ascent of Hackman’s career, partly because if Hackman is remembered for any character, it is this one.

One of the most well-developed scenes in the movie is when Popeye and Cloudy are in the nightclub after work, as the real-life singing group The Three Degrees is performing (they later had a radio hit with “When Will I See You Again?”). Popeye is shown to be prodigiously intuitive, as he is intrigued by, and examines, a table including an unsettling mix of characters: “two drug connections” whom Popeye “make[s]”; an apparent police functionary identified by Cloudy as “that policy guy from Queens”; an ex-con referred to as “Jewish lucky”; and a few others, including a man whom they eventually will identify as Sal Boca, who turns out to be the on-the-street point man for the big heroin case that is the focus of the movie.

It later becomes key to Popeye’s case that he presents to his supervisor Walt, in arguing for further support such as a wiretap, that Sal Boca is engaging in activity linked to Joel Weinstock, a figure who has an illicit banking role, who apparently had been involved in such activity in the past; according to some background info (maybe on the movie DVD), the fictional Weinstock character actually represented more than one person with the same kind of role in the real-life case. Also, it is interesting that the film does not spell out that some players in this drug conspiracy are members of the Mafia; such a term is never used in the film, though the overall story—what you would have expected in such a milieu and in 1961 or so—would seem to suggest their involvement. In fact, FC came out a year before The Godfather, which arguably was the film that put the concept of the Mafia squarely in the American popular consciousness, in all its aspects (“romanticizing” and otherwise, with accepted terminology and certain stock concepts like “sleeping with the fishes”). 

Dated, and race-related, qualities; car chase clinches excitement

It is interesting to consider that, while the real story of FC took place in about 1961 and was something of an unstated Mafia-related story, the issue of Blacks’ involvement in the story is different, as posing potential controversy. Even if a Black drug-using culture was part of the story in 1961 (which I’m not sure about), it is so conspicuously an aspect in the 1971 movie that, today, we would say this movie seems a bit racist in making it seem that the main beneficiaries of a huge heroin shipment that means “Everybody’s going to get well” are streetwise, big-afro’d Blacks who hang out in their own clubs, with occasional soul music emanating from a jukebox. This seems like a sort of early-1970s stereotype—as it would be in the eyes of Archie Bunker types—of what segment of the U.S. population was going to hell in such a way that it was the magnet for major Mafia-shepherded drug crime.

Meanwhile, from what I’ve heard, when Blacks first saw this film in 1971, they cheered as if at a gloriously redeeming expose, because it showed how abusive a white cop could be to Blacks, as Doyle is with those he accosts to press them for information, etc.

In a sense, Doyle with his angry persona not only was someone for an angry white audience to identify with, but the movie as a whole seems to echo anger across the board in the later Vietnam-War years: anger among Blacks; anger throughout society at how things seemed to come apart at the seams… And the chop-chop editing seems to mirror almost a fit-throwing way of relating a story that wasn’t meant to comfort, but was tailored to a spell of venting by—whoever.

Of course, if early-’70s viewers didn’t get enough easy “catharsis” from all the more typical frenetic police-thriller action in this film, there was the famous car chase, with Popeye driving the Pontiac whatever-muscle-car under the El train to catch up with Charnier’s ruthless right-hand man Pierre Nicoli, played by Marcel Bozzuffi. Made to top the famous car chase in the Steve McQueen thriller Bullitt (1968), this one was filmed over about two weeks, in conditions Friedkin was young and reckless enough to pursue (and which he seems to admit he would never try today). However many cars were used, and obviously a stunt driver and not simply Hackman was used to drive the car (though he does drive it in select places), this sequence remains exciting with each re-viewing, and shows what can be done without CGI; for one thing, those are real collisions the Pontiac has with vehicles whose drivers apparently weren’t expecting them.

Sequel

FC was enough of a hit that, in a new technique for Hollywood movies that weren’t narrow genre fare, it spawned a sequel, with Roman numeral in the title (French Connection II, without “The”), similar to The Godfather’s spouting a similarly titled sequel—FC II appearing in 1975. FC II is what today we would call a star vehicle; it doesn’t have nearly as much of a story as the first installment, nor as much suspense/interest. Hackman does a good job with a character study in this sequel—as he chases after and eventually catches Alain Charnier, again played by Spaniard Fernando Rey—Popeye traveling with big set of bags to Marseilles, France, to do the honors.

One aspect of the sequel that may put a pall on the viewing pleasure of some is a spell of withdrawal from heroin that Popeye undergoes, after having been addicted by baddie Charnier. Presumably this is to make you more sympathetically gung-ho in backing Popeye’s fierce mission to vanquish Charnier. The movie is well constructed, visually and editing-wise, by director John Frankenheimer—the director of the first Manchurian Candidate. But it is probably primarily for fans of the first FC, and then they might see it only once.

End note 1.

Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs, & Rock ’n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998).