The Screengrab : jim thompson

Pat Hingle, 1924 - 2008

Phil Nugent — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Pat Hingle, who died this past weekend at the age of 84, was one of the most familiar and dependable of all American character actors, over the course of a career in film, TV, and the stage that spanned some fifty years. Born in Denver, Colorado, he served in the navy during World War II and studied acting at the University of Texas. In the first several years of his career, Hingle appeared in the Broadway productions of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (as Gooper, father to the no-neck monsters), Archibald Macleish's J.B. (in the title role), and William Inge's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (for which he received a Tony nomination). He also made his movie debut (not counting an uncredited small role in On the Waterfront) in the 1957 Method melodrama End as a Man (A.K.A. The Strange One, based on a play that he had also appeared in. Hingle was offered the title role in the 1960 Elmer Gantry, but before the film started shooting, he suffered a horrendous accident, falling more than fifty feet down an elevator shaft. He was laid up for more than a year recovering from his injuries, which included a fractured skull, his left leg broken in three places, and the loss of a finger. Elmer went ahead with Burt Lancaster , who won an Academy Award for it. Hingle maintained a good-natured attitude towards the whole thing: ""I know that if I had played Elmer Gantry, I would have been more of a movie name. But I'm sure I would not have done as many plays as I've done. I had exactly the kind of career I had hoped for. And I never, never forget that I'm the recipient of the blessing that is life. It was given to me to try again."

Hingle returned to work looking older, gruffer, squatter, and craggier: an easy casting call for authority figures at a time when those roles often meant dads who don't understand their kids (as in Splendor in the Grass, where he played the father of Warren Beatty, who was all of fourteen years his junior) or cops who were either crooked or self-righteously brutal or both. He appeared with Clint Eastwood in Hang 'Em High, The Gauntlet, and Sudden Impact, played Sally Field's father in Norma Rae, starred in the original Broadway production of Arthur Miller's The Price, and did an unholy shitload TV, notably playing Colonel Tom Parker to Kurt Russell's Elvis Presley in John Carpenter's 1979 Elvis and Sam Rayburn to Randy Quaid's Lyndon Johnson in the 1987 LBJ: The Early Years.

Unlike a lot of actors who work that much, Hingle has the distinction of having continued to get better, tapping into deeper veins of regret and exposing a streak of wry humor as he started to get almost as old as his characters. Reviewing the 1985 The Falcon and the Snowman, in which he played the hardass FBI-agent father of Timothy Hutton, Pauline Kael wrote, "It's a role Hingle has played dozens of times --he's a pop-culture joke in this role--but I doubt if he has ever done it as well." Five years later, he went to town in perhaps his best movie role, the terrifying cracker crime lord Bobo Justus in Stephen Frears's Jim Thompson adaptation The Grifters, giving Anjelica Huston the shivers and making it seem as if all the secrets to the universe might be contained in the line, "You'll never shit right again." He also played Commissioner Gordon in the 1989 Batman, a role that he would reprise in three other movies, playing it alongside a total of three different different--Batmans? Batmen? Whatever. More recently, he played Ben Franklin in a late-'90s revival of the Broadway musical 1776 and turned up in the movies A Thousand Acres, Muppets from Space, Shaft, and Talladega Nights. He died at his home in Carolina Beach, North Carolina, where he decided to settle after working there shooting the 1986 Maximum Overdrive, Stephen King's directing debut. ""I really do believe there was a divine hand that headed me here," he had told a local reporter.. "I am happy that I think it's going to end here."

Donald Westlake, 1933-2008

Phil Nugent — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Donald Westlake, who died New Year's Eve, at the age 0f 75, while vacationing in Mexico, was best known as a "crime writer", and in that capacity he won three Edgar Awards (including one for Best Screenplay for his adaptation of Jim Thompson's The Grifters, directed by Stephen Frears in 1990) and was honored by the Mystery Writers of America with the title of Grand Master. But such tributes barely hint at Westlake's stature as a supreme, all-around entertainer with a wide range within his chosen specialty. After publishing his first novel, The Mercenaries, in 1960, Westlake established such a steady rate of production that, in addition to the many books he published under his own name, he also adopted more than ten pseudonyms, partly to deflect criticism of him for overtaxing the marketplace. (He may have also had other, personal reasons, for sticking the name "John B. Allan" on the 1961 book Elizabeth Taylor: A Fascinating Story of America's Most Talented Actress and the World's Most Beautiful Woman and other pseudonyms on the pulp porn novels he wrote in the 1950s and 1960s, some of them in collaboration with Lawrence Block, which have titles such as Sin Sucker and Campus Tramp.) Westlake also matched certain pseuds up with recurring characters, for instance writing a string of mysteries about a character named Mitch Tobin under the name "Tucker Coe".

His best-known alter ego was Richard Stark, who, starting with 1962's The Hunter, wrote more than twenty taut, mean thrillers about Parker, a cooled-out, super-efficient sociopath of a professional thief. Under his own name, Westlake wrote, among other titles, the John Dortmunder series, detailing the often hilarious adventures of an intelligent, hard-working, frequently put-upon crook with a knack for gaudily designed heists that tended to run into equally gaudy complications. (The series began with 1972's The Hit Rock, which he said began as a Parker novel; he realized that he needed to concoct a new hero for it when the plot started turning funny on him.) Stark and Westlake both kept 'em coming until 1974, when Parker abruptly disappeared after Westlake, as he would later say, lost internal contact with the hateful bastard. But in the late '90s, Westlake seemed to get back in touch with his Parker side, and Richard Stark began producing again, even as Westlake continued to publish under his own name such entertainments as The Ax, The Hook, and the further activities of John Dortmunder in such novels as Watch Your Back!

In addition to adapting Thompson for the Grifters screenplay (and, more recently, Patricia Highsmith for the 2005 Ripley Under Ground), Westlake wrote one terrific original screenplay, for the chilling yet witty serial-killer movie The Stepfather (1987), directed by Joseph Ruben and starring a then-unknown Terry O'Quinn. The list of Westlake novels made into movies include the 1973 caper comedy Cops and Robbers, which he adapted himself; The Hot Rock, with Robert Redford as Dortmunder; the calamitous 1974 Bank Shot starring George C, Scott; the 1982 Jimmy the Kid, in which a Dortmunder novel somehow got turned into a vehicle for Gary Coleman; the 2001 What's the Worse That Could Happen?, in which a Dortmunder novel somehow got turned into a vehicle for Martin Lawrence; and the 2005 French film Le Couperet, directed by Costa-Gavras and based on the novel The Ax. There have also been a slew of movies base on the Parker novels, though for some reason the character's name has yet to survive the screenplay adaptation process. The grandaddy of Richard Stark movies is John Boorman's 1967 Point Blank, based on The Hunter and starring Lee Marvin as the monolithically homicidal "Walker." (It was remade, in 1999, as Payback, with Mel Gibson as "Porter.") Jean-Luc Godard also used the Parker novel The Jugger as the (loose) basis for his 1966 film Made in U.S.A., without paying for the honor, which would ultimately cause his movie distribution problems in the States. Westlake's last novel, a Dortmunder number called Get Real, is scheduled to be published in the spring.

The Rep Report (August 7-12)

Phil Nugent — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK: "The French Crime Wave: Film Noir Thrillers, 1937-2000" at Film Forum, runs August 8 through September 11. The programmers' definition of "thrillers" is pretty loose: it includes not just Henri-Georges Clouzot's great existential nailbiter The Wages of Fear but Robert Besson's existential and ascetic Pickpocket and A Man Escaped, as well as the pure horror poetry of Eyes without a Face. But then the French do take their crime literature seriously. One of the charms of the schedule is the chance to see what the work of a number of famous thriller writers--including Jim Thompson (whose Pop. 1280 and A Hell of a Woman provided the basis for, respectively. Bertrand Tavernier's Clean Slate and Alain Corenau's Serie Noire), Patricia Highsmith (whose The Talented Mr. Ripley was turned into Rene Clement's Purple Noon), and Cornell Woolrich (Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid) looked like after a pass through the French film hopper. The series is dedicated to honorary French director Jules Dassin (b. Middletown, Connecticut), who died last March at the age of 96, and who kicks things off with his influential 1955 caper film Rififi.

Over the course of the last dozen years, the Dardenne brothers have built up a remarkable body of films that address hard questions with intellectual and moral seriousness and with a rigorous filmmaking approach that is never condescending and usually aesthetically stimulating. Starting Thursday and running through the weekend, Anthology Film Archives is showing the films that put and kept them on the world film map: La Promesse, Rosetta, The Child, and perhaps their most extraordinary work, The Son.

Morning Deal Report: “The Godfather” – Now With Pimps!

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:00:00 GMT

It’s been a while since the work of hard-boiled crime writer Jim Thompson was adapted for the screen (since 1997, to be precise, which is when This World, Then the Fireworks debuted), but producer Charlie Loventhal is giving it a shot. He’ll bring a feature based on Thompson’s 1953 novel Recoil to the screen, Variety reports. “Story follows a young inmate who's sprung from prison, only to be set up for murder by the same corrupt political insiders who sponsored his parole.” Ralph Pezzullo, who recently scripted an adaptation of his nonfiction book Jawbreaker (co-written with Gary Berntsen) for Oliver Stone, will write the screenplay.

The Hughes brothers are pimpin’ again. Per the Hollywood Reporter, Albert and Allen Hughes, directors of the 1999 documentary American Pimp, have signed with HBO to develop a series called Gentlemen of Leisure. The show “will explore the generational conflict of old-school pimps living by honor codes and creeds who are being pushed aside by violent upstarts who are coming ‘with their guns blazing,’ mixing prostitution with drugs and thievery,” says Allen Hughes, who adds: “These are some of the themes from The Godfather but in the world of pimping.” Guys, it’s HBO. You meant to say, “It’s like The Sopranos – but with pimps!” They need all the help they can get these days.

And finally, here are five words I’d never hoped to see in this order: “Erotic comedy starring Ashton Kutcher.” The movie is Spread, which “tells the story of a womanizing conman who meets his match when he crossing the path of a female hustler,” says Variety.

Related:

No, But I've Read the Movie: The Killer Inside Me
Forgotten Films: This World, Then the Fireworks

No, But I've Read the Movie: THE KILLER INSIDE ME

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 16 May 2008 19:45:00 GMT

Jim Thompson was tailor-made for Hollywood success. He worked there for some time, and found early success with no less august a personage than Stanley Kubrick; he worked on the screenplay for Kubrick's terrific late-period noir The Killing and wrote the stunning war movie Paths of Glory in its entirety. Later on, a number of very fine films would be made from his novels, including two different versions of The Getaway of differing success, as well as The Grifters, After Dark My Sweet, and Coup de Torchon, Bertrand Tavernier's masterful adaptation of his Pop. 1280. Thompson's books carried a bleak criminal sensibility that was perfect for the noir era, and he wrote terrific, snappy dialogue that sounds great coming out of actors who have a feel for his work. Due to a combination of bad luck (many of his projects were prematurely scuttled by studio interference or money problems), politics (he was blacklisted in the McCarthy era due to his leftist leanings), and his own personal demons (he was plagued by alcoholism and innumerable other issues), Thompson never became the motion picture legend he could have been. Though critics have rediscovered his work, previously relegated to pulp status, and he's undergoing a similar reassessment to Raymond Chandler, many of his best books remain unadopted for the big screen. That's a shame, but not as bad as the fact that what's arguably his greatest accomplishment -- the nasty but near-perfect noir novel The Killer Inside Me -- actually did get made into a movie, but a movie that's been almost entirely forgotten, and with good reason.

With The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson created one of the most chilling portraits of pure psychotic evil ever committed to paper, but it's not just a bloody thrill-ride trash novel the way that serial killer novels developed in later years. Lou Ford, the novel's main character, is a man of surprising depth, and Thompson's unfolding of the character is a psychological portrait that transcends its pulp origins and becomes something worthy of Dostoevsky. Ford is the sheriff in a small mining town in Montana, trusted by everyone; he's such a folksy character, straight out of cowboy art, that even his fellow townsfolk, hearing the endless cliches and banal observations he spouts, think of him as somewhat simple-minded. But Lou Ford has a secret: a twisted mind and a history of dark childhood abuses by his physician father have turned him into a monster. He's far more intelligent than he lets on, putting up his stupidity as a show to allay suspicion from his grim hobbies. As he puts it, "When things get a little rough, I go out and kill a fewpeople, that's all." In fact, part of his downfall is that he assumes everyone else is as stupid as they think he is. Ford is under no illusions about his future: he describes himself as "waiting to be split down the middle", the inevitable result of the double life he's committed to lead. But in the meantime, a lot of people are going to get hurt by the man Lou Ford is, and the man people think he is. In 1976, Western veteran Burt Kennedy (Welcome to Hard Times, Support Your Local Sheriff) brought Thompson's greatest novel to the screen.

WHAT IT HAD: Any adaptation of The Killer Inside Me lives and dies by the man who plays Lou Ford, and the movie version at least succeeded on that point. As Ford, Stacy Keach is terrific; he presents a clear understanding of the character and plays him well at every turn. When Lou Ford is called upon to be folksy and corny, Keach plays it well without ever hamming it up; and when Lou Ford's dark side needs to come out, Keach is fantastic, displaying his character's psychotic tendencies in an understated, subtle, almost tender way that perfectly suits the role. A few of the supporting cast stand out as well, particularly Keenan Wynn and Don Stroud; they're not up to Keach's level, but they provide a nice veteran anchor to the cast. While the script (by Robert Chamblee and Hollywood gadabout Edward Mann) isn't stellar, it at least does its best to preserve some of Thompson's best dialogue.

WHAT IT LACKED: The Killer Inside Me is, to be perfectly honest, a grade-Z production. It's not an exploitation flick -- in fact, a little more gore and sex probably would have pepped it up a bit -- but just from looking at it, you can tell it was made on the cheap. Its production values are substandard and at times the whole thing plays like a bad TV movie. Few of the supporting roles, most especially Susan Tyrell as Keach's foil and romantic interest, are up to snuff, and the plethora of half-assed acting diminishes his performance. It's not clear whether it was just timidity or a eye towards the ratings that kept the writers and director from fully embracing the brutal violence of the book, but it leads to some crucial scenes being left out or soft-pedaled. And while Kennedy's direction is competent, it's never any more than that, and it's sometimes less. Overall, the entire film has a lackluster, patched-together quality; it never coheres into the elegant and vicious thing that is the book.

DID IT SUCCEED?: Nope. It's a testament to how unsuccessful the movie is that it's most widely available in DVD format on a double-feature disc with another forgotten thriller from the '70s. As a resume item, it didn't do much for anyone's career, and while it's not a terrible film, its pleasures -- largely, Keach's performance and some choice bits of Thompson's dialogue -- are few and far between. Even if a remastered edition were available that sheds the crappy digital transfer and overall poor visual quality, it's not as if there's much to watch. It's a project worth revisiting; in the hands of a skilled director with a feel for noir and an affinity for Thompson's gorgeous, nihilistic prose, this book could make a great movie, especially today when an antihero like Lou Ford could really resonate with Tarantino-hardened moviegoers. There's a fine film waiting to be made out of The Killer Inside Me, but unfortunately, this isn't it.

Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds: 2 B 2-Together 4-Ever!

Phil Nugent — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds are getting hitched, and we here at the Screengrab haven't been this proud and excited since our guppies mated! These are two of our favorite people: Reynolds, because he's a likable fellow who's shown himself to be a reliable, capable actor whether he's flexing his chops in bad comedies (Van Wilder), bad action movies (Smokin' Aces), bad horror movies (The Amityville Horror), or bad unintentionally comic action horror movies (Blade : Trinity); Johansson, because she was once in a good movie (Ghost World) without doing it much harm, because Tom Waits isn't too proud to cash the royalty checks, and because every time we run a picture of her, such as this computer-generated simulation of what she'll look like in her wedding outfit, our page numbers go up for some reason. (Also, her name is Scarlett, but she's a blonde! How trippy is that!?) Interestingly, though both of them keep very busy, the 23-year-old Johansson and the 31-year-old cradle-robbing bastard Reynolds have never worked together before. (IMDB lists their only shared credit as 101 Sexiest Celebrity Bodies on TV, which we haven't seen--we're waiting for the opera---but we have a hunch it would stretch the definition of "working together.") But if this marriage is going to work, and I think we can all agree that the thought of it failing is just too morbid to contemplate, then they're going to want to explore the possibility of co-starring vehicles to increase their volume of quality time together. (It worked for Julia and Kiefer, right?) Because the kids must have their hands full with wedding plans--registering at Sears, negotiating to rent out a bowling alley for the bachelor party, trying to get Survivor's Boston Robb on the phone to ask if he'd still lobby for the surf and turf buffet--they might not have a lot of time to flip through scripts, so we've taken the liberty of offering a few suggestions:

THE GETAWAY: Scarlett and Ryan have to co-star in a remake of the married-bank-robbers-on-the-lam thriller The Getaway, based on the Jim Thompson novel. This isn't our favorite choice for them, but after the Steve McQueen-Ali McGraw and Alec Baldwin-Kim Basinger versions, we're pretty sure that federal law demands it, so they might as well get it over with quick, like ripping off a band-aid or meeting the in-laws. (Personal to Ryan: just ignore Mr. Johnansson when he demands that you pull his finger.) After watching Ryan's steely gunplay in Smokin' Aces, we suspect that he'll actually be a solid, impressive Doc McCoy, and as for Scarlett, well, we're sure that she'll look shiny and immaculate even while camping out in a rat-infested dumpster. Since the movie will almost certainly blow, the newlyweds can't be judged too harshly for it, which means that the real suspense will be in seeing who gets to play the slimy killer nutjob chasing them and the lovable old goober who gives them a lift at the very end. We propose that the casting director go wide and unexpected with Steve Zahn as the psycho and pluck the viewers' nostalgic heartstrings by hiring Bob Newhart to play the sweet, gabby old thing. Or, if Newhart is unavailable, Robert De Niro.

WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?: After the scathing reviews The Getaway is sure to earn, Scarlett in particular will be eager to jump in the deep end and show off her acting chops. That's a problem for her, because she can't act, but she can probably hollar, and that's really all you need to do to impress most critics with your range after they've sat through twenty pictures where you pretty much just stood there reflecting light. Playing Martha, the rampaging gorgon at the center of Edward Albee's marital slugfest, gave Elizabeth Taylor the chance to pick up an Academy Award for Best Hollaring by a One-Time Candidate for Most Beautiful Person in the World, so there's a ready-made tradition for Scarlett to tap into here. The husband, George, is supposed to be a prototypical middle-aged American wimp, but since most people's memories of the play are based on the movie starring Taylor and Richard Burton, they think George is English, which means that Reynolds too will have the chance to stretch by breaking out his best Monty Python accent to go with his prop eyeglasses. Throw in Elijah Wood and Bijou Phillipa as the goggle-eyed witnesses to this house of horrors and I think we've got a winner. Don't talk about the boy, Scarlett!

GREEN ARROW AND BLACK CANARY: Tradition and awards are all well and good, but for full mutual career satisfaction, our little Lunt and Fontaine are also going to need to bring home that box-office gold. The ideal thing would be to sign them up for a franchise as crime-fighting superheroes. It isn't until you start trying to come up with possibilities that you realize just how few great man-and-woman superhero combos there have been, especially since Reed Richards and Sue Storm have already been spoken for. But we think that these two will make for a fine fit. Swear to God, we think there's always been something about Ryan Reynolds that's whispered, "Goatee! Robin Hood costume! Bow and arrows!" As for Scarlett, she's sure to rock the black leather slinkywear. The only problem is that there have been rumors of a Green Arrow movie in the works going back to when Kevin Smith was regarded as promising, and the property may be tied up. If it can't be pried free, then we propose going old-school and reviving Nick and Nora, the wisecracking alcoholic marrieds of the Thin Man series, "rebooting" the franchise to give it commercial potential for these sophisticated modern times. As Nick and Nora, Ryan and Scarlett will make wisecracks--or, to better keep with the nature of their talents, Ryan will make them while Scarlett stares at him blankly--chug martinis, and solve crimes. While wearing jet packs!

RYAN & SCARLETT'S XXX HONEYMOON SEX TAPE: A surefire career booster! With an IMAX 3-D sequence to be directed by Martin Scorsese and featuring Christopher Walken and Zac Efron in the musical numbers. To be released in conjunction with the premiere of their new reality series. "It's just called 'Chicken of the Sea' because people like chicken, Scarlett!"

Forgotten Films: "This World, Then the Fireworks" (1997)

Phil Nugent — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 23:00:00 GMT

This past week marked the thirty-first anniversary of the death of Jim Thompson, the cult-object writer who worked on the scripts of Stanley Kubrick's The Killing and Paths of Glory, but whose real gift to film history was a shelf's worth of pulp novels (The Killer Inside Me, The Getaway, The Grifters) so intense and obsessive in their seaminess that they amount to a double-dog-dare to the movies: You think you're the repository of forbidden daydreams? Put this on the big screen! Two versions of The Getaway, including one with Sam Peckinpah's name in the credits, softened the relationship between the husband and wife bank robbers on the lam (the star of the Peckipah version, Steve McQueen, having objected to the less cheerful elements of a screenplay treatment turned in by Thompson himself); Coup de Torchon, directed by Bertrand Tavernier and based on Pop. 1280, is in motherfucking French! Even the best of all Thompson adaptations, Stephen Frears's The Grifters, is handsomely mounted and has a good vicious streak but keeps it distance from the vortex of Thompson's deeply felt hatefulness; it maps the dragon's lair down to the last molted scale but resists the urge to fling you in there by your feet and nail the door shut behind you.

To see what Thompson's special, sweaty brand of nihilistic dementia looks like uncensored, flashy but not polished, your best bet might be the 1997 This World, Then the Fireworks, based on a posthumously published Thompson fever dream. Directed by a music-video veteran named Michael Oblowitz, the movie lets you know right from its opening moments that it's not going to play coy and try to impress you with its subtle touch. The antihero and narrator, Marty, has a twin sister, Carol, and the movie opens with a little backstory interlude set on their fifth birthday. Entertainment at the party includes a shootout between their father and the wife of a woman dad's been screwing. "The man on the floor didn't have any head, hardly any head at all," Marty says, by way of explaining why he and sis got such a kick out of the festivities. Oblowitz shoots this bloody-trauma sequence in over-the-top funhouse mode, breaking out the fish-eye lenses and dousing the screen with surreally bright colors and contorted faces leaning into the camera. He doesn't pull back much when the action shifts to the "present"--which is supposed to be 1956 but looks more like some perpetual Noirville, U.S.A.--and Marty and his sister, who's become his fuck buddy, are played by Billy Zane and Gina Gershon, both looking as if they'd immigrated to our world from the covers of old paperback thrillers.

It might be a stretch to call This World a good movie, but it's true to its overheated vision in a way that's amazing to watch, partly because it makes you aware of how watered-down down pulp movies really are. Zane and Gershon thrive in this atmosphere. She's never been as eerily adorable as when she describes having suckered a couple of thugs who thought they could threaten her into staying out of their territory ("I do believe they'd never heard of chloral nitrate!"), and he looks unusually at home whether he's resigning from his job as a newspaper reporter by physically assaulting his editor (because the man has said nice things about his work, which bothers him because it makes him worry that the man might have the capacity to understand him) or romancing a masochistic woman cop (Sheryl Lee) by asking, "Are you blonde all over, or just where it shows?" If there's any real art mixed in with the cheap thrills and dazzling hype of This World, it comes from Sheryl Lee; as in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, she demonstrates a rare, brave talent for acting her character's sexual degradation that sensitizes you to the pain inside the pulp fantasy. She conveys the unhealthy attractions of Jim Thompson's cruel fantasy life even as she transcends the mindset that it grew out of.