Why Film Noir Is Like an AudioBook

AudioBooks are like old time radio dramas (see post below) and the film noir movies of the 40s and 50s were like the old time radio dramas (except with pictures.) So, I guess it stands to reason that those great old movies - White Heat springs to mind immediately: - "I'm on top of the world, ma! On top of the world!" - were what audiocasts, audiobooks, dramacasts want to be and, I hope, will be someday. I'd love to plug an earbud in and be swept away into a radio noir drama. (There's a singer who should be in a film noir movie, let me think of her name..... hold on....Got it: Bernadette Seacrest.)

What are the characteristics of a film noir film you ask: read on, my precious one.

• Cigarettes - everyone smokes, lots of smoke in the air bouncing off lights and fedoras.
• Fedoras - everyone wears a hat. To keep the smoke out of their eyes?
• Underdeveloped femme fatales - I'm not taking body parts, I'm talking characterisation, as in, one-dimensional female roles.
• Twists and convoluted plots - who to trust, who to trust?
• Flashbacks and Flash-forwards - the story is often told in a non-linear (remember Tarantino's Resevoir Dogs? Pure film noir except for the babes, lighting, ... okay. Nevermind.)
• Morally ambiguous - the good guy has bad traits, the bad guy has good traits; both try to live up to their own moral code; too bad sometimes it involves knocking someone else off occasionally.
• Voice-over narration - considered a weakness by modern day screenwriting gurus, voice-over narration is deriguer in film noir.
• No Hollywood ending - everyone loses, nobody wins,
• Banter. Lots of witty, clever banter. Lots of good one-liners. For all of film noir's negativity, there's a lot of humor in the banter. Love banter. Banter is my life. Banter like this:

You know you don't have to act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow

Bacall to Bogart in To Have and To Have Not (1944)

Bacall was 19, Bogart was 45 and the next year they got married. Altogether they were in four movies together, all film noir: To Have and To Have Not, The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), and Key Largo (1948). Who can argue with a film style that produced not only the romance of the century (the last one - century, I mean) but also those four great flicks? Hmmm? Can you, punk? Well, do ya, punk? Do you feel lucky? (now, who said that?)

The whole point of this post is to make the following dare to myself: I'm going to attempt to write a film noir screenplay. I don't have a plot but I've got a title: Die Me a Genealogist. Pretty classy, eh? Picture the young Robert Mitchum embracing the young Gloria Stuart (the old lady in Cameron's Titanic) on a drizzly San Francisco street, over there, near the docks, a little bit away from the tourists, in the shadow of that empty warehouse. I only hope I can banter well.

Go in Peace, my lovely little ones, and fear no boogeyman.