Film Noir Podcast

There's a film noir podcast wherein two academics talk about film noir. Personally, if you can get past the academic jargon ('source material' for 'the book it was based on') and the introduction wherein one of the two academics makes.... pronouncements about the movie in question, the podcast, Out of the Past, is pretty good with some insights about the genre, etc.

As for my film noir screenplay, Die Me A Genealogist, it is not going through a re-write. I'm just not un-busy enough to put it up or put up with it. Plus, I had a major computer crash. Two, in fact. One computer has been returned minus the faulty hard disk (with tons of data.) The other computer - with Die Me A Genealogist on it - is still in the shop and if it comes back with an erased disk, well, Die Me A Genealogist is poof, up in smoke, in the nether regions of life and quite an experience it was, too. I do, however, have a cool vampire movie in mind titled: Vampire Steaks. No, that wasn't it. Oh, well, I can't think of the original title so I'll go with that.

Anyone have any idea for a plot?

Go in peace. Live in harmony. Promote Good Thoughts.

Script Frenzy Script

I have finished my film noir screenplay and have been announced a winner (over 20,000 words - aout 100 pages) of the Script Frenzy frenzy. Someday I plan to put most of the script up here on a related page. If I figure out how to do it.
I believe, if memory serves, only five people get killed in my screenplay, the good guy gets the money but not the girl, and ach... six people get killed. Maybe I'd better read the damn thing to find out what happens. This is one of the special results of writing in a frenzy and not really paying attention to what you're doing: writer's alzheimer's - makes reading it a new and fresh experience!

Film noir script Part 2: the fun.

The script, which I'm sure you're all really, really waiting to read on baited breath, is going swimmingly - whatever that means - well?. Let's recap, shall we? I have to write a 110-page film noir in one month. I have the good guys, the bad guys, and the woman. I need some plot twists but I'm already on page 65 and moving fast. In fact I should actually be doing the script instead of playing on Tedorigawa but I can't pound out the words that long without running around looking for something else to do. No! It's not attention deficit disorder, it's because I want to think about what my characters want to do, what they are pulling me toward.

Main good guy - Mainwaring (named after the man who wrote one of the first film noir films - Daniel Mainwaring and the movie was Out of the Past starring Robert Mitchum and pretty soon all the nouns will be in wikipedia blue.). A former hitman who now operates a crummy little used bookstore in Seattle.

Main bad guy - Eely Moran (named after nobody, just a name I thought sounded greasy and slimey and ne'er do wellish.) A genealogist, the deadliest of bad-guy occupations, yes? Hmmm. Hence the tagling:

When this genealogist checks your lifeline- run!

The Woman (commonly known in the film noir world as the femme fatale; her name is legion. She is known by different names by different people: Eely knows her as Diane. Mainwaring knows her as Gertrude; the cops know her as Special Agent Freytag. But everyone knows her as Nancy - please sing along with the Beatles... ) She's known throughout the movie as....

The Hair

(a mispronunciation by Moran as The Heir - he thinks she's about to inherit a ton of money from her dead husband, who Mainwaring killed for a couple thousand dollars.)

I should say no more. I should get back to work. I should type something useful. I should say no more.

Create Peace wherever you are.

Film Noir (black film?) Screenplay

I have decided to join the ranks of the chosen millions (especially in Los Angeles) who have decided that they, too, can be the next Shane Black (a man who has gotten way too much cash for his scripts - unless someone buys mine, then we're both underpaid) and write a movie. Or, as we say in the biz, a script.
Not an ordinary script, though, (I wish) but a film noir script. A dark, twisted script with three basic characters: the hero, an ex-hitman turned bookstore owner, the femme fatale that makes the ex-hitman jump through the hoops, and the bad guy who tries to manipulate the femme fatale and the bookstore owner. This is all because of Script Frenzy in which we unwashed of the world pretend to be on deadline for a script.

• One month. June.
• One script. Die Me a Genealogist
  
• One film noir ready for sale. Ha.

So, naturlich, I looked up film noir ala wikipedia to make sure I've got all the ingredients for this particular caldron of soup. According to that we need the following pieces:

1. cigarettes - what genre comes after film noir, film cancer?
   
2. flashbacks - love it. All the screenplay gurus (Syd, Robert)say never use flashbacks.
3. a dame
4. a flawed hero
5. a flawed bad guy
6. voiceovers, of course - and, hey, didn't I write about this very thing not too long ago? Am I repeating myself? Do I have blog-alzheimer's? Yes I did! May 23 of this year. Look below! - Who am I shouting at? Myself? Probably. Who's in charge of this blog anyway!?

Today's recommended film noir movie (redundant, or what?) is "Touch of Evil" (released the same year as "No Time for Sargeants" with Don Knotts.) directed by Orson Welles, starring Orson, Charleton Heston, Janet Leigh, and, in a pre-Psycho crazy role as a motel clerk (can you say Norman 'Hi, Mom' Bates), Dennis Weaver (no, Weaver isn't in Psycho, I know that. That was Anthony Perkins. It's just that Weaver's hotel clerk in Touch of Evil is an over-the-top weirdo two years before Psycho was released.)

A bit over-acted in parts, the main reason for watching this flick is to watch Welles' directing - his camera positioning, his angles; his, what, ten-minute first tracking shot. And to watch Welles' character fall into the abyss as Heston watches and may have pushed a little bit, Janet Leigh gets gang-scared, and Dennis Weaver freaks out about marijuana.

If you're interested in film noir scripts, I've got one for you. Let me know. Contact me. Hit comment. Smile. Enjoy your life and hey, let's be careful out there.

"Die Me A Genealogist"
If this genealogist checks your lifeline, you'd better run.

Seth Harwood's Jack Palms II Podiobook

As if to show me I'm wrong about my last post (see below, bunnykins), I heard a portion of a new podiobook by Seth Harwood, Jack Palms II on Podcast411 episode something. Seth does a good job of doing two things: one, reading and two, writing. A lot of people who read are either overblown Dramatic with a capital D or monotone; Seth is neither. He hit it quite nicely in the middle. He also used special effects but only as necessary. He didn't go overboard. And the writing, for the most part, held my attention which, of course, is the point. There were a couple of points where I grimaced at a forced transition or two but generally really good. On Podcast411, we hear an interview with Seth and a 15-minute clip teaser of Jack Palms II which is scheduled to be put up on Seth's podcast starting June 3rd. The 15-minute portion on Podcast411 leaves us with a cliffhanger but that was to be expected. (Ah, got it, episode 203 of Podcast411. Two hundred shows? That's incredible, eh?)

This is all to say that Seth's podcast came across as a good old fashioned radio drama minus a lot of overdramatic music but without the different voices for all the parts; Seth reads all the characters himself with one exception.

This is also to say that I realized why a lot of the crime dramas on old radio shows were told in the first person. First, because that was the way crime novels (hard-boiled, Chandler, Hammett,- two Ms, two Ts - and pulp fiction) were written - Think Bogart in the Maltese Falcon. And because it sounds more like the character talking to you instead of someone reading to you or pretending to read to you. That said, I think I'm going to check out Seth's serialized audiobook.

In the next post on this blog I'm going to talk about a podcast called Behind the Black Mask, which looks like interviews with several pulp/crime/detective novelists. Should or could be interesting. (By the same people who do a podcast on film noir called Out of the Past.)

Eat in Peace.

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.