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November 30, 2008
An amateur sleuth with a difference
You wouldn’t think that there would be too many laughs to be found in murder and prostitution, but you might change your mind after reading Scott Sherman’s debut mystery, “First You Fall” (Alyson Books).
I picked up the book after hearing the writer speak at a panel at the annual Bouchercon mystery writers’ conference in Baltimore in October and I’m glad I did. Sherman has pulled off the mean feat of writing a Janet Evanovich-style comic crime novel about a New York City male escort named Kevin Connor.
The range of professions in amateur sleuth crime fiction these days is quite amazing. Coffee shop operators, nurses, gardeners, crossword puzzle creators, tattoo parlor managers — you name the job and there’s a good chance some clever author has used it as a jumping off point for a mystery series.
Sherman breaks new ground with his escort hero who juggles a number of compelling personal problems — including the sudden death of a dear friend, a surprise visit from his hysterical mother who is convinced Kevin’s dad is cheating on her, and the search for a stable romantic partner — while plying his trade in the oldest profession.
What makes the book distinctive (and memorable) is the way that Sherman juggles laughs and drama (and terrific plot twists) in a story that opens a door into the world of men who make their livings as sex workers. The author doesn’t glamorize prostitution, but he shows us how attractive “the life” can be for young people who are just starting out in New York. What other job pays several hundred dollars an hour and often includes fine dining and free trips to the best cultural attractions Manhattan has to offer?
Kevin Connor makes a very nice living working for “Mrs. Cherry,” a madam of unknown gender with a large stable of male escorts (the name Sherman chose for the escort manager is just the first of many sly references to gay icon Barbra Streisand in the novel — Mrs. Cherry was the very odd madam played by Yiddish theater legend Molly Picon in the 1974 Streisand epic, “For Pete’s Sake”).
Most of Kevin’s clients are low maintenance types who are willing to pay considerable amounts of money for companionship and role-playing. But the young man’s work leaves him in a very vulnerable position when his own life appears to be in danger — going to the cops is not an option for an escort in trouble.
Mystery and tragedy enter the book early on when one of Kevin’s older friends — not a client but a regular customer for some of Connor’s associates — falls to his death from a fancy Central Park West apartment. The cops rule the death a suicide, but Kevin knows that the late Allen Harrington would never kill himself. Soon we meet a large pool of murder suspects, ranging from the man’s homophobic grown sons to at least one of Kevin’s fellow escorts.
Through Kevin’s search for Allen’s killer, Sherman explores the unique mix of high life and low life that makes Manhattan such a compelling — and sometimes dangerous — place. The result is an unusually substantial piece of light entertainment that will leave most readers wondering what might happen to Kevin in follow-up novels.
Posted by Joe on 5:16 PM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2008
Nixon secretary strikes again!
Did you catch the Diane Sawyer-Ashley Dupre act on “20/20” Friday night?
It still boggles my mind that Sawyer is considered a “journalist” by ABC News after the Michael Jackson-Lisa Marie Presley debacle of a decade ago and the Elian Gonzalez shaming in 2000, but there she was two nights ago looking suitably “shocked” and “compassionate” as the Eliot Spitzer call girl told her tales of woe.
The ex-beauty pageant contestant and loyal secretary to President Richard Nixon — Diane followed Nixon back to San Clemente after he resigned in disgrace in 1974 — is a better actress than many of the stars her husband Mike Nichols has guided to Oscar nominations over the past 40 years.
Whether it is looking sympathetic sitting across from the Jackson-Presley trainwreck marriage or getting down and playing on the floor with little Elian, Sawyer has always seemed to be auditioning for the sob sister newspaper-woman role in “Chicago.” She makes Barbara Walters look like Helen Thomas.
Years ago in the musical “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” there was a hilarious number sung by a mock-outraged Houston TV reporter — “Texas Has a Whorehouse In It!” — and I recalled that tune as Sawyer kept working up a new look of surprise and moral superiority every time Dupre explained that there are lots of men in this country who pay young women to have sex with them (No!)
Way back in the early 1980s I used to enjoy Sawyer on the CBS version of “The Today Show” where she handled light features and co-host banter with considerable charm, but as she has risen up the ladder into harder news slots, Sawyer’s reliance on pseudo emotionalism and ignorant moralism has become increasingly repellant.
Fighting with colleague Barbara Walters for each new ABC newsmagazine “get” — and making who-knows-what sort of deals with her scandal-sheet prey — the newswoman is an embarrassment to her profession.
Posted by Joe on 5:36 PM | Comments (0)
November 20, 2008
Folie a deux in Fairfield
Tomorrow night it will be my privilege to co-host a free screening of the 1995 Claude Chabrol film, “La Ceremonie,” at the Fairfield Library at 7 p.m.
The movie is the second in a new monrhly series the library is calling “Fringe & Foreign” (my pal, Drew Taylor of The Fairfield Weekly, is selecting the indie cult titles and I’m choosing the foreign films).
“La Ceremonie” is a perfect choice for a library showing because it is an excellent adaptation of the novel “A Judgement in Stone” by the great British crime writer Ruth Rendell.
Rendell has always been more interested in how crimes happen than in the traditional whodunit. She likes to examine the forces that push seemingly ordinary people to violent eruptions.
“A Judgement in Stone” is one of Rendell’s finest novels, with a much-discussed first sentence that gives away the ending of the story. The author names the perp and her victims flat out and readers who aren’t familiar with Rendell might wonder how she can keep us turning the pages toward a pre-ordained finale.
Instead of diminishing the suspense, Rendell increases it by making us wonder and wait to see how things could possibly end so badly for a group of people with no history of violent crime.
Chabrol made one major change in the Rendell book by omitting that opening declaration. He just tells the gripping story of how horrific things transpire after a bourgeois French family decides to hire a rather aloof but very hard-working young maid.
I think even viewers who have never read the novel feel a sense of dread very early on, when it becomes apparent there is something wrong with the maid. So, the film generates the same sort of suspense as the novel — we wonder what terrible things are going to happen.
Sandrine Bonaire (above, left) gives a very understated performance as the maid, allowing us to draw our own conclusions about what is going on under a series of rather blank expressions.
The trigger for the events of the final third of the story arrives in the form of a discontented postal worker who dislikes most of her customers and matches the maid in terms of loneliness and emotional repression. The French call this sort of unhealthy pairing a folie a deux.
Chabrol regular Isabelle Huppert (above, right) plays the part of the postal clerk with a subtly subversive humor that allows us to share her character's resentment of the comfortable country lives of the wealthy Parisians who own lavish weekend getaway estates outside her village.
Chabrol turns the screws by making the rich family sympathetic — despite their being oblivious to the lives of the underclass people all around them. Jacqueline Bisset plays the working wife and mother — she runs an art gallery — who is so grateful for her new maid’s work ethic that she doesn’t pay much attention to the young woman’s simmering anger.
The final 15 minutes of “La Ceremonie” are as creepy and as shocking as any horror movie finale without resorting to any graphic displays of violence. It’s a movie most people remember long after the credits roll.
(The Fairfield Library is at 1080 Old Post Road in Fairfield Center. Call 256-3155 for more information on the free screening Friday at 7.)
Posted by Joe on 1:52 PM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2008
Bad news/Good news
The terrible civil rights setback represented by the passage of the gay-bashing Proposition 8 in California earlier this month could prove to be an unexpected boost to the Gus Van Sant film, “Milk,” set to open in New York and Los Angeles Nov. 28 and around the country in December.
The bio-pic about the life and 1978 murder of the pioneering San Francisco gay politician Harvey Milk was already generating Oscar buzz when liberal Hollywood and the gay community around the country were stunned by Prop 8.
Now, the film could become a rallying point for the national movement to repeal the discriminatory proposition.
With a dearth of obvious year-end awards contenders, “Milk” seems on track to be a all-too-timely audience and critic hit.
One of my favorite Manhattan performers, Justin Bond, attended a screening at the Tribeca Grand last night and kicked off a new blog (http://www.justinbondisliving.blogspot.com/) with a long posting today.“The real uncanny thing, to me, is the timing. It reminds me of when The China Syndrome came out right when the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant went all funky...I think this film comes at a time time when the LGBT community needs a shot of inspiration and if nothing else the story is truly inspirational,” Bond writes in a smart and witty account of the screening (and his gate-crashing the celebrity party afterwards).
With a strong supporting cast that includes rising stars James Franco (above, embracing Penn) and Emile Hirsch, “Milk” should be able to crossover quickly from limited art-house release in early December to wide multiplex play by Christmas. I'll report on the film here after I see it next week.
Posted by Joe on 3:47 PM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2008
When television was the enemy
Tonight at 7, I’m hosting a screening of the 1957 Elia Kazan-Budd Schulberg drama, “A Face in the Crowd,” as part of the monthly “Martini and a Movie” series at the Fairfield Theatre Company.
The picture is the second in a three-film series devoted to “Politics & Hollywood.”
Last month’s movie “State of the Union” was a look at the way politicians often have to bend their beliefs to get elected.
“A Face in the Crowd” was made at a time when smart people were starting to worry about the negative impact of television on almost every aspect of American life — in particular, the way that TV was changing political campaigns (and even the choices of potential national candidates).
Kazan and Schulberg looked at the issue three years before John F. Kennedy brought a new youthful “charisma” to the presidential race, changing some of the ground rules of what the public looked for in a leader because he used TV so brilliantly as an image-building tool. Everyone knows the story of how radio listeners believed the sweaty and far-from-charismatic Richard Nixon won his election season debates with Kennedy, but that the vastly larger audience that saw the debates on TV thought the cool and handsome senator from Massachusetts was the winner.
“A Face in the Crowd” is about the creation of a national celebrity out of a rather sleazy backwoods country singer named “Lonesome” Rhodes.
A small-town radio personality played by the wonderful Patricia Neal discovers Lonesome in an Arkansas jail and turns him into a local star. Soon, he becomes a regional sensation via a Memphis TV show. Lonesome is brought to New York where he builds a huge national audience and thoughts of a political career.
A key scene involves the critiquing of some footage of a national political aspirant by corporate types and ad men .
One of these hucksters says, “Instead of long-winded public debates, the people want capsule slogans: ‘Time for a change!’ “The mess in Washington!’ ‘More bang for your buck!’ (They want) punchlines and glamour!”
Andy Griffith plays Lonesome in a truly scary performance — the moral opposite of the country sheriff he would play on TV a decade later.
“A Face in the Crowd” was a financial flop in 1957, but has been elevated over the years in the same manner as another cynical “flop” that year, “Sweet Smell of Success.”
Kazan and Schulberg were free to attack TV 50 years ago because the movie studios saw the relatively new medium as their enemy. Now that the same global corporations own film production companies and broadcast and cable TV networks it would be much tougher to mount a major film that is this savage about the way “home entertainment” has changed every aspect of private and public life in this country.
“A Face in the Crowd” still has the power to provoke, so there should be a very interesting discussion after tonight’s free showing.
(The Fairfield Theater Company is at 70 Sanford St. in Fairfield. The doors and the bar open at 7. The film will be shown at 8.)
Posted by Joe on 2:46 PM | Comments (0)
