Full Metal Jacket

When a smarter person would have been on his way to bed last night, I saw Full Metal Jacket was about to start on a movie channel. I’d seen it a theater when it first came out, but since then had only seen most of the basic training sequences a few times.

My memories of the movie were the basic training stuff was first rate, then it wallowed for a while until the final sniper sequence. Having slept in yesterday morning I thought last night would be as good a time as any to see how well my memories held up.

The basic training bits are as good as I remembered. Uncomfortable to watch, but R. Lee Ermey is brilliant and the actors playing his trainees respond as they should. He carries the first third of the film on his back.

Then he dies, and so does the movie. Beautifully photographed, artfully directed, but what story there is consists of caricatures making speeches to each other, except when they’re making transparent speeches directly to the audience. Timing is affected as scenes are milked. The actors aren’t bad—they do what they can with what they were given.

In the end, a real disappointment, considering FMJ is considered an iconic Vietnam film. Maybe a dozen years after the war was too soon for an objective perspective. Platoon came out the same year (1987), so maybe I need to give that one another look, too.

The end result was, I switched over to another movie channel to catch ten random minutes of Blazing Saddles before I went to bed. Now there’s a movie that holds up well over time.

Fire Season

Humorous crime fiction is hard to pull off. (We’re leaving Donald Westlake out of this discussion. He could make anything work, from Dortmunder to Parker.) Elmore Leonard has a reputation for being funny, but, with the possible exception of Get Shorty, his books aren’t written to be funny. The humor is endemic to the situation, and to the intellectual capacity of the characters, who are most often inadvertently funny. (The characters, I mean. Leonard has no accidents in his writing.)

A lot of authors try to write tongue-in-cheek crime fiction; none blends the elements better than Jon Loomis. His Frank Coffin mysteries never make light of the seriousness of the crimes, but juxtapose them against what may be absurd conditions to create a unique atmosphere.

Loomis’s newest is Fire Season. The book opens with the killing of a restaurant’s tame seals, kept in their own tank near the beach as a tourist attraction in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Soon a series of increasingly serious arson fires breaks out, and a local doctor is found dead in gruesome fashion. Whether any of these are related is a key element of the story, so we’re not going to discuss it here.

There are two keys to the success of Loomis’s stories, and Fire Season is no exception. First is Coffin, a Provincetown detective and acting chief of police. He worked homicide in Baltimore for several years, finally leaving because he’d developed a phobia about corpses. He returned to his native Provincetown to get away from that, but they insist on popping up in the least expected places. His girlfriend is pregnant and hyperaware of things, and his mother is suffering from Alzheimer’s, which leaves her prone to what she thinks of as pranks and the other residents of her nursing home consider terrorist acts.

The other thing the series could not exist without is Provincetown as a setting. The town on the farthest tip of Cape Cod, always a summer tourist attraction, has become an enclave for the LGBT community, often flamboyantly so. It’s P’town that makes the humor work, as the bizarre settings allow Loomis to make the comedy endemic to the scene without diminishing the seriousness of the situation. Everything is held together by Loomis’s acceptance of everyone in Provincetown as they are. He never condescends of make fun of them, rather welcomes them as the engine that makes his stories fun to read. How do you make murder scene interviews funny without minimizing the brutality of the crime? Interview half a dozen Tall Ships (male transvestites) in various stages of undress, and capture their side conversations.

Coffin is not alone. The supporting cast more than carries its weight. Even those who aren’t P’town crazies realize they live in a sometimes surreal environment, and make their decisions accordingly. The normal rules of logic don’t always apply in Loomis’s Provincetown, but loomis sticks to the rules he has created so the reader never feels cheated, but also never quite sure how each event will be received.

Fire Season is the third Frank Coffin mystery, after High Season and Mating Season, both of which are also highly recommended. (Especially the premiere, High Season.) Enough loose ends are left for the characters to carry on should Loomis decide to keep writing them. Let’s hope so. He’s carved out a unique niche in crime fiction. It would be a shame to lose it.

Tick-Tock, the Clock is Running

The Groupees bundle is available through the end of July. So far sales have exceeded our first goal and continue to rise. Here’s the deal:

Go to the 27 Authors Crime Fiction E-Book Bundle page on the Groupees web site.

Bid whatever you think the collection is worth to you. Bids may be as low as $2.00.

You’ll receive the following e-books:

Four Funny Detective Stories, Starring Maynard Soloman, by Ben Sobieck.

Banal, by Vincent Zandri.

Kick It With Conviction, by Fiona “McDroll” Johnson.

The Noir anthology from Black Heart magazine, edited by Laura Roberts.

Cleansing Eden (The Celebrity Murders), by Ben Sobieck.

Wild Bill, by, well, me.

In addition, the top bidder will receive a handcrafted hard copy of Wild Bill, created by The Beloved Spouse specifically for this Groupees promotion. Bidders Two through Five receive signed copies of Cleansing Eden, which has recently been released in paper.

Be not dissuaded by my presence in the group; these people can write. (If you’ve already read Wild Bill, the rest of the bundle I still a great deal. Buy it, and line your Farmville bird cage with the extra copy of Wild Bill.) In addition to those listed above, the Noir collection has stories and artwork from twenty-seven collaborators, including several previously noted here on OBAAT (Dan O’Shea, Keith Rawson, Kieran Shea, and the ubiquitous Mr. Sobieck).

Not only is this a great deal for you, you get a chance to do good while doing well. Twenty percent of all proceeds will be donated to the National Kidney Foundation.

Summer will soon be gone. You’re not going to want to face the Season of Doom without something good to read. Two bucks gets you in; the high bid so far for the print copy of Wild Bill is $21. It can be delivered to you anywhere in the world mail deliveries occur. Hell, I’ll hand deliver the bastard if you live within 100 miles.

Head on over. The clock is ticking.

Wild Bill (And More) Available as a Groupees Bundle

Events have precluded me from devoting the kind of attention this has deserved, but Wild Bill was selected for inclusion in a promotion that has great promise and is also a lot of fun.

Ben Sobieck, author of Cleansing Eden and the Maynard Soloman short stories, has put together a package of authors and books for the promotional web site Groupees. People can buy an entire bundle of crime fiction e-books by paying whatever they want for the books. As an incentive, premiums will be awarded to the highest bidders.

The books (and their blurbs) are:

Four Funny Detective Stories – Starring Maynard Soloman (Ben Sobieck):

Maynard is the philosopher-cum-man-of-action that we all wish we could be, the detective who solves mysteries by turning idiocy against itself.” – Peter Rozovsky, Detectives Beyond Borders (Spinetingler Award winner)

“I recommend to everyone who is looking for a quick read. It’s perfect for that pick me up laugh, that bathroom read, that afternoon escape.” - Molly Edwards, Reviews by Molly

Kick It With Conviction (Fiona Johnson):

Seven crime/noir/drama/humour original stories from Fiona ‘McDroll’ Johnson

The Noir Issue of Black Heart Magazine (Laura Roberts):

Featuring the works of old-schoolers and newcomers to the noir/crime-fiction genre. Packed with 64 pages of short, dark fiction and even shorter (and darker?!) poetry, there’s a little something for everyone with a hole in their soul—or a few bullets where there oughtn’t be.

Cleansing Eden, The Celebrity Murders (Ben Sobieck):

“Cleansing Eden is a highly suspenseful read. Benjamin Sobieck has an inventive way with words. He writes with a voice that’s strong and uniquely his.” – Debbi Mack, New York Times bestselling author of the Sam McRae series

“Cleansing Eden by Benjamin Sobieck is a gripping story about individuals who give up more and more of themselves over time, becoming the things they hate.” – Michelle Peden Vasquez, Life in Review

Banal (Vincent Zandri):

Is a writer suffering from a never ending bout of writer’s block capable of murder? Or is he simply bored with his life? In this previously published short story by bestselling noir author, Vincent Zandri, a writer commits the ultimate act of destruction to a neighbor and friend if only to finally uncover the one story he needs to write himself out of his troubles. But then, not all murders are what they appear to be. Nor are all stories.

Wild Bill (Some Guy):

Blah blah blah blah you’ve heard it all before.

To get in on this, go to http://groupees.com/27crime and click either Get It! or Gift It! (Or both. No reason you can’t get a copy for yourself and one for someone else.)

The premiums to be awarded to the top five contributors include four autographed copies of the recently released print edition of Cleansing Eden and a unique, hand-crafted paper copy of Wild Bill. Proceeds will be split among the authors, with a share going to the National Kidney Foundation.

I’m jazzed to be included with such a talented group, and flattered to have been asked. The deal is only open for eight more days, so get in on it while you can. It’s a chance to choose your own level of support for several authors at once, as well as contribute to a worthy cause and be entertained for the contribution. (The “worthy cause” is the NKF, not me. I’m the cause of many things, few of which are considered worthy.)

Pop on over when you get a chance. Any questions can be asked at the site, or left in the comments below, and I’ll do what I can to get an answer.

Wild Bill Reviewed at Edged in Blue

Many thanks to Jim Winter over at the Edged in Blue blog for his kind words for Wild Bill. Jim's a fine writer, whose Road Rules made my Best of 2011 list. I have his Northcoast Shakedown queued up on Kindle for when life stops intervening so damn much.

Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead

I only heard of this movie because it stole its name from the Warren Zevon song. All I knew about it was the title.

So I wasn’t expecting much when the credits started to roll. Andy Garcia. William Forsythe. Christopher Lloyd. Treat Williams. Jack Warden. Steve Buscemi. Bill Cobbs. Oh. “And Christopher Walken.” (Don Cheadle also has a cameo not noted in the opening.)

Now they have my attention.

This is a solid movie about what happens when you mix with the wrong people and things go tits up. (In this case literally, when Garcia’s crew accidentally kills the girl they’re supposed to be bringing back to the crime boss’s son.) I’ve always liked Andy Garcia, and I appreciate his skill as an actor more all the time. (For a role you’d never expect to see him in, check out Confidence.) Here he pulls off subtlety most actors wouldn’t have the nerve to attempt, especially in a touching scene with Lloyd. This is also the first time I’d seen Lloyd in a straight dramatic role, and he is convincing as the senior member of Garcia’s crew.

The story moves along, the dialog sizzles, and the performances are spot on. The movie lost its ass, according to IMDB. (Budget of $7 million; American gross of about $500,000, though it did better in the UK.) It’s a shame. This is a good example of what can be done on a fairly limited budget, working with professional actors for whom the job is worth more than the check or the media coverage.

Will your life be forever diminished if you don’t see Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead? No. If you like solid, gritty crime stories with solid performances, sharp dialog, a little tongue-in-cheek humor, and bits of pathos that never become maudlin, it’s a well spent couple of hours.

Heaven’s Prisoners (Movie)

The Beloved Spouse and I watched Heaven’s Prisoners last night, a 1995 film starring Alec Baldwin as James Lee Burke’s protagonist Dave Robicheaux. Not a great movie, but a solid effort and well worth watching.

I’ve often wondered why more of Burke’s books haven’t been made into movies. This is the second I’ve seen (along with In the Electric Mist, with Tommy Lee Jones), and both came off well. Louisiana is a great setting for the kinds of stories Burke tells, mysterious more than mysteries, and the scenery and lifestyle are photogenic. New Orleans is just down the road, and The Big Easy is always good for a great scene or two.

I’d not read the book, but had meant to see the movie for some time. Baldwin is good as Robicheaux, though his accent slips occasionally. In his late thirties when the film was made, he’s almost too young to have done what Robicheaux has done by that point in his life (Army, NOLA cop, notorious homicide detective now off the force), but uses that to his advantage. He’s not a grizzled drunk with a hard-on. Baldwin’s Robicheaux wants what’s right, and will push the envelope beyond what’s rational to get it. Every bad thing in the movie happens because he can’t leave well enough alone, but his initial motives are pure. He has no way of knowing when he starts he would have done well not to push things, and it goes badly for him. Once the ball is in motion, he can’t help himself, and he’s more than capable of giving as good as he gets.

The screenplay was written by Scott Frank, who also did the first successful adaptation of an Elmore Leonard crime story with Get Shorty. (Hombre and the original Three-Ten to Yuma both pre-date it and were, of course, superb adaptation of Westerns.) Not having read the book, but well aware of Burke’s work, I saw many of the things that made Get Shorty successful in Heaven’s Prisoners. Frank keeps as much of the original dialog as he can, which adds considerably to the flavor, as both Burke and Leonard have their own distinctive styles with speech. (No, as I said, I have not read the book, but I know how Burke writes dialog. Work with me.) He’s also more concerned about remaining true to the tone of the book than with replicating the plot. Robicheaux’s friend, Clete Purcel, is missing from the film, though there is a scene that could only have been written for Clete in the book, his movie role filled by a DEA agent. Clete is problematic for screenwriters, as his presence in Robicheaux’s life often overwhelms his importance to the plot. (He is also missing from In the Electric Mist.)

Heaven’s Prisoners is not a great film, though it is the kind of movie American studios make too rarely these days: a crime film not filled with car chases and shoot-outs that gets you to the end with a satisfied feeling of knowing your time has not been wasted. (It should be pointed out the two main action sequences and both well done and compelling.) Watching inspired me to go to the local library and pick up a copy for comparison purposes. It also fired up my writing impulses, left mostly dormant for the summer, as it reminded me why I wanted to write in the first place: so I could write stories like that.