Noir is the new black.
Okay, this was meant to go with the Midnight:30 strip, but I was too tired.
In order to rev myself up for Midnight:30 --and to give myself some idea for a plot-- I watched Brick.
Brick is what would happen if you took the level of importance assigned to everything in a film-noir detective story along with the suspicion and paranoia that IS Noir, and laid it on top of the template of a modern high school.
The nightclub singer becomes the school's drama-club diva, the street-smart detective becomes the loner kid who watches all the other cliques from his lunch spot behind the trailers. Everyone talks simultaneously like noir adults and modern kids. It's absolutely amazing, brilliantly shot with a great story and a satisfying end. It is styles-mapping done Right.
After watching that, I was revved up alright: revved up to watch more film noir. So I turned on Roman Polanski's Chinatown.
Jack Nicholson. I understand why the guy's a star when he did stuff like this. John Huston was in the movie. As a villain. Wow. Roman Polanski knows how to make a movie (and how to avoid felony charges, but that's neither here nor there). This movie did get me revved up to write Midnight:30. Partly because I was reading about the sequel (The Two Jakes) online, and the article mentioned that there was supposed to be a third movie to complete the trilogy. According to wikipedia:
"Screenwriter Robert Towne originally planned a trilogy of movies involving private investigator J.J. Gittes. The third movie, called Cloverleaf after a downtown Los Angeles interchange, was to take place in the 1950's and concerned the building of the massive freeway system and resultant air pollution, continuing with the backdrop of greedy developers and tycoons as in Chinatown (water rights) and The Two Jakes (oil)."
I thought, well, there's my concept: I'll call the story 'Cloverleaf' and deal with highway issues, since my Midnight:30 hero (Hal Fpast) is a traffic private eye. Perfect. I pointed the article out to xenosauridae and he independently came up with the same conclusion, namely that Cloverleaf could still be made.
Well, I was thinking about that --and the fact that I was now realizing how many movies include homages to Chinatown-- and suddenly realized that it had been made already (Cloverleaf, that is). It was just made under the title:
The plot is there: a freeway is going to be built over Toontown by Judge Doom's company (The Cloverleaf Corporation, heyo!). The references to Chinatown are there: compare the Roger-looking-at-pattycake pictures scene and the opening scene of Chinatown, just for one. And Toontown is as close to a parallel to Chinatown as you're going to get, playing on how inaccessible it is to policemen who can't patrol there like they can in the rest of their jurisdiction.
So that means I can't use the plot. Fine. Traffic private eyes don't investigate people building freeways anyway; those freeways are, honestly, good for business. However, I will say that this only strengthens my love for neo-noir. Who Framed Roger Rabbit as an elaborate Chinatown-trilogy-finishing device. Who woulda thought? Not even Wikipedia realized it. (Yes, it caught the references to Chinatown, but not to Cloverleaf; I'm so goddamn sharp, I cut myself[1]).
So now I have a list of movies I newly realize I need to see/own:
*The Two Jakes
*Who Framed Roger Rabbit[2] (seen it, now need it)
*Angel Heart (own it on VHS; I'll watch it this weekend)
*The Big Lebowski
*Blue Velvet
*I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
*Night Moves
*Mulholland Falls
*The Long Goodbye
*Klute
*Chaos
*Hollywoodland
Hollywoodland comes out on DVD on Feb. 6, the day before my birthday.
What a lucky break that is.
[1]to see if I still bleed?
[2]no question mark because question-marks in a movie title are supposedly bad luck at the box office. Struth.
.
In order to rev myself up for Midnight:30 --and to give myself some idea for a plot-- I watched Brick.
Brick is what would happen if you took the level of importance assigned to everything in a film-noir detective story along with the suspicion and paranoia that IS Noir, and laid it on top of the template of a modern high school.
The nightclub singer becomes the school's drama-club diva, the street-smart detective becomes the loner kid who watches all the other cliques from his lunch spot behind the trailers. Everyone talks simultaneously like noir adults and modern kids. It's absolutely amazing, brilliantly shot with a great story and a satisfying end. It is styles-mapping done Right.
After watching that, I was revved up alright: revved up to watch more film noir. So I turned on Roman Polanski's Chinatown.
Jack Nicholson. I understand why the guy's a star when he did stuff like this. John Huston was in the movie. As a villain. Wow. Roman Polanski knows how to make a movie (and how to avoid felony charges, but that's neither here nor there). This movie did get me revved up to write Midnight:30. Partly because I was reading about the sequel (The Two Jakes) online, and the article mentioned that there was supposed to be a third movie to complete the trilogy. According to wikipedia:
"Screenwriter Robert Towne originally planned a trilogy of movies involving private investigator J.J. Gittes. The third movie, called Cloverleaf after a downtown Los Angeles interchange, was to take place in the 1950's and concerned the building of the massive freeway system and resultant air pollution, continuing with the backdrop of greedy developers and tycoons as in Chinatown (water rights) and The Two Jakes (oil)."
I thought, well, there's my concept: I'll call the story 'Cloverleaf' and deal with highway issues, since my Midnight:30 hero (Hal Fpast) is a traffic private eye. Perfect. I pointed the article out to xenosauridae and he independently came up with the same conclusion, namely that Cloverleaf could still be made.
Well, I was thinking about that --and the fact that I was now realizing how many movies include homages to Chinatown-- and suddenly realized that it had been made already (Cloverleaf, that is). It was just made under the title:
The plot is there: a freeway is going to be built over Toontown by Judge Doom's company (The Cloverleaf Corporation, heyo!). The references to Chinatown are there: compare the Roger-looking-at-pattycake pictures scene and the opening scene of Chinatown, just for one. And Toontown is as close to a parallel to Chinatown as you're going to get, playing on how inaccessible it is to policemen who can't patrol there like they can in the rest of their jurisdiction.
So that means I can't use the plot. Fine. Traffic private eyes don't investigate people building freeways anyway; those freeways are, honestly, good for business. However, I will say that this only strengthens my love for neo-noir. Who Framed Roger Rabbit as an elaborate Chinatown-trilogy-finishing device. Who woulda thought? Not even Wikipedia realized it. (Yes, it caught the references to Chinatown, but not to Cloverleaf; I'm so goddamn sharp, I cut myself[1]).
So now I have a list of movies I newly realize I need to see/own:
*The Two Jakes
*Who Framed Roger Rabbit[2] (seen it, now need it)
*Angel Heart (own it on VHS; I'll watch it this weekend)
*The Big Lebowski
*Blue Velvet
*I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
*Night Moves
*Mulholland Falls
*The Long Goodbye
*Klute
*Chaos
*Hollywoodland
Hollywoodland comes out on DVD on Feb. 6, the day before my birthday.
What a lucky break that is.
[1]to see if I still bleed?
[2]no question mark because question-marks in a movie title are supposedly bad luck at the box office. Struth.
.