Things I Like
Yes, I know it's been a long time. *sigh*
Problem is I haven't felt the desire to write much as of late, mainly because of Real Life intruding into my thought processes, hanging around like The Pinata That Wouldn't Die before it finally broke open, much like a pinata.
So here's one of the Things I Like: John Cusack movies. From his days with "Savage" Steve Holland (Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer) I identified with the characters he tended to play back in the early 80s. After that came Tapeheads,(which I didn't see until much later) Say Anything, The Grifters (which in turn led me to Donald E. Westlake, writer of the Dortmunder series of mystery books) to much popular fare like Con Air and High Fidelity.
For me, however, what cinched him in the Honor Roll were four things: Eight Men Out which told the story of the Black Sox Scandal from the perspective of the guys involved. For baseball fans, this is an event that was the Steroid Scandal of its' day. Eight players from the Chicago White Sox team of 1919 to throw the World Series against the Cincinatti Reds. Cusack played George "Buck" Weaver, the guy who attended the meetings but didn't go in on the fix. He knew about it, however, and that was enough to prompt newly minted Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis to ban him for life along with the rest of them.
The second thing was Being John Malkovich. No words that I can put here will do this brilliant, if somewhat surreal, comedy/science fiction film. Cusack plays an out-of-work puppeteer who forced to work at an ordinary office to make ends meet. He finds that it's not so ordinary, as he discovers a portal to the inside of John Malkovich's head. Strange and wonderful, but not for everyone as the surreality of the piece can be hard to follow.
The third thing is 1408, a film based on a short story by Stephen King. Now, before you all grab your torch-and-pitchforks and storm Der Kestle gates, hear me out. 1408 (the story) did the one thing that I thought could never happen since the first time I read his novel It; it scared the crap out of me. To this day, there are times when I hear a phone ring, and imagine a malevolent voice on the other side saying "This is twelve, this is twelve, ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE DEAD! This is fifteen, this is fifteen..." *shudder* What puts this here is Cusack is not what you would call a Genre actor. His career has run the gamut from noir to romance to even an action film. Horror is not something he signs onto, so it was to my surprise and great delight that he was chosen for the part of Mike Enslin.
And the final thing, which is totally unrelated to film, is his long time friendship with Hunter S. Thompson. Which is the subject of a future Things I Like.
Indeed. And so much for all of that, eh? Time for this guy to wander off into the 'hood. Be seeing you.
Problem is I haven't felt the desire to write much as of late, mainly because of Real Life intruding into my thought processes, hanging around like The Pinata That Wouldn't Die before it finally broke open, much like a pinata.
So here's one of the Things I Like: John Cusack movies. From his days with "Savage" Steve Holland (Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer) I identified with the characters he tended to play back in the early 80s. After that came Tapeheads,(which I didn't see until much later) Say Anything, The Grifters (which in turn led me to Donald E. Westlake, writer of the Dortmunder series of mystery books) to much popular fare like Con Air and High Fidelity.
For me, however, what cinched him in the Honor Roll were four things: Eight Men Out which told the story of the Black Sox Scandal from the perspective of the guys involved. For baseball fans, this is an event that was the Steroid Scandal of its' day. Eight players from the Chicago White Sox team of 1919 to throw the World Series against the Cincinatti Reds. Cusack played George "Buck" Weaver, the guy who attended the meetings but didn't go in on the fix. He knew about it, however, and that was enough to prompt newly minted Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis to ban him for life along with the rest of them.
The second thing was Being John Malkovich. No words that I can put here will do this brilliant, if somewhat surreal, comedy/science fiction film. Cusack plays an out-of-work puppeteer who forced to work at an ordinary office to make ends meet. He finds that it's not so ordinary, as he discovers a portal to the inside of John Malkovich's head. Strange and wonderful, but not for everyone as the surreality of the piece can be hard to follow.
The third thing is 1408, a film based on a short story by Stephen King. Now, before you all grab your torch-and-pitchforks and storm Der Kestle gates, hear me out. 1408 (the story) did the one thing that I thought could never happen since the first time I read his novel It; it scared the crap out of me. To this day, there are times when I hear a phone ring, and imagine a malevolent voice on the other side saying "This is twelve, this is twelve, ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE DEAD! This is fifteen, this is fifteen..." *shudder* What puts this here is Cusack is not what you would call a Genre actor. His career has run the gamut from noir to romance to even an action film. Horror is not something he signs onto, so it was to my surprise and great delight that he was chosen for the part of Mike Enslin.
And the final thing, which is totally unrelated to film, is his long time friendship with Hunter S. Thompson. Which is the subject of a future Things I Like.
Indeed. And so much for all of that, eh? Time for this guy to wander off into the 'hood. Be seeing you.