True Noir, Dick Tracy and King Kong

April 23rd, 2024 by Max Allan Collins

The crowd-funding campaign for True Noir: the Nathan Heller Casebooks at KickStarter is set to go live on May 1. I have delivered the first of ten-episode scripts (the production is based on my novel True Detective) and everyone seems pleased. Director Robert Meyer Burnett has started casting. Todd Stashwick of Star Trek: Picard and the 12 Monkeys TV series has been onboard to play Nate Heller for a while now, and in fact you can hear the 12-minute sample starring him – our “proof of concept” – as Nate right now. Right here:

Longtime readers of the Heller saga will recognize this as the beginning of Stolen Away, but that was just chosen as a way to intro newcomers to Heller and to give director Rob Burnett a chance to get the concept on its feet. We’re starting with True Detective, the first novel of course. In addition to Todd, several other notable actors have signed on, including a favorite of mine, Jeffrey Combs of the Re-Animator movies, as Mayor Anton Cermak. The image we’re sharing here is still in progress but you should get a kick out of it.

Jeffrey Combs as Mayor Anton Cermak in True Noir

I am about to dive into the remaining nine scripts (each episode should be in the 35 – 40 minute range) and this is now my current major project. I have a very busy remainder of the year ahead: the last scheduled Mike Hammer novel (Baby, It’s Murder), another Antiques novel (we have just signed to do two more!), and what looks to be the final Heller.

This past week was a busy one. Work on preparing the materials for the VCI/MVD release of Blue Christmas continued, with producer Chad Bishop in the lead. I recorded three (!) Blu-ray commentaries – Chad and I did the Blue Christmas commentary (and he did a great job), and for VCI I recorded commentaries for two mid-‘40s RKO Dick Tracy movies: Dick Tracy Vs. Cueball and Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome. These are for an upcoming Blu-ray release of the four RKO features, a boxed set that looks to be a jam-packed affair with multiple commentaries and much more.

I had done commentaries for the other two Tracy films (Dick Tracy and Dick Tracy’s Dilemma) in 1999 for the late Cary Roan, and these are included. Now, a quarter of a century later, I found myself completing the quartet of B movies for Robert Blair at VCI. I’ve always been fond of these films, though the sometimes lauded Gruesome is by far my least favorite, but did not expect to revisit them ever again.

As I have expressed here on occasion, my bitterness over being essentially fired from Dick Tracy – the strip that I had, in my estimation and that of others, saved from cancellation – had been deep and abiding until I was called upon by editor Dean Mullaney (who had first published Ms. Tree) to put on my Big Boy pants (so to speak) and write introductions for the IDW volumes that would collect the complete Chester Gould. I took on that task, spanning a number of years, and reminded myself how much I liked the strip and basically came to terms with the firing that frankly opened the door on much else good that has happened for me. Probably no Road to Perdition, for example, had I still been on Dick Tracy.

This is not to say I don’t retain some bitterness. I was told by a reliable source that the Joe Staton and Mike Curtis team (who’d been approached to take the strip over after Dick Locher’s passing) asked why the Trib wasn’t returning to me. The editor there (a newer one I had never met) reportedly said, “Why would we make the same mistake twice?”

Nonetheless, revisiting Tracy in both the IDW volumes (a long-running series now completed) and again last week by way of those four fun RKO B-features was indeed like Old Home Week. Tracy was my childhood introduction to crime fiction (and comics), and the first big break of my career.

Speaking of Road to Perdition, I was pleased to see the movie version again turning up with some very impressive neighbors — number 17 on Ranker’s list of The 90 Best Mafia Movies Of All Time.

By the way, when I recorded the two Tracy commentaries I did so with my longtime collaborator Phil Dingeldein at my side. Phil is the Director of Photography on most of what I’ve done in the world of indie filmmaking starting with Mommy (1994) and continuing through this year’s Blue Christmas. Between the two recording sessions for the pair of Tracy movies, Phil and I took lunch and discussed the revision I did recently of my script for a proposed film of Road to Purgatory, my prose sequel to Perdition. It’s a low-budget version (not “low” in my usual scrounging sense, but the Hollywood sense) designed for me to be able to direct myself.

That, frankly, is part of why I undertook doing Blue Christmas and am preparing another feature to shoot late this summer – I want to see if the Old Boy still has it in him. And I’m not referring to Phil.

Road to Purgatory has been the dream project for a long, long time. We’ll see if a dream is all it is.

* * *

For several years now I have spent Saturday afternoons with my grandson Sam, watching movies. We began with animation, including classic Warner Bros and the Fleischer Popeye and Superman cartoons. After that it was 3-D Blu-rays that were mostly CGI – Pixar and others – with occasional live action like the Spy Kids movies (some of which are also 3-D – my obsolete 3-D screen got a workout).

In recent months we’ve delved into comedies, in particularly the Pink Panther movies (skipping the first two) and The Great Race, the latter being more of writer/director Blake Edwards at his comic best. I’ve been edging up on some things that I loved as a kid, and Sam’s father Nate also loved (though not Lone Wolf and Cub yet – Sam is just eight!) (of course so was Nate at the time).

So this week we watched the 1933 King Kong. Barb had warned Sam that the first half hour or so was pretty boring, a lot of it on the ship sailing to the island with Skull Mountain. But Sam never wavered. He wanted to see the whole thing. When Kong arrived in all his gorilla glory, I explained stop motion to Sam – that Kong was mostly a puppet recorded incrementally, and that also a giant head and hand had been used. He did not get frightened but he was into it.

At the end I searched YouTube and found a colorized clip of the fight between Kong and the T-Rex. Sam told me to make sure I stayed with it till we saw Kong flapping the defeated dead T-Rex’s jaw, which was his favorite part (mine too).

Then Sam announced that he liked the black-and-white version better.

There is hope for the world.

M.A.C.

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9 Responses to “True Noir, Dick Tracy and King Kong”

  1. stephenborer says:

    Being a fan of David Niven and the ever-exasperated Herbert Lom, I have to ask why you did not want Sam to watch the first two “The Pink Panther” movies ?

  2. Darren Hudak says:

    “Make the same mistake twice”? The Tracy strip became unreadable for years after you stopped writing it, (pretty much from then to the current writer). I really have to wonder what mistake they think they made?

  3. I should have added “yet.” The first PINK PANTHER doesn’t really focus on Clouseau. It’s kind of a “real” movie and something of a sex comedy, so I skipped that for now with 8-year-old Sam. Ditto A SHOT IN THE DARK (my favorite of the movies), which is again more of a real story (sort of) and has quite a bit of sexually-oriented humor. So I’ll wait a while. Not long. But a while. This is a function of THE PINK PANTHER not being intended to launch a Clouseau series. And Clouseau was added to A SHOT IN THE DARK when director Blake Edwards found just adapting the successful play into a film looked to fall flat. So Sellers was approached, signed, the movie rewritten and, several years later both Sellers and Edwards (who apparently didn’t like each other) threw in together to revive Clouseau in the wonderful series that followed (although all of the non-Sellers sequels, including the Alan Arkin one and the ones cobbled together after the death of Sellers) are quite dreadful.

  4. Darren, it was obviously a glib, stupid remark from somebody who didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. When it was reported to me, I took great offense and I still do. By the way, I pitched Joe Staton to be the artist before I knew Locher was available; my memory is that Joe and Terry Beatty were offered up to do the job together.

  5. Ron Fortier says:

    Love reading about your introducing Sam to the original King Kong. My Dad took me to a 1955 re-release, I was all of 9. It seared itself into my soul and remains to day, my all time favorite move.

  6. stephenborer says:

    Thank you for the explanation on the first two movies.

  7. Fred Blosser says:

    Glad to hear that Sam Collins inherited the movie genes. At his age, I impatiently waited for the arrival of King and the dinos too. Now, in my advanced years, I think the lead-in scenes are nearly as compelling, a snapshot of the grim Depression years that my parents lived through. What was worse for Ann Darrow, winding up as with the protective Kong or trying to survive as a beautiful, penniless young woman on the streets, probably being sexually victimized? Prospects are equally sad for today’s homeless.

    Good news about the Dick Tracy BRDs. Love those unpretentious B-movies.

  8. Jeff Dyer says:

    Max, I hope Clover Press will collect your Tracy run now that the Gould run is complete!

  9. Jason Q says:

    Speaking of movies, my brush with greatness was working at Suncoast Video in Davenport, IA. A gentlemen came to the counter to purchase a laserdisc copy of Dr Strangelove. When he paid with a check, I did a double take. I had just picked up a copy of the first issue of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Danger comic a few weeks prior and when I saw the name on the check I couldn’t believe it. I knew the name Max Allan Collins. It was shortly after that I discovered Nathen Heller. I’ve been a fan ever since. Thanks, MAC.