We have an event coming up on Sunday, Oct. 6, at the Putnam museum in Davenport, Iowa, a special screening of Road to Perdition. The details are here.
In the meantime, I’m wrapping up the research phase of The Return of the Maltese Falcon and should begin the actual writing by sometime this coming week. The research consists of me marking up, text-book style, a copy of The Maltese Falcon as I go through reading it in depth (and am reminded what an incredible writer Hammett was, and what an incredible book The Falcon is); plus material on San Francisco in the late 1920s. The great J. Kingston Pierce of The Rap Sheet sent me a picture book he wrote and assembled on the city, a resource that’s going to be invaluable.
Barb and I also screened the 1941 Maltese Falcon (on beautiful 4K) and films from novels don’t come more faithful – but it’s fascinating to see what director John Huston left out. Hammett’s Spade is much more ruthless than Bogart’s. Also, it’s illuminating to see how Hammett – without ever going into Spade’s mind – tells us things, including just what his relationship with secretary Effie Perrine really is.
I’ve said this before, and it’s not exactly a revelation; but Hammett completely creates the private eye genre, perfects and then abandons it, in The Maltese Falcon. Don’t talk to me about Race Williams – I’m a Carroll John Daly fan, have all of the books, but his take on the private eye (however much impact it had on Mickey Spillane) did not establish either the tropes or the artistic possibilities of the private eye novel.
While I’ve been very busy this year, I haven’t dug into the writing of a novel for a while, tied up with filmmaking and scripting True Noir: The Assassination of Anton Cermak.
Where True Noir is concerned, I’ve also been attending (by Zoom) much of the recording, which is nearing its end. This past week we recorded Patton Oswalt (a great guy) and have two more sessions with our Nathan Heller, Michael Rosenbaum, who is absolutely spot on as Nate. Robert Meyer Burnett, the director and another of the producers on the project, is hard at work editing the enormous project (ten audio episodes) and, based on what I’ve heard to date, is doing a remarkable job.
For now, the True Noir Kickstarter page is still active and you can order the audio drama there in various forms (from downloads to physical media) right now.
True Noir’s Nathan Heller, Michael Rosenbaum
I will be working on lining up the Iowa theatrical release of Blue Christmas, and a premiere event or two for Death by Fruitcake. I’ll be trying to do some promo for both. Over the weekend, I went over “check discs” of the blu-ray and DVD of Blue Christmas for Bob Blair at VCI, who are distributing it through MVD. Here’s one of the places you can pre-order it.
Here’s the sleeve.
The Blue Christmas Blu-ray is almost ridiculously overloaded. In addition to the movie itself, there’s a trailer, a feature-length commentary with me and producer/editor Chad Bishop, a documentary on yrs truly, over an hour-and-a-half of Q and A at the various premieres around the state of Iowa, and a booklet where I discuss the origin of Blue Christmas. The DVD is packed, too, but lacks the 90-minute-plus Q and A/premiere stuff – the commentary’s there, and the booklet, and the documentary about, well, me. It was produced by Muscatine Community College in 2023 when I was deemed a “legend” (in my own mind?).
There is a connection between some, if not all, of these things. Blue Christmas is essentially a rumination on both The Maltese Falcon and A Christmas Carol (specifically, the 1951 Alistair Sim film version). Nathan Heller is my take on the private eye that Hammett – and Chandler and Spillane – developed.
My thanks to all of you who drop by here to see what I’m up to, and provide your generous support.
M.A.C.
