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True Noir in Session, an Antiques Indie, and M.A.C. on Film

Tuesday, June 25th, 2024

True Noir has a major recording session scheduled this week, and I hope to attend by Zoom. Participants are in California, New York and…? It’s a big, terrific name cast, bringing True Detective to life as an immersive audio drama from my recently completed ten-part script, and if you are a fan of the Nate Heller books, you’re going to be thrilled.

Our gifted director Robert Meyer Burnett is viewing the project as a movie – there’s even been discussion about animating it – and that brings me to a favorite topic around here: movies – and an announcement.

In what may be my swan song as a low-budget indie filmmaker, I will be directing (in tandem with my wife Barb) from a script we wrote together based on a novella we wrote (got all that?) the first ever movie based on the Antiques/“Trash ‘n’ Treasures” mysteries. The interest our forthcoming Christmas movie, Blue Christmas, has generated was encouragement enough to do another Yuletide mystery, Death by Fruitcake, based on the novella “Antiques Fruitcake” in the collection Antiques Ho Ho Homicides.

And the inability over the last ten years or so of two separate wonderful female showrunners to sell Antiques to TV prompted us to put the thing on its feet ourselves. As a little indie movie.

We have Brandy and Mother cast, with our first choices, whose identity won’t be announced for a while. For now, just know that many of our talented cast members from Mickey Spillane’s Encore for Murder and Blue Christmas will be back on board, including the latter’s star, Rob Merritt.

Pre-production is seriously underway, with producer/cinematographer Chad T. Bishop putting a crew together and meeting regularly with me for planning sessions. Barb has been gathering props and working with department heads on wardrobe and other areas of the filmmaking process. The script is finished, or anyway as finished as any movie script is until the cameras roll.

Why, particularly at this late date, am I wading back into indie filmmaking? A bunch of reasons.

Some of my markets for publishing fiction have dried up. I’m a white guy closer to eighty than seventy, and that makes me about as much in demand as a stale loaf of Wonder Bread. This lack of foresight on the part of a generation or two who have never heard of me will not stop me from creating. And I do love movies.

That was my mother’s fault, largely, as she took me to at least one movie every weekend, and often two; and the Uptown Theater had Saturday matinees, too. Plus, TV was full of old movies. I was part of the first generation born to TV-watching. I saw George Reeves play Superman, first run. I saw Martin and Lewis movies in the theater – never missed a one. And, after that, Jerry’s solo efforts, although it started getting challenging around Three On a Couch (1966).

Speaking of Jerry Lewis, I am proud to say that my regular Saturday afternoon movie-watching with my eight-year-old grandson Sam continues with his enthusiasm for Ray Harryhausen stop-motion Sinbad movies now equaled by his giddy joy at encountering both Martin and Lewis and Jerry Lewis himself. That I have made my grandson a Jerry Lewis fan is one of my proudest achievements. First up was Artists and Models, and lately it was The Disorderly Orderly. Plus You Tube gems like the following excerpt from Cracking Up.

Please don’t write me and tell me what a horrible person Lewis really was. How he left his kids out of his will and hit on female co-stars and supposedly did this and that reprehensible thing. I have wrestled with the difference between the public and private artist (and he was an artist) and have come to decide that all we’re owed as fans is the work. The rest is largely irrelevant and/or past understanding. Why were two of the most sensitive singers of the Great American Songbook – Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby – such heels in certain private aspects of their lives? Don’t know. Don’t care.

They give us the gift of their talents, and they don’t owe us anything past that. That said, I don’t find O.J. Simpson that funny in the Naked Gun movies – of course, he always was the least funny things in those movies – and I haven’t been able to stomach Robert Blake post-his wife’s murder. Consistency isn’t my strongest trait.

Take Roman Polanski and the sexual misconduct that makes him a fugitive in the United States even today. Does that make Chinatown a bad movie? Unwatchable because the director may have more to do with Noah Cross than Jake Gittes? Not to me it doesn’t – not any more than I can comprehend what it would be like to have your beautiful pregnant wife butchered by Charles Manson’s minions.

Which brings us to Chinatown. Let’s get this out of the way: the current 4K Blu-ray release of that great film is a stunner. It looks wonderful, better than I’ve seen it since seeing it (multiple times) in the theater on its initial release. I never tire of it and always see new things in it. Or should I not like it because Faye Dunaway is supposedly unpleasant on set? Gonna give her a pass on that.

Gonna give a movie a pass on everything but the movie itself, which in the case of Chinatown seems to be more screenwriter Robert Towne’s doing than Polanski’s, although arguably Polanski’s Sharon Tate-inspired ending is what elevates it to its deserved stratospheric reputation. Polanski reportedly cast John Huston as Noah Cross, a decision that also elevated Chinatown and not just because Huston directed the other truly great private eye film, The Maltese Falcon (well, Kiss Me Deadly isn’t bad either).

What struck me about Chinatown this time around is something I would guess others have already noticed; but this was the first time I did. I knew it had the same kind of emotional impact as Hitchcock’s Vertigo (my favorite film); but I hadn’t realized that Chinatown and Vertigo are essentially the same movie. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that.

Both stories revolve around the following: a detective who well-meaningly caused a death in the past, while on the police, and is haunted by it; a client who presents the detective with a false narrative; a scenario that plays with and against the viewer’s boredom while following the detective shadowing a major figure in that false narrative; a female lead who pretends to be one thing and is something else; a detective who exudes confidence, but ultimately is taken down all the way to a tragedy of his own making, unintentionally destroying the woman he has come to love.

I could write a book about it.

And yet this film is one I’ve seen perhaps twenty times and none of this occurred to me before. Either I am very stupid or these movies resonate with me at least in part because of their structural and thematic sameness.

While I am on the subject of movies, let’s tip our hat in farewell to one of the screen’s most interesting actors, Donald Sutherland. Sutherland had a distinctive, quirky presence that should not have lent itself to a multiplicity of roles. And yet there was seemingly nothing he could not play. He put this down to not painting a character good or bad, benign or evil, but instead just trying “to act the fella.” To be the character. He understood that a villain never knows he is the bad guy. He knew that the line between comedy and drama was not just a fine one, but not a line at all.

As coincidence will have it, Barb and I watched one of our favorite films, Start the Revolution Without Me (1970), the evening before we learned of Sutherland’s passing. We revisited that film – which is not perfect, and in fact is rather ragged along the edges – because we’d watched the excellent documentary, Remembering Gene Wilder (2024), the evening before. The night before that we re-watched The Producers (1967), which we’d seen on its first release in a theater in Bettendorf, Iowa. To celebrate Wilder, who we have loved ever since that first Producers viewing. We loved him when he was not really famous yet, in the likes of Start the Revolution Without Me and Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (1970). He wasn’t quite Willy Wonka yet.

Anyway, we were both struck by how perfect and perfectly funny Wilder and Sutherland were as separated twin brothers, one pair a poor peasant one, the other a rich unpleasant one, both hilarious. Wilder and Sutherland would have made a fantastic comic team had they embarked on a joint career. How funny? Abbott and Costello funny. And, yes, Dean and Jerry funny.

And on some level, this is what I love about the movies. I never met Gene Wilder. Or Donald Sutherland. Or Jerry Lewis (probably a good thing). But they fill some of my most priceless, precious memories. I remember, for example, how hard Barb and I worked to find theaters where we could see Start the Revolution Without Me multiple times. I remember, for example, how initially offended Barb was by the idea of Zero Mostel diddling little old ladies out of money for his latest flop play in The Producers…until she came to find it hilarious. I remember how it felt, as a ten year-old child, to see Vertigo for the first time and be as fooled by the plot as James Stewart. I remember seeing Chinatown for the first time and realizing there was potential in the private eye story to be something more than a mere genre piece.

These actors and directors are friends we encounter, and if in real life they are assholes, find someone else to care because I don’t. These are memories I cherish, as much or nearly so as actual experiences.

And I wonder, as we go to the movies less and less – and when we encounter more and more unspeakable behavior in the seats around us – if watching even the best binge TV available (Mad Men, Sopranos, Breaking Bad) can ever have the impact of that church of popular culture where the wine is Coca Cola and the Sacramental Bread is popcorn?

M.A.C.

Tags: Antiques Ho-Ho-Homicides, Antiques Series, Blue Christmas, Death by Fruitcake, Encore for Murder, Mike Hammer, Nate Heller, Nathan Heller, Trash 'n' Treasures, True Detective, True Noir
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 3 Comments »

You Tube and Me (And How to Be a Fiction Writer!)

Tuesday, May 28th, 2024

I have gotten into the habit of looking at a lot of YouTube of late. Working on a big project like True Noir – the ten scripts for a massive audio production of the first Nathan Heller novel, True Detective (1983) – I find the bite-size offerings that YouTube serves up make ideal late night comfort food. Earlier in the evening, I have usually watched a movie on physical media with either my wife Barb or my son Nate – who comes down from his house up the street after he and his wife Abby manage to get our two grandkids Sam and Lucy to bed – and don’t feel like digging into another feature-length presentation.

The algorithm YouTube uses to generate new offerings on their “recommended” feed – fed by what you last watched and by your subscriptions – means there’s always something new to watch. Unfortunately the flaw is that if you sample something just to get a look at it in the “what’s this about?” sense, you get barraged with material generated by that sampling. Look at one Jordan Peterson video and you’ll get ten more. Look at one Jimmy Carr video and get you swamped in those, but also other “offensive” comedians. Check out Steve Schmidt’s The Warning and receive an avalanche of anti-Trump material. Videos on filmmaking often attract my attention, particularly ones on micro-budget indies.

Sometimes that’s okay. You learn things and at times your interests are fed (as opposed to simply your curiosity). I watched a Ballistics Burgers video and enjoyed it and now I’m on my way to learning how to make a delicious cheeseburger, if I ever get around to trying. And the algorithm thing led me to Robert Meyer Burnett of Robservations and Let’s Get Physical Media, who is now my collaborator on the Nathan Heller audio project, and Heath Holland, whose Cereal at Midnight I am now guesting regularly on (or irregularly – about once a month). Both Rob and Heath are now good and valued friends of mine.

You quickly learn that some of the presenters on YouTube are naturals at it – like Rob and Heath – and others are just guys in their basements with the appeal and communication skills of somebody who just starts talking to you in the supermarket. A YouTube video with a subject that interests you, or just intrigues you, is not guaranteed to include a presenter who ought to be presenting. It’s a democratic landscape, but we all know democracy is messy.

Recently I checked out a few videos purporting to teach novices how to write. I am always willing to learn – after all, I’ve only been doing this since I was in junior high in the early 1960s, and writing professionally since 1971. I have since been bombarded by tips on how to avoid “filter words” (a very popular phrase right now) and words to never use (like “very,” which I just did).

What is disconcerting about these videos – and I’ve sampled a bunch, meaning my YouTube feed will drown me in the damn things for a while – is they feature (A) very young writers…damn, I did it again!…or (B) writers you’ve never heard of, or (C), young writers you’ve never heard of. Many tend to be young woman (under thirty) who speak with clear-eyed confidence in training others how to do what has enabled them to become successful writers. Being a successful writer among these self-appointed teachers of the craft often means they self-publish, though that fact is usually glossed over quickly.

Not all of this advice is good, but neither is it necessarily bad. But who are these people, except up-talking young ‘uns who have no business giving advice to anyone? Never mind, because (as I say) not all their advice is bad, and they often do discuss important topics like writing a good first sentence and whether or not to outline.

The problem, beyond too much self-confidence and an overwhelming desire to fill a YouTube screen with their face, is that fiction writing can’t really, not exactly, be taught. I used to do seminars – for a long time, it was every summer at Augustana College in Rock Island, and a lot of my attendees went on to successfully publish – but I always made the point that fiction writing has no rules, just strategies. No right or wrong, just what works. For you. The individual.

I had tips and shared them. For example, I discouraged opening with a line of dialogue, a practice in which a lot of writers (including published ones, even successful ones) indulge. I would point out to those attending the seminars that opening with dialogue does not tell you enough – you don’t know who is speaking or where they are uttering this supposedly reader-catching bit of fake human speech.

Both opening with dialogue and avoiding doing so, however, are a strategies. Tactics. Not rules.

I have written here before about how useless I consider advice from the likes of Elmore Leonard and Stephen King is to wannabe authors. Not because I think Leonard and King are bad, but precisely because they are good. Better than good. They are great storytellers who have developed their methods by trial and error, and by having grown up as little Leonards and Kings consuming a lot of narrative storytelling, both novels and movies and maybe even the occasional play.

No quick path to learning how to write fiction is available. None. You have to be obsessive about storytelling – wanting to tell stories, wanting to read/see/and-ultimately create stories. But it’s mostly strategy.

What should the first line be? Is the basic story I have in mind better served by first person prose or third person? How is point of view best served in this piece of fiction? The answers to such questions come from the individual writers.

James M. Cain

Mickey Spillane

Donald E. Westlake

James M. Cain taught me to write dialogue (also Jack Webb on 1950s Dragnet). I never met Cain (or Webb), but they taught me by example. Raymond Chandler and Mark Twain schooled me in writing in first person. I came to know – personally know – Mickey Spillane and Donald E. Westlake. But I learned writing action/violence scenes from Mickey and sublime point-of-view technique from Don, long before I met either one outside of the pages of their books.

Some young blue-eyed girl, staring out at you from the television (or “monitor,” to you younger folks) is not going to tell you what a grown-ass woman like Fannie Flagg or even Ayn Rand will. Rand is a good example because she did a lot of things wrong, but also a lot of things right. That kind of successful writer can stimulate thinking along the “I should do this but not that” line. People of less than genius intelligence (like me) can learn more from Harold Robbins in The Carpetbaggers than Marcel Proust in Remembrance of Things Past – particularly when you are starting out to teach yourself in junior high school.

I don’t mean to pick on the females here, because plenty of guys – particularly in the screenwriting area – are turning their own experiences into rules for the easily swayed. I started watching a video where the interviewer was acting like he was in the presence of a real master of the craft – Robert Towne, maybe, or (again) Elmore Leonard – and when the uber-confident dispenser of screenwriting craft’s credit was finally mentioned, the guy had written a Charlie’s Angel movie.

When I was doing seminars, I worked with a lot of young women of all ages who wanted to be romance writers when they grew up (some of these young women were twenty, others sixty with all stops between). They did a lot of things right, in their fiction, and often came together in writers’ groups and helped each other learn and grow. I found then, and believe now, that this kind of thing is positive. Workshops, like the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa where I fought many battles, gets you down in the trenches with other writers, discussing specifics like plot and character, not “rules,” learning tactics, not “never use adverbs.”

Most of the people telling you never to use adverbs do so in sentences that contain adverbs.

There is only one teacher who can teach you writing: you. The fiction you love will guide the way. Looking at novels and stories (and movies) that are favorites of yours, but doing so in an analytic way, can be helpful. Hitchcock can teach any writer and that isn’t even what he’s trying to do.

Of the young, clear-eyed women teaching others how to write on YouTube (often with pets lurking in the background, scene-stealing), almost none of them discuss first-person writing, or understand that many of the “filter” words to avoid are crucial to writing effective first-person. Barb and I (as “Barbara Allan”) use two narrators in the Antiques novels, neither of whom is a trained writer, which is a great source of fun for us in the books and, we hope, for readers.

One of these very young (“very” again!) writers weighed in on a topic I’ve explored here quite a bit – the wrestling match I sometimes have with editors and even readers about my insistence on describing what a character is wearing. This young writer said she got around that by simply stating something along the lines of “Joe was a sharp dresser” and never describing Joe’s wardrobe again in any way throughout the novel. That’s a choice. A tactic. But I consider physical description and a rundown on wardrobe to be key elements of characterization, at least as I approach it.

That’s all for today. I have Steve Schmidt and Jordan Peterson videos to watch.

* * *

The first Quarry’s Return reviewer has appeared and it’s a nice one.

How to read the Nolan books in chronological order.

And Road to Perdition is once again cited as an outstanding film from a comics source.

M.A.C.

Tags: Nolan, Quarry, Quarry's Return, Road to Perdition, True Detective, True Noir, True Noir: The Nathan Heller Casebooks
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 1 Comment »

Cutout Emerges and True Noir Begins

Tuesday, April 16th, 2024

Paperback:

E-Book:

Digital Audiobook:

Audio MP3 CD:

Today is publication date for Cutout, the new novella written by Barb and me. You should be able to order the print version from Amazon now (it includes some wonderful illustrations and should be a very nice physical book). Also available are the Kindle version and an audio version from Skyboat, who have done such a terrific job with the Quarry novels, the first two of three Fancy Anders titles, and more. The reader is Gabrielle de Cuir, who always does an excellent job. Barb and I have not heard it yet but are anxious to. Nor have we seen the print version and are anxious to.

I’ll interrupt myself to share with you this nice write-up from “Bits and Pieces” at Jerry’s House of Everything blog:

Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins (or maybe Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins), Cutout. Crime novella. “A young woman from the Midwest, recipient of an unexpected college scholarship, is recruited into a lucrative courier job that shuttles her from Manhattan to Washington, D.C. There’s a slight drawback: the previous two ‘cutouts’ died by violence.” Preordered; publication date is tomorrow 5/16. Also, Max Allan Collins Collection Volume 5: Twist in the Tale. E-Book compilation five books by Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins: two novels (Reincarnal and Bombshell) and three short story collections (Murder — His and Hers, Suspense — His and Hers, and Too Many Tomcats and Other Feline Tales of Suspense). A superb bargain.

Thanks, Jerry!

The idea for Cutout was Barb’s and her draft was so good, working with it was a genuine pleasure. I think it represents our best work together, and really reflects her remarkable abilities as a storyteller and just flat-out good writer.

Neo-Text, who brought out the Fancy Anders novellas, is the publisher. They are in finally stages of prepping the third Fancy Anders, which will again have Fay Dalton illos. It’s my hope that the three Fancy Anders novellas (which interconnect) will be gathered into one novel with the Dalton art done full-color justice. And if the first two audios of Fancy Anders read by Gabrielle de Cuir (with music and sound effects) are any indication, Cutout should be very well-served on audio.

On a somewhat similar vein, the Kickstarter for the Nathan Heller fully-immersive audio dramas is about to go live. I have described this as a podcast series but that doesn’t do it justice. You’ll soon be able to get a sample of director Robert Meyer Burnett’s impressive handiwork with the proof-of-concept “pilot” I wrote, based on the opening of Stolen Away. Nate Heller is portrayed on that pilot by Todd Stashwick of Star Trek: Picard fame. That Todd is a Chicagoan and a former Second City cast member resonates extremely well with me.

We are beginning with the first Nathan Heller novel, True Detective, and I have delivered the first of ten scripts, which I am pleased to say got a rave review from director Burnett. I will admit it felt odd returning to a novel I wrote in 1981-1982 for 1983 publication, the book that I consider in many ways the real beginning of my career (meaning no offense to Nolan, Mallory or Dick Tracy). Since I am planning what will likely be the final Heller novel, The One-Way Ride, to be published by Hard Case Crime, the audio series seems somehow right to also be circling back to Nate Heller’s first recorded case, “The Assassination of Mayor Cermak.”

There’s an official Nate Heller/True Noir YouTube Channel with a pic of Rob Burnett, Todd Stashwick and the rest of the cast at the proof-of-concept pilot session.

* * *

Speaking of True Noir, Nate Heller and Rob Burnett, here’s a podcast interview with Rob that gets into True Noir and Heller, on John Suentes’ excellent Word Balloons.

The great Putnum Museum in Davenport, Iowa, is showing Road to Perdition on Sunday, May 19, at
2:30 p.m. in their Giant Screen Theater. I will be handling a Q and A session afterward. Details are right here.

Finally, the best ten performances on film of Tom Hanks are discussed here. Guess what #3 is?

M.A.C.

Tags: Cutout, New Releases, Stolen Away, True Detective, True Noir
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 1 Comment »

Blue Christmas at The Last Picture House

Tuesday, March 26th, 2024

Today I’m sharing a few photos from our Muscatine, Iowa, premiere screening of Blue Christmas and more than just a few pics from the last stop on our premiere tour, The Last Picture House.

Karlyn Larson, MAC, and my old friend from band days, Charlie Koenigsaecker

Sheila Miller, Dave Juering (who plays the “snake” Larry Turner in BLUE CHRISTMAS), Rob Merritt (Richard Stone) on the red carpet at the Muscatine Premiere showing of BLUE CHRISTMAS at the Palms 10.

Charlie Koenigsaecker, Karlyn Larson, Christ Causey (Jake Marley in BLUE CHRISTMAS) Barbara Collins and Sheila Miller at the Muscatine, Iowa, Premiere of BLUE CHRISTMAS at the Palms 10.

Sheila Miller, Linda Annis, Karlyn Larsen and MAC at the BLUE CHRISTMAS Premiere at Muscatine’s Palms 10.

All of these theaters – the Fleur in Des Moines and the Palms in Muscatine (both of which are Fridley Chain venues), as well Bruce Taylor’s Collins Road Theatre in Cedar Rapids and Davenport’s Last Picture House – have been incredibly supportive, and the turnouts have been stellar. Cedar Rapids, Muscatine and Davenport were all sold out, strictly capacity crowds with tickets at a premium.

First A.D. Jodi Hanson watches from the sidelines at the packed house for BLUE CHRISTMAS at the Last Picture House.

The capacity crowd at the Last Picture House in Davenport prior to the Premiere screening.

The response from the audiences has been great, but of course we are careful not to get too full of ourselves, as we are well aware we have a home court advantage. Still, it feels very good. As I’ve said here before, Blue Christmas was designed for streaming and home video, and seeing it up on these huge movie screens, with booming movie-theater sound, has been frankly thrilling to our little army of actors and crew who turned six days and $14,000 into a credible movie – in a world where Hollywood thinks $5 mil is low budget.

I was blessed with a terrific cast, all from here in Iowa, and a crew that included my producer (and editor and much else) Chad Bishop, longtime partner and D.P. Phil Dingeldein (aided by First Camera Assistant Liz Toal), and our lead actors Rob Merritt, Alisabeth Von Presley and Chris Causey. But really everyone in our cast of 24 (!) and tiny crew of half a dozen (!) hearty souls came through for me and for the production.

At the Last Picture House, Director of Photography Phil Dingeldein schmoozes with First Assistant Director Jodi Hanson and Set Design/Props Mistress Meg McCarthy.

Brian Linderman – Eddie Marley himself in BLUE CHRISTMAS – gears up for the Quad Cities Premiere at the Last Picture House.

Chris Causey (Jake Marley in BLUE CHRISTMAS) answers a query at the post-screening Q and A at the Last Picture House in Davenport.

The beautiful Barb Collins with unknown attendee at the Last Picture House premiere.

We have one more stop on this mini-tour – Blue Christmas is an official selection of the Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival and will be shown at 9 a.m. and at 1:05 p.m. on Saturday April 6, again at the Collins Road Theater (1462 Twixt Town Rd, Marion, IA 52302 – Marion runs side by side with Cedar Rapids). Tickets are $10 advance and $12 after April 4. I will be there for the 1 p.m. screening.

This will be the last opportunity to see the film before this year’s holiday season, when we’ll be in a number of Iowa theaters as well as available on Blu-ray from VCI Home Entertainment (MVD is handling streaming marketing, but it’s too early days to know what streamer or streamers will make it available).

The real final stop of our mini-tour will be for the Iowa Motion Picture Association Awards, an event held in Forest City, Iowa, on May 4. But this is a competition, not a festival.

My apologies to my readers and friends (not exclusive groups) who have been subjected here of late to pretty much nothing but news of this indie film production. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled Heller, Quarry, Antiques news very soon.

And serious work on True Noir the Nate Heller podcast starting with a 10-episode adaptation of the first novel, True Detective, begins this week.

* * *

According to this excellent article on Road to Perdition (the movie), James Bond was not Daniel Craig’s best role!

Finally, here’s a video about the upcoming Nate Heller podcast series. Check it out!

M.A.C.

Tags: Blue Christmas, Road to Perdition, True Detective, True Noir
Posted in Message from M.A.C. | 6 Comments »

Posts Tagged ‘True Detective’

True Noir in Session, an Antiques Indie, and M.A.C. on Film

You Tube and Me (And How to Be a Fiction Writer!)

Cutout Emerges and True Noir Begins

Blue Christmas at The Last Picture House