TAX TIME AND F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

by Janice Law

1

March and tax time approaches. As I tote up my slender profits, my thoughts turn to George Harrison’s funny song and to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Most people of a certain age will recall “The Taxman,” but Fitzgerald strikes a chord with writers, specifically short story writers.

Oh, sure, he wrote one classic novel, The Great Gatsby, most recently transformed into a new opera, and several good ones, including Tender is the Night . But short story writers are apt to focus on his tales of the Jazz Age and on his biography, specifically, on the vast amounts of money he made from “commercial” short stories.

Once upon a time, short stories were commercial. They went out into the world and returned large checks. Although today this seems like a fairy tale, it is absolutely true that in the golden years before World War II, publications like Colliers, The Saturday Evening Post, and the old Cosmopolitan and Redbook, not to be confused with their modern incarnations, paid very well for short fiction.

When Fitzgerald had money, he wrote novels. When he needed cash, he turned to short stories for the slicks. He was at the top of the game: fiction, specifically short fiction, paid for a villa in France, treatment for his wife, Zelda, and the bar bill that eventually destroyed his health.

But even writers without Fitzgerald’s talent or ambition could make money from short stories. Pulps like the famous Black Mask, Dime Detective, and Amazing Stories fed a seemingly inexhaustible demand for short, lively fiction with an emphasis on those two staples, sex and violence. The weird and the exotic did all right, too.

Wikipedia reports that some of the pulps had as much as a one million circulation. If the pulp writer could not expect ruin on the champagne diet like Fitzgerald, he or she could expect a livelihood. Raymond Chandler was only one of many mystery writers who learned his craft working in the pulps.

Economically, the pulps are much missed, along with the television programs like Alfred Hitchcock Presents which purchased short fiction for anthology shows. Today it would be a very, very frugal writer – make that a live-off-the-land survivalist – who could exist on the remaining outlets for short fiction.

True, there are more opportunities than ever to see one’s work in print. Anyone with a computer can launch a story into cyberspace and a myriad of little electronic (and some print) magazines are looking for copy. What they don’t have are the million eager readers per issue who are willing to pay for their product.

Even surviving pulps like the beloved Dell Magazines line cannot claim a large circulation nor print more than a fraction of the professional output. As for the many “literary” magazines, few handle even unusual mysteries, and fewer still pay at all.

Moralists among us may consider how much modern short fiction writers have thereby avoided: the Riviera in high season, candlelit villas above the deep blue Mediterranean, dancing in taverns, Parisian café society. Thanks to the collapse of the short fiction market, we needn’t fear expensive holidays in Spain or dinners at the Ritz or stays at the Georges V. We’ve been kept from decadence and saved from too much good vintage and old whisky.

But is this enforced virtue a good thing? Besides regretting the Riviera, which must have been truly splendid before overdevelopment, I am sorry to see decently paid markets dry up for writers. One learns one’s craft by writing and getting published, and, I think, getting paid, which, like it or not, is the imprimatur of value in our society. The vast sums paid for work by the very few skew the aspirations of many beginning writers, all of whom think, why not me? Why not, indeed, except simple economics?

Instead of aspiring to be the next generation of Fitzgeralds or even of pulp wordsmiths, most writers today must have a Plan B. As I used to advise my students, the arts are an addiction; think how you are going to support it. Find a job you enjoy, develop a marketable skill, get a life that can nourish, but also support, your writing or painting or music. In short, if you’re serious, learn plumbing or marry money.

And, leaving aside mercenary marriages, this prospect is not all bad. While good writing and good ideas come from a combination of life and art, profitable formats congenial to writers are not always with us. The old women who told the first fairy tales around the fire side and the old men who created the American tall tales on their front porches did not get publisher’s advances or royalties or print publication.

Possibly it will be a long time before there is another golden age where a new generation of Fitzgeralds live the high life on short fiction. In the meantime, we can take comfort in the idea that, economically speaking, we are all poets now.

1. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda. Credit: Princeton University Library Photo via United Press International. [↩]

CONE of SILENCE

by Leigh Lundin

From the BBC, we learn of the President’s new-fangled SCIF secure communications tent set up in hotels. As dedicated writers of political intrigue, we jumped on the opportunity to update our latest thriller with this knowledge. We soon learned the President discovered a few problems during his visit to Brazil.

MURDER, TEXAS STYLE

by John M. Floyd

For quite a while now, I’ve been thinking of doing a column on a movie that I really liked but that nobody else — at least nobody down here in my end of the forest — seems to have heard much about. It’s Blood Simple (1984), the first movie by the Coen Brothers and (in my opinion) one of the best noir films since the forties.

I’ve been trying to decide what it was about it that made it so good, and I’ve also thought a lot about what made it different from others in the genre. I finally came to the conclusion that what made it different is also what made it good.

O brother, where art thy dialogue?

For one thing, this movie didn’t have a lot of conversations — especially in the second half — and for me that’s usually a disadvantage. Unless it’s something like Apocalypto or Cast Away, I prefer a fair amount of dialogue in a movie, and in any other kind of fiction. (The only film I’ve enjoyed lately that didn’t have much dialogue was The American, with George Clooney.) We writers know, or we should know, that characters talking with each other is one thing that keeps a story moving at a good clip, and holds the reader’s/viewer’s interest. The final 45 minutes of Blood Simple was an odd case: not much was said because not much needed to be said.

The movie also had an extremely slow pace, throughout. That’s something else I usually dislike, but in this one — as in The American — moving at a snail’s crawl seemed just right. The whole movie had a dark, haunting mood that took hold during the first few minutes and stayed there till the final credits, and its long, silent scenes managed to generate some of the most delicious suspense I’ve ever seen.

Shovels, knives, and bulletholes

Don’t be misled by my observation about the slow pacing. This movie had several — not many, but several — absolutely unforgettable scenes. One involved the burial of a guy who just wouldn’t stay dead, and the other involved a knife and a hand and a windowsill. Anybody who’s watched that second scene will know exactly what I mean.

Plotwise, here’s another unusual feature: more than in any other movie I’ve seen, none of the characters ever seemed to know what the other characters were doing or thinking. Every one of the four main characters was always charging off in a different direction, doing things based on wrong information, and the viewer was the only one who knew what was really happening. In a couple of cases, the viewer didn’t know either — and those plot twists made the story even more fun.

Bloody it was, simple it wasn’t

I also remember being impressed by the technical details of the movie. Yes, you could tell it wasn’t a high-budget film, and except for M. Emmet Walsh the acting wasn’t the best, but most of the little things (sound, lighting, camera angles, editing, etc.) that have to work in order to have a good movie . . . well, those were all there. It even had a unique score. Carter Burwell, who did the soundtracks for The Spanish Prisoner and almost all the other Coen films, made sure the music was a major part of this movie. It’s moody and quirky and even creepy at times, and does exactly what it should do: heighten the tension and add to the dark, brooding “feel” of the story.

What’d you say your name was?

Another point that I found interesting was that no one in this movie was famous, or even well-known, at the time. The faces of Walsh, Frances McDormand, John Getz, and Dan Hedaya are easily recognized now, but they weren’t then. There’s no doubt that casting less familiar actors in lead roles can sometimes work — look at Star Wars, Twister, E.T., Dr. No, etc. When superstar salaries don’t bust the budget, I guess there’s more money available for important things, like putting an exciting and believable story on the screen.

Last but certainly not least, this was a Coen Brothers product, and those guys know what they’re doing. (I won’t belabor this, because I wrote a column on them only a few weeks ago — but I should mention that most of their recent movies, including a True Grit remake, do contain big names. With the Coens’ track record, I doubt that fund-raising is the problem it might once have been.)

So here’s my recommendation: if you haven’t seen Blood Simple, give it a try. If you have seen it, watch it again sometime and look for the subtleties. Either way, I think you’ll be reminded that a good crime/suspense story doesn’t always have to have a stellar cast, a lot of subplots, or overly admirable characters. And I bet you’ll enjoy it.

THE IDEA

by Steven Steinbock

“Dad, is that the column we were talking about?”

“What column?”

“The Criminal Brief column. The one when you had the idea in the car that you told me to write down.”

“What?”

“Dad. The day before yesterday. You were driving me home from Cam’s house and you said, Sam, quick, write down this idea. It will make a great column.”

“Oh, right. Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Did you write it down?”

“No. You didn’t have a pen in the car.”

“Oh. What was the idea?”

“I don’t remember. All I remember is that you told it to me, and I said, ‘Yeah, that would make a really cool Bandersnatch column.’ And then you told me to write it down, but I couldn’t find a pen. So you told me to type it into your phone.”

“That was a good idea. Did you?”

“No. Your phone was in your pocket. And you couldn’t get to it because of your seat belt.”

“It always pays to be safe. You should always wear a seat belt, and never use the phone while driving.”

“Dad, like that really helps me. I won’t be old enough to drive for another two years. And because you couldn’t get to your phone, I couldn’t type your idea.”

“So what was the column going to be about?”

“That’s the point, Dad. I can’t remember. I was hoping you remembered and it’s the one you’re writing right now.”

“Oh. So you have no idea what it was on?”

“No. I just remember that it was a really good idea.”

“Hmm. If it impressed you it must have been good.”

“What are you talking about? I like lots of your ideas.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I just don’t like proofreading your columns at gunpoint.”

“That’s not fair, Sam. When have I ever made you proofread at gunpoint?”

“Well, there was the one about . . .”

“Okay, never mind. That was a unique set of circumstances. Now I’m really curious about that idea. It was that good, huh?”

“Yeah. When I couldn’t write it or type it on your phone, I told you I’d remember until we got home, and then I’d write it down for you.”

“Why didn’t you say that before? Where is it?”

“What?”

“Where did you write it down?”

“I didn’t. I remembered it until we got in the house. And then once we got inside I forgot to write it down.”

“And I thought I had memory issues.”

“Sorry, Dad. Next time just make sure you have a pen and a pad in the car.”

“I will.”

“Dad, if this isn’t the column we about the idea that we can’t remember, then what are you writing about?”

“I’m not sure yet. Give me a few minutes and I’ll have you proofread it.”

WHAT YOU SAY?

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

Today’s article continues from last Thursday’s with more slang words that interest our readers to a certain time period within our stories. Next Thursday, I’ll complete the trilogy.

From the Roaring ’20’s:
All wet — an idea or person as not one well received
Applesauce — an expletive when something is not desired
Balled up — confused
Bank’s closed — no kissing now
Bee’s knees — outstanding
Beef — problem or complaint
Bell Bottom — sailor
Bible Belt — are in the Midwest where Fundamentalist religion reigns
Bull — a policeman
Caper — criminal act
Check — kiss me later
Copacetic — everything’s all right
Drugstore Cowboy guy hanging out on a corner trying to pick up girls
Fall guy — a scapegoat victim
Fire extinguisher chaperone
Gams — a woman’s legs
Glad rags — best clothes
Handcuff — engagement ring
Hooch — bootleg liquor
It — sex appeal
Jack — money
Juice Joint — speakeasy
Kisser — mouth
Moll — a gangster’s girlfriend
Neck — kissing passionately
On the lam — running from the law
Owl — person who’s out late
Pinch — to arrest
Razz — to make fun of
Sheba — woman with sex appeal
Spiffy — elegant appearance
Tin Pan Alley — music industry between 48th & 52nd Streets in New York City
Tomato — a female
Torpedo — a hired gun

From the Dirty ’30’s
Broad — a woman
Bean shooter — a gun
Bleed — to blackmail
Brodie — a mistake
Butter and egg man the man with the bankroll
Cabbage — money
Cadillac — ounce packet of cocaine or heroin
Canary — female singer
Cave — house
Chicago overcoat coffin
Chopper — Thompson submachine gun
Cinder dick — railroad detective
Copper — policeman
Drilling — shooting with a gun
Face — a Caucasian
G-man — federal agent (coined by Machine Gun Kelly)
Hardboiled — tough guy
Low down — all the info
Meat wagon — ambulance
Packing heat — carrying a gun
Sourdough — counterfeit money
Stool Pigeon — informant to the police
Taking the fall — taking responsibility for a crime someone else committed
The kiss off — final goodbye

From the 1940’s
Big cheese — boss
Bump off — to murder
Hairy — out-dated
Hang up — to quit something
Heave-ho — throwing out physically
Heebie-jeebies — the jitters
Hipster — a member of the counterculture of the 1940’s
Honcho — the boss
Hots — desire for someone
In the know — person who is up-to-date on everything
Kick — enjoyment
Line — insincere flattery
Moolah — money
Nerve — boldness
Nuts — insane
Pushover — easily convinced person
Scram — leave quickly
Swell — wonderful
Wise guy — smart aleck
Whoopee — to have a good time

From the Nifty ’50’s

Ain’t that a bite — that’s too bad
Ankle-biter — child
Apple butter — smooth talk
Backseat bingo — kissing in a car
Big Daddy — older person
Binoculars — eye glasses
Blast — a good time
Bundie — boy in need of a haircut
Cat — a hip person
Clanked — rejected
Cop a breeze — to leave
DDT — Drop Dead Twice
Due backs — pack of cigarettes
Fade out — to disappear
Frail — without money
Frosted — angry
Germ — pest
Handle — your name
Grody — sloppy
Heat — the police
Ice it — forget it
Jacketed — going steady
Keeper — parents
Lighting up the tilt sign — not telling the truth
Night shift — slumber party
Off — to steal
Pad — home
Roust — under arrest
Scooch — a friend
Shuckster — a liar
Split — to leave
The Man — police
Tube steak — a hotdog
Warden — a teacher
Way out — ground-breaking
Weed — a cigarette
Yoot — a youngster
Zorros — the jitters

THE YOUNG AND THE CANCELLED

by Rob Lopresti

I have been busy at my VCR lately, eliminating this season’s bright hopefuls, new TV shows that I have decided after a few episodes, or a few seconds, that I never want to see again. For the record, the only new show I am still watching is Blue Bloods, and that’s hanging on to my recorder by a fingernail.

All of which made me think about some TV shows of the past. I am not talking about the great series we have discussed here before. I’m referring to the inspired failures, better than anything we have been offered this season, but which died sad and untimely deaths. Here are a few of my faves. Feel free to add yours.

EZ Streets (1996-1997)

From the mind of Paul Haggis (Due South, Crash). Pity Danny Rooney (Jason Gedrick), a petty criminal fresh out of prison and desperate to go straight. Only two people are willing to consider giving him a job: a crazy mob boss (played by the always wonderful Joe Pantoliano) who wants to hire him or kill him, depending on his mood, and a cop (Ken Olin) who wants him to work undercover against the mob boss. Character actor Mike Starr was terrific as a thug you had to love. The show was set in a chillingly empty rustbelt city and the soundtrack was haunting Irish music

Favorite scene: The mayor (Carl Lumbly) is giving a speech in a factory, promising the workers that he will save their jobs and the plant will not close. There is wild applause but the camera suddenly pulls back to reveal the mayor standing in an empty factory, reliving his glory days . . .

Johnny Bago (1993)

Pity Johnny Tenuti (Peter Dobson), a petty criminal fresh out of prison. (Does that sound familiar?) But in this case, Johnny was framed. Now he’s out and on the run from mobsters who want him dead, and from a vicious, unstoppable, highly motivated parole officer who wants him back in prison. Did I mention that the parole officer is his ex-wife?

The dude can’t catch a break, except for one. He meets an elderly man who promptly dies of natural causes, leaving Johnny in possession of his Winnebago (and a new name).

George S. Kaufman said satire is what closes on Saturday night. If he had worked in TV he would have said it gets cancelled after six episodes. Johnny’s travels through America are a wild mockery of life in the 1990s.

Favorite scene: What could be wholesome, more normal than a midwestern farm? Except the one Johnny stumbles across has plastic chickens and a nuclear weapon in the silo. It’s a don’t-scare-the-neighbors front for a missile base and the two soldiers on duty have just had a lovers’ quarrel. One of them has decided, hey, if I’m unhappy, why shouldn’t the whole world blow up?

Police Squad (1982)

Ah, this one you have heard of. It died after six episodes, but had a happy afterlife as The Naked Gun movies. It is often said that the show failed because you actually had to watch it. If you just had it on while you read the paper or knitted you would miss the visual humor that made up much of the show.

Favorite scene: Oh lord, pick one. But take this bit. If you weren’t watching, just listening, you’d be a minute into the scene before you heard a joke. But if you watch…

Boomtown (2002-2003)

Here’s an original concept: a show about cops in Los Angeles. How the hell do you make that new and interesting? By changing the style of storytelling. The show follows different characters, seeing the same scenes from several different viewpoints, piecing the story together. One episode starts at the end and fast-rewinds back to the start. Another begins with a patrolman, one of the good guys, handing a gun to an unseen character and telling him exactly how to get away with murder.

Like Police Squad was TV you had to pay attention to. It made it to a second season, barely, and died six weeks in.

Favorite scene: Charming, alcoholic Assistant District Attorney David McNorris (Neal McDonough) attempts to convince a suspect to talk. It’s right here, starting at 11:00.

The Black Donnellys (2007)

Four Irish-American brothers in Hell’s Kitchen in New York City move from the legal borderlines to being major criminals.

Another Paul Haggis attempt, and not as good as the other shows in this list. It feels like Haggis sold it based on a great pilot but hadn’t figured where to go after that. So why is the series on my list at all? Because it has a feature that is almost unique in TV: an unreliable narrator.

The stories are told by Joey Ice-Cream, a friend of the Donnelly family who is now in prison, being interrogated by cops. He cheerfully tells them about events he could not have possibly heard or seen, but hey, that’s no problem. They know that he is a compulsive liar.

Favorite scene: Joey Ice-Cream tells a tale; the cops do the editing. It starts at 2:40.

And a bonus . . .

When I think of series like these I always remember The Middle Ages, another classic loser from 1992, but this one had no crime connection.

Peter Riegert played a salesman who turned forty and had a mid-life crisis, deciding to try to get his old band back together. This cliché of a summary doesn’t do justice to a well-written ensemble show about generations of people unsatisfied with the life they have grown into. Riegert’s first line, dreaming that he is in elementary school and air raid sirens are going off: “Is this real or is it a test?” Good question.

Favorite scene: The hero’s father-in-law was laid off from his salesman job and is enjoying a no-necktie life as a taxi driver but he gets called back in an emergency. The pompous boss sends him to lunch with some important clients with the warning that corporate headquarters is keenly attentive.: “Remember: The coast is watching you!” Unfortunately the clients are such arrogant jerks that the salesman rips off his tie, drops it into their Mexican food and marches off, shouting back at them “The coast is watching you!”

Unfortunately, nobody was watching the show.

NOIR TO THE RESCUE

by Melodie Johnson Howe

Last week I left out the most important element in my column. Hollywood turned Mildred Pierce into a noir mystery, which the book was not. This is why the film worked so beautifully. Monte Beragon (Zackary Scott) wasn’t just a once wealthy man, a user and a predator, he was also a dead man. Dead from the very beginning of the film in that wonderfully black and white shaded scene when he falls on the floor from a gunshot and gasps, “Mildred . . . ”

What might be considered a soap opera or a “woman’s movie” was framed by murder and the detection of that murder. That’s why Mildred Pierce worked.

When Billy Wilder first screened Sunset Boulevard for an audience his movie received nothing but howls and derisive laughter. The cards they filled out afterwards were devastatingly awful. The reason for this was the opening of the film. Wilder had the dead Joe Gillis (William Holden) sitting up on a slab in the morgue and telling his story to the other corpses laid out on their gurneys. The audience thought it was hoot and not in a good way.

So what did Billy Wilder do? He didn’t give up the idea of having a dead man narrate his film, but he cloaked it in mystery instead of bad satire. He put William Holden floating face down in a swimming pool. As the cops take his picture and try to figure out what happened he tells the story. It was a brilliant idea and gave a campy movie the feel of noir and crime.

The next screening-audience loved it. What Wilder did is a great example of rewriting. He didn’t let the laughter of the audience change his concept of opening his film with a dead character talking; he used the context of the mystery genre to give the opening it’s own reality, tension and suspense.

Rebecca would just be another class-conscious love story if it weren’t for Rebecca’s questionable death. Was it murder? That mystery frames the story and is its driving force along with the haunting performance of Dame Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers.

In Jane Eyre, the wife isn’t dead. She’s crazy and locked in the turret. But without her you would have another English story of a young woman falling in love with her employer, a brooding nobleman.

Obviously Jane Eyre and Rebecca are not film noir, but they are shrouded in mystery and suspense and that is what holds us. The mystery form can take the banal story and make it anything but trite.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious is another example of using the elements of noir. He and Ben Hecht took a romantic thriller and brought darkness to it by making Ingrid Bergman’s character a “bad woman.” Noir loves bad women. It is her cynical promiscuity and alcoholic character that Cary Grant despises and despite himself is obsessed with. Just as the two of them start to let down their tough exteriors and begin to fall in love, he allows her to use her promiscuity to seduce and marry a German agent (Claude Raines) the CIA is after. The noir cynicism is complete. Yet, Notorious is a great love story. And a very sexy movie.

Sweet Smell of Success is not a mystery; but it oozes the dark cynicism of noir, giving it the gritty feel of crime. J. J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) is not unlike Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb) in the movie Laura. They are both arrogant and power hungry. But Laura is a true mystery and Lydecker must die for his sins. In Sweet Smell of Success, it’s Falco (Tony Curtis) who pays at the end of the movie by being beaten up by the cops. Yet it’s Hunsecker’s sister who prevails. She is the only one who escapes his grasp and seeks independence. I just recently discovered that this movie was taken from a short story, “Tell Me about it Tomorrow” by Ernst Lehman, who also adapted the screenplay with Clifford Odets.

It’s interesting how many of these movies depend on the strength of their female characters. Noir didn’t use or reduce women. Noir gave them a sense of power. I’ve read great literature about women, but it was the first hard blonde that strode into a bar in a Raymond Chandler story that made me sit up and take notice. She had to be dealt with.