Skin Flick by Woody Haut – Review
A group of young friends are enjoying a carefree night in Pasadena in the early 1960s when suddenly their pleasant evening is interrupted by a large police presence on the streets. While ushering the teens away, an overly talkative police officer reveals that a woman has been murdered and the suspect is loose in the area. This fires the teens’ adolescent imaginations. Sure enough, they soon discover a man cowering behind a trash can down an alleyway. Assuming him to be the murderer, they savagely assault the man and crush his head with a rock, leaving him for dead.
This horrific event will define the lives of everyone involved, from the active participants to those that looked on unable or unwilling to stop it. As two decades pass, the friends drift apart, taking different paths in life: one becomes a cop, another a preacher and the main protagonist Billy, a modestly successful freelance journalist.
One day, Billy is contacted by Cassie, an old girlfriend. She wants him to use his investigative skills to help locate her teenage daughter who has suddenly vanished. Billy is hesitant at first, but he agrees to help for old times’ sake. After all, he’s had periodic romantic entanglements with Cassie and suspects he may actually be the father of the girl. As with the best noir tales, what begins as a somewhat reluctant assignment spirals into an all-consuming obsession. Billy is forced to confront the friends he was with the night a man was beaten to death twenty years earlier. He interviews Cassie’s ex-husband, a deadbeat poet who tacitly admits that he abused the missing girl. He interviews his friend who became a fire and brimstone (and sexually confused) preacher. He tries to recruit the support of his old pal who has become a terse, cynical cop. His passion for Cassie is reignited, even though she has become a ruthless businesswoman cashing in on the 80s property boom and embodies everything Billy detests about Reaganomics. Before he can judge his friends though, Billy is about to descend into his own personal hell. A nightmare from which it is far from certain that he will ever emerge.
I am sent copies of many newly published books… more than I’ll ever have chance to read, let alone review. But when a copy of Skin Flick arrived, and I saw it was the latest novel by Woody Haut, I knew it was going to be a book I would devour. I read it in two sittings. Would have finished it in one, were it not for the inconvenient fact that I had to go to work. Woody is a bona fide noir expert who has written several seminal works on the genre. His previous novels Cry For a Nickel, Die For a Dime and Days of Smoke were both superb. I’ve known Woody for several years as he was the guest speaker at the James Ellroy: Visions of Noir conference I organised at the University of Liverpool. In fact, there are strong parallels between Skin Flick and elements of Ellroy’s work. The fatal assault on the man hiding behind a trashcan reminded me of Ellroy’s Blood on the Moon, in which a horrifically violent event between adolescent youths reverberates through the decades, with equally violent results, for all of the main characters. But the stronger influence here is probably David Goodis, in that Haut doesn’t need a detective protagonist to unravel this tale of intrigue. Prepare to be sucked into Billy’s first-person narration as he recounts, in a form of noir poetry, the emotionally desolate landscape of eighties America and the fatalistic lives of the characters trapped in it.
Skin Flick is a modern noir classic.
Highbrow Lowbrow: The Hit vs High Fidelity
In the latest episode of Highbrow Lowbrow, I discuss the classic British Gangster and Road movie The Hit, and the role it played in revitalising the acting career of sixties icon Terence Stamp. My podcast co-host Dan Slattery argues that High Fidelity deserves a place in the pantheon of great movies about music. Both films were directed by Stephen Frears, and we talk about his eclectic career.
You can listen here. Enjoy!
In the Dark was an extraordinary internet drama that was broadcast (or should I say uploaded) onto YouTube between April and July of 2007. The drama focuses on Louise Paxton, a young woman who moves from Norwich to London to begin an exciting new life. The initial videos are fairly innocent. They show Louise having a farewell party with her friends in Norwich and then enjoying her new home. But pretty soon this idyllic life begins to fall apart. Louise begins to suspect that she is being stalked, and unsettling incidents in her flat appear to confirm this.
The video series was directed by Andrew Cull, who, working with a low-budget used practical effects with remarkable results in heightening the suspense of the drama. But the real star is Louise herself. Her video diaries are heartbreaking. She is increasingly scared, exhausted and always sympathetic. When the videos first came out, YouTube was in its infancy and the internet was awash with speculation that the videos were genuine, and even years later some viewers are still taken in by the story.
In the Dark was, of course, a hoax, or a drama, whichever label you prefer. It wasn’t real. I played a role in bringing this to light when I revealed the character of Louise Paxton was played by the actress Zoe Richards. I subsequently interviewed Andrew Cull who went on to direct the film The Torment (also known as The Possession of David O’Reilly) and is now a novelist based in Australia. For some time, I’ve been trying to get in touch with Zoe Richards. Her performance as Louise is heartrending and is key to the enduring appeal of In the Dark. Zoe Richards went on to play roles in Get Him to the Greek and Mr Selfridge. I was delighted when she agreed to be interviewed by me about the experience of playing Louise Paxton:
Interviewer: How did you first become involved in the production of In the Dark?
Richards: It was one of the first auditions I went to when I came back to the UK after studying at Lee Strasberg (Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute) in New York. I signed up to an online audition website. I was working six nights a week in a bar in Soho and auditioning for anything and everything in the daytime.
Interviewer: Did you bring a lot of your own personality and experiences to the character of Louise, or would say you are two very different people?
Richards: I experienced a stalker when I was eighteen years of age at university. We had to get the police involved. Working on In the Dark made me feel like I almost made a tribute to women like me. Scared to leave their homes. I wanted to be a part of something that made people aware of it.
Interviewer: Were the videos tightly scripted or did Andy Cull allow room for improvisation?
Richards: There was a producer and writer/director. I always took instruction from them but it was a fluid creative project. So I was allowed to bring my training from Lee Strasberg in. As naturalistic as possible. I wasn’t involved in the streaming or real time posting of the project. That was all the mastermind of Cull. He had a vision. And executed it well.
Interviewer: The drama is an intense viewing experience. Was it an exhausting experience to film?
Richards: No. I was hired for a two week period. Paid expenses for travel from Victoria (where I was living) to Streatham where we filmed the project. I made no profit. I was trying to get a showreel together after finishing Drama School in New York.
Interviewer: Did playing Louise Paxton have a beneficial impact on your career?
Richards: No. I did have to audition for The Torment after In the Dark. I gained the lead female role. I only realised it had gained gravitas after receiving your message over twelve years later recently. I had no idea some of the videos had over 600 thousand views on YouTube. Well done Andy. The writer is the star not the actor.
Zoe is too modest. Her performance as Louise Paxton is stunning and will sear its way into your brain. Watch In the Dark and prepare to be emotionally haunted.
Highbrow Lowbrow: Sexy Beast vs Shoot ‘Em Up
The latest episode of Highbrow Lowbrow (our ninth episode so far) is now available. In this one I argue that Sexy Beast (one of my favourite films) is the last truly great British gangster film. My co-host Dan Slattery makes the case for Shoot ‘Em Up as being the best film to spoof the action genre. You can listen here, and let us know what you think of our choices.
Highbrow Lowbrow: Das Boot vs Under Siege
In the latest episode of Highbrow Lowbrow, Dan Slattery has the highbrow choice and discusses the merits of the classic wartime film Das Boot. Whereas, I argue for the lowbrow, but no less enjoyable, action film Under Siege. You can listen here. Enjoy!
The Blood Ogre: The Hellish Menace Beneath the House Doc Savage Built by Craig McDonald – Review
There are few figures in American literary life who know more about the history of pulp fiction than Craig McDonald. In his series of novels featuring Hector Lassiter, McDonald created an extraordinary pulp history of the twentieth century, mixing fictional characters with historical events and real-life figures in the world of literature, showbiz and politics.
In his new novel The Blood Ogre, McDonald is on familiar territory, but he adds a supernatural twist and the results are devilishly good. Indeed, there are moments here that evoke vintage Clive Barker.
The story revolves around the reputation of two remarkably prolific writers, Lester Dent and Walter B. Gibson. Dent suffered a nervous breakdown and early death in 1959, perhaps brought on by the impossible schedule of churning out Doc Savage novels by the dozen and averaging two million words a year on his typewriter. In his final days, Dent had hallucinations in which he would see and interact with Doc Savage characters. In 1965, Doc Savage and The Shadow novels are enjoying renewed popularity. The Shadow author Walter B. Gibson has a knack for publicity rooted in his parallel career as a magician. People start witnessing a black-clad figure looming around the Greenwich Village house where Gibson penned the final Shadow novel in 1949. Gibson claims it is a ‘living mind-projection’ of The Shadow. But if a hero can rise from the pages of an authors literary output, then what other, more sinister, characters will follow him?
McDonald’s knowledge of this material is unsurpassed, and he seamlessly merges Doc Savage and The Shadow-like narratives into The Blood Ogre, in a story that still feels bracingly original. As a metafictional text, there is some discussion of the mechanics of a pulp story. But it is never done in a dry or distant manner. Rather, McDonald invites the reader to ponder why we love these stories. How they remind us of childhood dreams and fading generations, and how the stories evolved over the decades to reflect changes in American culture.
The Blood Ogre is an affectionate tribute to a bygone era which might just earn a place in readers’ hearts so that is talked about long after the present generation has gone. No author can ask for more.
Highbrow Lowbrow
The latest episode of Highbrow Lowbrow is now available. My podcast co-host Dan Slattery and I look at two very different war films. Dan’s pick is Rogue One, possibly the best film in the Star Wars franchise. I discuss the World War Two murder mystery The Night of the Generals. An underrated gem.
You can listen here. Enjoy!
A James Ellroy Playlist: Death of a Composer
In the following post I am going to look at how James Ellroy portrays both real-life and fictional composers in his writing. Buckle up for some tales of talent and tragedy…
Requiem for Danny
The Big Nowhere contains many musical references. Towards the end of the novel, the dying Dr Saul Lesnick is being interrogated by Buzz Meeks about his patient, the recently deceased jazz musician Coleman Healy. Through his description of Coleman’s music, the reader gets a glimpse of how Ellroy might compose. Healy had been working on a piece titled “The Big Nowhere”, the same title as Ellroy’s novel:
Coleman was fighting his urges inchoately, with music. He was working on a long solo piece filled with eerie silences to signify lies and duplicities. The riffs would spotlight the unique high sounds he got with his sax, loud at first, then getting softer, with longer intervals of silence. The piece would end on a scale of diminishing notes, then unbroken quiet – which Coleman saw as being louder than any noise he could produce. He wanted to call his composition The Big Nowhere.
With such an aura of death hanging over these characters, it’s not surprising that Ellroy views music as elegiac. But this can be both solemn and exhilarating, as expressed in the stark high and low sounds that Coleman, a killer himself, produces with his sax. However, Coleman’s Big Nowhere is forever unfinished and deliberately meaningless. Ellroy’s sense of music is more closely tied to a narrative: crime fiction resolves mysteries and answers questions. Of course, the meaninglessness itself might be the answer, as Ellroy views Coleman’s murderous personality to be devoid of morality, empathy and ultimately just empty.
Jean-Louis Marchand and Delphine Baudet composed the album Requiem for Danny based on The Big Nowhere. In November 2019, while Ellroy was touring France, Marchand and Baudet pulled off a major coup when Ellroy agreed to read from the novel while the orchestra was performing Requiem for Danny onstage. Marchand and Baudet captured the brilliance of Ellroy’s prose and, at times, the bleakness of Coleman’s existence.
The track below is titled ‘Suicide’ and concerns the death scene of Danny Upshaw. Once again, music and death merge seamlessly in Ellroy’s world. May the Blues Sing Thee to Thy Rest…
Uptown Blues
In an essay titled ‘Ellroy’s History – Then and Now’ Ellroy describes the setting of his novel Perfidia, ‘rogue cops screw movie stars. Jimmie Lunceford is gigging at the Trocadero. Dig his eerie “Uptown Blues”‘. Ellroy had previously spoken of his love for Jimmie Lunceford’s music and “Uptown Blues” in particular on the BBC Radio 4 programme Inheritance Tracks. The concept of the show is that the guest picks one track they inherited from their parents and one track they want their children, loved ones or future generations to inherit from them.
Ellroy speaks knowledgeably about both the creative and technical aspects of the music which makes “Uptown Blues” such a powerful piece, ‘It has a haunting alto sax solo by Willie Smith, a haunting trumpet solo, and it’s almost a primer on the quiet elegiac mournful power of the Blues’
Ellroy chose “Uptown Blues” as the piece he hoped the children of his then partner would inherit from him. Lunceford died of a heart attack, shortly before a scheduled performance at The Bungalow Dance Hall in Seaside, Oregon. He was only 45. ‘He had a bum ticker’ Ellroy rued in Inheritance Tracks.
The composer dies. His music lives on.
Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy is available to pre-order from Bloomsbury. You can also pre-order a copy from all good booksellers.
An Interview with Larry Beinhart: Author of The Deal Goes Down
The Deal Goes Down marks the return of Tony Casella, an ex-private eye who first appeared in Larry Beinhart’s Edgar Award winning novel No One Rides For Free in 1986, and reappeared in the follow-up novels You Get What You Pay For (1988) and Foreign Exchange (1992). This is the first Casella novel in thirty years and the character begins the story at a very low ebb. Estranged from his family, in financial trouble and on the brink of having his home repossessed, Casella is thrown a lifeline when he meets a woman named Maddie who offers him a well-paid assignment – murder her abusive husband. Things get complicated when Maddie, backed by a financier who funds “good causes”, compiles an array of dangerous assignments for Casella.
The Deal Goes Down is a gripping read, both thrilling and amusing in equal measure. It can be read as a standalone novel or as part of the Casella series. I strongly recommend that you jump on this narrative rollercoaster that begins in Woodstock NY and climaxes at an Austrian resort where Casella faces off against a Russian billionaire named God.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Larry Beinhart about The Deal Goes Down. Talking to Larry is like reading one his novels. He is witty, clever and, like all good books, very companionable.
Just don’t mention Hollywood…
Interviewer: The Deal Goes Down marks the return of Tony Cassella. Could you tell us a little about the character and why you decided to bring him back after a thirty year hiatus.
Beinhart: I thought it might be a good idea for me to go back to my roots. Fundamentals. He doesn’t care. Unless I make him do so. If I was going to bring him back I thought it was interesting to make him 30 years older. A real 30 years. It’s a significant change, especially if it takes someone – anyone – into their seventies.
Once I started, it was just a matter of going with it as if it was real.
If you go back to the first book, you see he was a guy who started as an idealist. It was the time of Serpico and Bob Leuci (Prince of the City), if you remember all that, and like them his idealism hurt him. There’s also a very New York if you fuck with me, I’ll fuck with you reflex that we were taught in our school yards. One more layer is that he was smart enough to get into Yale law school (but left because he had to make a living when his father died.)
All those things allow him to act effectively and to let him get himself into trouble. When we last saw him, at the end of Foreign Exchange, he was actually happy and optimistic. Newly married to the mother of his first child, ready to reconcile those conflicting impulses.
Interviewer: Part of the genius of Casella is that, when he is being roped into various serious crimes, he can anticipate how the police will investigate, and therefore wrongfoot them. Do you do a lot of research into modern detection methods?
Beinhart: The “modern” elements of modern detection methods are, for the most part, matters of common knowledge.
Most important, the electronic footprints of our e-devices, computers and phones.
I’ve seen and read lots of crime/thriller dramas where those elements play an important part. Except for the Dragon Tattoo girl, it always the genius sidekick or super-tech-wiz that the hero knows who does the e-wizardry. The hero asks, that person delivers. We never see it done.
I want to see it done. Or, if I were to use a wizard, I’d want to at least see how one is found, contacted, operates.
So, I stick with matters that are in reach or easily researched.
An auto accident? Definitely a mechanical analysis, likely a tox screen. What do tox screens reveal? Look on the net or ask your friends who use a lot of mood elevators.
It’s more that he thinks through what they’re certain to do.
Interviewer: The novel covers a lot of serious topics, everything from domestic abuse and murder to international intrigue, but always with a terrific sense of humour. How important is it for you to have a comedic element to your writing and who were your influences?
Beinhart: There’s a scene in the book in which Tony goes into the local coffee shop.
“Beinhart [yes, that’s me] was at Bread Alone, as usual, in his regular corner, the NY Times open in front of him. He claims to read it for the comedy and sure enough he broke out cackling.
Jay Samoff, a retired local lawyer, sitting beside him, said, “You know the rules, no snickering unless you share.”
That’s literal reportage of a real scene. Except for Tony being there, since he’s not real. That’s my mentality. To some degree my culture, classic post-war New York City. Also, a lot of life is really quite funny.
Interviewer: You reference yourself in the novel and make some satiric digs at Hollywood, including the shocking Buchwald Vs Paramount case. What would your advice be to writers in Hollywood to help them avoid being exploited?
Beinhart: Hah! Hahaha.
I have no idea how to avoid it. Some small amounts can be fought by a good agent (if you have one, if they care) or lawyer (if they’re good, well positioned, and you can afford one). If you have more power than the person you’re up against. If you’re lucky. If you’re so successful with other things – books or whatever – that you can turn down offers for years and figure you’ll be happy if there’s never a deal.
Most of the time the writer needs the deal more than the deal-makers need the writer. Then calculate if it still works for you.
Interviewer: The novel is timely as a subplot examines Putin’s inner circle. Do you enjoy writing about contemporary politics in fiction and does the current state of the world worry you, or do you have optimism for our future?
Beinhart: I write about politics and economics a lot.
Actually, I was trying to make this book not be explicitly political. Certainly not in the sense that Wag the Dog and The Librarian were. But we live in a political world. Our lives are constantly shaped by economic policies. So, it’s there.
The current state of the world, compared to what? The Great Depression? World War II? Segregation in the US and apartheid in South Africa? Putin compared to Stalin? COVID v. pre-vaccination polio?
Optimism would be based on prediction. Will it get better? Will it get worse? If I had to guess, I’d say clearly on the road to better – better science, technology, material production, nutrition, medicine, education, involving more and more people – unless something manages to blow it up. All that positive stuff is happening, relentlessly, no matter how many politicians, theologians, pundit-entertainers, want to dig us down into the mud of our illiterate histories.
Highbrow Lowbrow: Theatre of Blood vs Event Horizon
In this special horror-themed episode of Highbrow Lowbrow, I discuss one of my favourite horror films Theatre of Blood starring the great Vincent Price. My podcast co-host Dan Slattery argues that Event Horizon is an unjustly forgotten nineties classic. Expect good-natured banter as we discuss two horror films dripping in gore and go on diversions that take in everything from Hellraiser to Classical theatre.
You can listen here.
The Venetian Vase 