writers in movies

there are plenty of writers who have done cameos in movies or was given parts in films.  hell, i remember when i was goo-goo-ga-ga over the mid-20th C poet robert lowell.  i remember a lovely evening i spent walking alone in The Haight in SF when i bought a copy of the lowell bio penned by ian hamilton.  that was a thick tome & i carried that with me up & down the neighborhood for a few hours as i ducked into this shop & that bar.  but i recall reading in that bio when lowell won i think the pulitzer he was contacted by a hollywood agent who asked if lowell would be interested in the movies.  well, sure, why not, after all lowell was the author of a few well-received plays.  he can try his hand at screenwriting.  no, said the agent, would the poet want to act in films.  lowell was a handsome man with a large head & his author photos were mighty things that triggered the interest of at least one hollywood agent.

now, writers don't need to have large heads or have commanding author photos.  but sometimes a writer can indeed command a few minutes of screentime.  hell, i remember renting VHS copies of murder by death [1976] at the local mom&pop video store because it featured truman capote who is magnificent in this murder mystery penned by neil simon.  capote is playing an exaggerated version of himself, i gather, but he is funny as hell in this pic.

but my two favorite writers in movies right now, at this moment, are the hard-boiled detective novelist jim thompson & poet/novelist james dickey.  both writers acted in but one film.  for dickey his acting is superb.  for thompson, who is quite good in the limited time onscreen, it is just cool to see him in a movie.

i confess, i recently watched farewell, my lovely [1975] directed by dick richards & based on the novel of the same name by, you know it, raymond chandler & didn't know that that was jim thompson.  tuff guy extraordinaire robert mitchum is philip marlowe who is chasing leads into the underbelly of LA.  this is a neo-noir flick where marlowe keeps his cynical wit as he navigates a gritty labyrinth of glamor & grime.  but i didn't know that that was jim thompson in a scene when we are introduced to the femme fatale played by charlotte rampling.  thompson plays rampling's husband, a powerful judge in LA but a feckless & impotent man in regard to his marriage.  thompson's face & his expressions are just right for his role.  

here is the scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqGm7dQSIl8. 

poet james dickey is a long favorite of mine.  still is.  & i think dickey & allen ginsberg, radically different poets stylistically, have a lot in common spiritually.  i say that because both were explorers of a kind of fleshly mysticism.  they were members of the same generation.  & both died within a couple of years of each other.  plus, i was a reader of both poets.  & find more in common with each than i do their differences.  but then again, that could be just me, my own poet biases.  & i recall dickey was quite caustic of the beats, & ginsberg in particular.  

at any rate, dickey penned the novel deliverance that was made into a movie helmed by john boorman that not only was successful as a box office draw but has entered the popular culture in ways like the beatles & shakespeare have.  quite a claim, sure, but you don't have to have seen the pic to know its references.  such as the banjo theme.  just like you don't have to know what play is penned by shakespeare with the line let's slip the dog's of war!    

dickey was given the small role of sheriff bullard of the doomed town of aintry.  the poet is a natural in this role.  so good, so menacing & so dangerous is he that he held his own with two veteran actors, jon voight & ned beatty.  

here is the scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gh5B_Uezmk.

i don't think either writer, thompson & dickey, ever acted in another movie, much less character role.s  still, they are both, in their respective movies, iconic.  i'm not sure what kind of role robert lowell would play.  he was an old-blood new englander from the upper-class.  but he did enjoy his drink, which was milk & vodka, if my memory serves, & smoked like a chimney so lowell could have had roles portraying both the upper echelons of society, & perhaps it lowest as well.  but i dunno!  at least i can watch jim thompson & james dickey in their own respective movies.  

launch into low earth orbit wash

 

a bucket of blood [1959]

 

it's sweltering here!  we are having a heatwave.  an unseasonable trough of hot air parked itself over the west coast & man does it feel like summer.  today's high was in the high 80s F [31 C].  we even turned on the AC!  horrors!!!  so what does one do when it is hot hot hot?  open a couple of cold beers & watch movies of course.

this pic is a study of economy & scale.  shot in five days with a meager budget of about a buck & a quarter roger corman was tasked by American International Pictures to make a horor movie.  corman did, but he also created a brisk black comedy of manners, artistry, artists, & beatnik culture.  the great character actor dick miller plays walter paisley, a slow, goofy dude who works as a busboy at a beatnik coffeehouse called The Yellow Door.  paisley is enthralled by the bohemians that inhabit this place.  he wants to be part of their scene.  paisley is also crazyinsane over a fellow coworker at The Yellow Door, the lovely carla, played by barboura morris.  

but how to impress carla & these bohemians?  why, get a chunk of clay & make a sculpture.  but paisley doesn't know how to create a figure from clay.  after a dreadful night slopping coffee cups & emptying ashtrays paisley goes home to his flea-rotten SRO, takes out his slab of clay, & tries to make a face.  frustrated by his ineptitude paisley accidentally kills his landlady's cat, who found itself stuck between two walls.  hey now!  paisley comes up with the brilliant idea to hide the dead cat by covering it in clay.  but now, paisley has a sculpture he calls DEAD CAT.  with the knife he killed it with still stuck in it!

the beatniks, & carla, are gaga over DEAD CAT.  they surround paisley, call him a genius, & want more of his statues.  inspired paisley goes on a killing spree.  the artist as serial killer.  geez, what a trope!  at any rate, corman created one helluva morality tale peppered with moments of extreme black humor with a script by charles b. griffith.  corman wastes not a millimeter of film stock & gets maximum bang for his budget of a buck & a quarter.  the running time is a brisk 66 minutes.  morris is quite lovely & is excellent in this flick.  there's a bit more to the plot than this brief review notes.  such as a subtext of a demimonde drug world that is infiltrated by undercover cops.  or how art as a means of production is a mere commodity to by bought & sold.  or how fame will distort, pervert & make obscene the objects of adoration but also  the people upon who they adore.   clever for what was supposed to be a cheap drive-in horror movie.  

& then but still, the heatwave is still going.  tomorrow the high will be similar to today.  the first day of spring is tomorrow, friday, but man it seems, right now, we skipped spring on started on hard summer.  oh, i'm not complaining.  my walks have been extremely pleasurable.  i love it when i see people outside, at restaurants, walking their dogs, walking, jogging, skateboarding, the whole electric dynamism of living.  & summer, at least, should be hotter than the surface of the sun.  at least it is a dry heat!  

check out a bucket of blood!

bad poems

i have written many bad poems

i expect to write many many more bad poems before i am thru & can't do it no more

either because i died or incapacitated somehow 

like a stroke or something but then i think of old whitman living in his splendid squalor in camden, nj where he suffered several strokes & was still the great good grey poet

it is said that whitman's house was so messy with his papers everywhere it was an astonishing thing to experience & yet the poet was able to extract the exact item he needed when he needed it

great feats of whitmanic bravura he made his life into a poem

still, i am committed to my own minor domestic bohemia & i pledge to stay the course in writing bad poems

my only criteria are to not be boring or dull but create a poetics like a punk rock guitar solo where the damn notes go screechy & yet stay within the song & as another song goes lend me your ear & i'll sing you a song but i will most likely sing out of key

being the old punk i am odi et amo until all the goddamn wheels fall off

i will write bad poems

where the streets are paved with poems

 

quote unquote

 life in poetry

it's not what you say as a poet, it's how you live as a poet.

-tom clark

being a poet is not writing a poem but finding a new way to live.

-paul lafleur [thru eileen r. tabios]

i'm in deep

 

infra baudelaire

 

street poetics