Your Witness: Mason On The Comeback Trail

If you're any kind of 1950s to '60s TV fan -- and I know you are -- you can probably conjure up the Fred Steiner composed "Perry Mason" theme song in your head. Once you do, it's hard to stop thinking about it -- sorry about that.

As a Perry Mason fan it's good news to learn that Robert Downey Jr. is developing a script that could bring him to the big screen as the famed fictional attorney who never lost a case.

According to Variety, rather than setting the movie in the present, as did the TV show, the Downey script will be more faithful to the books written by Erle Stanley Gardner, and will take place in the "rough and tumble" 1930s L.A.

Mason, the irrepressible defense attorney who could never resist a hopeless case, was a relentless force in getting to the bottom of every investigation he handled. He inevitably saw the truth that law enforcement and the state overlooked.

Gardner, born in Malden, Mass., was a virtual book-writing machine who cranked out 82 Perry Mason novels and dozens of short stories. His extremely popular Mason series sold more than 425 million copies. He mentored both Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, and sold more books than the two combined.

In addition to the "Perry Mason" TV show, starring Raymond Burr (pictured above), which ran from 1957 to 1966, the novels also inspired a 1930s radio program and a series of teleplays starring Burr that ran in the 1980s and '90s.

Aside from Downey in the title role, the feature film will include the familiar characters from the TV series, Mason's secretary Della Street, detective Paul Drake, and Mason's nemesis, prosecutor Hamilton Burger -- poor SOB never won a case.

It all sounds like perfect material for what could be a great piece of work by Downey: 1930s L.A. crime; murder; courtroom drama; a police investigation gone wrong, and brilliant deductions arrived at by a sophisticated legal mind. It's the stuff we can always use more of. The state rests.

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Coens Crime-Comedy Coming To Small Screens

I'm looking forward to Joel and Ethan Coen's hour-long detective comedy, "HarveKarbo," which will be appearing on Fox TV ... soon, I hope.

The show follows surly private detective Harve Karbo as he delves into the seedy side of Hollywood high society and hangs out with his ne'er-do-well pals in El Segundo, Calif.

"HarveKarbo" just may be some must-see TV for fans of the Coen's twisted take on crime. And that means it will include their twisted take on crime films, because they're such dedicated movie geeks, and they enjoy commenting on the vintage stuff. Think of "Miller's Crossing," "Fargo" and "The Big Lebowski" -- there are some really promising possibilities.

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It's a single-camera project the Coens are executive producing and creating with "Cedar Rapids" writer Phil Johnston, who's handling writing duties for the project.

L.A. Noir Poetry: Month-Long Celebration Of Dark Side

Poetry and crime fit together like a fist and a set of brass knuckles.

At least that's what noted poet, biographer and editor Robert Polito will likely demonstrate in a program that kicks off a citywide month-long noir tribute, titled "Night and the City -- L.A. Noir in Poetry, Fiction and Film: Noir Immersion."

Polito's presentation starts at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 15, at Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd., Venice. Admission is free for Beyond Baroque members, $8 for non-members, $5 for students. Reservations are required: Call 310-822-3006.

Polito (pictured, left) is editor of the Library of America volumes “Crime Novels: American Noir of the ’30s and ’40s,” “Crime Novels: American Noir of the ’50s” and “The Selected Poems of Kenneth Fearing.” He is editor of “The Everyman James M. Cain” and “The Everyman Dashiell Hammett.”

Also appearing is vocalist Cristy Knowings. A short film will be shown.

Polito's most recent books are the poetry collection "Hollywood & God,"Farber on Film." His Jom Thompson biography, "Savage Art," won a Nation Book Critics Circle Award.

He is completing a new book, "Detours: Seven Noir Lives." His criticism appears regularly in Bookforum and Artforum, and he writes about art, poetry, and film for The Los Angeles Review of Books. He is founder and director of the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at the New School.

The Program Continues

Other notable events in the series include mystery writers Gary Phillips, Dick Lochte, poet Richard Modiano and writer Judith Freeman, author of "The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved," talking about Raymond Chandler and his legacy on Nov. 4. That discussion will be followed by an evening with James Ellroy (pictured, left), author of "L.A. Confidential," "The Black Dahlia," and, most recently, "The Hilliker Curse."

On Oct. 29, Edgar Allan Poe Award-winning writer Naomi Hirahara and poet Carol Lem will discuss women in noir before a screening of "The Crimson Kimono," with an introduction by film noir scholar Alan K. Rode, all at the Japanese American Museum in Little Tokyo. Later that evening, a literary noir bar crawl, organized by PEN, will hit the streets of downtown.

On Nov. 5, the South Pasadena Library will screen the noir film "Union Station," with an introduction by historian Tom Zimmerman. The evening will include a tribute to star William Holden (pictured, right), who also starred in the noir classic "Sunset Boulevard" by actress Stefanie Powers.

Other events include poetry readings, theatrical performances, a continental noir breakfast with a featured noir guest, open mics, film screenings and literary discussions. The events take place across the city; some have free admission, others with ticket prices going up to $15. See the L.A. Poetry Festival site for complete schedule and details.

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The Humanity of a 'Mad Dog' in 'High Sierra'

In "High Sierra" (1941), Humphrey Bogart is Roy "Mad Dog" Earle, an ex-con who is full of contradictions. Earle, apparently a hardened criminal, gets sprung from prison, and the first place he wants to go is to a park, where the grass is growing underfoot and he can breathe the fresh air. He may be the only movie gangster of that era who could also be a card-carrying Sierra Club member.

Earle has a soft spot for a crippled girl and a dog, and although we like him better for it, neither of the two will do much to stop his inevitable demise in this film. In fact, his soft spots end up being the Achilles heel that helps bring him down.

The role was a breakout part for Bogart, one that allowed him to display a greater range of subtleties in his character -- albeit portraying another gangster, as he had in a string of movies preceding this one.

Earle is involved in a holdup plot that goes wrong, and then he's on the run. The film's climax comes in the mountains, and includes a high-speed car chase that showcases Raoul Walsh's lean, powerful direction.

Walsh shoots the sheer cliffs and overpowering, vast landscape of the Sierra Nevadas as a desolate spot, where tragedy is just around every hair-pin turn up the steep mountain road.

The press tags Earle with the "Mad Dog" moniker, and this gnaws at him no end. He's not really bad, it's the circumstances of his life and some bum choices that have brought him to this juncture in his life.

The irony is that Earle is ultimately trapped in nature, as he evades the law as best he can among the mountain peaks. He's caught in wide open space that holds him in its grip just as certainly as did prison bars and concrete. And from that, few escape.

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Tabloid Photog Had Eye For Public Drama

"He will take his camera and ride off in search of new evidence that his city, even in her most drunken and disorderly and pathetic moments, is beautiful."

- William McCleery in 'Naked City'

New York shutterbug Arthur Fellig, AKA "Weegee" (June 12, 1899 – Dec. 26, 1968) didn't invent tabloid photography, but he turned it into high art.

Fellig earned his nickname, a phonetic rendering of Ouija, because of his frequent, seemingly prescient arrivals at scenes only minutes after crimes, fires or other emergencies were reported to authorities.

Weegee the photographer was the cigar-chewing saturnine poet of New York's Lower East Side in the 1930s and '40s. He prowled the streets at night, police radio in his car, in search of crime, fires, car crashes and any scene that would throw human nature and its frailties into relief. He also frequently focused his lens on the denizens of the night, whether they be Bowery flop house regulars, burlesque performers or rich folk slumming it amid the blood and beer in the streets.

Armed with a Speed Graphic camera, whose mighty flash bulbs poured stark, unyielding light onto scenes of dead gunmen splayed across sidewalks, grieving families watching their apartment building burn -- with a relative inside that firefighters couldn't get to, or the aftermath of twisted steel and still-warm corpses left in the path of an auto wreck, Weegee created a bold, unflinching view of the terror and joy of the urban condition.

With a darkroom setup in the trunk of his car, the self-taught photographer developed his own pictures on the fly, typed a descriptive blurb about each scene (see photo, left) and delivered the fruits of his labors to the papers in time for the "bulldog" edition.

It was the success of his first photography book, "Naked City" (1945), that made Weegee famous. And as Lee Friedlander noted... "It is one of the great ironies of 'Naked City' that although it established Weegee as an expressive photographer and helped prepare the way for his work to enter and belong in art museums, it produced one of the purest forms of the tabloid as we know it today." Film director Stanley Kubrick admired Weegee’s photographs so much so that he hired him as the stills photographer of "Doctor Strangelove." When Peter Sellers heard Weegee speak he apparently used Weegee’s voice for Dr Strangelove.

Weegee's book inspired "The Naked City," a 1948 crime film directed by Jules Dassin. The movie, shot partly in documentary style, was filmed on location on the streets of New York City. The director sought to capture the drama that Weegee delivered daily in those two-penny tabloids that gripped the city for decades. Dassin got the flavor of the times in his movie, but it's a fool's errand to try to equal the force of those simple black and white photos that served as an inspiration to Dassin, and likely, to other crime film directors, as well. Weegee was an exceedingly tough act to follow.

New 'Straw Dogs' Has Much Bark, Little Bite

Like Neil Labute's failed remake of the British horror classic "The Wickerman," Rod Lurie's attempt to resurrect "Straw Dogs," the 1971 Sam Peckinpah thriller, is a film that might leave you scratching your head in wonder. The wonder is why Lurie thinks the Peckinpah horrific shoot-em-up, originally set in a remote English village needed to be moved to a small Mississippi town. And, indeed, why this cliche-ridden remake was necessary at all.

One tip-off that preview audiences were in for something foul came when searching Rotten Tomatoes. "Straw Dogs" had no reviews just a couple of weeks before its release. That usually means the studio knows its got a monumental stinker on its hands, and keeps the press away.

"Straw Dogs" (2011) isn't quite the train wreck I feared it would be, but it's got some flat acting and holes in its logic you could drive your pickup truck through. The original "Straw Dogs," like the original "Wickerman," commented on the insularity of British small town life. Where the first "Straw Dogs" felt like a journey to a strange place that was very real and very frightening, the retooled version feels like a journey to a familiar, yet meaner land inhabited by the cast of "The Dukes of Hazard."

Moving the story to the deep South allows the filmmaker to trot out every tired hillbilly redneck stereotype imaginable. Although "Straw Dogs" presents a multitude of crime, the film, strictly speaking, is not a crime film. It has more in common with American westerns, particularly those that strive to present a morality tale.

Weighing down the production is lead actor James Marsden, who simply hasn't got the acting chops to play the story's nebbish hero, David Sumner. Those who have seen Dustin Hoffman in the original role know what big shoes Marsden has to fill. Both he and Kate Bosworth, as David's wife, Amy, struggle to create the kind of on-screen chemistry that would make us care about this couple. But to little avail.

The two come off as spoiled and arrogant -- she a TV star, and he a screenwriter working on a script about the siege of Leningrad. That's a clue about what's to come in this movie.

Alexander Skarsgård, as Charlie, the local tough who takes a shine to Amy, is a credible presence, but James Woods, as the wildly inappropriate old-codger Coach, chews the scenery unmercifully, and should have been told to take his performance down several dozen notches on the histrionics meter.

The townsfolk seem friendly, at first, but little by little hostility starts to show toward the pair, as they zip around town in a Jaguar, instead of in a proper pickup truck as the locals do. Before she became a TV star, Amy was a child of this backwater town, and we learn that she has a history here that helps lead to the couple's troubles.

The couple comes to the remote hamlet to live in Amy's family's now empty home, recently after, we assume, her father's passing. The barn's roof is in ruins, and Amy and David hire Charlie and his fetid brood of backwoodsmen who would fit well in certain scenes of "Deliverance," to fix it.

The movie isn't really about much of anything, although heavy-handed references to old forgotten former football heroes and veterans of the war in Afghanistan are tossed around, but what are they supposed to mean?

It's hard to figure why Screen Gems gave this one a green light. Judging from the demographic of the preview audience, I'd say that hardly anyone was even aware that this film is a remake of another, and fewer still have seen the original. Don't studios do remakes of well-known properties so they can save on the promotional ad campaign? The reasoning is that you spend less in advertising if you don't have to explain in your ads what the movie's about.

They missed the boat on this one. Maybe for starters they'll do an ad campaign that will explain why they decided to do this remake. I'm waiting.

Noir Evolves From The Black And White World

After having defined "film noir" as a black and white medium in a recent post, I'd like to point out that I was referring to the classic period of noir. That generally ran from 1941 to 1958, beginning with "The Maltese Falcon" and ending with "Touch of Evil."

But then came the noir revival, probably best exemplified by "Chinatown" (1974), the Technicolor detective story directed by Roman Polanski and starring Jack Nicholson -- possibly Polanski's greatest effort to date.

So how can a noir be shot in Technicolor, and lack atmospheric shadows and darkness that are the hallmark of the genre?

Polanski, masterfully, I think, gave the film a muted, almost faded look, like a picture postcard that sat too long in a sunny drugstore window.

The effect perfectly expresses the hazy, dusty sunlight typical of a Los Angeles summer day.

Additionally, it may not have been commercially viable to shoot a black and white "Chinatown." Who would have put up the $6 million to make a film that wasn't in color, even in the freewheeling early '70s?

Give due appreciation to cinematographers John A. Alonzo and the uncredited Stanley Cortez, too. They adapted Los Angeles's hazy, smoggy atmosphere to a new generation of in-color noir, and the genre's entire look was reborn because of it.

While the black and white films of the classic noir period suggest a universe that has broken free of its orbit and plunged into eternal darkness, "Chinatown"'s hazy, sun-scorched look implies a world where nothing is clear, even in broad daylight.

In "Chinatown," you see, meanings are always elusive and often misunderstood, and nothing is what it appears to be.