Hollywood Underbelly!

Dana Gould Hour. Jungle worms and small friends, run around your feet. I bought a dog that killed the calf that ate the canary. What is true? And once again, welcome back. Hello, and welcome to the Dog Days of Summer. We've got an action-packed episode to get you through August, so tighten up your enthusiasm harness and get ready to listen and enjoy. Eddie?

Mueller is here. Eddie is an expert in film noir. If you like movies with private eyes, tough guys, and saucy dames, Eddie's your dude. Eddie is the host of TCM's Noir Alley. which is forever and always a celebration of all things noir. And he has a new book out entitled Dark City Dames, which examines the lives and careers of a group of actresses from the heyday of film noir. As you might expect, their true-life stories are often far more intense and insane than the movies they made.

Eddie is also the author of such books as Dark City, San Francisco Noir, The Art of Noir, the novels The Distance and Shadowboxer. Eddie is a fascinating guy. It was a great interview. I could have talked to him all day. Eddie Muller, ladies and germs. Also, one of our favorite people, Catherine Coldiron, our resident film critic, is back.

Catherine also has a new book out entitled Out There in the Dark. It's part memoir, part film criticism. You could say it is memoir as film criticism or film criticism as memoir. You decide. But I read it in one sitting. It's great. It's informative. It's honest. It's brave. It's a terrific piece of work. It's a great idea. I wish I'd had it. Out There in the Dark by Catherine Coldiron.

Two Tales from Weirdsville takes a deep dive into the cult classic Gun Crazy, informed in large part by the book Gun Crazy and the Origin of American Outlaw Cinema by, you guessed it, Eddie Muller.

Gun Crazy is not only a terrific cult film, but it's an incredibly important one, kicking off, as it did, an entire subgenre, an American movie, one that still thrives today. That is, the stories... of sociopaths in love gun crazy if you can find two words that better describe this country you let me know as for me

Oh, the next couple of months, I am busier than a one-armed traffic cop with a skin rash. So get out your pens. Here we go. August 15, 16, and 17, I will be at... GalaxyCon in San Jose, California. I will be signing... and watching my good friend Dr. Z as he hosts Hanging with Dr. Z Live. That's at GalaxyCon in San Jose, August 15, 16, and 17. The good Dr. Z performs on Saturday.

the 16th. On Friday and Saturday, August 22nd and 23rd, I will be performing at Zaney's in Rosemont, Illinois. That's just me in human form completely at Zaney's in Rosemont, Illinois. just outside of Chicago a bit. On Wednesday, August 27th, at the American Cinematheque in beautiful Los Feliz, California, the jewel in the crown that is Vermont Avenue.

formerly known as the Los Files Three, this very podcast joins American Cinematheque's The Best of the Fest as I personally introduce one of my favorite films on the big screen. In glorious black and white. 1962's surreal horror masterpiece, Carnival of Souls. It is the only narrative film that Herc Harvey ever made, although he did make a ton of industrial films, including the cult classic Shake Hands with Danger, Carnival of Souls, Imagine final destination.

as an arthouse film made 40 years before Final Destination. It is the movie David Lynch would have made if he wasn't 16 years old at the time. It stars Candace Hillegas, and it shows Wednesday night, August 27th at 7. p.m. On Tuesday, the 26th, my good friend Greg Proops is showing the producers, so it's going to be a rad time down at the good old American Cinematheque. If you are in Southern California, do try to make it out, won't you?

September 7th in Los Angeles. Hanging with Dr. Z live at Dynasty Typewriter. Join Dr. Z, Rusty, Carmine St. Pierre, and the whole gang as we welcome guests Andy Daly, Lori Kilmartin, and Chris Estrada. Two more that you should be aware of, but now we're getting close to next month's plugs. September 12th, 13th, and 14th. Dr. Z and I will be at GalaxyCon in Des Moines, Iowa. I've never been to Des Moines, Iowa, but my good friend Dave Higgins lives there, and I hope to see him.

And you. And lastly, on October 2nd, in Los Angeles, on the stage at Largo, it is Plan 9 from Outer Space. Live. A Hollywood Halloween tradition continues with myself, Patton Oswalt, Kimmy Robertson, Jonah Ray, Paul F. Tompkins, Janet Varney, and other special guests to be named. For details and links to all of these and more, go to the live appearance page at Dana Gould.

Finally, thank Christ. This program is brought to you by you. Although you may hear a couple of spot ads here and there, this show has always relied on its listeners for support. And we never fail to appreciate you. Nor, I am proud to say, have we ever gone into profit. But if you are not a Sky Cadet already, please consider becoming one. If you like the show, go to daniegouldhour.com and sign up for our Patreon. Five bucks a month gets you some extra audio content and video content.

and some other junk. We don't have graduated levels here at the show. Five bucks a month, and you get some stuff. Don't be a shy cadet. Be a sky cadet. It's a simple deal. for complicated times. And now it's on to our filthy business.

My guest today is someone of whom I have been a big fan for a long time, and I only just recently met him at the TCM Film Festival. He is the host of TCM's Noir Alley and is something of a living resource of all things noir. His new book is called Dark City Dames, The Women Who Defined. film noir. He also wrote the seminal book, Dark City, The Lost World of Film Noir, Eddie Muller's Noir Bar Cocktails, San Francisco Noir, Kid Noir, which is...

Kitty Burrell and the Case of the Marshmallow Monkey, which you would not be surprised to learn is a children's book. He's also written the next book on my reading list as saying the film Gun Crazy, the origin of an American exploitation masterpiece. I mangle the title, but you get it. Ladies and gentlemen, the lovely and talented star of stage, screen, and song, Eddie Muller.

Thanks for the big buildup, Dana. As long as there's no song involved, we'll be all right. And you're a novelist, which I didn't even touch on. You have a series of noirish mystery books based on a character. based on your father. Would I be correct in saying that? Yeah, absolutely. He was a boxing writer for the San Francisco Examiner. And so I got... Is it...

Safe to say it's a series of books if there's only two? I have a series of marriages, and I'm on the second one. Okay, good. I'm proud to say a limited series of marriages. I'm going to hold this one. This one will end when I'm in a box. You seem to be one of those guys that you always have a story in your head that you're brewing up. Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure. You were born and raised in the Bay Area.

Correct. San Francisco, precisely. Right. San Francisco Bay Area. And your father was a sports writer for the San Francisco Examiner? Correct. And then you also became what we like to call a journo. Yeah, exactly. Nothing so illustrious as working for the flagship of the Hearst Empire, which they like to call the Examiner back then. Now it's like the...

Right. It's not really happening anymore. America's only newspaper. Yeah, exactly. And it's kind of remarkable, Dana, because that's the only job my dad ever had. I mean, he started working at the Examiner when he was like... 15 years old as a copy boy. And when he retired in 1978 or something, that was it.

William Randolph Hearst was the only employer he had in his entire life. That's amazing. Stuff like that just doesn't happen anymore. You know, kids today have like five or six jobs by the time they're 30. Yeah. And sometimes all at once, it's the only way to survive. Yeah, exactly. What neighborhood in the city did you grow up in? Oh, a very nice one, Forest Hills, which was pretty ritzy, honestly.

yeah no i used to live in the richmond district yeah yeah so like on on right there's pacific heights and all that stuff which is the real tony areas and then out in the towards the west part of San Francisco, there's St. Francis Wood and Forest Hills are kind of the upscale places. And it was kind of mind-boggling that that's where I grew up. Because let me tell you, sports writers don't live there now.

Because you could afford living there on a newspaper man's salary back in the 40s and 50s, but... You know, that is priced out now. It's all doctors and lawyers now. No, you know, ink-stained wretches. Yeah, I can't imagine. I lived in an apartment. with a bunch of other comedians at 21st and Geary. And I am, I can't even begin to comprehend what the rent on that thing must be now.

Unbelievable. So you guys were playing Holy City Zoo and The Other Cafe. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of my first dates with my wife was at The Other Cafe. Oh, really? When was that? What year was that? That was late 80s, and not to be a downer. Do you remember who you saw? Yeah, Jane Dornacker, the late Jane Dornacker. I love it.

And, you know, that's because I remember with great fondness that wave of comedians in San Francisco, right? Well, yeah. Bobcat Goldthwait is one of my closest friends on the planet. And, you know, Barry Sobel. Do you remember the Alex Bennett show? I was on the Alex Bennett show a few times. As was I, probably on a weekly basis. That's fantastic. With his assistant, Lisa Carr.

Yeah, Lisa Carr. I'm still very good friends with Curtis Demartini, the producer. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that guy would call in Bennett every day and go, penis, bagel, penis, bagel, penis, bagel, penis, bagel. Go figure. Yeah, I miss, I really, I mean, the best part about my daughter going to Berkeley was I got to go up there more and more. I really.

Really love it up there. And if you're into film noir, it's, you know, you're kind of in, you're kind of in the headquarters. Do you also work for the Examiner? No, no, no. I wrote a few pieces for The Examiner, but, you know, it's one of those things where if you're born into it, you kind of have to move away. I do understand that. And then come back.

They don't accept you if you're just standing right there in front of their face. You're never big in your hometown. Exactly. So that's what I did. I worked other places. You know, I've always made my living putting words together. You know, I consider myself like a mason. I'm like a stone mason with words. Yeah.

I agree, and we're going to get into all your books, but you published a book. I bought it at the great Larry Edmonds bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard. God bless those guys. They're the greatest. Because let me tell you something about Hollywood Boulevard in the summer. It makes its own gravy. But, uh, so I go down there any chance I get, but no, I went, I bought it and then I went back and bought a couple other copies to hand up.

Friends, because what it does, what this book does, it's called Scoundrels and Spitballers. It was written by Philippe Garnier, but it was written, as you can tell, by the name in French. Correct. You published it in English and it's writers and Hollywood in the 1930s. A lot of pre-code stuff. And what I love about it. is that you sort of puncture the tour theory and, uh, it does all start with the writer and these guys were lunatics and not just the, not just the, not just the writers.

everybody it was in insanity and i don't know if it's and and i read a lot about that uh because i find it comforting to know that this world was always a lunatic asylum. Uh, and, uh, It just the volume changes, the brightness changes, the contrast changes. But. It was always an asylum. And, you know, Diddy didn't do anything that Lionel Atwill didn't do backwards in high heels.

Oh, not exactly. To quote Alicia Malone's book, that's the title of one of her books. But you're absolutely right. And the thing that I love about that book is that... depicts Hollywood as like a frontier town where it hadn't quite... uh, you know, galvanized itself into this corporate monstrosity. Right. Right. I mean, anybody could show up and if you had an idea to pitch, right.

And that's why it's called scoundrels and spitballers, because a lot of these people who came there to make their fortune had just come from prospecting for gold in the Yukon or bilking people out of real estate deals in Florida or something. Yeah. And like if you could spin a yarn. In the five minutes you got on a studio boss's carpet in his office, you could maybe walk out of there with a $10,000 check or something. Yeah. Who was the guy that...

Was in San Quentin and Robert Tasker, Robert Tasker and Edwin Booth were the two guys. That were jailbird writers. Yeah, that's one of the best chapters in the book because it. When the pictures came in and crime stories hit big in Hollywood, these guys in San Quentin started pumping out all these stories that Hollywood was buying up. I mean, initially it was H.L. Mencken who got them started because they submitted these things to literary journals like the Smart Set that Mencken edited.

And was that before the American Mercury? Maybe it was for the Mercury. It was one or the other. I'm not absolutely sure what the order was. H.L. Mencken was the dean of American letters. Yeah, absolutely. was sort of hard to get a modern-day equivalent to him. But his reading him, again, is very soothing because... He's writing about today, but he's writing it in 1926. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But let me read something just so...

we can sort of define this because it seems to be where the conversation is going. In the introduction of your book, Dark City, which is like everybody I know. owns a copy of Dark City, The Last World of Film Noir by Eddie Muller. And it is a primer of American noir. cinema. It kind of gives you a great... It's like the physician's desk reference of film noir cinema. I'm going to read you a small... I'm going to use that on the next edition. I'll put that on the next edition.

Everything here is gratis. But I want to read the first couple lines from the introduction because it really does define what film noir is. We were talking in the last episode about... uh blue velvet and blue velvet starts with a blue sky a green lawn a white picket fence and bright red roses and then you pan down to see The grass is foaming with bugs and weevils. That's what film noir is. Pretty much. What's going on under the grass? And this is what you wrote.

Film noir were a distress flare launched onto America's movie screens by artists working the night shift at the Dream Factory. Some shell-shocked craftsmen discharged mortars, blasting their message with an urgency aimed at shaking up the status quo. Others were firecrackers, startling but playful diversions. Either way...

The whiff of cordite carried the same warning. We're corrupt. The nation's sigh of relief on VJ Day, which is victory in Japan at the end of World War II, ought to have inspired... A flood of happily ever after films. But some victors didn't feel good about their spoils. They'd seen too much. Too much warfare. Too much poverty. Too much greed.

all in the service of rapacious progress Unfinished business lingered from the depression, nagging doubts about ingrained finality, ruthless human nature, unchecked urban growth, throwing society dangerously out of whack. Artists responded by delivering bitter dramas that slapped romantic illusion in the face and put the boot to the throat of the smug bourgeoisie. Still, plenty of us took it and liked it.

perfect description, and as timely today as it ever was. Yeah, isn't that weird? Yes, all the elements that made... film noir happened when it happened we're seeing them all kind of reassemble again in the culture today yeah it's it's really weird and people had always asked me over the past 25 years or so you know when i've developed like this

what, cottage industry and noir, people have asked, you know, will there be a resurgence of noir films? And I said, well, you know, they never really went away, but I'm very curious to see. if that will happen now. Because the other thing that defines noir is it's minimalist. These aren't big stories. These aren't the spectacles that you're going to see in the movie theaters. Yeah, and it's hard to get a movie made. It's interesting.

somebody you know as people that work in that business it is a lot easier to get a 200 million dollar movie sold than a 20 million dollar movie so yeah absolutely But I think with the prevalence of streaming services and stuff, I think there's going to be a hunger for, when there's a hunger for content and it gets, I think that's where smaller.

Budget storytelling is going to go. It's going to gravitate all toward the streaming services, and I think you'll be seeing a lot more noir-centric stuff there, especially with... women playing a larger role as the protagonists and things. We've seen this all right. It's stuff like, you know. Aubrey Plaza did Emily the Criminal. Yeah, yeah, great movie, great movie. Yeah, that's a genuine noir film of this time. I mean, it's about this time the way the original films were about their time.

Yeah, I'm waiting for the story of the guy that has no money that ends up working for ICE, whose girlfriend is here illegally. uh don't you think that one's already in there they must be making that one now right i hope when people talk about things being great again uh they're referring to this time they're referring to the late 40s and early 50s in that period after world war ii where america on the surface was great we were the leading economic force in the world

We were making great strides in culture and technology. We led the world. And that was the peak of these stories. Because what America... as a culture, is not good at is acknowledging the bullshit behind the whole thing. You know, I keep going back to George Carlin. You know, we were started by a group of slave owners who said all men are created equal. Let's just. Yeah, exactly. Which is not to say it's not a great idea. It's the you know, the idea is great, but you always have to acknowledge.

Oh, yeah. There's always the reality lurking behind there. And of course, you know, what that's all about, Dana, is just it's who's in charge of telling the stories. Right. So when people say we want to go back to to that America that was so great, it was like, well, a very limited number of people got to tell the stories. And now and now.

That has changed, and more and more people are telling their stories, and this certain segment of society is saying, no, no, no, we want to go back to only one group is telling the story, and everybody has to believe that narrative. And the reality is there's all kinds of narratives. Everybody's got their own narrative, you know? And it really is just a question of who...

whose narrative will dominate, right? I mean, that's what we're seeing every single day in this country. To that end, in Scoundrels and Spitballers, there's the story of Roland Brown.

Yeah, Roland Brown. Who was, again, a lunatic. And who worked a lot with Daryl Zanuck. A Titan, also lunatic. Well, yeah. I mean, you're using lunatic a little loosely, I think. But it's just because they were under so... They didn't have the constraints that the corporate mentality would put them under. Yeah, it was the Wild West. It was the Wild West. And so a guy like Roland Brown could roll in, and he was kind of hooked up with gangsters and shady characters, and he was an eccentric.

You know, Mark Hellinger was another one of those guys who really had a big influence on the noir era. But yeah, Roland Brown was a writer who just had a different way of doing things, and it was... And I'm so glad that Philippe wrote extensively about him because he's been kind of lost to time. People don't really know much about his movies.

And when you see his films, like Quick Millions and Blood Money and movies like that, that were, you know, he was a, like you pointed out. He was one of the... He was one of the first writer-directors. Exactly. And he was a, you know, Zanuck really liked him, and those films were made at, you know, 20th Century Fox, right? And... He just had a totally unique way of doing this that was so far ahead of its time, because when you see those movies, he is like a...

like a Robert Altman or a Paul Thomas Anderson or something of the 1930s. I mean, the ordinary rules don't apply. I mean, he will tell his stories exactly the way he wants to tell them in the normal pacing and the normal focus. Like, what you choose to focus on in a scene is sometimes really odd. Yeah, I think he's described in the book as an incrementalist. He looked like a movie star.

for a writer he's a big burly handsome guy like you see you see like a a photo of him on the set and you think it's the two actors in the movie and he's just directing Spencer Tracy in the scene but he he's this big tall handsome guy he looked like he looked like Christopher Nolan actually uh he did yeah you're right he does look a little yeah There's a story that he was living in a little apartment.

sunset and gower i believe and the guy who lived above him taught him how to write he said and this guy who taught him how to write lived on a quart of milk and a quart of whiskey a day And he was on his way out. Right away, the hero's journey. He's got his mentor. Joseph Campbell's already on the site. But he writes a story. He's got no money. Daryl Zanuck offers to buy the story for five grand. And this is five grand in the, I guess, in the 30s.

He rips the script in half and storms out of the office like, five grand, fuck you. Yeah, yeah. And then I think because it was so audacious and Daryl Zanuck was something of an audacious man in his own right, he called him up the next day and said, all right, we'll just make a movie together. I don't know if today that would work. Well, that's what's so amazing about reading that book is it makes you long for a time when you could just...

you know, have a handshake deal. We're going to make this movie. And, you know, of course, sometimes, you know, people got thrown out windows and things like that when things went sideways. But...

I love all that stuff. And also Roland Brown was the first one. There's also a chapter in the book about Edward Anderson, who was a Southern newspaper man who wrote Thieves Like Us, the Depression-era novel Thieves Like Us. And interestingly, Roland Brown read Thieves Like Us and adapted it to make it into a movie way before Nicholas Ray showed up and actually made the movie. And Philippe actually found that.

script and read it and did a really interesting comparison of how much of Roland Brown's original screenplay ended up in the version of the film that it was later called they live by night right uh instead of thieves like us and then later on altman did make thieves like us with Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall in the, in the seventies. But that's one of his, is that a, that was just before Nashville. I think, I think so. I think, I honestly can't remember the.

the order of those things i know that it's a it's not one of his like millstone oh god no no no no like it i think it was between the long goodbye and nashville he did thieves like us and it and he had a couple of those reviews Three Women and Quintet. He had a couple of these weird... He had a lot of these weird little movies. Quintet was later in the 70s. I think that was like 78 or 79. It was very funny when I did the... Because we met, as you said, at the TCM Festival.

earlier this year. And I also met Keith Carradine, who was the star of Thieves Like Us. And it was very interesting because he told me that he had agreed to make this picture with Altman. And he's in a hotel room someplace and they live by night comes on and he hears the character names from the movie he is making. And he had no idea that there was another version of this film. Like Altman never told him that Nick Ray had made it like, you know, 25 years earlier.

And I said, wow, that must have been amazing. What did you think of the movie? He said, I turned it off immediately. Yeah, I can understand why. I didn't want it to influence me in any way. I didn't want to look at Farley Granger in the way he played the character, you know? Yeah, yeah. No, I remember... uh there i

It's so funny when that happens. There's a famous lost Lon Chaney Sr. movie called London After Midnight, which was this vampire movie. Dana, it's now the holy grail of lost movies. Yes, yes. Well, greed, von Stroheim's greed and London After Midnight.

After Midnight are the two. Well, did you see the reconstruction of it? I believe Roddy McDowell had something to do with that reconstruction. I think that he actually... provided a lot of the the film uh photos for it so are you talking about greed or london after midnight london after midnight okay because because both of them have been

you know, quote-unquote reconstructed through still photos and things. Well, the thing you realize when you watch the reconstruction of London After Midnight is that it was later made as Mark of the Vampire. Right. I was like, oh, they made this movie. That was, who was that? Henry Hull, I think, was the actor. No, Bela Lugosi is in Mark the Vampire. Oh, Bela Lugosi, okay.

believe it was directed I think it was directed by Browning again but it's weird because Lon Chaney Sr. was going to play Dracula but he died and that's how Bela Lugosi I see This knowledge is why my life is just an avalanche of hot chicks. The fascinating thing about Scandals and Spitballers and these stories is that... These people led those lives, you know, like they're every they're every bit as.

crazy and fascinating as the stories that they're telling. Your newest book is called Dark City Dames, which... essays, six or seven film noir, film fatale actresses. Yeah, I chose them because they had to sort of be synonymous with film noir. Right. I mean, there are other actors and actresses. And also I chose them because they weren't huge stars. Right. It wasn't Barbara Stan. It wasn't Barbara Stan. Right. It was not Barbara Stan. It's not Lana Turner, Joan Crawford or, you know, it was.

Marie Windsor and Audrey Totter and Jane Greer and Colleen Gray and Ann Savage and Evelyn Keys. Those are the six. And Evelyn's a wild card because she's not known exclusively for film noir. But I loved talking with her because she was famous for being in Gone with the Wind. And she has the...

The most film noir life. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I wanted to unpack a little bit of, you know, you read these stories of, and Evelyn Keys is a great example. of what these people went through. You know, I just read... I just interviewed Burt Kearns, whose most recent book is Shemp with an exclamation point, as it should be. But it's the story of the Three Stooges and Shemp specifically.

But you realize that when these guys were in music hall, their life was brutal. Oh, yeah. You know, brutal. And, you know, they're getting hit in the head. hard repeatedly so it can be heard in the back of the hall three four shows a day and they all died by maladies that can be traced back to repetitive injury. There's a case to be made that Mo Howard killed every stooge. But it is that these people put their lives on the line and without getting too grappled.

Describe, you know, Evelyn Keys' story because it led to one of your more interesting collaborations. Well, she was just a, you know, a kid from Galveston. Texas and she shows up in Hollywood and she scores right off the bat. I mean, she has a contract with Cecil B. DeMille, like practically the day she shows up, but, but the life.

The thing that's so interesting is how, you know, what you see depicted on the screen is so far afield from the lives that these people actually led because she, her first husband. They had a very tempestuous relationship. Evelyn had already had an abortion. She was a victim of sexual assault from a very young age. From a very young age. assaulted by a director that she worked with. Well, virtually all of them, I suppose. But what's interesting, and this is...

It's so intriguing, Dana, because when I was writing, you know, I wrote the book back in the early 2000s when these women were in their late 70s. And I'm so glad the book has been republished. I didn't really change much of those six. profiles. I added 10 additional profiles, some of the women I knew, but some of them I just included because their story needed to be told. But, you know, so much had happened from the time that book was first published, like the whole Me Too.

movement, that it was really interesting to me to realize that a lot of the women I talked to would kind of scoff and say, These girls today think they've got it tough. Like what I went through. I know. And it's unbelievable. And they're right. Yeah. It's like you have no. In the same way that Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten have nothing on... Hank Williams and, you know, these early country guys from the 30s and 40s. It was a lawless time. Yeah, absolutely.

And anyway, Evelyn was really... The thing that impressed me the most about her was all the crazy stuff she went through, but she just had this sense of herself. It took her a long time to find it, but when she did... Figure out who she was. She just recreated her whole life. So she did have this, you know, Harry Cohn was kind of You would say today that he was abusive to her

Charles Vidor was the husband who raped her. I mean, it was interesting that in the book, I actually had a little go around with the publisher because they thought it was harsh. And they wanted me to take out the word rape, that he raped her. And I said, no, I'm not going to do that. Because that's what he did. And they were married. But that's what he did. That's a conundrum that I understand. I remember when, in a weird sort of parallel...

when the movie Django Unchained was released. And Spike Lee criticized Quentin Tarantino for the use of the N-word in the film. And Tarantino's response, I thought, was really smart when he said, oh, did you want me to make it seem like slavery was polite, that they respected these people? And it was like, yeah, no, you have to use that language. It's brutal language describing a brutal thing. Absolutely. And you have to...

You have to acknowledge it. And there's just a human, I think, if you have empathy, there's an innate desire to soften that. And you have to be really... as you were really rigorous, uh, in, uh, holding yourself to like, yeah, no, this is tough. This is tough stuff. Yeah. Don't you think that, don't you think in the case of that thing with Django Unchained? I think that Spike's problem with that is, I think he thinks that Tarantino is a little too gleeful and playful with it. And I think...

That is what is offensive to Spike, you know? Yeah, and I don't... I see both sides of that. I certainly think he's gleeful and playful with it in Pulp Fiction. Yeah. You know, coming out of his mouth. And, you know, when you watch that now, it's my, you know, that scene when. Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta show up at his house. That seems pretty like, ooh. You know, it's a fascinating, this is a fascinating subject to me.

Because it's like people talk about cultural appropriation, and you could argue that cultural appropriation is what America is all about. I mean, because we have always talked about the melting pot. This is the melting pot. Well, if it's a melting pot... that means there's going to be cultural appropriation, cultural amalgamation or something. And, you know, if you've read, if you know Quentin or you've even just read his, his book, you know, cinema speculation. Yeah.

know that he grew up on those films he grew up on black exploitation films and all that stuff and he grew up and he grew up in black culture absolutely you know and and i just I just always think you have to kind of look at what the motivation is behind the use of it. I can certainly tell the difference when people are using the N-word or... something you know i can tell the difference between them uh doing it for the effect of saying isn't this horrible right uh

versus this is really fun and we're going to get away with this and blah, blah, blah, which is pretty reprehensible. But, you know, such subtleties are very difficult to come by in our culture today. One of my stand-up specials, I Know It's Wrong, had a whole thing about the R-word and the R-word's ascension into the rarefied era of the N-word and the C-word. And in the course of doing that bit, I say all three words. But I say it, but this was 2015. Okay. And I think that bit has been cut.

from the reissues of that special. And I'm not 100% unhappy with that. Yeah. Because it can be mis... It can be misappropriated. Amy Poehler just released a statement like yesterday, two days ago, but we all misappropriated things when we did sketch characters. And I find myself... What I fear is on the wrong side of that argument where I'm like, well, yeah, but it's like, can you not, where's the line? Can I play a French guy? I'm Irish.

can I play anybody that isn't me? Well, you know, part, part of me, I mean, I, I mean, I love the, I, you know, I can see the party. Yeah. You know, Peter Sellers, that's pretty. That's pretty whack. I mean, Peter Sellers entire career, you have to kind of call into question. And the whole point of the party is. It sounds funny. There's nothing about that character that needs to be Indian. Yeah. He just, he wanted to play it that way. Yeah. So, so that, that I see, but you know.

uh, is, is, you know, Merkin Muffley and, uh, Dr. Strange. Well, he's not American. How, how, how can he play an American? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I know, yes, punching down, we're talking about white people. playing non-white people i get it i know but but i think it's just you know the culture goes through these these changes and i hope it's progressing right i always like to say that history is like a wheel But it's always rolling forward. We repeat stuff.

constantly, like we never can learn, but the wheel is moving forward. So these people who say, you know, let's make America great again, like they're saying, let's throw it in reverse and go backwards. Guess what? It does not work. There is no. way history does not go in reverse yeah and and our and you know uh our our culture and our politics are two separate things and you know it is always

You know, it's two steps forward, three steps backward, four steps forward, five steps backward in the 30,000-foot view, and we're getting a little far afield now. But when the history of the early... 21st century is written, I think the angle will be America elected a black man as president. And half the country's brains broke. Yeah. And it took us a generation to recover from that.

And that's something that Obama and David Axelrod have acknowledged. They have both said, we underestimated how shocking this was. to 48% of the population. My favorite comment about cultural appropriation is that joke that Ricky Gervais tells. OK, so this is pretty funny because he talks all about it, like, you know, how everybody got in an uproar because Adele wore cornrows in her hair. And it's like she's a white woman and she can't do that. And, you know, somebody.

sings in a particular, and he said, well, you know, what about all these black guys in the hood that use the N word all the time to talk to each other? You know, that's ours. We created that word. We want that back. They can't use that. That's ours. Wow. And I just thought, wow, that is. That's a pretty ballsy joke. That's a pretty ballsy joke. And it's so funny because the true – what is interesting is on the right, that argument is made.

There's a really, really great clip. I don't know what it's from, but look, it's Delroy Lindo and he's on some show on Fox. This white guy is saying like, you know, I turn on the car radio and I hear and we're this and we're this and it's OK for them to say it, but I can't say it. And the underlying. Yeah. The underlying truth of is. Yes, exactly. That's exactly right. You can't. They took it back. Yeah. Sorry.

That is exactly right. And if you can't understand that, then you do not get it. You just do not get it. Watch the clip because Delroy Lindo goes, you want to say it? Say it. Say it right now. And it's so uncomfortable. And then he goes like this. He goes, come on, I'll say it with you. And you can see this guy. Deservedly so. Perfect. Perfect.

Your story on the life of Evelyn Keys and these people that really struggled and just survived, that was read by Tab Hunter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Who then reached out to you. That is correct, yeah. Go into that a little bit, if you don't mind. Evelyn became a writer later in her life. She wrote her own autobiography, which I highly recommend, called Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister.

And she wrote for the LA time. She had a column in the LA time called the keys to the town. And, and she was, when was this? What year was this? This was in the seventies. I mean, she, she, and she was great. She was terrific writer. Anyways. I just wish I had a. I just wish I had a column. So when I got into an argument with somebody, I could end it with, you'll read about this in my column. Perfect. Yeah. So she knew tab because they had.

kind of worked on a film project or a screenplay, developed a screenplay together, and nothing ever came of it. But she mentioned to Tab... Like, you should read this guy's profile of me. I think it was pretty good. And Tab was trying to put his autobiography together, and it had been unsuccessful. And speaking quite frankly... Part of the reason it was unsuccessful is because he was using gay writers.

Because people who may be listening who don't know that Tab Hunter was gay. You know, he was the biggest heartthrob in 50s Hollywood. But he was, you know, he was closeted. You know, he had a... relationship with Tony Perkins and they all would go out, you know, with their beards and all that stuff. And anyway, so Tab met me.

introduced by Evelyn. And we talked because he was looking for a writer to do his autobiography with him. I'm just curious. Where did he live? He lived in Montecito, right? Above Santa Barbara. They all live up there. Yeah, well, he lived down the hill from Jeff Bridges, you know, and up the hill from somebody else. Yeah.

And it was a great experience. I mean, it was two years of my life working with Tab. And it was very interesting, Dana, because at that point, I only had a couple of books to my credit. And, you know, there were movie books, Dark City Dames, obviously one of them, but and the novel. But I had not written a biography or anything like that, you know, so I got called back to New York to.

Simon and Schuster that was going to publish the book, uh, to meet the editor. And I thought it was an audition for me, you know, like we got to see if this guy is actually up to snuff. Right. And I went into the office and I started talking to this guy. His name was Chuck Adams, very esteemed editor back there.

He just stopped me and said, Eddie, don't. You're not auditioning because I know your books. I've read your stuff. I have no problem with you at all. My question is, is Tab going to be gay enough? In this book, because we we bought this book because we have to have the story of the biggest male star in 1950s Hollywood was actually gay. But Tab. was now in his 70s and never used the word gay. Really? Yeah, he was still kind of in the closet. I mean, he was definitely of the you know if you know.

You know, that was, that was Tab's thing. But if you're going to do a book. Confirmed bachelor. Yeah. Confirmed bachelor. But if you're going to do a book, if you're Simon & Schuster and you want to publish a book and have a bestseller, and it's 2004 or whatever it was, then...

then you have to own it. You have to come, come out all the way out. So honestly, Dana, my job was to bring tap all the way out, which is kind of interesting because he was more comfortable doing that with a straight guy.

That was my question because, you know, you're a, you're a, you're, you're a, you're a noir writer. You're, you know, you're a. you're straight you're a you know you're boxing boxing you know you're right about whiskey you're right about whiskey and stuff like that so like in a way i guess you know i guess in a way it's that sort of only nixon could go to china well but i but i'm also from san francisco right i think but i think that how i think that

Absolutely. I mean, I grew up in the whole, you know, gay revolution time in San Francisco. And so it wasn't, you know, there was nothing shocking to me there. And so it was interesting because I was just the storyteller, you know, and my job was to just tell his story is effectively.

as possible. I did not go. And that's what I told him. I said, look, here's the deal, right? Your sexuality is going to be a big part of this book, but it's not going to be the whole book. He says, we're going to tell your life story and you're going to tell me what. what the priorities were in that life and, and a full portrait of you will emerge. And, and that that's what happened. And he, he was very, very pleased with the, the book and. to the degree where he would take me with him.

You know, when he would go on these little book tours and do signings and stuff, he didn't try to hide me at all. Like, oh, I had this guy work on the book with me. He wanted me to get full credit. I mean, he put my name. Right on the book. You know, it's Tab Hunter with Eddie Muller. Now, I'm wondering if on that tour... Was there a lot of gay guys in their 60s and 70s that were only also now just coming living out, so to speak?

Yeah, I'm sure. And it was a yes. I mean, the answer is yes. I mean, when we do these signings, it was a fascinating thing because, you know, the line would form and it would be a woman in her.

60s or you know 70s saying you were my idol you know when i was growing up and he'd signed to her and then the next guy would be the guy saying you were my idol i was in love with you when i was a boy you know and it was it was everybody everybody loved tab and he was living a double blind because he wasn't tab hunter either no His real name was... Art Galeen. Yeah, Art Galeen. Art Galeen, yeah. You know, and so they create...

This completely fabricated persona is 50s Hollywood. They create this fake version of you. So that's not the truth. and and and the real you art galeen can't live there's there's not even a art galeen can't be art galeen either no no it's it's It really is kind of amazing. But it was, but Tab was inevitable as a movie star because, you know, when he was a boy going to school.

girls would chase him around the schoolyard and i mean it was and it was weird because it was really uncomfortable for him because he didn't he didn't get it It was all just because he was so freaking handsome. He was so good looking. Even when he was 12, he looked like, you know, he belonged on Mount Rushmore or something. And everybody was into Tab, you know? Sure. Everybody. So it was inevitable.

Well, the agent would would see him and say, you should be in pictures. You know, he couldn't act. He couldn't act at all. I mean, it was literal on the job training. And I'm assuming that his time in Hollywood was just a parade of beards. Oh, yeah. And were the beards also lesbians? Because I know that happened a lot. No, no, I don't. I don't believe so. Wasn't that the Charles Lawton, Nelson Lanchester marriage? That is true. But I don't think that was necessarily the case with.

with tab i mean and honestly i didn't it wasn't my place to dig that far into it you know i mean i was believing what tab was telling me but he he had very dear female friends sure uh you know he was very close to natalie wood they were in a bunch of pictures together and venetia stevenson was a was a very good friend of his. And, you know, he did. All through his life, he had a lot of female friends. He was very close to Harry Cohn's wife, Joan.

uh that was a really interesting relationship and and you know that almost turned into one of those weird marriages where if she was going to leave harry cohen she said i'd do it and you know we could get married because you know It was her, Lawrence Harvey, right? And as Tab always said, this was hysterical, I said, was Lawrence Harvey gay? And he goes, nah, just British.

I don't know if this is true or not. I'm just quoting somebody. I asked somebody who knew Vincent Price if Vincent Price was gay. And this guy said, Vinny didn't care what side of the street he drove on. And I don't know if that's true or not. I don't want to talk out of turn. Yeah, there's... I know that Rock Hudson had like... An arranged marriage with his agent's secretary. Correct. Correct. Yeah. Who he didn't even know. Right. It just, you know, because the dark media.

Back then, which was, you know, social media now, but that was like confidential magazine, confidential magazine, hush, hush and whisper and all that stuff. You know, they, they were.

digging around for stuff that would be salacious that they could sell magazines with. And in the parlance of the day, they wanted to know who was Lavender. Exactly. And, you know, Tab... uh was arrested you know in a big uh you know raid of a gay party in hollywood and uh i didn't know that what year was that that was 50 Okay, so when that would kill you, when that would kill you. Oh, yeah. And it's interesting that they gave up Rock Hudson instead.

because tab was protected so so it was mentioned but it didn't really blow up and and to his credit you never hear anything good about jack warner right never nobody ever says a good word about jack warner But to his credit, when all of this blew up and it looked like Tab's career was going to get blown sideways, Jack Warner looked at Confidential magazine and he said, today's news, tomorrow's toilet paper.

right that's what he said and it was like we don't i don't care it's going to blow over you know and it didn't really affect tab's career at all was who was the i'm now who was the actor It's like Harry Grant. It was somebody big that killed somebody with their car. Oh, there have been several of those, actually. And I believe it was Jack Warner. They took a guy.

who was whose contract was almost up like an executive and they said you did this and you're going to go to an honor farm for four months and then you'll work here for the rest of your career the vehicular manslaughter stuff. I know John Houston was one and Clark Gable. Clark Gable. I was just reading about it. Yeah. Yeah. Killed somebody in his car and, and MGM just made it.

go away. Yeah. I was reading a book about Eddie Mannix. Yeah. Yeah. He was the fixer. Eddie Mannix was the fixer. Yeah. Yeah. And Eddie Mannix actually was involved with Roland Brown. Fabricated a story about Roland punching an executive in the face. Exactly, exactly. Boosted his reputation considerably. Yes, yeah, it really did.

Before I let you go, I want to talk about a book that you've written that is my next read. When I'm done, Scoundrels and Spitballers, which is an essay. I guess it's a monograph, an essay, it's a book on the film Gun Crazy. Right, right, right, right. Which is, it's funny because... And we were talking about when we met, we were talking about Lost Highway, but I was also thinking about, and I was saying how wild at heart.

When Wild at Heart came out in 91 or 90, it wasn't, a lot of people didn't like it. It was half and half. Right. But then within three years, you had true romance, natural-born killers, and then a couple others that were basically pastiches of Wild at Heart. But Wild at Heart is really a... Pastation of gun crazy. I exempt Badlands because that's more of a character study. It's more of a serious character study. Badlands is clearly based on the Charlie Starkweather story.

good but yeah but there's a there's a there's a i don't want to say cartoonishness but there's a giddiness to gun crazy that that's a really good word to describe it yeah that exists in those other films. Absolutely. And, you know, Barry Gifford, who wrote Wild at Heart, is a huge film noir fanatic. He's written his own book.

It was originally called The Devil Thumbs a Ride, but Barry's an enterprising guy. He's put that book out like four or five times. He just sent me the latest edition of it, right? Which has a different title, but it's still the same. book the world is so small my friend chris did the graphic novel of barry's book from which the term lost highway is taken i it's called uh wow night people

Night People. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My friend Chris Condon did the graphic novel adaption of that. Cool. Very cool. It's a tiny little world. Barry Gifford co-wrote Lost Highway, which is something of a noir. Yeah, I've actually shown it with Barry, and he's funny because he can be a little disingenuous when he's saying, no, I don't think I was influenced by this or that.

Patricia Arquette in Lost Highway isn't doing Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity with that blonde wig, which is styled precisely like Phyllis Dietrichson's hair. Yeah, she goes from Betty Page to Barbara Stanwyck in one movie. Precisely, precisely. Anyway, yeah, all... I love all that stuff. And you're absolutely right. Gun crazy was really the, that's why the book is the subhead of the book is the origin of American outlaw cinema.

Because that's what it is. That's the first movie. And the thing that's fascinating about that, Dana, and you'll see when you read the book, is the thing that makes that movie... So unique for its time is that the characters are totally amoral. They just like shooting guns. And it's like foreplay for them. And I mean, it's a total replacement for the sex that can't be shown is this hopped up, as you said, giddiness.

about the you know it's and it's clear to me that the guy in gun crazy is a virgin right well that's that's also i believe clyde yeah barrow clyde barrow and bonnie yeah barrow i said barry

Clyde Barrow was impotent, was he not? Precisely, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the guns become, you know, a symbol for— I've never thought of that. Guns as a phallic replacement. Yeah, how about it? What a surprise that is. How strange that they're big in our culture. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, so, but that's true. Gun Crazy was just the start of so much, and it influenced European cinema, right? Because Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless is clearly inspired by Gun Crazy, and then that in turn... benton and newman to write bonnie and clyde right yes yes and so it just it like i said it's this wheel that keeps moving forward and people are you know, borrowing this stuff and interpreting it. And then, you know, and that's how that's how all this stuff works.

Let's give those chimpanzees a couple of flamethrowers and see what happens. Exactly. Well, you know, it's funny when I, I've gone around the world and done a lot of film festivals and served on juries at film festivals and stuff. And it never fails to amaze me that when you go to a. foreign country and you go to a multiplex and you look at the posters for what's showing, only the American films have the guns.

There's just guns all over the posters. Everything is a confrontation. Everything is a gun pointed at the person looking at the poster. And it's always pointed up. Well, yeah, it's either up or God. bit it's like if you look at you yeah like the working man the jason statham movie you know where it's like basically he's got his legs spread and the gun is between his legs and it's pointing at you it's like i don't think this is symbolic enough you know

No need for Freud here. Yeah. But it's amazing because I've always noticed that. It's like movies from other countries do not have weaponry prominently displayed on the posters. Only the American films. gosh i could uh i could talk to you all day let's let's go down the bibliography really quick go to your local bookstore or or your online bookseller of choice, try not to automatically go to the first one that comes up. If you can avoid it, they have enough money.

Among your books, Dark City Dames, The Women Who Define Noir Bar. eddie noirs yeah bar cocktails you were a bartender were you not i was a bartender once upon a time so i like to say i made one positive contribution to society uh dark city the lost world of film noir san francisco noir Um, and, uh, I would definitely pick up gun crazy, the origin of American outlaw cinema, which is really, uh, it was so that movie was so ahead of its time and so much more.

Eddie, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really super appreciate it. A pleasure, Dana. This was great fun. I was really looking forward to it. I'm so glad you invited me. I hope you invite me back someday. To be continued. Beautiful.

They're true.

Film noir is a very American film genre, all the more so in that it has a French name, and its earliest practitioners were German, Russian, and Hungarian immigrants. It started on the page, of course, in the early days of the Great Depression, which is fitting, because film noir is nothing if not a meditation on the dark, seedy underbelly of the American dream.

For example, in 1929, the first year of the Great Depression, Dashiell Hammett published his first novel, Red Harvest, which told the story of a murder investigation by the Continental Op. a private eye employed by San Francisco's Continental Detective Agency. But he wasn't investigating just any old murder. It was a series of murders in a corrupt Montana mining town. which had been taken over by gangs in the wake of a nasty labor dispute, the key word being corrupt.

The story of Red Harvest is the story of dirty dealing, backroom arrangements, and business interests being put first at the expense of life, liberty, and liberty. and the pursuit of happiness. Not the image America was selling to the world, but a quick glance at any newspaper in 1929 will tell you that that image was only that. An image. A mirage. An illusion. That's why they call it a dream. The story of Red Harvest was inspired by a true event, the Anaconda Road Massacre.

where guards for the Anaconda copper mine opened fire on striking workers, killing one and seriously wounding 16 others. Hammett would go on to write other novels, The Maltese Falcon, The Glass Key. both of which would be made into classic films. Other giants of the genre appeared at this time, often in the pages of The Black Mask, a monthly pulp fiction journal started by H.L. Mencken, the Dean of American Letters.

It was Angel Mencken who famously coined the phrase, no one ever went broke, underestimating the intelligence of the American public. The term film noir was coined by French film critic Nino Franck. and referring to, quite literally, the dark films coming out of Hollywood during the 1940s and 50s, the heyday of film noir. Now, these were dark stories, tales of desperate men and women looking for a way out, full of human failings, and, with rare exception, the architects of their own.

demise. And if the economic struggles of the Great Depression set the stage for film noir, it was World War II and its aftermath that raised the curtain for a mass audience.

These were also physically dark films. The 1930s saw a flood of German and Eastern European immigrants. Artists like Fritz Lang, Michael Curtiz, Robert Seardmack, Billy Wilder. They came to Hollywood fleeing Nazi Germany and brought with them the film techniques. of German Expressionism, using light or the lack thereof to symbolize the dark world the characters lived in.

These films weren't blasted with light in every corner of every set. The characters lurked in the shadows. Sometimes entire scenes were played in silhouette. The play of light and shadow was one of the major elements of film noir. along as recurring stories and characters such as the world-weary private investigator like In the Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon.

Often, one who had served in World War II and had seen too much carnage to have anything other than a cynical eye towards humanity. There's the mysterious stranger with a troubled past, trying... unsuccessfully to go straight, like in Out of the Past, or the law-abiding citizen lured into a life of crime, usually by a sexy dame with bad intentions, like in Double Indemnity.

Along for the ride, shadows, fedoras, lots of cigarettes, and guns. Lots and lots of guns. Guns, guns, guns. All God's children got guns. All kinds of guns, gats, rods, bangers, pieces, roscoes, heaters. But they were always just an object, a prop. And in that they were underserved. America, more than any other country, has been in love with guns from the jump. But it wasn't until 1950 that this love affair was addressed head-on in the film noir classic...

Gun crazy. It always begins on the page. Not only the film, but this piece, which I have cribbed shamelessly. from Eddie Muller's excellent book, Gun Crazy, The Origin of American Outlaw Cinema. And everything I present here is but the tip of the iceberg. If this story intrigues you, you gotta get Eddie's book.

Now, as for the story in the film itself, it began in the pages of the Saturday Evening Post in a piece of fiction written by McKinley Cantor. What a name. He might as well have been named Caucasian Whiteman. Cantor was a war correspondent who had previously written a poem that became quite famous at the time, entitled Bailey Who Burned, about a U.S. soldier who pulled his parachute cord too soon and, well...

You get the rest. Thanks for nothing, Gravity. Cantor then wrote a book about veterans returning home from the war entitled Glory for Me that was widely panned. This came as a shock to McKinley Cantor, who was nothing if not an ardent fan of McKinley Cantor. Despite the book's lukewarm reception by readers and critical pans, Sam Goldwyn picked it up to be adapted into a movie for MGM.

Goldwyn wanted Cantor to adapt his own book into a screenplay, but Cantor decided instead to return to Europe to cover the end of World War II. This pissed off Sam Goldwyn no small amount. who wanted what he wanted when he wanted it and who he wanted it with. Cantor recommended Robert Sherwood, and it was a strong recommendation. Adapted by Sherwood, directed by William Wyler, Glory for Me was renamed The Best Years of Our Lives and went on to win Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor.

Robert Sherwood picked up an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, and McKinley Cantor got to listen to it all on the radio. Not only did he not get an Oscar, he wasn't even invited to the ceremony. To add insult to injury, Sam Goldwyn was so petty, he didn't even include the name of the original novel, Glory For Me, in the adapted by credit. It just says, Screenplay by Robert Sherwood from a book by McKinley.

Cantor. Kinda shitty. But my guess is you don't get to be Sam Goldwyn without being a lunatic. So Sam Golden was shitty in victory, and McKinley Cantor was shittier in defeat, and he moved on to his next project with a sizable chip on his shoulder. That next project was an adaption of a short story he had written for the Saturday Evening Post five years earlier called Gun Crazy.

Gun Crazy, as originally published, told the story of Nelson Tarré, a bank robber blazing a trail of terror through the Midwest. We learn in the story that Nelson Ture has been fascinated by guns since he was a child, but he can't bring himself to actually kill anything with them. This earns him the nickname Nice Nelly.

That said, crime doesn't pay. It can't pay, especially if you're writing about it in the pages of the very conservative Saturday Evening Post. And so Nelson Ture comes to a tragic end. Enter.

The King Brothers. The King Brothers read like characters from Barton Fink. In fact, I am surprised the Coen brothers never got around to including them in that or Hail Caesar, which supposedly takes place in the Barton Fink cinematic universe. Rotund and pugnacious, the King brothers were more carny barkers than movie producers, their father was a bootlegger, and the King boys, Maurice, Frank, and Herman, learned about the business at his knee.

They tried several business ventures. They tried owning apartment buildings while they were still teenagers. They ran slot machines. And then they went into a business venture with a big investor, Cecil B. DeMille. But he backed out at the very last minute. This pissed off the King brothers, much in the same way McKinley Cantor pissed off Sam Goldwyn. And spurred on by their anger, they figured, hey, if Cecil B. DeMille can produce a movie, so can we.

And so they set about producing their first honest-to-God feature-length motion picture. It was called Paper Bullets, and it was a success. And it got them a great deal with monogram pictures. one of the great Poverty Row studios of the time. Their next film was Dillinger, which we talked about recently on this very podcast, as it made a star of Lawrence Tierney.

And it made a boatload of money for Monogram Pictures and the rotund Pugnacious King Brothers. They were eager to follow up on Dillinger's success as well as add a little shine and prestige to their company. They felt they could do both by scooping up Gun Crazy, which was written by the guy who had just written the book that The Best Years of Our Lives was based on. Boom! But first, they had to get it past...

one important gatekeeper. The head of Monogram? No. Their mom. That's right. The King brothers ran every major decision past their mom, Sarah Kaczynski. Which is... Kind of sweet when you think about it. She approved. The King brothers were so in love with the idea of gun crazy that they offered McKinley Cantor the chance not only to adapt his own novel, but direct the movie itself. He'd never directed anything before, but they were willing to roll the dice.

The King brothers hailed McKinley Cantor as the great American writer, which made McKinley Cantor think, wow, these guys are smart. They were partners. They were in love. They were off and running. They were even going to shoot the movie in Iowa in the very county where McKinley Cantor grew up. He would officially be codified as a local treasure.

they started having problems immediately. Specifically, with a guy named Joe Breen. Who? Exactly. In the 1920s, Hollywood was rocked by several national scandals. A famous director named William Taylor was mysteriously murdered. Beloved film comedian Fatty Arbuckle was accused of murder by raping a woman with a Coke bottle. He was completely innocent, but who has time for details?

terrified of the evil subversion of our precious culture at the hands of quote-unquote Hollywood, i.e. the Jews, Three dozen different states began drafting film censorship legislation, and film studios feared, quite rightly, that having to navigate each state's individual censorship laws would make film distribution impossible.

William Hayes, a former postmaster general and Presbyterian elder, was named the head of the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America and introduced what he called the formula. a set of rules that would dictate the boundaries of morality and ethics that all major studio releases would have to adhere to. In other words, don't censor us. We'll censor ourselves. Cool? Cool.

Joe Breen was in charge of enforcing what was then known as the Hays Code, or the Production Code. The code held sway from 1934 to 1968, with Breen at the helm for most of it. Working in feature films was an odd choice for Breen. The movie business had a very large Jewish contingent. All the major studio heads were Jewish, as were many of the actors, writers, and directors.

And Breen, for his part, was a strident anti-Semite. Good fit! Breen once wrote to a friend, a priest no less, about his new job. Quote, A rotten bunch of vile people with no respect for anything beyond the making of money. Here, meaning Hollywood, we have paganism rampant. and in its most virulent form. Drunkenness and debauchery are commonplace. Sexual perversion is rampant. Any number of our directors and stars are perverts. 95% of these folks are Jews of Eastern European lineage.

They are probably the scum of the earth. Welcome to Hollywood, Joe!

Now, the King brothers, whose real name was Kaczynski, knew going in what Mr. Breen thought of them as human beings. But even they were surprised by what the production code objected to in the first draft of Gun Crazy. Now, here's the deal. McKinley Cantor was a self-infatuated gas bag among self-infatuated gas bags, but he was a self-infatuated gas bag who had some really good ideas now and again. The problem was...

he could not get out of his own way. To quote Eddie Muller, Cantor's script by industry standards was a mess. It was a rambling treatment, close to 200 pages, formatted in a variety of ways. And later, quote, Cantor, full of ambition and self-importance, had created an epic, the cradle-to-the-grave saga of an outlaw spending decades in a straight-ahead linear fashion.

with dozens of scenes explaining what pushed young Nelson Ture to go gun crazy, end quote. But in all that silt, there was a nugget of gold. Gun Crazy would tell the story of how Nelson Ture was let down by society. In Cantor's script, Therese's father was a criminal who was killed by a posse. Then his stepfather kicked the shit out of him repeatedly. Feeling powerless, the young boy turns to the only thing that gives him a sense of safety and protection.

Guns. Children subjected to cruelty and brutality grow up into fucked up adults. That's a worthwhile message. That's a good story. You'd have to pull it out of the hundreds of other pages a gobbledygook, but it's a good story and it's worth telling. Not on Joseph Breen's watch. Joseph Breen wanted traditional, guilt-based, Christian moralizing garbage. Bad people are born, not made.

Cantor's script had a sympathetic child surrounded by brutal, unsympathetic adults. The PCA demanded those roles be reversed. The adults would be stern but sympathetic, moral figures, and Nelson Ture would be an unsympathetic asshole. There's a scene in Cantor's original script where a schoolteacher literally whips Nelson, and later Nelson...

To prevent another whipping, pulls a gun on him. This horrified Breen, because were the story to unfold that way, the audience would, oh my God, sympathize with Nelson's action. Under the production code, you could sympathize with a criminal, but never his crimes. Figure that one out. Basically, the PCA demanded that Kent to reverse the magnetic poles of his own story.

Had he written Jaws, they would have wanted him to turn it into the story of three sharks chasing a giant person. McKinley Cantor refused to make any changes. which meant that the King brothers couldn't go ahead with the movie. I mean, they could make it if they wanted, but the production code wouldn't authorize it for distribution. So they were stuck. Now, they could have fired McKinley Cantor.

But that would look terrible. A scrappy little company hires a big-name writer whose movie has just won Best Picture, and then they fire him. No. They had to get McKinley Cantor to walk off. his own movie. What they did was brilliant. With Gun Crazy stuck in the mud, they gave McKinley Cantor a quick rewrite job. Could he do a polish on an adaption of a play that they were making called The Last of the Bad Men? Whatever they had planned, it could not have worked out better.

Cantor's quick polish became a massive overhaul. Like his draft of Gun Crazy, the script went on and on and on and on and on. He even went so far as to change the name of the goddamned movie from The Last of the Bad Men to Wicked Water. This allowed the King brothers the opportunity to give McKinley Cantor the notes that they wanted to give him on Gun Crazy, to hopefully send the message, since he wasn't attached to direct what was now called Wicked Water.

They didn't have to tiptoe around anything. They could really let him have it, and they did. Quote, the opening is too slow, too wordy. Sequences don't flow into one another. This looks like something you dashed off in a hurry without giving too much thought and effort to it. And then, after gutting him like a fish, they closed with, Being a straightforward, square-shooting guy yourself, I know you'd want our honest opinion.

Cantor's reply, again, this is all printed in Eddie Muller's book, did not disappoint. Quote, Sirs, your proposals are infamous, nefarious, cowardly, dastardly, diabolical. inhuman, and cannot be complied with, end quote. Okie doke. McKinley Cantor, gone. The King brothers moved on to a real screenwriter.

one of the best script doctors in Hollywood. Now, normally, they would not have been able to even approach affording this guy. But this guy had become somewhat infamous and had fallen on very hard times. so much so that they couldn't even use his name. Dalton Trumbo's script would be on screen, but his name would be nowhere near it. The House of Un-American Activities Committee was formed in 1938 to investigate disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens.

public employees, and those organizations suspected of having communist ties. It picked up steam after World War II in the advent of the Cold War. Being accused of being a communist sympathizer was a deadly weapon in its day, and it was used and abused with wild abandon. Its most famous exploiter was Joseph McCarthy. after whom we now have the term McCarthyism. Joseph McCarthy would accuse a chair of being a communist if he didn't think it was comfortable.

and he was able to destroy a lot of lives before he died in an alcoholic stupor at the ripe old age of 48. In 1947, the House of Un-American Activities began investigating alleged communist propaganda and influence in the Hollywood motion picture industry. Now, right out of the gate, it must be acknowledged that there were films made during World War II

that were undeniably pro-Russian. Films like Mission to Moscow and Song of Russia. And you could make the argument that these films were pro-Russian propaganda. You could make that argument lying on your back with your feet up, because they were. What's often not mentioned is that they were made at the request of the White House. Because at the time, America was allied with Russia in the war against Germany, and these films were considered helpful to the war effort.

After the war, especially under heat from HUAC, which was the House of Un-American Activities Committee, Hollywood pivoted to making anti-communist movies, like The Red Menace, I Was a Communist for the FBI,

and John Wayne's Big Jim McClane, where he plays a heroic HUAC investigator investigating investigations in dark, scary, communist Hawaii. John Wayne, who did not serve in World War II, was a big supporter of hueck dalton trumbo who did was not now A lot of people in the artistic community attended communist meetings during the Depression, out of curiosity, to see if communism held the answer to America's crippling unemployment problem.

Attending these meetings were now a career-ending crime, as was, apparently, knowing someone who did and not ratting them out. HUAC wanted you to come forward and name names. You know, squeal. Dalton Trumbo thought that being a rat was more un-American than destroying the life of someone you knew because they went to a Communist Party meeting 20 years ago. He refused to name names.

And that is how Dalton Trumbo became part of the Hollywood Ten. Hundreds of lives were destroyed by what became known as the Hollywood Blacklist. In addition to the scores of people you've never heard of... Big names like Lena Horne, Lloyd Bridges, Edward G. Robinson, Charlie Chaplin, Lee Grant, and Burgess Meredith lost work.

Some, like Orson Welles, had to leave America entirely and live in Europe for years just to keep money coming in. But not the Hollywood Ten. They didn't go to Europe. They went to prison. Cited for contempt of Congress, Dalton Trumbo, Alva Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmitrich, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Samuel Ornitz, and Adrian Scott.

all went to jail for contempt of Congress. Dalton Trumbo was sent to the Federal Correctional Institution in Ashland, Kentucky. Oddly enough, while he was serving time for contempt of Congress, The head of the HUAC committee that recommended him for prosecution, Jay Parnell Thomas, also served a stint in the pokey for taking kickbacks. Go fig. Now...

Dalton Trumbo was no less talented after HUAC than he was before, but he was now radioactive in terms of being hired. According to Eddie's book, When Trumbo met with Frank King of the King Brothers, initially at a restaurant, he advised him to cover up the script he was holding so that no one in the restaurant who saw them together would think that they were talking about work.

King offered Trumbo the rewrite job at a fraction of his pre-HUAC asking price. Trumbo needed the gig and took it without reading a word of the script. The screen credit would go to a guy named Millard Kaufman. who is a non-blacklisted writer who agreed to work as Trumbo's cutout. Trumbo would do the work, Millard would be paid, and then Millard would slide the money to Trumbo. This whole setup...

had a great movie made about it called The Front. I think it was made in 1976 or 77, and it starred Woody Allen and Zero Mostel from the producers, who was, you guessed it, blacklisted.

Dalton Trumbo turned Millard Cantor's overwrought script into a movie, telling the story of Bart Tarré. Now, he was Nelson and Cantor's original script, with the nickname Nellie. But Nellie was a gay slang in those days. I think it still is. Looks like they hired a couple of Nellies to run the sweat-a-bon.

In a brief opening sequence, we see young Bart Ture played by Russ Tamblyn, later of West Side Story, Twin Peaks, and most importantly, War of the Gargantuous fame. He's just a kid in the movie. In fact, he's billed as Rusty Tamblyn. We meet Bart, a young boy with no parental guidance. We soon learn that he's being raised by his sister. And with no boundaries or sense of direction, he finds solace and comfort in guns. He loves them.

The sense of power, the sense of safety, the look, the weight, the feel. Trumbo's script takes pains to point out that, despite his obsession with guns as objects, he is incapable of... killing he is a messed up kid to be sure but he is empathetic he is not a killer he just loves guns, so much so that when he sees one he can't afford, he just steals it and is immediately caught and sent to reform school. And from there, he is shipped to the army. The story picks up.

after he is discharged. Now in Cantor's script, it follows him scene by scene throughout his life. He goes to reform school. We see it. He goes in the army. We see it. Trumbo dispenses with this entire backstory in three or four death sentences. Director Joseph Lewis made a very important decision. He didn't want a tough, macho actor to play Bart. He didn't want Humphrey Bogart, John Garfield, or Lawrence Tierney. Instead, he cast a guy named John Dahl.

a young, 29-year-old actor who had recently played one of the killers in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. About Dahl, Lewis said, quote, I wanted John for his kind of weakness, that kind of... oddity, end quote. What he meant was, John Dahl was gay. Closeted, of course, this was 1950, but a two-fisted film noir gangster he is not.

John Dahl's Bart Touré does have an alien strangeness, a separateness, much in the same way clean-cut, non-threatening, also-closeted Anthony Perkins would inhabit Norman Bates 12 years later. This was important to Lewis because he wanted Bart to be clearly dominated by his partner in crime. Dahl's co-star in the film, Peggy Cummins. Now remember, under Dalton Trumbo...

Gun Crazy became a love story. The King brothers were pitched to Veronica Lake for the park, but by 1950, Veronica Lake was sadly... Well into her descent into drug addiction and alcoholism, so instead they found a young actress who could best be described as the Veronica Lake of Ireland, Peggy Cummins. Peggy plays Annie Laurie Starr, the brains of the outfit. and he works as a carnival trick shooter.

Lewis gives her one of the best entrances in film history. She bursts onto the screen, wide-eyed and apple-cheeked, dressed in a cute little Annie Oakley cowgirl outfit. She literally comes at you all smiles. guns blazing, and then literally fires a shot right in your face. In the audience, Bart Ture reacts like a wolf in a Tex Avery cartoon.

Annie Laurie's star is the first thing Bart Touré has ever loved that is not a gun. And together they embark on their journey through life, pistols blazing. Of course, bowing to pressure from the production code, before they do anything...

They stopped and got married. Natch. Director Joseph Lewis pulls off several amazing set pieces. The first bank robbery scene is stunning. Fun fact, it is shot in Montrose, California, just down the street from the very sanitarium where Bela Lugosi admitted himself to kick his morphine habit. In the film... Bart and Annie drive into town and park in front of the bank. Bart runs inside and Annie stays outside waiting in the car, engine running. But she gets approached by a cop who...

because she's pretty, starts chatting her up. And he won't shut up. She tries to get rid of him, but she can't. And when Bart emerges from the bank... Now, if you've seen Gun Crazy, you know how this scene ends. And if you haven't seen it, you should. And I'm not going to spoil it for you. But this entire scene is done in one take with one camera.

And no cuts. Little Peggy Cummings drove a specially outfitted Cadillac stretch limousine. Although it didn't look like that on film. All we see on film is Annie and Bart driving a car. But behind them... In the car are the director, the camera operator, two grips, two sound men, and the script supervisor, all crammed in around a giant camera and a special jerry-rigged dolly track. Since the camera never went inside the bank, they didn't bother to get any permits.

No pun intended, they stole the entire scene. In fact, when Dahl comes running out of the bank, now in real life, people in the bank just saw a guy in a trench coat run in, and stand in the lobby and wait for a signal to run back out but when he did run back out people outside saw him and started screaming they're robbing the bank they're robbing the bank and these people weren't actors there were people just on the sidewalk

Gun Crazy was released in 1950, but despite the fact that it was so good, it could not catch a break. Bowing to pressure from Monogram, the King Brothers changed the title from the short... punchy, descriptive, catchy, gun-crazy, to the loftier and far more mediocre Deadly is the Female, despite great reviews. The Los Angeles Times called it hell on wheels, having just as much continuous excitement as is possible to cram onto one screen.

The LA Daily News called it a modern-day Macbeth. The Hollywood Reporter said the story is fast, actionful, frequently thrilling, and always suspenseful. But they did open their review by noting that the title sucked.

The movie could not get any traction, and the title hurt. It was re-released several months later, now back under its original title, Gun Crazy, but by that time, the bloom was off the rose. Wasn't this movie just out? As pointed out in Eddie's book, Gun Crazy and the Origin of American Outlaw Cinema, the competition for screen time in 1950 was brutal.

That year alone gave us Sunset Boulevard, All About Eve, The Asphalt Jungle, Destination Moon, In a Lonely Place, Father of the Bride, and on and on and on.

Gun Crazy could very well have slipped into obscurity, except for, as usual, the French. Among Gun Crazy's fans... were such French new wave giants as Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut. Indeed, you can see a lot of gun crazy in Godard's Breathless. It also established a beachhead for a subgenre of American noir that is still thriving today. Kill crazy sociopaths finding love. You can see it in Bonnie and Clyde, Wild at Heart.

True romance, natural-born killers, and on and on and on. But it is gun crazy, my friends. That was the acorn that grew the oak. I told you I was no good. I didn't kid you, did I? What is it you want? But I want things, a lot of things, big things. Look, I don't want to look in that mirror and see nothing but a stick-up man staring back at me. You better kiss me goodbye, Bart. Because I won't be here when you get back.

Symbols. We're all familiar with them. There are shortcuts to vital information. That's why, to familiarize you with the movie rating symbols, which will be used by this theater, we present the following guide for parents and young people. It is designed to inform parents about the suitability of movie content for viewing by their children. G, all ages admitted, general audiences. GP, all ages admitted, parental guidance suggested.

restricted under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian X no one under 17 admitted and now On with the show.

It is a warm, sunny, near cloudless day high atop the Mulholland Drive view shelf here in the sun-baked dystopia that is the city of Los Angeles. in the People's Republic of California in the former United States. We are joined today by a good friend and a frequent guest here on the show. She is the author of, amongst other books, Junk Film. Why Bad Movies Matter and last year's Wire Mothers, she has a new book out entitled Out There in the Dark. Please welcome your friend and mine.

America's au pair, Catherine Coldiron. Thank you for that lovely introduction. I'm so glad to be here. I have never been an au pair and I'm a very poor babysitter. trying to come up with something other than the girl next door. So there's so much I want to talk to you about. And this is a really interesting book. You wrote film studies.

And then with Wire Mothers, you're moving into essays. And this is sort of a combination of the two. How would you describe Out There in the Dark? Well, an interviewer described it to me as autocriticism. playing on the genre of autofiction, which is like autobiography that's fictional. And I wish that I had had that term when I was pitching the book years and years ago, because it is autocriticism. It's kind of...

an attempt to make sense of my life through film crit and also a little bit of fiction. So hybrid essays is kind of how I pitched it. And I think that's kind of what... autofocus the press wanted to pitch it as. But I don't know where you'd put it in the library. I tell you, it was a fast read. I mean, I really tore through it. What I found...

And this is my sort of uneducated take on it. It begins with the premise that film presents you a form of reality that we accept as real, but it's not. It's never real. Even in... It's attempts to be real. It's not real, as exemplified in your piece on the fact that the book The Lifetime of a Fact is not factual. Lifespan, yeah. Yeah, Lifespan of a Fact. Yeah. It's not factual.

And so to that end, you look at your own life in the same way. You adapt it to sort of your attitude towards film. The first point that you make is about... The Sound of Music, and you make a point that I'd always sort of had in my mind that I'd never really articulated, that although that film... you know, has an optimistic ending, the period of time those people are facing is horrific. It is, yeah. A climb through the Alps is not going to be...

Like, it's not going to be good for him. Like, there's a reason the film leaves off there. It's like, are you really going to show and set to music and joy this sort of climb through these horrible conditions? And in real life, they took a train. Like, it wasn't... An actual climb through the Alps. But in real life, a climb through the Alps would not work with seven children. Well, it would. You just wouldn't have seven when you arrived.

It'd be more of a Donner party through the Alps. And, and yeah, well, it sort of goes to my theory that like every rom-com, the ending of every rom-com.

i want to see the movie that i want a movie to start with the end of a rom-com do you know because then i mean it's well yeah because i write comedy well i write comedy so i want it to be but but i do believe that people and i and this sort of goes with the theory of your book we pattern our we want our lives to be like the movies you know i think a lot of people get married or they get in relationships and they're really thrown when it gets difficult because

It's not supposed to be difficult. It's supposed to be happily ever after, but happily ever after is fiction. Yeah. And I know people, especially I think when they're young. They can't process when they have a real insurmountable problem because they don't see that in 27 dresses or whatever it's called. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

I thought that was—it's ripe for study, and especially now where our entire— definition of reality is out the fucking window well yeah i mean one of the things i said in another interview was the the line between real and fake is a very powerful opposition and storytellers from Buster Keaton to Fox news know it, you know, whether, what kind of story you're going to tell about the world.

Whether you like, if you're going to choose to lie, then your power is unlimited. If you're going to choose to tell the truth, then you've got boundaries around what you're going to say, what story you're going to tell about the world. Liars, though, are not constrained by the truth and thus not constrained to what kind of story they have to or can tell. It's exhausting. And it was my fear when I became a parent was what if my kids just.

refuse to do what i say yeah you know just like go to bed no well eventually there's nothing you can do um i fortunately i they didn't but but it is If you're not constrained by any norm of reality, yeah, nothing can stop you. You know, we're living in a Thomas Berger novel. What if people just stopped knocking on doors and just started coming in your house? Eventually it just gets exhausting. Yeah. I, I, and there's really.

I struggle with how to properly react because you can't be in a, your hair can't be on fire every day. And that's. But they but on the other hand, one could say, yeah, they count on that. They do. Yeah. Not to get too deeply again into it, but I would say that.

being in a constant state of crisis makes you vulnerable to whoever wants to come and take advantage of you. And that is something that a lot of storytellers in this country are relying on right now. And the thing that it makes me think of is...

This is very, this is not going to be popular for me to say, but I figured out a while back that if you are constantly on a diet. you're always hungry and you're always sort of mentally weak because you're constantly got in the back of your head that you're hungry. And so the fastest way to kind of make... 50% of the population less strong and capable than they really should be is to force them to constantly be on a diet. And that is why, you know, that that's why.

thinness is prized among women because patriarchal values want us to be thin so that we'll be weak, not just physically, but mentally, because being on a diet is exhausting. And this is, you know, in a way, this is the same thing that's happening. If you're in a constant state of crisis, you can't really think you can't really function. And that's, that is exactly where the right wants us to be.

Is that an unintended consequence? Because, you know, the 50s was incredibly patriarchal, but Marilyn Monroe, who was like the physical ideal by today's standards, would be overweight. And I don't say that's healthy or admirable. I mean, I don't think it's an unintended consequence, no, but I also have a lot to say about the 50s and Marilyn Monroe. It wasn't a great time, and she had a worse time. I'm aware of that because I have daughters, and...

they're of age and I see the billboards that they drive by all the time. Yeah. And, uh, and you want them to be healthy. And that's, that's the language that their mom and I. always kind of held ourselves to is this a healthy choice is this a healthy choice right and i bring my own baggage to it because i was a super fat kid with Older athletic brothers. So I'm trying not to bring my only four of them. So, yeah, I tried not to project my own self-loathing onto them.

You talk about the photo. I forget the name of it. It's called Burst of Joy. Burst of Joy, and it's Colonel Sturm? Yeah. Lieutenant Colonel, but yes. Lieutenant Colonel Sturm. In relationship to your dad. So for those of you who don't know, Burst of Joy is a very famous photo about a Vietnam veteran.

A Vietnam POW returning home and being greeted by his family. And tell the real story behind that photo and the reality of that moment. Because I know the photo, but I didn't know the story behind it. Yeah, it's, it's hard. It's a hard story. Um, and the, the photo, if I describe it.

A lot of you out there will be like, oh, yeah, that one. It's it shows Lieutenant Colonel Sturm's the back of his head and sort of his body. And he's walking away from the camera. And in front of him is this family of people, particularly this. older daughter, both of her feet are off the ground. She's wearing platform shoes and she's just got her arms wide open and she's so happy to see her dad. Uh, and he had been a POW, I think for three years at that point.

This was during Vietnam. And it turns out that his wife had already written him a Dear John letter by the time that photo was taken. And the family broke up. And he moved out and she remarried. Had he received the letter? Yeah. Okay, so he knew. He knew. Yeah. Yeah. And it's easy to villainize her, but we have no idea what her life is like. No, I don't. I mean, I don't villainize her at all, especially the parallels between the story of.

Sturm and his wife and my father and my mother were very plain to me because Sturm in articles later, he was interviewed and he talked about, you know, everything that I believed in every. thing that i wanted out of my family that was just dust and and i've been taken to the cleaners and like my dad is similarly bitter about what happened when he divorced my mother and you should say also that your your father was

In Vietnam, he was a military. So the parallels are really sharp, although your father wasn't a POW. No. He was, as they say, he was a career military, and he was, as they say, in the shit. I don't know if he was in the shit. I don't know anything about his career in Vietnam. Like I know basically nothing. I know that he was with, like he was a Navy corpsman who traveled with the Marines. So like he was the med guy, the medical guy with this.

platoon of Marines, but that's all I know. And I think that. I don't, I don't know. I think that it was very, very hard on him. That's kind of all I can assume. And I know that him being in the military was hard on us, me and my mom, because we, you know, this was, uh, like the sort of late eighties, early nineties is when his career was kind of, um,

peak ambition. I'm going to say like he had peaks in his career. He had a bunch of other things happen, but he was on deployments constantly during that time. And so he would be away for six months at a stretch. And during the first Gulf war, he was away for much longer than that. over a year and yeah that's a lot to ask that's a lot to ask of a spouse and kids and everybody yeah it is and and that's why i like i don't i would never villainize

Someone who was the wife of a POW for saying, no, I can't handle this. Like, I get it. Yeah. And it wasn't like she was saying, get lost. She was just like saying, I can't do this. I can't. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's understandable. And your father, so it's interesting that you say, and you do talk about this in the book, your dad told you, was it three things about his time in the service and they were all really innocuous? Just details.

Yeah. Just things like, you know, that they used to keep their... toilet paper under the elastic band on their helmets because then it would stay drier than if you kept it down further on your body. Stuff like that. Just really small details. Yeah. I was just reading a story.

Because we don't know what these guys went through. Because they don't talk about it. And I'm sure you know this story. John Ford. was running a documentary crew that shot D-Day. And afterwards, he got drunk for a month. I'm sure he literally like, like just lived in a sleeping bag and completely fell apart. Yeah. Cause that was a, you know, just the, and.

You just had to process that and to go on. You said that when you saw Apocalypse Now, it made you think of your dad. In high school, yeah, in a class. It was, it was hard to see that because, um, and all war films tend to be hard for me. And I think it's just because as with the photo. that any of the men in front of me could be my dad, because I know so little about what he actually did. And your dad's still here?

Oh, yeah. He's alive. We're estranged, unfortunately. But he forged his birth certificate to join the service earlier than was legal. Oh, okay. But he was also in Vietnam during the 70s, not during the 60s. So Apocalypse Now is specifically about kind of a much more heightened part of the war than my dad participated in, as far as I know. Is that, is Apocalypse Now, I don't even, is that during, well...

Full Metal Jacket is the Ted Offensive. I think so, yeah. And that was 68. Apocalypse Now is earlier, or is it like 69? I really don't know the answer to that. I'm just going by the music. I know it's, it's no, but I mean, I know like, I think it's get off of my cloud. Like the music that they're playing. I know it was, he's too good of a director to have had. I think that.

I think Get Off of My Cloud is in the movie, so that wouldn't have been 67 because that song wasn't out yet. That was what I was trying to gauge. I think Coppola was not trying to do a realistic film about Vietnam. I think he was trying to do kind of more of a tone poem about war. And, you know, maybe specifically about this war, but not tracing something.

uh, historically sound. I mean, part of the reason for that is that he's bumping up against Conrad's novel, Heart of Darkness, and how, you know... putting those two things over one another you have this outline of a thing as opposed to like the real shape of the thing yeah That was a famously tight shoot with a clear, clear cut script and they knew exactly where they were going. No problems, no health issues, nothing, nothing to interrupt, like no substances.

stars showed up ready to work. Yeah. No, the film, if you haven't seen the documentary hearts of darkness, it's one of the great, you know, it, it, there are these, there are these films that. you need the companion piece to the film. It's like a two film package. Like you see Apocalypse Now and you really need to also see Hearts of Darkness. I think that's right. Yeah. You know, it's hard to, I'll go to our, my go-to. It's hard to watch Plan 9 from Outer Space and not also see Ed Wood.

Or vice versa. Yeah, they complement each other in a beautiful way. And then there are documentaries about movies that are better than the actual movie. Which I was thinking about Lost Soul, the Richard Stanley movie. Oh, boy, yeah. Which is a much better documentary than a film. Yeah. There's a story about the making of Apocalypse Now when they're doing the famous helicopter attack after they filmed it.

They brought in some helicopter pilots that did it. Do you know this story? No. I haven't seen Hearts of Darkness in a really long time, but keep going. So they bring in these guys. and that were pilots and they say we're going to run this footage and you guys just talk to each other like you're the pilots so we know so we have stuff to put in and they got right into it

And they kind of went there. And when they were done, they all broke down. Oh, no. Because they got into that. Put that right up her ass. Like they really. And then they were able to immediately step out and see what they had to be to survive. Right. And they all kind of...

uh, broke down. It's a really interesting story. And it's, uh, um, again, like, yeah, the, the documentary is, is, uh, in its own way, as powerful as the, uh, as the, as the story it, uh, tries to tell as the movie tries to tell.

Well, I'll tell you, the thing that strikes me about people, specifically people who were in Vietnam, because I grew up sort of with... uh that around in the air a lot more than i think this generation has um by which i mean like

People in this generation are used to Vietnam, to veterans talking about Iraq and Afghanistan. And so I'm used to veterans talking about Vietnam. But in my experience, the people who are actually there don't talk about it. And the people who weren't tend to lie about it.

Yeah, it is like the 60s. If you remember it, you weren't there. This is purely anecdotal. But one part of that anecdote is that I went to Mount Holyoke from undergrad, and one of the history... there was this guy who was very well regarded for his books about Vietnam. People who took classes from him loved him for his stories about Vietnam and the way that he taught using these personal stories. We'll come to find out all of that was not true. It was plagiarized or it was lies.

because he never went to Vietnam. And so that against my father and other veterans that I've met who will not talk about it is to me, like, I'm sorry. automatically do not trust that you can talk about it in a sane and reasonable manner. I don't think that you were there. Did we ever talk, were you going to Mount Holyoke? No, I don't think so. Okay. I went to UMass. Oh. Hey there, Scooby. Five college bus system.

There's one of the most realistic depictions of the way Vietnam veterans talk about Vietnam is in the movie Rushmore when Jason Schwartzman goes to Bill Murray, were you in the shit? And Bill Murray just goes, yeah, I was in the shit. Yep. And that's the conversation. That's all he's going to say about it. Yep. But, you know, I talked to a guy. the man that ran the physical effects unit on my show stand against evil was this older guy and he worked with his kids just bob this old guy and uh

I worked with him for three years, just this, you know, genial old guy. And then literally after like two and a half years, we finally got a minute and says, how'd you get into this, Bob? And it turns out that he was a... He was an ordinance man in Vietnam. And and and he just had like the most. The the details were too specific for him to have been making it up.

but he just kind of had this at first i was a tunnel rat you'd go down there and uh you know thing is they had these bamboo sticks and they tie these snakes to them and they just stick them in the roof of the tunnel so you got to be careful that you get bit right in the head But his job basically was when they left, they had all of this ordinance, explosives that they couldn't bring home, but they also couldn't leave there.

So they just had to go around and blow it up. Blow it up. Yep. Yeah. And he said, and he said his biggest takeaway from Vietnam is he goes, I can't believe I have all my fingers. Well, he brought his, he brought his hands back. Yeah, he brought his hands back. But it was, yeah, he was just like, it was clearly like, no, you and his counselor, he goes, no, that's true. He was there. I mean, but he was, these guys, you just can't face them.

I just took this off a corpse. Okay. Sounds good. Oh, God. Sounds good.

Another weird thing we have in common, we have both been the victim of extensive dental work. Well, so the more... I talk to people about this book, the more I find that everybody has a tooth story. And most of those tooth stories are trauma stories. So like... I agree that that is something we have in common. However, I think you would be surprised how many people we have it in common with. And I really, I really was.

Like it was a good day when I stumbled upon the fact that veneers were invented for the movie industry in Southern California. Like that was a, that was a good day. Cause I went, I can use this to tie my whole essay together. But you had to have veneers when you were a kid because you had an infection and you were allergic to antibiotics and it discolored your teeth. So it wasn't a vanity thing. It wasn't an orthodontia thing. Yep.

I'm allergic to amoxicillin and erythromycin. And those were, when I was a kid, the two main antibiotics that were being used for ear infections. And I had chronic ear infections. So they used... a kind of antibiotics that will permanently stain your teeth so as to clear me of these ear infections. And then somewhere in my tween years...

My mom said, well, for you to have teeth that are stained like this is unacceptable. So we're going to go and get you veneers. And I didn't, they didn't use those words. They said bonding. It was plastic bonding, plastic veneers that they used. And those, you know.

Something I don't know if she knew at the time, but those only last for like five years, 10 at the most. And that meant that I would have to have them replaced. And that's what ended up happening. And I shelled out for porcelain ones, which should last for like 20 years. But the whole process was so long and drawn out and messed up that I actually thanked my dentist and the acknowledgments of this book because, like, he was great. He was so good to me. My dentist.

awful my dentist is one of like the at the end of my life look the top five people i thank i mean yeah because i had it all i had to have everything yeah what happened with you because in my earlier days before I discovered the wonders of SSRI, uptake re-inhibitors. I had every physical manifestation of stress one could have. I had insomnia, IBS, I ground my teeth, you know, and.

I ground my teeth to the point that my jaw didn't fit into my skull anymore. Oh, wow. And so they had to, I did this thing where I, it's called losing centric where my teeth didn't fit together. also known as hell on earth. And so they had to put crowns in the back teeth to rebuild my bite.

Right. And then I had this thing, the instant orthodontia, which you talk about, because I had a big overbite. And when they did that, they just redid my front ones and tucked them in so I didn't look like a mule anymore. And, uh, and, uh, but it was, you know, it was, I mean, there was a day I was in the chair 13 hours. I had crappy Irish teeth and every time they would prep one, which is grinding it down to a tic-tac.

Like, oh, you know what? You actually need a root canal on this. Like, I think I have four teeth in my mouth that haven't had root canals. Oh, God. Yeah. That sucks. I'm sorry. This is my Tinder profile, by the way. I'm so lucky that I could afford it and have it done. But, you know, just as a weird thing, I changed dentists. I had this dentist here in L.A.

And when I first had it done, my dentist was in Sacramento and I lived in L.A. But he was my acting teacher's childhood friend and he did it at cost. And actually, I saved money by flying to Sacramento, staying in a hotel. Flying back. I believe it. Yeah. Dentistry is no joke on your wallet. Michael Delmont. God bless him. Well, God bless Michael Delmont, everyone. Remember him in your prayers tonight. True.

But the point I was going to say is, I said, like, you don't look like you have fake teeth. You look like you have just nice teeth. But I had a dentist down here who was like, I'm going to give you the perfect smile. And I was like, I don't want a perfect smile because nothing about my face is perfect. So, you know, it's just, I mean, just no one's is it's, it's, you know, my, your face is imperfect. I want it to look, I don't want it to stand out.

I just want to look like I have teeth. And I literally had to change. It was like a three. On the third argument, I was like, I can't do this. And I changed dentists. I just don't want him perfect. I want him a little uneven and a little discolored, and I want him to look like, oh, he's got nice teeth. Yeah, I mean, they offered me, like, this all took place kind of just as the super hyper white. teeth trend was coming in. So they offered me these very, very white teeth, like super.

neon fluorescent white. And I was like, no, give me the yellowest ones you've got. And the yellowest ones you've got are kind of normal looking. And I'm very happy with them. I wouldn't have said the thing that you said. Yeah. Yeah. I give you the highest compliment. I didn't know. Which is, you know, it's like you don't, again, movie versus reality. I don't want people saying, God, whoever did your teeth.

His dental assistant at the time, who I think he's gotten rid of, thank God, was this very, like, like, kind of Steve Martin in Little Shop of Horrors except female. Like, she was... really awful and scary. And she had bright white veneers on top and bottom. And every time I looked at her, it was more proof of like, no, not like that. That's not what I want. And we live in a time where not just teeth, that the standard of beauty has surpassed.

physical ability like you the standard of beauty is based on well you would get you get lip injections and it's like the kardashian look is not physically naturally attainable It requires you have to look surgically enhanced. Have you seen 28 weeks later yet? 28 years later yet? I have not. I'm not spoiling anything. There's a great scene, you know, it's in a dystopia. And this guy comes from, and he has a photo of his girlfriend on his phone. And she looks like a typical, like.

what you would describe today as a hot chick. And she's showing him, he's showing it to this kid who grew up in this dystopian village. And he's like, what's wrong with her face? Exactly. And he goes, what do you mean? He goes like, why are her lips like that? Because she's beautiful. And the kid goes, no, we have a girl in our village who's allergic to fish and that happens to her sometimes. But it was, but I was like.

I was like, yes, yes, thank you. It's not just me. This isn't right. Yes. Yep. I completely agree with that kid and with you. It's, it's, and the thing that I. think about it is like

This is a time when feminine beauty standards are like hyper, hyper, hyper feminine. The last time that happened was in the fifties, which is very repressive, like, you know, moment of, of not wanting women to have power. And I think. I think we're in that again. I think there's a reason for this, but I also, you know, damn the Kardashians every day. It's also, I think it's called.

An extinction burst? An extinction burst of hyper-masculinity and the whole UFC of it all? Yes. It's also a response to the Me Too movement. All of these things are predictable, but not good. Yes, I agree with that. Here's the example that I always say. The Civil War statues in the South did not go up after the Civil War. They went up after civil rights. Yeah. You know, it's a, I'm threatened and I'm going to push back. And eventually this will abate, but it's generational. Yeah.

It's just time if we survive long enough. Yeah. In 20 years, Trump is dead and whites are a minority. And nothing you do today can affect either one of those things. So, yeah, who thought they'd go quietly? Show of hands. Um, but, and I said that it's because I said that online, I, I said that online.

And all the comments. See, there was your first mistake. You shouldn't say that kind of thing online. Well, all the comments were like, all of these self-loathing liberals, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, no, I'm not self-loathing at all. I love, I love my, believe me, I love myself, but I'm not proud that I'm white because I had nothing to do with it. It's like being proud of having feet, you know, I'm.

proud of my accomplishments. Uh, and I'll tell you something sort of interesting about this conversation there. One of the essays that didn't make the cut into this book was an essay about Gone with the Wind and Django Unchained and my family. And I think I'm at a point now where I'm comfortable saying that I was raised in a family that was... pretty white supremacist. I mean, we weren't marching in the streets. We didn't say the 14 words, none of that, but it was like, um, yes, you should

only mix with white society. That is the right way. The white way is, is just a more civilized, reasonable way to live, which is of course not what I believe today, but it was what I was raised with. And the essay turned out. I could look back at it after I had written it and realize that it was really an expiation of white guilt, which is not really something that anyone needs to read. Sure. Like, it's not...

That's not something that should be centered in the conversation about movies or about race or about anything. Because it's not about us. Yeah, 100% not about us. And so I'm really glad I wrote it. really glad I got that out there. And I'm really glad that I thought and talked about Gone with the Wind the way that I did. But I don't think that essay should see the light of day because all it does is recenter whiteness. And that's not what I want.

Yeah, I understand. I mean, I grew up in a house. I heard the N word a dozen times a day. And it's just that world. It's gone. It's going away. Um, but it was, you know, 60s, 70s, middle, middle, actually bunker, actually bunker. Um, and, uh, it, it's. I think that one of the reasons we are where we are today is that I don't think people appreciate that when Obama got elected, half the country's brains broke.

I just don't think people understand the degree to which that really violated people's views of what reality should be in this country. You're talking about the 50s and, you know, we are in an era where, I mean, that's the... The wink-wink behind making America great again is going back to this period where things were great for wealthy white men. But you talk a lot about...

the movie The Misfits, which I have to admit, I've never seen it. I know it, obviously, but it is one of those movies where...

And there's a lot of these, and I find them really fascinating. It's got all of these ingredients, and it doesn't work. And the way you describe it, it's got too much good stuff in it. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, there's a lot of things that go wrong with that movie. One of the things that goes wrong is that. Well, let's talk about, let's introduce the movie for people that don't know, like who's in it. What's it about?

So The Misfits is a 1961 film directed by John Huston, and it was written by Arthur Miller. It's his only screenplay. Uh, and it stars Marilyn Monroe, who was married to Miller at the time and Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift. And, uh, I know a lot of details about all of those stars, but, um, Huge stars. Yeah. Very great movie stars.

Yeah. And, um, Eli Wallach and Thelma Ritter are also in it who I'm going to say, those are two of the greatest character actors who's ever, who have ever lived. Yeah. So it's, it's kind of an interesting setup for a film to have all of these just. really big, really talented, really charismatic people in it. But it's a dud. It's a dud of a movie. Part of it is that there's no kind of... driving force of plot or character. These people are just kind of stuck in Reno and they just do things.

I think the reason for that is that the screenplay was being rewritten constantly. And as Miller's marriage to Monroe was failing, he wrote her worse and worse and worse. And she's just completely inconsistent throughout the film. Like who she is and what she is there to do is just changes from scene to scene. It's almost as if, and you know more than I do.

It's almost as if he was too good of a writer to write a movie because his biggest works are about ideas. And movies about ideas rarely work because movies need to be kinetic.

I would not say that, what you just said. I don't know enough about Miller or know his work well enough to really judge why this one doesn't work. I don't really like his work. And I don't... think that he was I don't think he was suited to writing a film because once a play is done it's done and it's you know you you do it the same way every time and movies aren't like that they're much more

dynamic and constantly shifting right and so for him to do that it's kind of i don't it doesn't it doesn't make a lot of sense i think for the kind of writer that he was but yeah like death of a salesman would not make a great movie No, no, it wouldn't. And I, I don't, yeah, they're just, they're very different forms. And for people to think that they are similar because they're both actors saying lines is like, no, it's not, it's not the same thing at all.

Well, it's like when these great novelists went to Hollywood to write screenplays. And, you know, it's not necessarily... Just because you're great at one doesn't mean you'll be great at the other. It's fish and fowl. It is. And it seems like it's not with plays and movies, but it totally 100% is. I think that's part of it. Part of it is that the shoot was total chaos.

Monroe was very sick at the time, but she also was kind of publicly getting the blame for wrecking the shoot when John Huston was gambling the production money, like the budget of the film, at the tables in Reno every night. Um, which is just shocking to me. And the fact that that kind of never got out in any of the, anyway, um, and Clift was his usual self, you know, he's not a reliable human being.

Like, I love Montgomery Clift, but he's not who you call when you need someone to kind of be there. Yeah, well, he's this was after he he's a fascinating story because he sort of had two careers. He was this. He was one of the great. famous method actors very internal and small not small you know what i mean very internal very methody very methody and then and he was oh my god And then he got into a terrible car accident right down the street from my house. And it kind of effed up his face.

And so it was like before the accident and after the accident. Fun fact, he was happier after the accident because being that beautiful, he felt like a freak. And once he was... I know how he feels. And so once he was like a little bit asymmetrical, like a little bit less beautiful, he felt like he could be a better actor.

I believe that. But it didn't help his pill addiction that he was in a very serious accident that needed... Now, did his pill addiction come from being in pain? Or was he just... He was an actor. No, I think he was in pain and then eventually was an addict. I think that's what happened. It happens. Like, I think, yeah.

I think he had problems that required pain pills, but then that just turned into itself. The book that you talk is the making of the misfits. Is that what it's? Yeah. I really got to get that book. These three people are icons. At this point, they are larger than life and they're all so broken. Like Clark Gable famously after Carol Lombard died. Same again. Was it just a shell of a man?

Didn't he kill somebody? No. So, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about, but that it was actually probably Houston. And the. It's funny you ask, because the last year I've been researching 1930s Hollywood, and this specifically came up because of the book that I'm writing about that period. What's the book? Oh, I want to talk about that. And someone hit and killed a pedestrian in Hollywood in, like, I think on Sunset, kind of near where UCLA is now. And...

They covered it up, but they covered it up in this confusing way where it could have been Gable because they were responding to a prostitute situation for Gable on a similar day. But this was probably Houston. That's at least what the books that I've read have said. Okay. And from what I understand, and correct me if I'm wrong, Eddie Mannix basically said, we're going to get...

We're going to get a mid-level executive who's on his way out and he's going to take the rap. It is, but it's also like the, there's this book that I have about Mannix and Strickling and how, you know, everything that they.

It's called, I think, The Fixers. Yeah, I think I have that book. The Fixers is like, I think a lot of it is conjecture or sort of... sort of sources but not really uh gossip it's not as bad as hollywood babylon but it's not very reliable at all yeah but there the part where he talks about this particular incident is like it's it's unclear

what exactly they were covering up and when. But the files kind of got mixed together for Eddie Mannix. And so who he was actually protecting in that incident is not... clear to us now. But yes, a pedestrian was killed. It was probably either Gable or Houston, and someone else took the fall for it. But Clark Gable did, in fact, rape Loretta Young.

And the baby that she had that she, quote, adopted was Clark Gables. But the person who knew that it was rape did not reveal that until after the kid's death in, like, the 2010s, I think. So for years and years and years, it was like, okay, first there's this secret that this is Clark Gable's baby. And then there's this secret that, you know, that lasts decades and decades. And then there's this secret that...

In fact, it was rape. And that secret has only been revealed for a relatively short time. But, yeah. And it was so... It wasn't common. It was ubiquitous. I mean...

Yeah. Eddie Muller wrote a book called Dark City Dames, which is the story of several actresses that were, you know, famous film noir actresses that weren't the big ones, you know, and it's people like, you know. Colleen Gray and Savage from Detour. And there's this woman, Evelyn Keys. I mean, her life reads like Angela's ashes in Malibu. Like it's.

It's just like this unending abuse and torment. And it's, it's interesting. I was listening to this thing about, you know, John Ford and, you know, they say that. Guys have a warped image of masculinity because of movies. But a lot of those movies that they look to... were done by these warped people. So it's like chicken to the egg. If John Ford had one session with a therapist, the ending of the session would not be, I don't think you need anything. I think you're good.

I don't want to take your money. Because I grew up in the 70s, but I was watching old movies all the time. I had to realize... Not that I ever did this, but like, yeah, you know, if you go for a woman and she's, you know, if she's a star, you slap her. You know, if she resists your kiss, well, you got to force it.

You know, like, I never did those things, because in the moment, it's all like, oh, no, this isn't right. But that was the standard. Yeah, I get that. And, you know, as I'm watching all these 30s movies and research, it's... Interesting. One of the figures in my book is John Gilbert, who was a silent actor who didn't quite make the transition to sound. And he was masculinity in the silent era. He and Rudolph Valentino, who are both very sort of fit, trim.

men who paid absolute attention to the women on screen, like thought that they hung the moon, very obviously like worshiped these women. And then what changed was Gable. He came in, he's this very masculine, very, like, sort of meaty dude, and the way that he treats women is sort of, you gotta love me, even though I push you around. And... And that's not great, but it's kind of was the new masculinity at the time. And all of these sort of thin, respectful men went out the window.

As far as I'm concerned, the exact same thing happened in the 80s in action movies. Like, you had... sort of action movies with with um people like steve mcqueen and then now you have action movies with people like stallone and schwarzenegger who are these meaty motherfuckers like well not not even they're sure i mean but that's the you go from not even again like it's the mass it's the male version of it is yes yes this body isn't even on a is it yeah no it's not achievable but

But that is the model of masculinity as opposed to something that's more, I guess, reasonable, even if it's, even if it's toxic, like, um, you know, McQueen hitting Ali McGraw. And I think. Not the getaway, maybe the getaway, but like... very different vision of masculine perfection between sort of 70s guys, not Steve McQueen. He's not ugly, but you know, like, like Robert Duvall and Gene Hackman who are like, no one's idea of a beauty queen.

to these, like, ultra-steroid dudes. It's just interesting to me how this, too, is a cycle of, like, what we consider masculine changes and then rechanges over the decades. Yeah. I mean, it's one of my favorite topics. Sean Connery's body in Diamonds Are Forever. And Zardoz, for that matter. Yeah, he takes off his shirt and he looks like my dad. You could be an action hero and look like a human being.

being you can't anymore yes you know i don't know if that will you know that will that will change but but it is it is uh that whole jacked kind of a kind of thing i remember i had a i had a trainer and the first day i worked with him i was like i can't do this like i like two days later i was immobile

And he was like, don't you want to get jacked? No, no, I don't. I just want to be healthy and in shape. I don't, you know, but he couldn't even understand that. Yeah. Don't you want your manifest destiny to be as big as you possibly can? No, no. It's just, it's a weird, I was just, I'm not proud of this. I was just salmon fishing. Where are you now? I was in Alaska because my daughter was in Alaska like a lot of kids these days.

My daughter went into paleontology and she was up there, literally part of school on a dig. And then she was like, come on up. We'll hang out. So we go up. And we hang out. It was great. Alaska is gorgeous. And the sun didn't go down. But we had a great time. My daughter wanted to go salmon fishing, which is not exciting. She had a, but, and she, you know, she caught a bunch of fish. I didn't catch anything. And I, and I, we had this like aggro salmon fishing guide. Who's like.

I feel it, Dan. You're going to get one. I can feel it coming. You know, if you can catch a rock, you can catch a fish. And I finally said, like, I don't define success this way. I'm fine if I don't catch a fish. It's like, I'll go home tonight. I'll be okay. Oh, boy. You know, it was just like, we're going to win. I don't need to win standing by a river.

Just here. Oh boy. Wow. Yeah, no, it is, you know, it's that it's the chicken or the egg. I mean, it is, it's kind of goes back full circle to what.

your book out there in the dark is about is we live in a, we live in a chicken or the egg sort of cultural loop where film.

you know, people look at movies as reality and it affects how they live their lives, but then it colors, it goes back to, it goes back to film. The last film you talk about somewhat extensively in the book is Mildred Pierce. which you draw an analogy to your own childhood. You say something really interesting in the book. You say, the first time I remember feeling shame about money was the first grade, and the last time was a few minutes ago.

How is it that you felt shame about money in the first grade? This is a sad story. So in the first grade, Christmas that year, they had this little like market. To be clear, my memories of childhood are fuzzy at best and very patchy. So I don't know what the purpose of this was or anything like that. But they had this thing where you could go and you could buy gifts for Christmas at school.

And my parents gave me $20 to buy something. And I, this was, this must've been like 1986. I'm going to guess maybe 1987. So they gave me $20 and I went in and I looked at the market and I bought a poodle, a stuffed poodle that was $20 for myself. And I came home and my parents were really upset because I had bought a present for myself. The idea was that they would give me money and I would buy presents for other people at this, at this thing.

I was not aware that that was the situation. I thought that the money was for me. And also I was maybe six. So, but they made me feel really ashamed that I thought about myself first instead of thinking about other people when they gave me money. that, yeah, that was when that happened. And that was like, I'm not going to say that's like the root of the money trauma. Cause it's not at all, but it's like, that was the first time that I was like, okay, so money, money can make me feel bad.

Yeah, no, I get it. We all have those stories. I mean, we all have those weird stories. So where do you suggest people get your book? Where's the best place to purchase your book? You can purchase it either from my publisher, Autofocus Books, which is autofocusbooks.com, if I'm not mistaken. You can also just Google Autofocus. You can get it at Asterism, which is the distributor. Asterism Books. A-S-T-E-R-I-S-M? A-S-T-E-R. And you can also get it at Bookshop.

If you want, you can buy it directly from me and I will send you an autographed copy. And I don't have any stickers for this book, but I do have some hand-pressed cards that I made with quotes from the book that I can send. along and just think if you, if you wanted to buy the book and not give money to somebody who doesn't need any more money. Yeah. I mean, it's actually not available on Amazon. Um, so, so there's that, but, uh,

Yeah, you can get it direct from me. Go to my website, kcoldiron.com, or you can get it from autofocus, asterism, or bookshop. kcoldiron.com. Good on you! We didn't get to talk about how much I don't like No Time to Die, which is a new subject for us. Can I plug something else just in case? Of course. I don't know who listens to your podcast, so this is... Bunch of jerks.

The last novel that I finished, actually, I finished it last year, and it was a book inspired by Casablanca. And it's about Ilsa, kind of her... life from the time that she's a late teenager up through the events of the film. And I... I'm really proud of it. I worked really, really hard on it. I spent like two years researching and writing, and I haven't been able to find anyone who wants to get permission from Warner Brothers to publish this book.

um oh you yeah i guess they still still have the even after all this time the copyright does belong to Warner brothers. And I consulted with a lawyer and like the IP situation is that we need to get permission from Warner brothers to use the characters. So, um, I haven't had a lot of luck with that, but that's, um,

It's a really interesting book, and it's an interesting reflection on the Trump era. The book that I wanted to write was kind of reflecting on 2016 to 2020, but now that we're in another one, it seems even more... To the point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand that. Oh, great. Well, good luck. I mean, it can be done. And what I have found is it depends on who asks. It's not the ask. It's the asker.

Yeah, that's certainly for sure. Well, the book is called Out There in the Dark. Go to kcoldiron.com or you can get it from the publisher Autofocus.

And Catherine will be back. We didn't even get to talk about my better version of Fire Walk With Me idea. There is no better version of Fire Walk With Me. Firewalk With Me is a masterpiece. I get it. Not saying it's not. But is there to... to have made it more commercially successful and to bridge the gap in what Mark Frost wanted to do with what David wanted to do. Because Mark Frost wanted to bring the story forward.

David wanted to tell the story of Laura Palmer. To do a Godfather part two, Dale Cooper is in the Black Lodge and evil Dale Cooper is running amok. And we go back and forth between the last seven days of Laura Palmer. And what's happening with, you know, but then we wouldn't have gotten season three. And like, I think, I think David was right to be concerned about showing.

what the audience thinks they want when it's not actually what they want. I mean, one of the greatest lessons about narrative that I ever learned was when he said in his book of interviews, like, People thought they wanted to know who killed Laura Palmer, but once they did, it was over. Yeah, they did. Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. Yeah, it's...

It's, uh, and I can't, I didn't realize we've talked about this before and I'll let you go, but like, I appreciated that movie late. I didn't get it for a long time. I mean, and I saw it opening night and I walked out and said, what did I ever do to you? But now, and I will, I get more done. I'm not going to recover. The Q2 fan edit, I actually like better than his cut.

Good to know. It's three hours and 20 minutes, but I just find that, but I find that all of the fan service stuff, the Michael, you know, you, you see everybody. It takes its foot off your throat a little bit and lets you breathe a little bit before you go back into this story. Yeah. I don't know. I am hugely impressed by...

Lynch putting us inside of a dying girl and not letting us, not letting us go from that. Like, I think that's, that's a much more impressive achievement than I care about being comfortable, you know? Yeah. No, that's true. No, I definitely said, like, this is the more comfortable version. You know, for sure. Like, absolutely. But I also could stay in Deer Meadow for another hour. I'm a Chet Desmond fan. I'll happily have more Chet Desmond.

podcast speaks for the sky. Dana Goldbaum. This has been the Dana Gould Hour. Brought to you by The Internet. Music by Andy Paley with Jake Posner behind the board. Produced by Jeff Fox. Graphic design and web production by Spencer Hunt and Segan Friend. Sound editing and post-production by Jalinda Palmer and Joe Napolitano. Tom Kenny speaking. I'm a DJ. I'm a DJ. I'm a person. I'm a person. I'm a singer.

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