Outside The Frame

Noir more than ever

Peter Keough — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:41:00 GMT

People in the Fenway, where I live, have gotten pretty blasé this fall about big movie crews shooting in the neighborhood. One weekend "The Zookeeper" was shooting late at night a couple of blocks away and it seems every week the helicopters, swat teams, police vehicles and light towers of Ben Affleck's "The Town" have taken over the streets around the ball park. So when I was walking home the other day and saw Kilmarnock St. shut down by "cops" from Peterborough to Queensberry, I thought, here we go again, and looked around for the catering van to see if I could swipe a cookie or a slice of pizza.

Turns out that it wasn't a film crew after all. Two guys in masks robbed the Boston Taxi office of several thousand dollars. One was apprehended, the other is still at large. The guy they caught turns out to be a three time loser out on parole for a life sentence he was supposed to be serving for manslaughter and second degree murder convictions.

Scary. But if you really want to be scared read the bloodthirsty comments following the story reporting the robbery. I.e:

"If we just waste these "types" then we won't have over crowding in the prisons. I'll be there to throw the switch if we need volunteers."

and:

"Clearly Gerald Hill misses rough prison love and that's why he committed this senseless crime."

and:

"He did it so he could a free swine flu shot and you morons want the corrupt democratic goverment to handle your healthcare , sad and sick."

and:

"Lets torture these prisoneers so they will be miserable when they get out (as most do) and murder some poor S.O.B helping us decrease the surface population.
Forget about healthcare because people in crowds like schools and prison get disease's easier deserve to sufer like in the former USSR.
Lets prove what the we call Mideast Terrorist that we are the true SOBS they claim we are. And lets prove to the rest of the world we have NO humanity too."

That'll show them. Actually, I think the last one was putting us on. But I'm sure there a lot of readers out there nodding their heads.

The dominant concern seems to be that the death penalty should be used to provide more room in prisons for other evil doers, like the Muslims and Liberals and Democratics.

And this is the "Globe," mind you. I shudder to think what cheerful thoughts the readers at the "Herald" are sharing.

Sleep depraved

Peter Keough — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:05:00 GMT

After writing about "Disney's A Christmas Carol" earlier this week, I fell into a cold sweat, a panic attack as if I was about to remember something I was trying to forget.

Details of that movie - the dim sense of hideous entities invading the bedroom, the flashing lights, the feeling of being lifted bodily from under the covers to some horrifying destination - touched on something repressed and dreadful.

I had experienced these things before.

Then I remembered: it was from the trailer for "The Fourth Kind" (I haven't seen the movie; are you kidding?), in which post-Whitley Streiber ETs have their way with slumbering Alaskans (insert Sarah Palin joke here). And not just that, but also "Paranormal Activities," the "Blair Witch"-ish horror movie in which a yuppie-fied young couple record on video inexplicable nocturnal visitations.

Clearly there is a trend in recent movies tapping into a fear of -- or desire for? -- things that go bump in the night while the rest of the world is asleep and vulnerable.

What does it mean? Socialism would be my guess. That Maoist Obama regime lulling us to sleep with sweet talk and Health Care lullabies so they can give us the ultimate anal probe of a full-blown Marxist dictatorship. Just remember that I warned you.

A Christmas Cartel

Peter Keough — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:41:00 GMT

Did you ever notice how all the classic Holiday movies are about capitalism? Not surprising given the fact that the season is the epitome of consumer culture, an annual shopping spree which, this year more than ever, sustains our economy.

And so we have It's a Wonderful Life (1946), the Frank Capra perennial which centers around a systemic financial failure, the distraught and suicidal owner of an insolvent building and loan company, and a conniving capitalist eager to reap profit from the misery of others. Sounds timely.

Or "Holiday Inn" (1942) and its remake of sorts, White Christmas (1954), in which holiday spirit, the crooning of Bing Crosby, and the music of Irving Berlin prove a money maker in the hotel resort industry.

Or "Miracle on 34th St" (1947), in which St. Nick's honesty and charity turn out to be a brilliant marketing concept for a giant New York City department store.

But maybe the ultimate expression of the capital/labor class struggle is the beloved Charles Dickens's chestnut "A Christmas Carol" in which the ultimate ruthless capitalist squeezes dry Bob Cratchit, the epitome of the exploited proletariat, and gets a supernatural comeuppance for his trouble.

For how this works in the real world you might take a look at "American Casino," which is kind like Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" without the humor but with facts (it plays this week at the Brattle Theatre).

Otherwise you can dip into the endless catalogue of "A Christmas Carol" movie adaptations - over two dozen since the first one in 1908. I'd recommend "Scrooge" (1951) with Alastair Sim. "Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol" (1962) is pretty good too and also the much maligned "Scrooged" (1988) with Bill Murray.

But steer clear of the new one from Robert Zemeckis. Save your money and read the book aloud to your kids instead.

The Boston Palestine Film Festival 2009: "Laila's Birthday"

Peter Keough — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:28:00 GMT

The harried hero (Mohammed Bakri) of Rashid Masharawi's "Laila's Birthday" has a few simple rules when it comes to people using his cab. First, put on the seatbelt if you're in the front seat. Second, no smoking. Third, no checkpoints. And finally, absolutely no automatic weapons. "You're robbing yourself!" says one would-be customer toting an AK-47. "Half the people in Ramallah carry guns. The other half can't afford taxis!"

So goes another day in the life of a cab driver in Palestine. Unlike most, perhaps, this driver is also a judge. Invited by the Palestinians to relocate from his successful post in a neighboring Arab country to serve in their Ministry of Justice ("We have a Ministry of Justice?" asks one fare), he's been enduring a Kafka-esque ordeal waiting for months for his appointment to be confirmed because the government keeps changing. In the meantime he makes a living by driving his brother-in-law's cab. He's frustrated and stressed out, so no wonder his wife must remind him that it's his 7-year-old daughter Laila's birthday and he must return home from work in time to celebrate, bringing a present and a cake.

That's the premise: the cabbie must survive the absurd trials of a day on the meter in Ramallah and make it back home to sing "Happy Birthday" by 8 p.m. As such the film serves as a window into life under the Israeli occupation - but without a single Israeli in sight, only the off-screen roar of hovering helicopters and passing jets. Instead, Masharawi focuses on the Palestinians themselves, how they might ameliorate the situation, contrasting their ineffectual demands for freedom with their unwillingness in some cases to obey simple traffic regulations. In a climactic rant through a police bullhorn, the cabbie does give a shout out to the occupiers, but mostly the film demands that the Palestinians themselves seize their own destiny.

Though barely over an hour long, "Laila's Birthday" makes a powerful impression, partly through Masharawi's shrewd and concise cinema verité style, employing tracking shots and mise-en-scene reminiscent of Abbas Kiarostami (and also of Hany Abu-Assad's extraordinary 2003 documentary "Ford Transit"). Not to mention Bakri's intense, eloquent performance, conveying through sheer body language hardship, dignity, and rage.

It seems almost too much to bear. Somehow, though, you suspect that Mashawari's simple decency and rueful whimsy will prevail.

It screens this Sunday, November 1 at 5 pm at the Museum of Fine Arts to conclude this year's Boston Palestine Film Festival. A panel discussion on the film and on Palestinian filmmaking in general follows.

Von Trier: Willem Dafoe's penis "too big" for Antichrist

Carly Carioli — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:31:00 GMT

We suspect some of you may have missed the salient segment of Peter Keough's interview with Antichrist director Lars Von Trier this week, in which he revealed that Willem Dafoe required a stunt-cock for the film. And not, as in the case of Marky Wahlberg in Boogie Nights, because his member was insufficient for the part, but for the opposite reason: Dafoe's dick is just way too fucking huge:

Willem Dafoe — and I think you've mentioned this before — plays probably the worst therapist in the history of movies.
First of all, I have been undergoing this cognitive therapy for three years, and I tend to get sarcastic about it. One of the main ideas behind the treatment is that a fear is a thought, and a thought doesn’t change reality. But you can say in the film that it’s changed reality. As for Dafoe, I wouldn’t let him treat her in any other way than with his dick; he has an enormous dick. We had to take those scenes out of the film. We had a stand-in for him because we had to take the scenes out with his own dick.
You had a stand-in dick for Dafoe?
We had to, because Will’s was too big.
Too big to fit on the screen?
No, too big because everybody got very confused when they saw it.

Why the confusion? Perhaps this: very small man, very big dick. We had the opportunity to meet Dafoe briefly earlier this year when he came to the Brattle Theater. Dafoe, it turns out, is short: we're guessing he'd be five-five in heels. Who says big things can't come in small packages?

More noir: the Columbia Noir Classics on DVD (vol. 1)

Peter Keough — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:03:00 GMT

After writing the onerous article on "Boston Noir" and attending the "Boston Noir" book launch/reading at the Boston Book Festival (Dennis Lehane should host a talk show; he's hilarious) I thought I'd fill in the gaps in my noir knowledge by checking out the Columbia Film Noir Classics I ($59.95) box set of five 50s B-ish films from that genre, to be released by Sony and the Film Foundation. And indeed, it was an eye-opener. Who knew these movies were so gay?

Like kinky Fritz Lang's "The Big Heat" (1953), the best known of the bunch. Why is Lee Marvin's psycho Vince Stone so pissed off at women? The hot coffee in Gloria Grahame's face scene still packs a wallop, but while watching it this time in the context of some of the other films in the collection it occurred to me that perhaps one motive for such viciousness is repressed homosexuality. In a society (the 50s) where gayness is brutally repressed, no wonder sexually tormented guys like Vince take it out on dames and just about everyone else. I haven't had a chance to tune in to the commentaries by Martin Scorsese and Michael Mann. Maybe they shed light on the matter.

On the other hand, nobody bothered to comment on the DVD of Phil Karlson's "5 Against the House." Understandably so, because it's kind of a bland (surprising since it's based on a novel by Jack Finney of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" fame) and confused item somewhere between "The Blue Dahlia" (1946) and "Oceans Eleven" (1960). So I'll put in my two cents worth. In it four veterans from the Korean War, now attending "Northwest" University, get caught up in a scheme to rob a Reno casino. Unfortunately, one of them, sweaty, baby-faced "Brick" played by Brian Keith, is a bit of a psycho, ostensibly from battlefield trauma.

But I think there might be something else to it. First of all, the four pals are maybe a little too tightly knit, their banter at times weirdly double entendre-ish (and mostly annoying), plus their enslaving/hazing of a freshman named Speedy seems a little unwholesome. Then there's the tension when the best looking guy in the bunch, Al, played by Guy Madison, starts two-timing the group by getting cozy with a nightclub singer played by Kim Novak. That's when old Brick starts getting the homicidal heebie-jeebies. I see it as psychopathic jealousy and homosexual panic. I mean, just look at Madison in the cowboy suit.

Speaking of Brian Keith, his wizened father Robert plays one of a pair of mob hit men in Don Siegel's "The Lineup" (1958) . He's Julian, the older, wiser, but no less sociopathic member of the team and he has his hands full with Dancer, played by a brilliant Eli Wallach who must have been an inspiration for Joe Pesci in "GoodFellas" and "Casino." A key scene occurs in a steam room with a sailor. As one of the DVD commentators, Eddie Muller of the Film Noir Foundation observes, at this point the subtext is no longer just suggested. The other commentator is the great crime novelist James Ellroy, and let's just say he seriously competes with the characters on screen for down-the-road-wacko-ness. Sheesh! No wonder the studio put up a disclaimer.

As for the two others, in Edward Dmytryk's "The Sniper" (1952) the title psycho can't control a compulsion to pop errant women who resemble his mother with his military issue M-1. It stars Adolphe Menjou as "Lt. Frank Kafka." One of the more striking images involves an extreme long shot of a tiny man dangling from a huge smokestack. Phallic symbol, anyone?

Finally, Irving Lerner's "Murder by Contract" (1958) has Vince Edwards (remember "Ben Casey?" there's even a sequence here with him dressed up like a doctor) as a hit man whose single-minded dedication to his craft (in his commentary Scorsese explains how the film influenced "Taxi Driver") works fine until he's given a contract on a woman. Unlike the other guys, he doesn't like it at all.

The Boston Palestine Film Festival

Peter Keough — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:18:00 GMT

The ongoing Boston Palestine Film Festival (Oct. 16-Nov. 1) and the upcoming Boston Jewish Film Festival (Nov. 4-15) take place, presumably coincidentally, almost back to back. David Ridgen and Nicolas Rossier's "American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein," which screens as part of the Palestine Festival tonight at 8:30 pm at the Museum of Fine Arts (the festival's other venues include The Coolidge Corner Theatre, the Harvard Film Archive and others), would be an appropriate selection for both.

Not that the title academic and political firebrand is the type to resolve differences - indeed, he has stirred passionate controversy and divisive opinions for some 25 years with such books as "The Holocaust Industry" and "Beyond Chutzpah." The son of Holocaust survivors, Finkelstein argues that Israel in its dealings with Palestine should not employ Nazi tactics and that the Holocaust should not be exploited to further a political agenda.

The fiery response such ideas arouse are recorded by the filmmakers as they follow the charismatic and intense academic and activist (in the Hollywood version I see John Malkovich cast in the role) to various appearances and debates from 2000-2008 and in cities ranging from Beirut to Montreal. Though siding with their subject, Ridgen and Rossier allow equal time for his detractors, such as Rabbi David Olesker and Alan Dershowitz. Even Finkelstein's mentor Noam Chomsky acknowledges that Finkelstein might be too caustic for his own good, and notes that, in an infamous incident, his accusing Dershowitz of plagiarism was an unfortunate distraction. Indeed, it might have cost him his tenure at DePaul University, which appears to be a case of silencing an alleged anti-Israeli voice through the anti-American suppression of free speech.

In short, "American Radical" will stimulate discussion about one of the day's most important issues. Surely the sign of a significant film and of a worthwhile film festival.

PS:It looks like Norman Finkelstein will be attending the screening. Should be an interesting evening.

Interview with Lars von Trier, part 2

Peter Keough — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:46:00 GMT

In which Lars von Trier explains which fox to trust:

PK: The fox I heard came to you in a shamanistic journey? Is that true?

LV: (laughs) That's right. Yes I did from time to time these shamanistic things. It's a very long story, but it had to do with someone from my family being in the hospital, and was dying, and then I read somewhere that by means of these shamans in Brazilian tribes, you could kind of travel for another person. And that is what I did for my family member, who was very fond of foxes. So I went to talk to some foxes. And then there was this interesting thing that was not in the film, and that is that the first the first fox I met behaved like the one in the film, but afterwards, I met some other foxes, and they said, ‘never trust the first fox you meet.'

PK: Meaning the one that said "chaos reigns," right? So which fox do you trust?

LV: (laughs) I trust the one with the chaos.

PK: Did you know that that phrase is becoming a kind of catch-phrase?

LV: Yes. I saw something on YouTube that looked very funny, yes. Great.

PK: Somebody online also suggested that you can market the three beggars as like merchandised toys or something like that. Has anything like that ever occurred to you? Like having merchandised figures out of those creatures, of the three beggars, the fox and the deer, and the-is it a raven or a crow?

LV: Yeah it is supposed to be a crow but we could only get a raven. (laughs)

PK: Yeah. Edgar Allan Poe reference there, right? Because it is despair, right?

LV: Yeah.

PK: Is it true that there's a video game of this movie?

LV: It doesn't exist yet but I know that they're working on something.

PK: Who's working on it?

LV: Um, not me. You know when I make a film it's quite important that people see the original, and then what they do with it afterwards I can't control. So I'm, no, I wouldn't work on the game.

PK: It seems like a kind of difficult game, I would imagine. A lot of that stuff you don't want to do at home.

LV: Yes.

PK: There are a number of films that have been coming out lately-and this probably is remote to your filmmaking, but there's a film coming out that's called "2012," there's another one called "Legion," there's "The Road;" there seems to be like a lot of films about the end of the world and the apocalypse. Do you think your film draws on that kind of zeitgeist?

LV: "Zeitgeist," yeah. Probably. But I remember a lot of films about the end of the world earlier, also. During another period. The disaster films. And I can only say that this film ["Planet Melancholia"] that what I am going to do is going to be the real end. Nobody is going to survive, you know. Normally there's a couple of people that will survive in a cave somewhere. Not in my film. No no no.

PK: You did a film similar to that, "Epidemic," a while ago.

LV: Oh yeah that's right. It must be zeitgeist. But that's zeitgeist from some time ago.

PK: Yeah. But is it going to be your last film? If you wipe out the entire human race, will you go on from there? A fresh start?

LV: Yeah, you can say that. But you have to start with these little-it's something called "stromatolites" [?]. These little bacteria form that live for three billion years.These special kind of bacteria. If you went there with a camera to film, it would have taken you three billion years to get just a little action.

PK: And then you'd probably regret it, too. I think that three or four of your last films have been set in America, but you've never traveled to this country. What is the reason for that?

LV: First of all because I'm afraid of travelling and the travels I've done have not been very successful. To me, you know, 80% of the films that I like and that I've seen have been American. So to me, America, since I have not been there, is some kind of a ‘film-land,' you know. So I can do almost what I want to because I don't know the place. I think the next one will not be in America, but of course for a film to be marketable it must be in English or American, I'm just not comfortable with setting it in a country with a different language.

PK: And it's usually in the Northwest, too. The Pacific Northwest.

LV: Yes. That's because somebody told me that it could look like Scandinavia.

PK: With "Twin Peaks," that wasn't in the Northwest, was it? That was one of your favorite movies, or, TV shows.

LV: Oh yeah, I believe it was. Or maybe it wasn't.

PK: One of the prizes that the film received at Cannes was kind of ironic. It was the "anti-prize" from the Ecumenical jury. Do they actually give you some sort of trophy for that?

LV: No, I didn't even know about that, but I'm proud to win it.

PK: I thought it was a bit hypocritical because the head of the jury was somebody who worked with Marco Ferreri, who had done "The Last Woman," which involved Gerard Depardieu in a scene similar to one in your movie. Why do you think people get so worked up about your film, but that one I don't recall having so much controversy attached to it?

LV: That was in another time, you know. There was a lot of nudity and violence and ecstasy in the seventies, wasn't there?

PK: Would you have preferred to make movies back then? There seemed to be a more open, creative, atmosphere for filmmakers all over the world, including the United States.

LV: No, I would say that the only trick I have up my sleeve is to take something from back then and show it today. So no no, if I had done it then, I would have disappeared, you know.

PK: The film that's coming out here around Halloween, do you have a similar holiday in Denmark?

LV: We are getting more and more Halloween.

PK: "Saw VI" is opening the same week. I've described Antichrist as "Saw VI" as directed by Carl Dreyer. Is that accurate?

LV: Yeah, very precise.

PK: Do you think of this as an artier kind of slasher film?

LV: I would always be proud that any film that Carl Dreyer would have made I would have liked to be compared to. I believe these films, are they something called torture-porn? They are torture-porn. Well it's nothing I watch myself, you know, the torture-porn, but I like to mix different ingredients from different genres into a film. I don't have a kind of moral thing about torture-porn or porn altogether. I believe that anything you can imagine you could show. But of course I have children also. But in principle I think you can show anything....

PK: I was surprised to learn that you converted to Catholicism in 1995? Do you still practice that?

LV: No. I converted because I was a-religious before and after some years you tend to be more and more like your mother and father, and they were atheists by belief, so I'm a poor Catholic.

PK: But do you believe in redemption?

LV: Ah, that's a long question. Yes, let's say.

PK: Oh, what a relief! Happy Halloween!

Interview with Lars von Trier

Peter Keough — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:00:00 GMT

A while ago we were wondering how Lars von Trier was doing because it had been reported that he was very depressed and felt like quitting movies. But now he's back with his most offensive movie to date and he's still depressed and so is everyone who watches it! But let him do the talking. Oh, and there are SPOILERS. Like that scene with Bill Murray...

PK: How are you doing today?

LV: I'm actually okay. Today is an okay day.

PK: That's good. It's hit or miss, huh?

LV: (laughs) Yeah, sometimes.

PK: Would you recommend making a movie like this as a treatment for depression?

LV: Uh, yeah, well my treatment was more the work than the subject, if you understand what I mean. Just to get out of bed and do something. So, yeah I think I would recommend it. I don't know how many people have the opportunity, you know, to do a film to get cured. There would be a lot of films made.

PK: I bet, yeah. It's better than Prozac, though, I imagine.

LV: Yeah, Prozac is also good. But the problem about Prozac is it doesn't continue being good, you know? It holds for a couple of years.

PK: Yeah. Well, um, it seems like the subject of the film also is like conducive to treating depression. Like the "He" character, the film sort of confronts things that are terrifying and tries to make them less terrifying. Is that correct?

LV: The idea is normally when you panic, then your thoughts never get to your brain. You know, you panic before you think. And the idea is to think as soon as possible and then say to yourself, "Last time this happened, I was okay after a while so maybe I will be okay again after a while."

PK: So that's the therapy that the William Dafoe character is trying to apply to his wife.

LV: Yes, yes.

PK: And are you trying to. like, confront the things that terrify you by making this movie?

LV: Yes, I am trying to. It's easier said than done, you know. The end goal is of course to confront it, you know, to endure the full anxiety, and you know, get all the way over for half an hour, but it's a painful half an hour. I don't know if you have anxieties yourself.

PK:. Um, would you say that you're more depressed after the film given some of the responses? Has that made you depressed also?

LV: No, no, no, no. I'm fine with...you know, as I see it, some people like the film, some people don't. That is fine; I'm not trying to make a very broad film as you might know if you've seen other stuff I've done. No, no, it's fine. And it helped to get out, you know, I'm out of bed at the moment. So no, I'm quite content. So now the only problem is I'm supposed, or people would like to see me make another film, or some people would. So that's what I'm working on.

PK: Your new film is "Planet Melancholia?"

LV: Yeah, it's, we call the film ‘Melancholia' even though there's a lot of films with the same name, but, yeah. A lot of directors use the same title. And it's with planets.

PK: "Antichrist" is dedicated to Tarkovsky; is your upcoming movie kind of like Tarkovsky's "Solaris?"

LV: I'm very, very fond of Tarkovsky, especially "The Mirror." I think he became a little weaker when he came to Western Europe. But "Solaris" is also a favorite of mine; I just re-saw a little of it again, yeah. If there's a film I would have liked to have made, it would have been "Solaris," yes.

PK: Is Planet Melancholia a happier place than Eden [the cabin where the couple in "Antichrist" go for the depression cure]?

LV: (laughs) I'm afraid there are no really happy places in my films. You know, Planet Melancholia is a black planet, which it had to be for itto be very close to Earth without being detected. It's a long story. It's not a happier place. I wouldn't recommend you go to Planet Melancholia.

PK: "Antichrist" reminded me of other films that you've done. Like "Medea." This seems to be like an alternative version of that earlier film.

LV: I'm not very fond of "Medea," the way I did it. But that's interesting. Maybe you can compare them because of the nature photography, in both of them, which we used quite a lot. But the "Medea" I did was from a script by Carl Dreyer. No, it's not my favorite.

PK: Sorry to bring it up. But the theme of the woman who is wronged by a very sort of calculating man, and then responds in a very violent way, seems similar to the one in this film.

LV: I can see that. I have thought about it.

PK: Are you tired of people asking about misogyny?

LV: No. My one problem is that it's so difficult to pronounce that I try to avoid the word, you know? No - it's like kind of deciding to hate elephants. That's kind of ridiculous, you know. You can hate the one elephant that's after you, but hating elephants in general is kind of silly. I made many films with women and about women so no. Yeah, people tend to ask me.

PK: I thought your best response to that question was that you identify with the woman characters in your film.

LV: I think that is right. I think that the female characters in my film are more believable than the male characters. The male characters just tend to be idiots, all of them doing something completely wrong. And whereas the women just tend to follow their nature somehow.

PK: William Dafoe, and I think you've mentioned this in another interview, is probably the worst therapist in the history of movies. How would you advise him to treat the Charlotte Gainsborough character, and what does he do wrong?

LV: Yeah, first of all, I have been undergoing this cognitive therapy for three years, and I think it's quite typical for me to be sarcastic [about it]. You can say that one of the main ideas behind any treatment of this kind is that a fear is a thought, and, you know, it doesn't change reality. But you can say in the film it's changed reality. But I wouldn't let him treat her in any other way than with his dick. He has an enormous dick; he's extremely well-equipped. And we had to kind of take those scenes out of the film, we had a stand-in for him, we had to take the scenes out with his own dick.

PK: You had a stand-in dick? You had to have a stand in dick for Dafoe?

LV: Yes, yes, we had to, because Will's own was too big.

PK: Too big to fit in the screen?

LV: (laughs) No, too big because everybody got very confused when they saw it.

PK: People should get intimidated. Especially when he-

LV: Especially when he-?

PK: When he ejaculates blood, that was uh-

LV: Oh yeah, yeah. That was the double.

PK: It's quite a trick.

LV: Uh, yes.

PK: You didn't have a stand-in, though, for Charlotte {Gainsbourgh] and her self-editing scene, her snipping scene.

LV: Yes, we also had a stand-in for that. Otherwise we could only do it once.

PK: You used some sort of prosthetic, I imagine, for that scene.

LV: Yeah, let's say that, yes.

PK: One thing that strikes me about the film, what I find more disturbing maybe than the genital mutilation, is there seems to be an attitude that existence itself is evil. Do you think that's true?

LV: Yes, I believe I do. The idea for the film came after I had seen a film about the original forests of Europe and I found out, maybe you read this somewhere before - you know this image we all have of this fantastic, romantic place in a forest? It actually is an image of the place that represents ultimate pain and struggle. Because if you go to a park, there's not so much struggle. But in this original forest there's kind of the maximum of life and death. I thought that was quite interesting that I would also, if I had to think of a very good place where I had no fears, and so on, it would be kind of in a place like this. And then, on the other hand, knowing that this was in fact a place full of all this suffering.

PK: In fairy tales the characters are warned not to go into the forest. For good reason apparently.

LV: But that is because again, I think the forest kind of represents nature, and nature is always, sexuality is also, I believe, nature, so nature has always in fairy tales also been seen, I think, seen as dangerous.

PK: The word "nature" comes from the Latin word "to be born." Is this film kind of a statement against reproduction?

LV: (laughs) No. Actually it's not so much, it's not a statement at all, I would say. I don't make statements...

PK: It's kind of an allegory. It seems like a number of your films lately have been allegorical, which is sometimes used as a derogatory term, but I think that it's more of an allegory like Dante's "Divine Comedy" or something like that. Do you see yourself as an allegorist? A religious allegorist?

LV: (laughs) No, no. I don't see myself as anything. No, I do not see myself or the film... I try not to analyze what I'm doing, or the film. I try to make films instinctively, if there's such a word, or intuitively. The films that I really like are... yeah, of course you can see anything as symbolism, but I prefer films that are intuitive and chaotic. My English is just terrible today; I'm sorry. The more a film seems to come in a natural way, or I would say, the less mathematics you can see in a film, and the less, also, symbols, because I think symbols are fine when you see a film, but symbols are not so interesting to use when you write it. So symbols I think are a waste of time.

Next: Don't trust the first fox you meet.

Interview With Dennis Lehane, part 3

Peter Keough — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:04:00 GMT

The other day I was astonished to find out that there was a video game for Lars von Trier's "Antichrist." So it doesn't come as such a big surprise that there is also one for Lehane's "Shutter Island." And why not, since even Lehane concedes that the novel might be a dying art form. Here's the conversation picking up at the point where Lehane responds to how some fans resented his turning to the historical epic genre for his most recent novel, "The Given Day."

DL: ...there's a part of my fan base that's just like, "God can you get over this fucking bullshit and get back to car chases and shoot-out," you know.

PK: You've said the crime novel is supplanting the social problem novel. "The Given Day" reminded me of "USA" by Dos Passos, for example, but in a different genre.

DL: Yeah, I think there's certainly a point where the crime novel very much became the social novel, particularly in the 90s, you saw this big renaissance of American crime fiction, that you saw if you believe that it happened in the 90s, what you saw there was a lot of investigating the social issues of the day, and it's sort of built for it because you're dealing for the most part, unless you're dealing with British boardroom mysteries, you're dealing with people that most people fly over or drive past, so it lends itself to the examination of social issues and hopefully not in a heavy-handed way.

PK: Certainly in "The Given Day" you're tackling questions of class and race and corruption and so forth...

DL: Yeah, I think I always write about, maybe with the exception of "Shutter Island," I think I'm always on some level writing about class warfare. It's just, I don't know, it's sort of, you can't escape your obsession and even when I think I'm not, I am and it shows-oh there it is again.

PK: Are you politically active?

DL: I'm politically active, but I like to keep it away from my books. So, I very much never want to write like a polemic. Normally I stay away but I was very, very vocal against the Iraqi war and I've formed a group, "Writers Against the War," put out an ad in the "Times, blah, blah, blah, but I also went and I saw U2 last night and I was like, come on Bono, just sing.

PK: You must be a little more encouraged by the recent presidential election.

DL: Oh yeah, yeah. I was with a Republican last night and we were talking and he said, I just don't know what the Hell's going on with my party, if your voices are Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, you're fucked.

PK: Well they seem to be getting more attention than they deserve. There's a series connected with your appearance at the Boston Book Festival, where you're doing a panel discussion with a bunch of writers from your anthology. Also there's series on Boston Noir movies at the Brattle Theatre. Do you have a particular favorite outside the ones based on your books?

DL: Oh I love "Monument Ave," absolutely, it's one of the most underrated. Such a great, great movie. I love "Monument Ave" and the obvious "Friends of Eddie Coyle." In terms of Boston noir, are we just talking Boston?

PK: Well Boston if you will, you can expand that as much as you want.

DL: The thing that I think is really interesting, cinematically that isn't appreciated at the level it should be is British noir. You know, when I think of the masterpieces of noir the first one that pops up in my head is "Get Carter," the second one is "Sexy Beast."

PK: Somebody told me that they read an article where you said that when you're first starting out writing, that you taped a note in front of your typewriter, whatever, saying, "Nobody cares," in order to let yourself write what you feel you have to write. Is that still your attitude, you think?

DL: Well I think there's some of that, there's also, I think you should be able to, I also think of the Humphrey Bogart line, "All you owe them is a great performance," you know? And I believe that and I take that really seriously, like I'm going to bust my ass to never phone in a book but what I don't owe you is "Gone, Baby, Gone VI," you know? I don't owe you "Mystic River III." That's not the deal. So the "Nobody Cares" thing was really more a way, if you fail, nobody cares. It's not a bad thing. Just loosen the fuck up, stop thinking anybody's out there keeping score and that helped me so much when I was, you know, twenty.

PK: You could always go back to chauffeuring cars, right?

DL: Yeah, yeah, it was at least, do this thing, love this thing, but don't expect-it was one, you know, my father in the background just saying, "The world doesn't owe you anything," you know, so get that out of your head, which is very good, because you see a lot of writers, their response to something is "But I spent six months on this," who gives a shit? You know what I mean? "But I spent two years on this." I don't care, it doesn't work. And I think that's something when I went to a class, and they'd say, "This doesn't work," I'd throw it away.

PK: The end of "The Given Day," it's Babe Ruth leaving Boston, and at first he's very depressed and then he says, "Well, wait a minute, I'm too big for Boston." Do you ever get the sense that that's going to happen to you someday?

DL: No, never. Never, never. I'm trying to get back here so hard. I just married a girl who has a business in Florida and I can't look her in the eye and say, "Well I can only work in Boston," you know? All I want to do is get back here, I mean I'm here right now, every time I'm away I want to get back, this is my town, I don't think it can get bigger than this. I don't like LA, and New York's just, I don't know, it's New York, I couldn't become a Yankee fan.

PK: You could not become one?

DL: Oh good God no. No, that's hideous, no. Oh God. No I couldn't become a Yankees fan.

PK: Or New York Jets, at this point too, are really starting to bug me.

DL: I said this to my sister-in-law, who's a huge Jets fan, and I said this to her a month ago, I said, "Watch out for your Jets," and she's like, "Nah, the jerks. They're not going to do anything," and I'm like, "Watch out, I think they're going to sneak up on people, I think they're really going to do some damage this year," and bang.

PK: They have.

DL: That game was tough.

PK: It was depressing, I was waiting for that five minute comeback that they had against Buffalo and it never happened.

DL: It never materialized, I know.

PK: Well I think I've exhausted my time here, one last question. You teach at a writers' class in Florida, so you know the coming generation of writers is going to be like, or some indication, do you ever get the feeling you're a practitioner of a dying art form?

DL: Yes, yes I do. More and more every year. I hate to day it, but it's-did you see that article in the "Globe" about that, I can't even remember which school it was, that's going completely electronic, they've killed their library?

PK: No, I didn't see it.

DL: A couple of weeks ago, and you just thought, "Oh dear God, this is it, this is the end." When school's go, we don't need a library, you start to feel like, yeah, maybe I'm a troubadour, you know? And there ain't going to be a lot of troubadours in the coming years, so the feeling I get from most of my students is-not the exceptional ones-but from the vast majority is, they don't read. What they really want to do is write screenplays, but they don't know how, and they don't have any connections in Hollywood.

PK: And they'll probably start selling them too because most of the people in Hollywood don't seem to know what a good story is, what a good screenplay is.

DL: And that's the problem too, I mean you see, was it, I think it was Tony Scott in the "NY Times" who wrote about what's happening with adult movies and I believe it was in this article, they said, "If you don't know how market "The Hurt Locker," what's left?" You know? If you can't take a movie that good and that exciting and that story-strong and that character-strong and make that into at least a modest hit, then it's over, you know? You guys really only know how to sell things connected to toys.

PK: And make movies that are based on toys too.

DL: Yeah, yeah. God, it's fucking depressing.

PK: You don't have any merchandising with any of your films, right? No Sean Penn action doll or anything?

DL: Uh, you know what, there's actually a "Shutter Island" video game.

PK: Really?

DL: Yeah.

PK: I actually think that would work.

DL: There's all sorts of things with that. There's a graphic novel, there's all sorts of weird things I can't remember that came out of "Shutter."

Interview with Dennis Lehane, part 2

Peter Keough — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:11:00 GMT

Here's something I forgot to mention: Lehane's most recent book "The Given Day", a working class epic set in post-WW I Boston and points west that is a kind of local noir version of Dos Passos's "USA," has recently come out in paperback and is also in the process of being adapted for screen with Sam Raimi directing. Just so you're not surprised when this comes up later in the conversation.

PK: A couple of blocks away they're making a movie at Fenway Park called "The Town," it seems to me that that never would've been possible in all this renaissance of filmmaking in Boston had you not written the book "Mystic River" and had Clint Eastwood not made a successful movie out of it. Do you think that that's a fair statement?

DL: I think that between Clint Eastwood making "Mystic River" and the way teamsters began to treat film crews was at that exact moment, created the perfect storm. The good perfect storm and that helped make movies in Boston because originally, before "Mystic River"...I'm trying to think how long the desert lasted before somebody would film a movie in Boston before Clint filmed a movie in Boston.

PK: The problem started I guess with, or most surfaced with "The Brinks Job," there was a heist in more ways than one.

DL: Oh yeah, and then it just continued and then it got worse and worse and worse and worse and you know in the 90s I was in the independent film scene in Boston, horrors, I can tell you-I can't tell you-horror stories about that. I saw some really terrifying things, and it ran everybody out of town. So when Clint came in and kind of worked a deal and said you know if you stick me up don't stick me up too heavily, it worked, and it brought a lot of good things to the city, so for whatever reason, that started. And you know, there's the tax breaks and there's all these other wonderful things that are going on with film communities, so I think "Mystic River" certainly got the ball rolling, but it's weird for me to try, I never want to come off taking credit for most of the things that go on with these movies because they don't have much to do with me, you know, I sold you the book, good luck.

PK: So you were into making movies in the 90s, you just said?

DL: Yeah, yeah. A little tiny film that was a little too much like "Good Will Hunting."

PK: Was that a feature length film?

DL: Yeah, it was, it was. Ben and I had a hilarious conversation about it where I just, I'm one of the only people in America who's never seen "Good Will Hunting" and we, it was just two different scripts out of this zeitgeist and we filmed almost, pretty much in two months of each other and neither of us has seen each other's film-each other scripts-and all of a sudden, I saw it again, and I was in editing, and I started worrying about this movie, this Gus van Sant movie, like oh shit, and I saw it and then I thought we're dead.

PK: So does a copy exist?

DL: Oh yes, but I do not show it to people (laugh).

PK: You don't think you're cut out to be a director, or filmmaker?

DL: I discovered that I think I was adequate at it, on one hand I had a good eye, on the other hand I wasn't terribly patient with actors. I could fake it, inside I just wanted to kill them and I think when you see Scorsese work with actors, when you see the way Ben works with actors, you just see this generosity of spirit, which I just don't think I have, I'd be too impatient.

PK: You're more the Otto Preminger type, I guess.

DL: Yeah, well you hear it about a lot of the Irish-Neil Jordan-they just don't want to sit around and chat, you know, like Ang Lee. You know there's certain directors who are just, "What the fuck, hit your marks." And unfortunately I think I'd be more like that and that doesn't make me a good actors' director.

PK: Plus it's an incredibly painstaking process and you're dependent on so many people, and like when you're just sitting down writing a book...

DL: Oh yeah, or even when we worked on "The Wire," we ran the show pretty much in every single aspect. TV, you're almost the playwright, in a good TV show certainly, premium cable, so the writers, you don't need to be the director, let that guy deal with the camera, you know, we'll deal with the production. So it's something that, it was an itch I scratched and then I went back to doing what I loved.

PK: So, you're happy to let other people do the directing, like Sam Raimi is doing the adaptation of your new book.

DL: Yeah, although Sam's got a lot of irons in the fire right now

PK: Yeah, I just looked at his IMDB thing and it had like twenty projects in development.

DL: Yeah, yeah, so where we'll get, I don't know. I've talked to Sam a couple of times, he is advertised as one of the nicest human beings I've ever met in Hollywood, but where we're going to go, I mean, I don't even think they've hired a screenwriter yet.

PK: And there's nothing like a cast put together or anything like that?

DL: Oh, God no. Literally is just in negotiations with the screenwriter.

PK: When I see the movie of a book that I've read that I liked I always have mixed feelings because it seems they've reimagined the character and have taken the place of the character I've imagined. Do you think that happens with your own characters?

DL: Completely, completely. I just feel like it's an alternate universe and I feel very comfortable with the split, some people don't, I just feel like that's-on the screen that's Sean Penn's Jimmy Markum, that's not my Jimmy Markum, you know what I mean? There's two different people and Sean Penn's interpretation is wonderful but it's a different entity, you know, it's like the film is a giraffe and the book is the apple.

PK: He won an Oscar for it too, he must've been doing something right.

DL: Oh, he was outstanding, I mean, but again, there's just that part of you that goes, "Right, that's brilliant, it's a great interpretation, but a different beast from the character of the book."

PK: So you never, when you write a book, have an image of an actor or another person?

DL: Every now and then I'll get something and it tends to happen against my defenses because I always fend against that idea, I just don't want to write to the movies, you know, let the movies be the movies, let me just write books and I've had moments, I remember at the end of "Shutter Island" and it just began to pop up very strongly near the end of that book that I was seeing Russell Crowe as Teddy, who was much younger in those days, then they would've thought of him.

PK: That's when you were writing it?

DL: Yeah, it was right at the tail end, for whatever reason, the face came into my head and I remember when I was writing "Mystic River," Lili Taylor popped into my head as the Annabeth [played in the film by Laura Linney] character, you know the actress?

PK: Yeah, right I know her, she's a great actress.

DL: Yeah, and it's funny I told her boyfriend that years later and he was like, "Oh, I don't even know if I should tell her," (laugh), know what I mean? But that was, for whatever reason, those are the only times I can think of it happening.

PK: That book was that your most ambitious book because it seems like you've gone from first person and then to third person and now you've gone from a minimalist into an epic kind of format.

DL: Yeah, I just, the only way I know is to keep sort of walking the path, whatever it is, I can't describe it, I know that everybody wishes at some level, certainly in my business world that I'd be a little more clear about where I go but I can only follow the stories, you know? So right now I'm writing, what, eleven years to the sequel to "Gone Baby Gone?"

PK: So you're going to continue with the two characters? [Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, the detective team in "Gone Baby Gone" and four other Lehane novels].

DL: Yeah, just when I was sure they were dead, like literally I was putting the last nail on the coffin and it just started talking to me: "Hey wait a minute, we got one more in us." So...and I'd like to do a continuation of the world I was dealing with in "The Given Day," you know, after that. But, yeah, I don't know, I never set up to go from minimalist to become epic.

PK: From Carver to Tolstoy.

DL: Yeah, no, no, no, not at all, (laugh). But, it's definitely been an interesting path and I wouldn't trade it for the world. But of course some fans would view, it's like the, the Woody Allen movie, "Stardust Memories," tell funnier jokes.

PK: He never followed that advice, unfortunately.

DL: No, he didn't, although there's some hilarious shit in "Crimes and Misdemeanors."

Next: words of wisdom - "Nobody cares."

Interview with Dennis Lehane

Peter Keough — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:05:00 GMT

If there had been no Dennis Lehane, it's safe to say that Ben Affleck wouldn't be having an FBI SWAT team blasting away at Charlestown bank robbers a few days ago a couple of blocks from where I live. He was shooting a scene from "The Town," an adaptation of Boston author Chuck Hogan's novel "Prince of Thieves."

Lehane, you recall, wrote the bestseller "Mystic River," which Clint Eastwood shot here in Boston and which won and was nominated for several Oscars in 2003. The success of that film no doubt influenced the Massachusetts government to pass a bill allowing studios shooting in Boston attractive tax credits, which led, in turn, to Martin Scorsese shooting "The Departed," which won the Best Picture Oscar in 2007. And then Affleck adapted Lehane's "Gone Baby Gone" and Scorsese adapted "Shutter Island" and now we have cops and robbers blasting out the windows of Gate D in Fenway Park.

Lehane has a new book out, one he's edited (and contributed a story to) called "Boston Noir." He and some of the other writers will be "launching" the book at an event at the Boston Book Festival http://www.bostonbookfest.org/ at the BPL on Saturday. He was kind enough to talk with me about the phenomenon of Boston Noir in its many manifestations.

PK: What inspired you to put together an anthology on Boston noir?

DL: Um, somebody kept asking me to, that was my inspiration. Johnny Temple, who runs Akashic books, and does these noir series, he just pretty much hounded me into my grave to do it, so I did it.

PK: And what was your resistance to doing it?

DL: Time, just time. I mean, I love noir, you know if I was-I'm not a big believer in that sort of ghettoization of certain types of literature but within the crime fiction if I would say noir is my favorite, as a sort of sub-genre if you will.

PK: Is Boston noir a legitimate sub-genre or sub-sub of the genre?

DL: Umm, I don't know if-that's for other people to decide-but I do think that noir itself can be. Noir is certainly different than classical mystery. Umm, so yeah. It was fun. Once I finally got the ball rolling I enjoyed it a lot.

PK: What are the elements of Boston noir that are distinct from let's say LA noir or Florida noir or any of the other regional types?

DL: Well, look, you can compare Florida noir to Boston noir, Florida noir it has a much more sort of absurdist, gothic bent. If you look at, I would think of Carl Hiaasen.Whereas if you look at Boston, it's a different kind of comedy. It's a darker kind of-blacker-more Boston type of comedy. The idea that, I'll say about Bostonians, that God's a bit of a jokester and we're the punchline.

PK: That's almost an Irish Bostonian, kind of point-of-view and tone.

DL: But you know, I see it in general across the spectrum in Boston. I mean, there's a level, a sort of deadpan understated humor that if you try it any place else, certainly any place south of New York City, nobody's going to get your joke. You'll just get blank stares.

PK: And is this from Brahmins down to Stevedores, or do you think it's more of a class kind of humor?

DL: I would say now it's definitely metastasized so that it's pretty much citywide. You know there's just a-I don't know-people get the dry line in a way they just don't in most places.

PK: There's a kind of fatalism to it, I think, which may have something to do with our sports teams.

DL: I definitely thought that for years. I mean I felt like it's going to be interesting to see if there's a generational shift now that we've become this city of winners, if you will.

PK: Title town

DL: Yeah. I remember trying to explain this to people last year, I lived at least half a year in Tampa and went to college there so I've always had a bit of an affinity for the Rays, I always think of them as my minor league team, and so it was a strange feeling seeing the Rays go up against the Red Sox having my identity built around David vs. Goliath and realizing I was Goliath.

PK: All of a sudden we've turned into the Yankees.

DL: Yeah, you know there is that, I don't know if we're quite the Yankees, I think we need 26 and George Steinbrenner to be the Yankees, but we're certainly, there is that-there used to be that line about the Yankees, that rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for US Steel. There is certainly that sense that rooting for the Pats and rooting for the Red Sox is rooting for a sleeker beast, if you will.

PK: More than a literary genre, noir has become a film genre and it seems like the Boston noir is dominating; most of the highly touted films and successful films have been set in Boston. Can you give insight as to why that it so?

DL: I think there's certainly...there's a funeral going on and it's for that type of world. The world that you see in "The Departed," the world that you see in "Mystic River," the world that you saw in "Monument Avenue," the sort of European Ethnic neighborhood, that sort of clannishness. It's departing and I think there's a bit of a funeral being held and it's showing up in those movies.

PK: So it's nostalgia?

DL: I don't know, it's both a nostalgia, and certainly I can say, I don't know if I can speak for, you know, Monahan or, I'm trying to think who wrote "Monument Ave," I remember Ted Demme directed it, but I can't speak for those guys, but I can say when I was writing "Mystic River" it was both a nostalgic look but also, you know, there's a reason these floors get swept.

PK: It seems as the city becomes more homogenized and gentrified, the films and the writing about it is sort of settling into a world where it's a bit more of a neighborhood kind of a city, more of a lower class kind of a city. Do you see that happening?

DL: I definitely see that that's where storytelling seems to be happening, I'm not sure-what would you say about Kenmore Square these days? Except that it's pretty much homogenized.

PK: Since the Rathskeller has left certainly.

DL: Yeah the Rat's gone and...God everything's gone, Cornwall is still hanging by its fingernails, but it's just not Kenmore Square anymore.

PK: The Citgo sign is still there.

DL: The Citgo sign, thank God. Remember that idiot who was trying to take it down a couple of years ago?...Yeah, so I think it's a dramatically fertile area to go to right now, is the neighborhood, so I'd like to see, I'd like to see what's going to come out of the new ethnic fabric. I'd love to see a Cambodian writer, you know what I mean? Or...the Brazilians in Allston, you know I'd love to see something come out of the new ethnic enclaves.

PK: A lot of Hispanic

DL: Yeah, well my neighborhood went Vietnamese, Vietnamese, Cambodian and that's not something, because that happened as I went away to college and moved out, it's not something I would feel comfortable speaking to, I would feel more like a tourist.

PK: So you're going to continue drawing from your experiences of Boston back when you were growing up in Dorchester, or...

DL: Or certainly from the perspective of somebody who grew up that way and is now seeing, you know, the writing is on the wall, you know that's certainly the story that I contributed was that idea of these guys growing up believing in the Church, suddenly that's not-

PK: I think a big reason Boston is becoming such a setting for this type of movie is clearly your success in film. What do you think is cinematic about your books? You look at them and they're very dense in terms of characters' psychology and the writing is very fine, it doesn't seem the kind of thing that would translate immediately into movies.

DL: You know, I totally agree with you. I've written one original plot in my life and that was "Shutter Island" and even that is wearing it-the homage is on its sleeve-I'm not a real strong, I'm not an original plot guy. You know, "Mystic River" is the plot of an old 1930s RKO movie, so I don't know what started it, what originally brought people to work. I know now, and I flavor them up, and so I produce a laundry list and everybody's like, "Ooh that could be a good movie, could get an Academy Award out of that." I think the success of my movies is very clear on what it is and it is to me. There were no extra cooks in the kitchen and in each case I had sort of auteur theory in play and you had Clint Eastwood, Brian Helgeland, that's "Mystic River," that's it, end of story. "Gone Baby Gone" was Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard, end of story, the Weinstein brothers left them alone and Martin Scorsese comes in and he's a 500 pound gorilla and he says "This is what I want to do," so none of my films have a lot of fingerprints on them.

PK: What's the story with "Shutter Island?" It's been postponed until February; is that something we should worry about? I was disappointed to hear that it wasn't coming out in November.

DL: No, you shouldn't worry about it, I can say this without ego because I had zero to do with the production of that film, I mean I'm an executive producer, yeah, you know, but I had zero-my fingers are not anywhere near that outside of the book and so I can say having seen the film that it's brilliant. I think the story that they put in the press is mostly true which is that they didn't have the money, the market and in a year in which very solid films, like "Public Enemies" and "State of Play" clearly under-performed, I think everybody's scared. So they said, they want to go back, they decided let's have a really good marketing plan before we pull the trigger on this.

PK: Would you be involved in that?

DL: Yeah, I'd be happy to. I've always said, look, if the film sucks, I'm not going to talk it down. I just can't stand writers who do that, I would just vanish, I would take the money, thank you, and just vanish. With "Shutter Island," it's such a good movie, I'd be happy to go out and pimp for it a little bit.

PK: You've been fortunate, I would say, a pretty good run of movies, adapting your books, they all seem to been true to the book and also excellent movies.
DL: Yeah, but again, it's-we go back to that idea, singular visions behind the camera, it's an old school kind of-

PK: The auteur theory.

DL: Yeah, and it's-now I don't know any other way. Sooner or later I'm going to have that crooked up adaptation of my books, and that's when you won't be able to find me.

PK: But have you contributed anything other than the basic book to these adaptations?

DL: I've had consultations, would be the way I would put it, most heavily on "Mystic River," but with "Gone Baby Gone," Ben and I spent a lot of time talking, but it was late in the process because I was so immersed in my book, I was just like, I really can't roll with you in the early stage of pre-production. And then with "Shutter Island," I started reading Laeta Kalogridis's script, I want to say two drafts before the final draft, and the only notes I had on the entire thing was that she was being too reverential to the lines in the book. And she got it, she was like, "Oh, you're right , you can't have that come out of a character's mouth, sounds pretty in a book, but it wouldn't work." So she went, she cut those lines and that was it.

Next: Boston filmmaking when the biggest heists were not on the screen.

Global Voices

Peter Keough — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:41:00 GMT

Back in 2003 or so after Iraq got squashed Syria was being pushed as a likely candidate to take its place in the Axis of Evil. I'm not sure what their status is now since the media and current administration have stopped demonizing them for the time being, but the country's image, it's safe to say, isn't one of a progressive, tourist friendly country full of people who, surprise, are just like we are, only a little different.

That's the picture conveyed by Jean Marie Offenbacher's (she'll be at the screening for a Q & A) documentary "Tea on the Axis of Evil," which is screening tonight at 9 p.m. as part of ongoing Global Voices Film Festival presented by the United Nations Association of Greater Boston. A buoyant travelogue with a political edge, featuring some fascinating sites and some intriguing, friendly people, it might not dispel all the myths about this ancient and vibrant country, but it does make you want to learn more. Maybe even pay a visit. Though I'm not totally convinced by the portrayal; the place at times seems like Vermont with deserts.

Well, maybe it is. Most of what I know about the world comes from the TV and movies, after all. That's why this festival is of such importance. It runs through October 11 at the Harvard Film Archive, the Harvard Kennedy School and the Brattle Theatre. Among the other films being shown are "My Neighbor, My Killer," Anne Aghion's look at the harrowing success of the Gacaca Tribunals, in which perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide confess their crimes in order to receive forgiveness from victims and survivors.

Nor is the outlook all grim. Tim Wise's "Soldiers of Peace" reports that because of the work of the title peacemakers the number of wars in the world, perhaps for the first time, is actually decreasing. Festivals like this can only encourage that process.

Late Night with the King of Comedy

Peter Keough — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:10:00 GMT

As the ongoing David Letterman sex/blackmail scandal has unfolded a couple of things have gone through my mind. The first was a sense of relief that Letterman would no longer resort to any more Clinton jokes, which he seemed to have been doing as recently as just the other day. The other was more elusive. The whole story reminded me of something. Not just the recent incident but the other bizarre things that have beleaguered Letterman -- the crazy woman stalker, the plot to kidnap his child. Then it hit me: Martin Scorsese's "The King of Comedy." It's all there -- the stalking, the kidnapping, the sex (or whatever it is that Sandra Bernhard is doing to Jerry Lewis as he's encased in duct tape), the extortion. The biggest difference being that the movie has a poignant innocence beneath its sordness. Poor Rupert Pupkin just had a dream. He wanted to triumph at what he loved doing. He wanted to make the world laugh. He wasn't in it for the money. Maybe that's the difference between the movies and TV.

Voices from "Zombieland"

Peter Keough — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:02:00 GMT

A couple of postings back I lamented the decline in civility in internet discourse. Well, that sure had an impact. Here's what some of those who disagreed with my review of "Zombieland" (which topped the box office this week, taking in $25 million) had to say about it on the "Rotten Tomatoes" website:

"scifimark writes:
on Sep 30 2009 09:52 PM
I didnt even know this crappy paper was still around. I dont know about the review but its a piss poor publication in general"

"runmong writes:
on Oct 01 2009 11:39 AM

Wait, did he actually get paid to write that review? I'm pretty sure 90% of the people here could write a better one."

Fair enough. Far be it for me to begrudge anyone the right to an opinion. But I wonder if runmong would include aaron b among that 90% of better qualified Tomatoes writers who writes

"Who knew that writing a review like this won't be a great opportunity for you to be liked by anyone. I hope that when you **** tonight all the ****hole excuses for reviews you've written in the past clog your ****hole and your very own vaginal lips choke the dumbass out of you. You cocknibbling thunder-twat."

Thanks for the asterisks to spare those of us who might be offended by the rough language.

In the last posting I mentioned the great critic James Agee who in his first film review described his role as someone who "conduct[s] one end of a conversation, as an amateur critic among amateur critics." A worthy ideal, no doubt. But Agee never had a conversation with aaron b.