Pretty Poison: Letters From L.A.

Desert Fury: Film Noir Desert Festival

Through the heat, the early mornings and my broken down car, the Palm Spring Film Noir Festival remained great fun and a wonderful success. Thanks to the efforts and talents of Marvin Paige, Alan Rode, Foster Hirsch and the great Eddie Muller, the event was a big score. Some excellent pictures were screened, as all noir should be screened, writ large, and I finally got to see another John Garfield (a genius, and one of my favorites) movie on the big screen (The Breaking Point -- one of his greatest, most heart-breaking performances). I also introduced two fascinating pictures -- the incredibly rare Inside Job, starring Ann Rutheford and the final film credit by Tod Browning. I was lucky to interview Ann who hadn't even seen the movie herself. She discussed the film somewhat, but mostly regaled us with wonderful Hollywood stories, like swimming lessons from Buster Crabbe, working with John Wayne, her role in Gone with the Wind and Errol Flynn's monkey.

I also presented the gloriously insane/exceedingly homo-erotic Desert Fury (directed by Lewis Allen) starring Lizabeth Scott, Burt Lancaster, John Hodiak, Wendell Cory and a wonderfully ball-busting Mary Astor. A desert noir where, excuse me, did I say homo-erotic? It was just flat out homosexual. How it passed the censors of the late 1940's is beyond me -- maybe the beauty of the rich, glorious technicolor and Scott's flaming red lips had them sidetracked.

And then... The Bad Seed -- a thrill for me (I've written about the movie too many times to count) with that icon of blonde evil, Patty McCormack as special guest (you have no idea how excited I am in the above photo -- posing with my dark overlord). Her brilliant performance received a standing ovation (the audience was galvanized by her brilliant brat and so thrilled to actually have Rhoda Penmark in the building). Talking with her (she most recently played Pat Nixon in Frost/Nixon) and trying to shield her from the mob of fans, she was relaxed, funny,down to earth and beautiful. More work for Miss McCormack please!

There were more films on the roster, including Vincent Sherman's impressiveve The Garment Jungle (starring Lee J. Cobb, Gia Scala, Richard Boone and a young, strapping Robert Loggia who was in attendance). Loggia was very honest about his career, some of his mistakes, and told an incredibly amusing story about getting his part in David Lynch's Lost Highway. Let's just say his real-life rage towards Lynch worked in his favor. He was also quite the charmer in person.

There was also Robert Siodmak's classic Criss Cross, Jules Dassin amazing Brute Force, Joseph Pevney's Female on the Beach (with Joan Crawford), Richard Fleischer's terrific, gritty Armored Car Robbery, Michael Curtiz's The Breaking Point (the greatest version of Hemingway's's To Have and Have Not -- as agreed by all of us at the festival), and of course Eddie Muller's The Grand Inquisitor, starring the ever talented Marsha Hunt, who also offered a fascinating conversation following the picture (I interviewed her last year, and she is a fountain of knowledge -- in film, in literature, in current events, in fashion -- and she is a hero -- blacklisted by HUAC, she refused to name names). And closing the festival -- Thief -- Michael Mann's splendid, gorgeous neo-noir starring James Caan and love-of-my-life, Tuesday Weld.

Thanks to Eddie, Foster, Alan and Marvin. Thanks to those men who made the cookies at The Chase Hotel. And thanks to all the fans of noir who attended. I love talking to the viewers, and spent many moments in the lobby, in the theater, even in the ladies room discussing noir with audience members. I'll never forget the couple who gave me a birthday card when I let it slip that my birthday was the same day as their son's. You two are the best.

Here's a sample of some of the fest -- sitting with Miss McCormack after taking in The Bad Seed,  walking out with Robert Loggia who is being...Robert Loggia. And a snippet of me presenting Desert Fury in coded ways -- not simply saying, this is the most homosexual picture of the 1940's. I didn't want to ruin the surprise.

Trouble in March

I love Erskine Caldwell. I have numerous first edition hard covers and lurid paperbacks of his work -- he has the best paperbacks. The Southern writer should be read my every American. And though John Ford tried, no one has made a proper movie version of Tobacco Road. Craig Brewer? Could you get on that?

Hollywood 101

Cafe 101, Hollywood. I suffer from wicked insomnia so I'm a mixture of tired, hyper and a bit delirious.

So my friend thought he'd film me. His voice is really not that sinister.

More pictures here.

Please read my main site, Sunset Gun.

Earl Pfeiffer, My Dear Deer

I love Earl Pfeiffer. He hangs in my bedroom and watches over me, which is awfully nice of him.

The rabbits are OK, but Earl's the only one who keeps me safe.

Please read my main site, Sunset Gun.

Middle Of the Night Motel

No sleep. Cheap motel. Wire hangers. Green ironing board. Gram Parsons. Lots of gold light.

Somewhere in California.

More motel pictures here.

Please read my main site, Sunset Gun.

Clifton's Serenade

 

One of my favorite places in Los Angeles is Clifton's Cafeteria, an establishment I take all of my friends to and eat alone at on many occasions.  I love downtown Los Angeles and venture there nearly every weekend. I’ve had people who live here tell me they never go downtown -- they think it’s depressing. Too bad for them. Sure, there’s scores of homeless people, crack addicts and a few creeps (like, you know, in Beverly Hills) but there’s also lots of nice people, lots of bizarre shops and loads of cultural flavor that people hiding out in the "nicer" areas forget about (you don’t see many fake breasts downtown).

There's also, of course, all of the historic architecture (the Bradbury Building just one example) and then my beloved Clifton’s Cafteteria. Opened in 1935, the three story cafeteria located on Broadway (amidst all the beautiful old movie theaters) showcases a redwood forest, a chapel, waterfalls, babbling brooks and an entire upper level adorned with red velvet wallpaper. The food (that I always eat entirely too much of) ranges from delicious to so-so (their deserts are great -- don't let anyone tell you different) but it doesn’t really matter. Finding this kind of old Los Angeles ambience is rare. And I love the Moosehead -- it reminds me of my childhood.

And a serenade? This was one of the greatest restaurant experiences of my life.

Watch here...

Desert Carnival in Eight Minutes

I can’t stop thinking about my desert carnival experience in late November. As The Seekers and Nick Cave so eloquently sang, the carnival is over, but man do I miss it. There’s nothing like all of those rigged games, scary cracked up rides, cheap stuffed animals, bright colors, and that whooshing sound of so many contraptions beckoning you in a methamphetamine haze. Smack in the middle of nowhere-ville, Yucca Valley, made the adventure even more surreal.  And I love the carnies. If there is ever a carnival in your area, go. Who cares if you're cheated from a game or don't trust the rides or can't stand pot smoking teenagers (and really, you should get over that, because we all smoked pot out of coke cans at one point in our lives). Anyway, keep this world in business, no matter how crooked it is.

And the above charming, fascinating older fella (and prince) with the greatest rings I'd ever seen became my fast friend after we talked for nearly an hour. His name (for real) is Andy Hardy, and not only had he met Mickey Rooney ("nice man") but he voted for Obama. An 80-year-old carny voted. See why Obama won?

Here's my experience, in under eight minutes. I love that stuffed dog playing poker... Watch it all go down here.

See all my Desert Carnival pictures here.

Please read my main site, Sunset Gun.

David Foster Wallace

I miss him.

Please read my main site, Sunset Gun.

Happy New Year

New Year's Eve is best spent on the train...

Happy New Year!

View all New Year's Eve Train pictures here.

Please read my main site, Sunset Gun.

Merry Mal

Merry Christmas and...

Hail Satan!

Read my review of this movie featuring two beautiful brilliant baby brides of Satan here. 

Stranger On A Snowy Train

I just woke up on the train. Spying the snow-capped beauty of Eastern Oregon at five in the morning was gorgeous, yet another reason why rail travel (next to road trips) is my favorite mode of transportation. I'm heading north for the holidays, and I loathe flying, so this is how I, as they say, roll. Or chug. I love trains.

I love moving directly near the California Ocean, winding through the freezing, sometimes scary highly elevated mountains (like the above photo I took of the train winding around the mountain). I love experiencing the pitch black darkness of train tunnels (there's nothing like those), thinking about George and Lennie as we hit Salinas, running to the frigid train station in Klamath Falls just because everyone else is taking a smoke break, and talking to porters. Porters are an old breed and I hope to god they never go away. Plus, my porter brought me chocolate and an orange and a small bottle of champage. Have to like that.

And then there's the sleeper car (where I snapped myself above -- in my fuzzy mirror). I read, I sleep, watch movies, I stare at the wilderness, the small towns and all of those wonderfully broken down but charmingly older areas that are known as "the wrong side of the tracks." Junkyards have never looked so romantic (I wish O. Winston Link could travel with me). And with the dining car, the train also allows one to meet all kinds of people, some nervous fliers, some on a choo-choo pleasure cruise, some who always seems to have something in common with me (this trip, it was a military kid from 29 Palms wearing an Iron Maiden tee shirt and who explained that all of those amazing orange fireballs I saw in the sky a few months back in nearby Joshua Tree were actually from the military testing he was involved in). And then there's boy scouts -- everywhere. And then there are the train crazies. Beyond the level of say, Neil Young's train fetish. The best was a train fanatic I met two years ago who talked trains non stop...every train in the Amtrak line, train movies, model trains, train photographers and on and on and on. He was not obsessed, but possessed by trains. I thought he might stab me in my sleep after I told him I didn't care for The Polar Express.

So traveling by train got me thinking (again) of some of my favorite train movies. There's, of course the great, Strangers on a Train (Robert Walker might be one of the most perversely freakish/oddly likable villains in cinema history) but also one of my favorite action packed noirs, The Narrow Margin (with hot Charles McGraw), The General, The Great Train Robbery, so many Westerns including, of course, The Wild Bunch. Then there's The Train, Closely Watched Trains, Runaway Train, Sullivan's Travels, The Darjeeling Limited, Human Desire, The Lady Vanishes, and so, so many more (don't hassle me about not including all, it would take forever, I know train movies, and I'm writing quickly on a train in a spare internet window, honestly it's going to drop any minute -- but please offer more suggestions). I also thought of some of my favorite train sequences like the train dump in Double Indemnity or the meet cute, soon insane seduction in Leave Her To Heaven, or that erotic/funny train journey in Some Like it Hot, but also from clear train lover Billy Wilder -- his sexy, Lolita-esque The Major and the Minor in which a comely Ginger Rogers pretends to be 12-years-old for cheap  train fare. In a funny, sexy and subversive twist, she ends up sleeping in Ray Milland's roomette. He thinks she's 12 and he's looking out for her but he's also...looking at her.

And then there's Bette Davis' obsession with the train in the supremely underrated Beyond the Forest in which the narrator states that every time Davis' unhappy wife hears it chug through her tiny, boring town, all she can hear is "Chicago, Chicago, Chicago." That's the city where she cheats on her husband and thinks her life will change, but instead gets knocked up and throws herself down the side of a mountain to get rid of the dreaded baby. Even worse (spoiler alert) she dies right next to the train when, riddled with peritonitis, she stumbles through the town towards the lure of the train humming: "Chicago, Chicago, Chicago." Brilliant.

But on the more romantic side, there's the most obvious -- North By Northwest, which boasts one of the hottest train sequences ever put to celluloid. A cool Eva Marie Saint stashes Cary Grant in her car, hides him from the police and promptly seduces him. While in her sleeper, she asks Grant: "Maybe you're planning to murder me right here tonight?" And he answers, "Shall I?" "Please do," she says before a passionate kiss. He tops the steamy moment with, "It sure beats flying." Yes it does indeed.

Sadly, I did not experience such a scenario on the train (and no Ray Milland or Charles McGraw, or...what the hell, Robert Walker) but I will say this, the rumbling sound as you sleep, the exploring (once, I sneaked into the kitchen one night after missing dinner in the dining car) and walking through those loud connection doors is, well, as sexy as hell. No wonder so many songs glorify trains ("Mystery Train," "Orange Blossom Special," "Night Train," "Love in Vain" and Johnny Burnette's wonderful ode to screwing his girlfriend all night with "Train Kept a Rolling" as well as John Lee Hooker's ). As the glorious Theresa Russell pouts in Nicolas Roeg's misunderstood Track 29: "Chugga-Chugga-Choo! Choo!" I hear ya Theresa.

Please read my main site, Sunset Gun.

Desert Snow Day

The unusual snowfall in Joshua Tree created a desert paradise. It's beautiful, it's cinematic, it's magical. I love it. But being snowbound without use of a car (there's no way that Z is getting down the hill) and with nary a trace of food in the house (I don't cook -- not even toast) isn't exactly pleasurable. 

My head dances with visions of animal crackers and hot and sour soup and Carvel's ice cream cakes. Or, my own shoe. 

So I set out on foot -- a good thing, since this winter wonderland begs for pictures.

Please read my main site, Sunset Gun.

And video...I love the man with the sack.

Joshua Tree House: Carpet, Curtains, Fireplace

It snowed here in the desert.  It's gorgeous, especially all of those alien-looking Joshua Trees flocked with white powder, but after a particularly freezing day driving around, taking in the cool beauty of the mountains and the cozy little snow capped cabins, and then lingering far too long on sad/strangely impressive Christmas decorations adorning western themed real estate offices and tiny medical centers, I wanted to stay inside. 

Driving the frigid Z through the muck or doing cookies at the Park and Ride wasn't as appealing as imbibing, watching cable (Investigation Discovery -- waiting for Dr. Stone to tell me who is "Most Evil," according to his scale)  and sleeping on the floor.

I wish I could stay here forever.

Look at more carpet, curtains and fireplace here.

Please read my main site, Sunset Gun.

Going Equus In Pioneertown

I love sleeping in Pioneertown California. A standing old west movie set and hotel that, back in the day, housed the likes of one of my favorites -- Barbara Stanwyck while she was filming the great John Sturges' picture Jeopardy (with two of my other favorites -- Ralph Meeker and Barry Sullivan), the place is a high point in the Hi Desert. Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Russell Hayden, Cisco Kid Duncan Renaldo and Gail Davis all stayed there.

I slept in Miss Russell's past residence. I wanted Stanwyck's Jeopardy pad but was lured by the horses directly across Russell's room. I love horses. The below clip shows my ardor. And it makes me happy.

So yes, waking up to these beasts was beautiful. And I felt like Tippi's Marnie: "Oh Forio if you want to bite somebody, bite me!"

   

Please read my main site, Sunset Gun.

Watch The Skies

This was when the Inn was fun, only a little over a month ago. I'm no meteorologist but the orange bursts of light exploding in the desert sky did not appear normal that night. Beautiful, but odd. Ex guest/permanent fixture Stodder (who begins and ends nearly every sentence with "sha!" and who I grew oddly fond of) was freaking out, man. So was I.

Where's M. Night Shyamalan when you need him? This was a happening. Sha.

Please visit my homepage, Sunset Gun.

Datsun In the Desert

I love the desert. Far too much. And as much as I worship big beautiful American muscle cars, like my Torino, I love my itty bitty Z (that sounded pornographic) and I love tearing it all over the sand and dirt and asphalt (Z's are solid). The car does need work however. A lot of work for me to feel it's perfect (but don't tell me it's not perfect since the car is essentially, my kid, and I will throw down for that car...).

Still, I don't mind suggestions. Though the paint is stock and I usually prefer stock (even if battered) and I have a fondness for primer, I want a new paint job. But what color? I'd like a '70s copper, metallic brown or a slick silver. Maybe black since this is a '78 and that's the first year the car came noir. Or plain white like my old Speed Racer-looking 260 Z. So...suggestions? And I hate the bumpers (the back one I recently smashed) -- I want the 240 bumpers. Anyway, here's three of my favorite things -- car, desert and hideaway. Here I am driving it away from my old Inn...

I Don't Want To Leave Cal

The desert Inn is haunted. Particularly a very cold corridor in my quarters. Two very nice and interesting parapsychologists (who took these infrared pictures) told me so. They sent the pictures and a Robert Mitchum movie, Blood on the Moon. Very cool.

Apparently, my ghost (I named him Cal) likes me -- he feels protected by me (so they say). But I'm not here enough for him. So I miss this thing, this person, this young spirit. Oh God, someone tell me to stop! That's how much these people got under my skin.

Shhh...I don't think Cal likes men. I'm not sure why I'm writing this. Maybe because he's in the other room.