The Story of The Iceman

---

---

"I don't kill women and children."

Richard Kuklinski (Michael Shannon)

---

Based on what I knew about hitman Richard Kuklinski before I saw the movie based on his life story, "The Iceman," which premiered in Lebanon on this day in 2013, I assumed his nickname was due to his demeanor.

That was a reasonable assumption, given that Kuklinski seemed to have ice water running through his veins. He was said to have killed more than 100 people — and showed no emotion when doing so — before he was taken into custody.

In truth, though, Kuklinski earned that nickname because of his proclivity for freezing victims to obscure the times of their deaths. But he did have his standards. He wouldn't kill women and children.

Michael Shannon, who played Kuklinski, is a large man, but he isn't as imposing as the character he portrayed. Kuklinski stood 6'5" and weighed in at 270 pounds — and, while technically regarded as a contract killer, he was also considered a serial killer because many of his murders were carried out on his own initiative with little or no input from anyone else.

Kuklinski was also a secretive sort whose double life was never suspected by his family. His wife (Winona Ryder) never seemed to suspect a thing, even when his behavior at home became erratic. In fact, his job was dubbing movies, and his wife and family believed he dubbed Disney movies when, in fact, he dubbed porn movies.

He claimed that his first murder occurred when he was little more than a boy himself, about 12 or 13. His first victim was alleged to have been a neighborhood boy who had taunted him.

The movie never mentioned that — or any of the killings Kuklinski was said to have carried out on his own. It suggested that his first murder was of a random homeless man at the insistence of a crime boss played by Ray Liotta.

Whether that was true or not, I don't know.

---

---

There were certainly times when the violence in "The Iceman" seemed gratuitous, over the top. But that was how he lived his life, how he conducted his business.

What Happened to Jimmy Hoffa?

---

---

"He knows the words, but he don't know the music."

Jimmy Hoffa (Jack Nicholson)

---

What became of Jimmy Hoffa?

We all know he disappeared in the summer of 1975, and he is presumed dead. He was 62 when he disappeared so that is a reasonable presumption; if he is still alive, he would be well over 100 years old.

It's pretty safe to presume he is dead. The courts declared him deceased more than 35 years ago, and there has never been a credible account that he was still alive in all the years since. No Elvis sightings for Hoffa.

But it is still the kind of thing about which people like to speculate. In some circles it is like a parlor game. In others it is the inspiration for movies — one of which, "Hoffa," premiered on this day in 1992. Jack Nicholson played Hoffa, and Danny DeVito, who also directed the movie, played a character that merged several Hoffa associates from over the years.

The movie told Hoffa's life story in flashbacks, primarily in the form of thoughts DeVito had as he and Hoffa waited to meet with organized crime leaders in the summer of '75.

---

---

That infamous meeting was supposed to take place at a roadside restaurant in a Detroit suburb in July 1975.

Jimmy Hoffa was long before my time, but from what I have learned Nicholson's portrayal was spot on.

I knew little about Hoffa's personal life before I saw the movie, and I knew little more than that after I saw the movie. And that, it seems to me, is appropriate. Hoffa was obsessed with the union. It was his whole life. Everything else came second.

To keep those and other matters in perspective, it was necessary for the story to have DeVito's character. Clearly he had to be created specially for this movie; if a person like that really existed, he wasn't willing to go on the record. And while the law frowns on fabricating witnesses, in Hollywood it is called poetic license.

So the audience had to accept Bobby Ciaro (DeVito's character), whose name fit the part and whose flashbacks filled in most — but not all — of the gaps in Hoffa's life story. Make no mistake about it. That is what "Hoffa" was. It was a biopic, not a theory about what happened to him.

I wouldn't recommend that a student doing research for a paper on Hoffa's life use the movie as a resource, though. At least, not as an unbiased one.

The movie did seem to provide faithful, albeit slanted, looks at Hoffa's well–known feud with Bobby Kennedy and his less–recognized conflicts with his successor as Teamsters president, Frank Fitzsimmons.

And I have no doubt that whenever and however Hoffa died, his last thoughts and acts were about the union.

The movie made a suggestion about how Hoffa died, by the way, but it didn't seem plausible to me. It didn't fit any of the facts with which I was familiar.

Then again it wouldn't be surprising to have witnesses go silent and physical evidence disappear in a case that might just involve organized crime. Would it?

---

---

So maybe things did go down the way the movie suggested.

I don't know. And, after more than 40 years, I doubt that anyone will ever know the truth.

But I didn't get the feeling that "Hoffa" was really about a search for the truth — or, at least, the specific truth about Hoffa's disappearance. Unlike "JFK," which premiered about a year earlier, it didn't explore suspects or motives or anything much, just gave a brief dramatization of what could have happened — but didn't seem likely, given how randomly it was presented — and concentrated primarily on the events of Hoffa's life.

I would have preferred a movie that examined the known facts about Hoffa's disappearance and offered suggestions about what could have happened. But I suppose that would have deprived audiences of Nicholson's portrayal of Hoffa.

And I will concede that Nicholson gave a great performance. His appearance was startling, like every photograph I have ever seen of Jimmy Hoffa brought to life. I haven't heard many recordings of Hoffa's voice, but Nicholson's voice was more gravelly. The real Hoffa's voice was a little higher pitched.

But I suppose that is a minor thing.

While the movie tended to be sympathetic to Hoffa, I thought it was well done but not necessarily Oscar worthy.

---

---

"Hoffa" actually was rewarded with two Oscar nominations, though — for Best Makeup and Best Cinematography. It won neither — understandably. Best Makeup went to "Bram Stoker's Dracula." In such a category, you can't beat vampires.

And Best Cinematography went to "A River Runs Through It." How could any movie compete with the Montana landscape?

An Often Overlooked Crime Thriller

---

---

"Well, Cinderella, I was beginning to think you'd never come for your shoe."

Mal Reese (John Vernon)

---

1967 was a rough year for crime films.

Any crime film that was in the theaters in the same year as "Bonnie and Clyde" almost had to take a backseat.

There were lots of other crime films that year — both fiction (most notably "Cool Hand Luke" although there was also "Wait Until Dark") and nonfiction (i.e., "In Cold Blood") stories — that are remembered by film buffs today, but "Bonnie and Clyde" really sucked up most of the oxygen in the room at the time and continues to demand a lot of the attention.

Consequently, a pretty good crime film like "Point Blank," which made its debut on this day in 1967, was forgotten practically from the start. It was far from a box–office smash, and today it is a hidden gem that you will seldom find shown on television. If you want to watch it, you may have to buy the DVD.

Which may not be such a bad idea. The movie was declared "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and chosen for preservation in its National Film Registry last year. My guess would be that was the first time that many people ever heard of it.

It got good reviews when it was released half a century ago and deservedly so. But "Bonnie and Clyde" (which was selected for the National Film Registry in 1992) had been in theaters only a couple of weeks when "Point Blank" premiered so it was all but ignored by the moviegoing public.

Timing, as they say, is everything.

---

---

If you ever saw "Animal House," you must remember John Vernon. He played Dean Wormer.

But more than a decade earlier, Vernon played a character who teamed up with Lee Marvin in "Point Blank" to steal a lot of money from a courier for a gambling operation — then he double–crossed Marvin, shooting him and leaving him to die. He took the money and Marvin's wife with him.

But Marvin didn't die, and he recovered with the help of a perplexing character played by Keenan Wynn. A few years after being shot he popped up to take revenge, aided by his sister–in–law (Angie Dickinson), and get his money (an objective he mentioned several times). Carroll O'Connor had a supporting role in the years before he found fame as TV's Archie Bunker.

Part of his revenge involved killing Vernon's character in a particularly brutal way.

---

---

I guess the moral of that story is — if you're going to kill people, don't wound them and then leave, assuming they will die. Finish the job. Don't leave the ultimate witness still breathing.

If you do, in keeping with Murphy's law, they will survive, and, at the very least, they will identify you.

At the very worst, well, they will do something like what Marvin's character did. As I say, it wasn't pretty.

But I suppose it is true what they say — No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of criminals.

Even in the movies.

That brings me to one more point.

Film critic Roger Ebert had a few questions of his own, most of which seemed to deal with plot logic. But, in the mostly make believe world of the movies, it is not wise to expect too much logic.

Still, if you like suspense thrillers, "Point Blank" is pretty good. As I say, it was ignored at the time — but it has come to be regarded as one of the best of its kind in the '60s.

What Was It About 'Fargo'?

---

---

"Mind if I sit down? I'm carrying quite a load here."

Marge (Frances McDormand)

---

What is it, I have to ask, about "Fargo," which premiered on this day in 1996, that makes it one of my favorite movies?

I've seen other Coen brothers movies, and, to be perfectly honest, the story in "Fargo" doesn't strike me as being particularly remarkable when compared to those other movies.

I've seen William H. Macy in other movies, for that matter, and I think he is always good, no matter what kind of role he has been given to play — but I'm not sure I saw him in anything before I saw "Fargo."

The same is mostly true of Frances McDormand, who won Best Actress for her performance. I did see her in "Mississippi Burning" years before she made "Fargo," and I also saw her in "Short Cuts" before I saw "Fargo." She is consistently good.

Likewise, I had seen Steve Buscemi in movies before — "Reservoir Dogs," for example. I think he, too, is always good. His performance in "Fargo" was not an exception for him.

"Fargo" wasn't unique, nor was its cast.

And the supposed inspiration for the movie — a true story — wasn't unique, either.

However ...

"To watch it is to experience steadily mounting delight, as you realize the filmmakers have taken enormous risks, gotten away with them and made a movie that is completely original," wrote Roger Ebert, "and as familiar as an old shoe — or a rubbersoled hunting boot from Land's End, more likely."

---

---

McDormand played a pregnant police chief investigating a murder that she connected with the apparent kidnapping of the wife of a Minnesota car salesman (Macy) who had been having financial problems. No one else apparently knew about these financial difficulties. The idea was for the wife to be kidnapped and held for ransom by a couple of criminals (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare). The salesman's father–in–law was a wealthy man who would pay the ransom for his daughter's safe return.

The criminals were in on Macy's plot, you see. They would give the ransom money to Macy. In return the criminals would be paid half of the ransom money and a then–new vehicle — leaving Macy with more than enough money to pay off his debts.

Which led to an obvious question that Buscemi's character asked Macy in their first meeting, "Why don't you just ask him for the money?"

"Or your fucking wife, you know," chimed in Stormare's character.

"Well, it's all just part of this," Macy said in his smarmiest manner. "They don't know I need it, see. OK, so there's that. And even if they did, I wouldn't get it. So there's that on top then. See, these're personal matters."

However, as Ebert observed, "To describe the plot is to risk spoiling its surprises," and I feel compelled to, in Ebert's own words, "tread carefully."

---

---

On the surface, the plan seemed simple enough. But the film had an ample supply of that eccentric irony that is always present in Coen brothers movies; thus, there were many little twists and turns, which prodded Macy into what may have been the best performance of his career. It was worthy of Hitchcock; as Ebert described it, Macy was trapped in "the unbearable agony of a man who needs to think fast and whose brain is scrambled with fear, guilt and the crazy illusion that he can somehow still pull this thing off."

As I say, things just didn't go according to plan. Right from the start — the kidnapping itself didn't go smoothly. En route to the kidnappers' cabin hideout, they were stopped by a state trooper, who was shot and killed. Enter McDormand, who was chief of police in the town where the murder occurred. McDormand's character pieced everything together perfectly.

I thought her interrogation of two hookers who slept with Buscemi and Stormare, then hung around long enough to watch late&night TV with them, was hilarious, especially their Minnesota accents. Every time I see it, I remember an appearance by Minnesota native Lea Thompson on The Tonight Show around the time "Fargo" was in the theaters. She said she had been back to Minnesota and had talked with some of her old friends about the movie.

"Yah, but you know nobody talks like that," she said one of her friends had said to her. In truth, everyone in the movie talked like that.

If you haven't seen the movie, I will leave it to you to discover how McDormand figured out what had happened — and how, in the process, she applied increasing pressure to Macy's character, who was totally incompetent when it came to carrying out a crime.

As each new problem surfaced — for example, illegible serial numbers on nonexistent cars for which he was trying to get a car loan company to pay — he got caught tighter in that vise.

---

---

I'm really no closer to answering my original question: Why is "Fargo" one of my favorite movies?

I don't know, but, perhaps, Ebert came close to an answer when he wrote, "Films like 'Fargo' are why I love the movies."

Walking a Fine Line on a Summer Afternoon

---

---

"That's all they're interested in — it's a freak show to them. I can't control it, Sal — let 'em say what they want. Forget it. It don't matter."

Sonny (Al Pacino)

---

After all these years of working in and around the news business, I guess this sort of thing shouldn't surprise me. But the events depicted in "Dog Day Afternoon," which premiered on this date in 1975, were based on real events, and it was one of the strangest stories you will ever see or hear.

A couple of men really did rob a bank in Brooklyn in August of 1972, and they concocted an elaborate scheme that was re–created in "Dog Day Afternoon." Their plan was to get enough money to finance a sex–change operation for Al Pacino's lover, Chris Sarandon.

But things went wrong from the start. In the first place, they arrived too late in the day. The daily cash pickup had already occurred, and there was very little money in the bank. To make up for it, Sonny decided to take some traveler's cheques, but he made a big mistake when he tried to prevent the cheques from being traced by burning the bank's register, which sent smoke billowing out of the building, alerting a neighboring business to trouble in the bank, and the police were notified.

---

---

As people gathered outside the bank, it became clear that a simple getaway was not possible so Pacino and his accomplice Sal (John Cazale) bargained with the police. Pacino asked for a helicopter to land on the roof. The helicopter would take them out of the country. Well, that wouldn't work, Pacino was told, because the roof would not support a helicopter.

So Pacino demanded to be taken to the airport where they would select a jet to take them out of the country.

But that pattern persisted. Every time Pacino's character tried to do something to prevent something bad from happening, there was a roadblock of some kind. Or there were diversions. Sonny had an uncomfortable phone conversation with Leon, his lover who wanted a sex–change operation.

Ultimately, the episode was brought to an end on the airport tarmac. Sal was shot in the head, and Sonny was arrested. Subtitles informed the viewers that Sonny was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Leon eventually got his sex change, and Sonny's ex–wife and children were on welfare.

"It's an actor's picture," wrote Roger Ebert. "[Director Sidney] Lumet and his editor, Dede Allen, take the time to allow the actors to live within the characters; we forget we're watching performances. Although the movie contains tragedy and the potential for greater tragedy, it is also tremendously funny. But Frank Pierson's Oscar–winning screenplay never pauses for a laugh; the laughter grows organically out of people and situations."

It would have been easy to exploit this story, but Lumet resisted that temptation and produced, instead, a movie that simultaneously observed both the human comedy and the deadly serious stakes of the situation.

Living in a Material World

---

---

"Paulie may have moved slow, but it was only because Paulie didn't have to move for anybody."

Henry (Ray Liotta)

---

So much has been said about "Goodfellas," which premiered on this date in 1990, that it almost seems redundant to go over the plot.

So I will content myself with making some general observations.

First of all, let's talk about its place among the great films of all time. The American Film Institute ranked it #92 of all time — only about one–tenth of the movies that were ranked ahead of "Goodfellas" were made after "Goodfellas" made its debut, and I can't really quibble about any of them except for "Titanic" — which I thought was good but not great.

The thing about "Goodfellas" was that the motivation was the desire to be treated like someone special. There have been other great movies about organized crime in my lifetime — the first two "Godfather" movies come to mind — but I never got the sense that the central characters were motivated by a yearning to be treated better than anyone else, although I suppose that was always implied. Those other movies have always seemed to me to be more about money and power, but "Goodfellas" was about a bunch of guys who grew up in underprivileged homes and wished to have the privileges they had been denied. Driving fancy cars and wearing fancy suits were ways of showing that one had risen above humble circumstances; so was having all the people around fall all over themselves to satisfy your every whim.

"As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster," said Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), whose life story inspired the movie. "To me, being a gangster was better than being president of the United States."

At the end of the movie, Hill was nostalgic about the old days. "We were treated like movie stars with muscle," he recalled. "Today, everything is different. There's no action. I have to wait around like everyone else."

Roger Ebert described this sense of entitlement in the context of "the most famous shot" in the movie: "[Henry] takes his future wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco) to the Copacabana nightclub. There's a line in front, but he escorts her across the street, down stairs and service corridors, through the kitchen area and out into the showroom just as their table is being placed right in front of the stage. This unbroken shot, which lasts 184 seconds, is not simply a cameraman's stunt, but an inspired way to show how the whole world seems to unfold effortlessly before young Henry Hill."

---

---

Bracco's character was groundbreaking in that she was allowed to speak at length. Most of the time, even today, the women in gangster movies are occasionally seen (if they are lucky) but never heard.

Violence always comes with the territory in a gangster movie, and in trademark Martin Scorsese fashion, the violence in "Goodfellas" could be shocking and explicit. I guess it needs to be that way in a gangster movie to underscore how things are done in that universe.

The violence, Ebert wrote, "is a story of economic ambition. Henry and Karen come from backgrounds that could not easily lead to Cadillacs, vacations in Vegas and fur coats, and she justifies what he has to do to pay for the lifestyle."

Robert De Niro, of course, was great in his role as Jimmy the Gent — but, really, doesn't De Niro seem to belong in gangster movies?

One final observation, and this has to do with Joe Pesci.

---

---

Pesci won Best Supporting Actor for his performance as a psychopathic gangster. It is the same award for which he was nominated 10 years earlier but didn't win. Although he has given performances since "Goodfellas" that were worthy of Oscar consideration, I do not think he has been nominated again.

Perhaps that mistake will be corrected one of these days.

On the Run With Sailor and Lula

---

---

"This whole world's wild at heart and weird on top."

Lula (Laura Dern)

---

"There is something inside of me that resists the films of David Lynch," film critic Roger Ebert wrote after the debut of "Wild at Heart" 25 years ago today. "I am aware of it, I admit to it, but I cannot think my way around it. I sit and watch his films and am aware of his energy, his visual flair, his flashes of wit. But as the movie rolls along, something grows inside of me — an indignation, an unwillingness, a resistance."

I don't think a lot of people really remember just how hot (not in the physical sense but in the successful sense) David Lynch was when he wrote and directed "Wild at Heart." Among his many projects was his TV brainchild Twin Peaks, which had a meteoric ride that began in April 1990 and continued until June 1991. At the end, the ratings were tanking, but it lit up the sky there in 1990. Many said it had developed a cult following for Lynch.

It was while Lynch was working on the first episodes of Twin Peaks that he was approached about directing a movie based on a novel called "Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula," the tale of a couple of lovers on the road together. Lynch was the one who introduced the crime angle; in the movie adaptation, Sailor and Lula weren't on the road so much as they were on the run.

---

---

I guess that was one of the movie themes of that time — people on the run from the law (or something). To an extent, I suppose, it is always a movie theme, but it isn't always as popular as it seemed to be in the late '80s and early '90s.

And, even when there is an unusually high number of such road movies in the theaters, few are as surrealistic — and I say that fully aware that "Thelma & Louise" premiered less than two years later — as "Wild at Heart."

Anyway, as I say, Sailor (Nicolas Cage) and Lula (Laura Dern) were on the run — but it started out that they were running from Lula's overbearing mother (played by Dern's own mother, Diane Ladd), who got other folks involved — gangsters, for example, and a detective (played by Willem Dafoe).

Both of the leads were played by young but familiar actors. Cage was cast regularly in movies in the 1980s — "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "The Cotton Club," "Peggy Sue Got Married," "Raising Arizona," "Moonstruck." By the time he made "Wild at Heart," moviegoers were pretty accustomed to the idea of Cage as a leading man.

Things were different for Dern. "Wild at Heart" was hardly Dern's first appearance on the silver screen — that came nearly 20 years earlier, when, at the tender age of 6, Dern was cast in 1973's "White Lightning" — but many moviegoers probably didn't know that in 1990, and most probably were not aware of her resume. She was cast in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," which received three Academy Award nominations, in 1974. She had had many supporting roles (earning a reputation within the industry for earnest portrayals of virtuous but rather naive characters); she had worked with Lynch before, on 1986's "Blue Velvet," and some of her roles could be regarded as leading roles, but "Wild at Heart" was probably the first truly successful movie in which she was widely recognized as one of the stars.

A big part of the plot of "Wild at Heart" was sex, as one would expect with an oversexed, hot–blooded type like Lula — and Cage's character was always willing to oblige her, as just about any man in that age group probably would. It's been quite awhile since I've seen the movie, but it seems to me that Dern and Cage marked just about every event with a roll in the sack ...

---

---

Even though that is — to an extent — the kind of behavior that is expected of people Sailor's and Lula's age, it was part of what made the movie so surreal. "You've got me hotter than Georgia asphalt," Dern said to Cage at one point. She must have spent her life in a constant state of arousal.

Part of it was Lynch himself, though. The structure of the road film freed Lynch to indulge himself in all sorts of ways, which led to mixed results. That part was probably predictable. But he also took viewers to some intriguing places — like the aftermath of a two–car collision in which a young woman, suffering from an obviously severe head injury, emerged from the wreckage, staggered around for a little while, asking what had happened and trying to find her wallet, and then died in front of the amorous couple. Sailor and Lula regarded it as a bad omen.

Which it was, I suppose, particularly for the girl who died.

Ebert dismissed "Wild at Heart" as "a film without the courage to declare its own darkest fantasies." There may be truth in that. I only saw it once, many years ago. Maybe I need to see it again.

"I've seen the movie twice now," Ebert told his readers. "I liked it less the second time."

My advice to you is to judge for yourself.

The Paradox of 'Pulp Fiction'

---

---

Vincent (John Travolta): And you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?

Jules (Samuel L. Jackson): They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?

Vincent: No, man, they got the metric system. They wouldn't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is.

Jules: Then what do they call it?

Vincent: They call it a Royale with Cheese.

Jules: A Royale with Cheese. What do they call a Big Mac?

Vincent: Well, a Big Mac's a Big Mac, but they call it le Big Mac.

Jules: Le Big Mac. Ha ha ha ha. What do they call a Whopper?

Vincent: I dunno, I didn't go into Burger King.

---

I don't know precisely when I got wise to the fact that, if I was going to watch a Quentin Tarantino movie, I had to be prepared for the likelihood that the story would not be told chronologically.

And sometimes he throws in stuff that has no real meaning to the story. Just to make sure you're paying attention, I suppose.

Roger Ebert really liked the dialogue in "Pulp Fiction," which premiered 20 years ago today. So did I — and for pretty much the same reason. Ebert just expressed it better than I could.

"Dialogue drives Quentin Tarantino's 'Pulp Fiction,'" he wrote, "dialogue of such high quality it deserves comparison with other masters of spare, hard–boiled prose, from Raymond Chandler to Elmore Leonard. Like them, QT finds a way to make the words humorous without ever seeming to ask for a laugh. Like them, he combines utilitarian prose with flights of rough poetry and wicked fancy."

That is the intriguing paradox of "Pulp Fiction," isn't it? A movie that is, ostensibly, about action is, as Ebert put it, driven by dialogue.

The conversation between John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson about Quarter Pounders and what they are called in France is my favorite example. Ebert cites his own, which is just as valid. There are many examples in "Pulp Fiction." The dialogue really is what makes the movie work.

It could have clashed with Tarantino's non–linear style of story telling, but it didn't because, as Ebert wrote, his was a utilitarian prose. There was purpose in each thing that was said, even if it wasn't readily apparent. And when the movie was over, the viewer felt as if he/she had been told the whole story and understood it as if it had been told in a more traditionally linear fashion.

The story began and ended with the same holdup in the same restaurant pulled off by Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer. By the time the robbery was seen for a second time, everything had fallen into place.

---

---

It was the dialogue that made the movie the black comedy that it was. I guess that is always the case, but the subject matter in this movie was really pretty brutal. If the words prompted laughter "without ever seeming to ask for a laugh" — and they often did — that is why it is remembered as a great black comedy.

Of course, there was more of a purpose to the dialogue, as Ebert observed. "[T]here is a chronology in the dialogue," Ebert wrote, "in the sense that what is said before invariably sets up or enriches what comes after." In other words, the dialogue provided a context.

It was the movie that resurrected Travolta's career. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor (but lost to Tom Hanks for "Forrest Gump") and was in some pretty good movies in the years that immediately followed "Pulp Fiction," but his career seems to have slipped from the radar again.

Seems to me I could almost say the same thing about Uma Thurman, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress (but lost to Dianne Wiest in "Bullets Over Broadway"). She's made some noteworthy movies in the last 20 years — the "Kill Bill" movies come to mind — but she has mostly dropped out of sight lately, too.

In all, "Pulp Fiction" received seven Oscar nominations and won for Best Original Screenplay.

"It's all in the dialogue," Ebert wrote, and I really have to agree. Tarantino richly deserved the Oscar he shared with Roger Avary for the original screenplay — and he also deserved his nomination for Best Director.

The Conscience of the Docks

---

---

"I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it."

Terry (Marlon Brando)
American Film Institute's third–greatest movie quote

---

"On the Waterfront," which premiered 60 years ago today, was a classic story about mob informers set on the waterfront of the Northeast. If it had the ring of truth to it, it is because the tale was loosely based on some Pulitzer Prize–winning true stories that were originally published in the New York Sun.

The American Film Institute ranked "On the Waterfront" #19 in its list of the Top 100 movies of all time. Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy, the never–was professional boxer, was rated the #23 hero of all time.

Lee J. Cobb played a union boss with mob ties who ruled the docks with an iron fist. Local law enforcement knew he was behind some murders, but no one on the waterfront was willing to inform on him, preferring to remain alive and working.

Rod Steiger played Cobb's right–hand man; Brando was his brother. Apparently, Brando was once a boxer with a lot of promise, but his brother (on instructions from Cobb) told him to lose a fight intentionally. Cobb had placed a bet on Brando's opponent.

---

---

The memory of that gnawed at Brando, who went on to work on the docks instead of contending for a boxing championship.

Brando's character was smitten with Eva Marie Saint, who played the sister of another dockworker. Brando was used as bait to lure her brother, who was about to testify against Cobb, into an ambush, in which he was killed. Brando thought they were only going to "lean" on him and resented playing any kind of role, albeit unknowingly, in the other man's death.

Saint and a priest (played by Karl Malden) persuaded Brando to testify against the union boss. His decision cost his brother his life, and it nearly cost him his own when Cobb's henchmen beat him up.

"Conscience," Brando's character said. "That stuff can drive you nuts."

Indeed it can.

---

---

"On the Waterfront" was nominated for 12 Oscars and won eight, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress.

Incidentally, you can see "On the Waterfront" in a couple of weeks on Turner Classic Movies' Aug. 11 salute to Marlon Brando during TCM's annual "Summer Under the Stars."

Christie's Underappreciated Classic

---

---

I hadn't been born on this day 75 years ago, but, based on my studies of history, I think I can guess what the mood was like.

Uneasy.

Less than three months later, World War II began when the Nazis invaded Poland. In the months leading up to it, there were all sorts of global political maneuvers going on.

Five years later, almost to the day, the Allied invasion of Normandy marked the turning point in the conflict.

Most of that was looming in the future when Agatha Christie wrote "Murder Is Easy," the detective novel she published in Great Britain on this day in 1939. (When it was published in the United States in September, the title was changed to "Easy to Kill.")

With so much uncertainty in the world, I guess Christie felt compelled to return to a more traditional plot. Comfort food for mystery readers, you might say. It took place in a sleepy English village. It had a loquacious vicar and an equally loquacious old maid. It had an overbearing captain of industry and his beautiful fiancee — and others, all of whom made for a delicious list of suspects from which to choose.

It also boasted Christie's trademark brilliant plot and clue placement.

But "Murder Is Easy" often gets the short end of the stick, probably because so many other Christie books that were published in the late 1930s had more complicated stories or took place in more exotic locales.

One of Christie's prominent detectives at that time was a fellow named Superintendent Battles, and he does show up at the end of "Murder Is Easy," but nearly all the heavy lifting is done by a character named Luke Fitzwilliam, a retired policeman who, to my knowledge, never showed up in another Christie novel.

Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing depends on one's perspective, I suppose. I have heard several Christie readers say they wish she had chosen to use Fitzwilliam in other books, but Maurice Percy Ashley, writing in London's Times Literary Supplement, said Fitzwilliam, a protege of Christie's detective Hercule Poirot, was "singularly lacking in 'little grey matter.' "

In fairness to Fitzwilliam, the case was baffling. On a train to London, he struck up a conversation with an elderly lady, who told him she was on her way to Scotland Yard to report what she had concluded was a serial killer on the loose. This killer, she said, already had been responsible for three deaths, and she identified by name the person who would be the fourth.

Fitzwilliam dismissed the conversation as the ranting of an elderly woman — until he saw the name of the alleged fourth victim in the obituary column. But the problem was that the man was not the fourth victim. He was the fifth. The old woman had been the fourth.

Had I been reviewing the book 75 years ago, I would have proclaimed it a classic.

But it is an understated and underappreciated one.

There Was a Crooked House ...

---

---

"There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house."

English nursery rhyme (published in 1846)

---

On at least a couple of occasions, Agatha Christie said "Crooked House," which was published in March 1949, was her favorite work.

She said it was her most satisfying book, an opportunity to examine the dynamics of family relationships — and, as she so often did, she took her title from a nursery rhyme, but it was only symbolic. Really had little to do with the plot. The story wasn't built around the content of the rhyme, only around the idea, as expressed by one of the characters, that "we hadn't been able to grow up independent ... twisted and twining." The occupants of the house were controlled and manipulated by the elderly patriarch.

It was an interesting household that Christie created in "Crooked House," which was inspired by a nursery rhyme that was about 100 years old when the story took place. It was centered around an affluent patriarch, whose first wife died and whose sister–in–law looked after his house and children from that time.

The patriarch married a younger woman — the difference in their ages could be measured not in years alone but in decades. That, of course, was an issue for others in the household, which the old boy also shared with his sons, their wives and three grandchildren.

One of the grandchildren was engaged to be married, and the story was told by her fiance. His father, a Scotland Yard inspector, was brought in to investigate, and the fiance assisted him.

The patriach suffered from diabetes and required regular insulin injections. On the fateful day, someone apparently switched the insulin with eserine, an eye medication, and it poisoned him.

As in most good murder mysteries, there was no shortage of suspects. Just about everyone in the house had a reason to want him dead. The patriarch's much younger wife was in love with another man, the tutor for the two youngest grandchildren. There had been rampant rumors about the relationship between those two, and the rest of the household hoped it would turn out that they were guilty. The second wife wasn't liked, and there would be a public scandal if someone else was responsible.

She wasn't the only one who had motive and opportunity but no alibi — and everyone stood to gain since the old man's will left generous chunks of his fortune to each family member. Beyond that, however, the family members shared little except a common bloodline.

Christie told an interviewer in the mid–1960s that she "had difficulty" with the ending of the book because her publisher believed the resolution of the crime could not be how she had written it — presumably because her readers wouldn't accept it.

As she almost always did, Dame Agatha prevailed in spite of the book's unforeseen and controversial conclusion. I won't reveal it — although, after 65 years, it is probably pretty well known to readers of mystery novels — but I would like to point out an important difference between this kind of Christie book and the ones that featured her usual detectives — Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, or even her lesser detectives.

In this kind of book, Christie's detective made his only appearance, and that is significant. With her usual detectives, Christie would allow them to maintain their detachment from the crime and observe from a distance. In a book like "Crooked House," Christie let her detective (actually, as I say, there were two in this case, the Scotland Yard inspector and his son) get his hands dirty.

It occurs to me that it might not have been possible for one of Christie's regular detectives to resolve the case from afar. From a distance, one can miss too much. Perhaps it was necessary for the detective to be close to the family. That intimacy allows the detective to pick up on subtle things that the detached detective would be likely to miss.

Distance can distort details — especially in a crooked house.

'Carlito's Way' Was Routine and Recycled

---

---

After I saw "Carlito's Way" — the movie that was released 20 years ago today — I concluded that the movie's star, Al Pacino, simply added a Spanish accent to the same character he had played in the "Godfather" movies, especially "Godfather III."

Pacino's character, a Puerto Rican drug–dealing gangster, was doing time (decades of it) in prison but was freed after only a few years on a technicality, thanks to his unscrupulous attorney (Sean Penn, who, I thought, bore a striking resemblance to Art Garfunkel in "Carnal Knowledge"). Upon his release, he decided to get out of his line of work as soon as he had accumulated enough money as the manager of a club owned by his lawyer to retire to the Caribbean.

But, like Michael Corleone, he couldn't escape his past.

In the interim, he rekindled his relationship with Gail, a stripper played by Penelope Ann Miller, and agreed to help his attorney, who had been coerced into helping a convicted mob boss (from whom the lawyer had stolen $1 million) escape from prison. Cocaine seemed to course through every relationship and every act in the story, which was to be expected, I guess, especially in the environment of the '70s, but the intriguing part was that Carlito actually did manage to keep his nose clean — until his lawyer talked him into helping with the prison break (and the murder the lawyer planned to commit).

---

---

After being brought in for interrogation, Carlito heard a tape of his lawyer agreeing to sell him out. From that point, it was a race to see if Carlito and Gail could escape.

I felt it was a B–level story, average if not mediocre, with a mostly A–level cast. The personnel was too good for the material but never quite rose above it. That wasn't for lack of trying, and I will concede that Brian de Palma's direction helped, but I had seen enough of his earlier movies to recognize some of his signature filmmaking tricks.

De Palma had been making movies for 25 years when he made "Carlito's Way," and he had grown comfortable with certain camera angles and other techniques he relied on to manipulate the emotions of the viewers.

It's never been a secret that, as a young director, de Palma was influenced by the movies of Alfred Hitchcock. In recent years, he has said he outgrew that as a director, but I'm not convinced. When he began saying that he was past his Hitchcock phase, it was after "Carlito's Way" was in the theaters, and I definitely saw some Hitchcock–inspired moments in that one. Someone who had seen several of his earlier movies could recognize his touch; those who had not seen many of his movies were probably impressed and apt to rate the movie highly.

Clearly, at least in "Carlito's Way," de Palma was also influenced by Bob Fosse — particularly Fosse's closing sequence in "All That Jazz" in which the lead character hallucinated as he died. Some folks probably thought it was a creative touch, not realizing it was recycled.

But I found it to be, in many ways, a routine re–telling of the gangster's tale — and of de Palma's movies in general.

Telling the Story of the Boston Strangler

---

---

Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that "The Boston Strangler," which premiered on this day in 1968, "requires a judgment not only on the quality of the film (very good), but also on its moral and ethical implications."

And, as a journalist, I agree. The Boston Strangler case was terrifying for the people in the Boston area and disturbing for everyone else. A film account needed to be faithful to the known facts, to promote knowledge instead of fear — but, as Ebert pointed out, "real events [were] being offered as entertainment." In my opinion, the movie was a clear attempt to capitalize on emotion, a tactic that has been used more frequently in the years that have passed, presumably because it was mildly successful in 1968 (the movie earned more than four times what it cost to make it).

Ebert felt the movie was a "deliberate exploitation of the tragedy of Albert DeSalvo and his victims." And that, I think, is a legitimate complaint.

But one of the things I have learned is that the truth is often up for grabs, especially in the movies. Then as now, people wanted easy, satisfying answers like the ones they saw on TV shows like Perry Mason (today I suppose it would be Law & Order), even if the facts have to be manipulated.

And the DeSalvo case was loaded with inconsistencies and other factual issues.

Ebert complained that the movie wasn't as "beneficial and ... educational" as its defenders claimed, but he seemed to buy the basic premise, that Albert DeSalvo (played in the movie by Tony Curtis) was, in fact, responsible for killing 13 women in the early 1960s.

And he never stated how the movie could have been educational.

It is important to remember that the crimes and DeSalvo's arrest and conviction — and the premiere of the movie about the case — all occurred in the 1960s. That was at least a quarter of a century before most people ever heard of DNA evidence. Until then, physical evidence linking DeSalvo to the killings was tenuous. It was only through a confession he gave after being arrested on a rape charge that he became a suspect.

---

---

In fact, DeSalvo was never convicted of any of the Boston Strangler killings. He was convicted of a series of rapes. Henry Fonda gave his usual stellar performance as the investigator who interrogated DeSalvo and obtained his confession to the crimes, and Ebert had praise for him. Curtis, too. Ebert wrote that Curtis "acts better than he has in a decade."

But his complaints didn't really address the fact that the story seemed to have been written to fit a particular worldview. In that way, I have always likened it to the Warren Commission report on the Kennedy assassination — which is ironic, I suppose, since one of the Boston Strangler's victims was killed the day after the assassination.

The Warren Commission has been accused of overlooking or glossing over some things that didn't fit a preconceived conclusion. I have my own thoughts on that, and that is another discussion for another time, but I definitely believe that the Boston Strangler case was that way.

Of course, if the technology to obtain the necessary evidence didn't exist 50 years ago, there wasn't much that could be done about it. But even after that technology became available, there were questions about the cases that remained unanswered.

Ultimately, DNA evidence did link DeSalvo to at least one of the victims, but there were too many variations for one killer to be responsible for all, some continue to say. There was a wide disparity in the ages of the victims (the youngest was 19, the oldest was 85), they belonged to different demographic groups and occupied different social positions, and the methods of killing weren't the same. Some were strangled, some were stabbed, some were beaten.

Even now, suspicions persist that more than one killer was involved — or that DeSalvo was not involved.

But, at the time, apparently there was a widespread belief that the killings were the work of one man. The justice system — and then Hollywood — encouraged that conclusion.

In telling the story, the movie utilized a split–screen technique that was popular at the time — and continues to be used today.

---

---

It is a technique that can be easily misused or overused, but sometimes it can be effective, which was what I thought of its use in this movie.

The story was that DeSalvo had a split personality — the homicidal one and the devoted family man. Neither, apparently, was aware of the other's existence, and the split–screen technique was probably the best way to illustrate that.

It was also a powerful method for showing the growing fear and tension in the city.

Forty–five years after its debut, it remains a potent drama, but I urge first–time viewers to watch it with more than a grain of salt. Legally, the case of the Boston Strangler may be closed — or practically closed — but there are probably as many issues surrounding whether DeSalvo acted alone — or whether he was even involved at all — as there are with Lee Harvey Oswald.