StanleyWheeler

Regarding Infinity War : I have discovered that the location of the final infinity stone, as well as the manner for obtaining the gem which will create incredible (perhaps infinite) power, is a matter of extreme importance to many. Nevertheless, it holds no interest for me. I've outgrown super hero movies; I don't intend to see this one. I did recently get to see a movie that I enjoyed again: Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep . I have to admit that remembering this movie while I was writing Smoke helped me to establish some of the texture for the novel, including the jabs about the main character's height. The other movies and books that were helpful included The Maltese Falcon , This Gun for Hire with Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, The Big Heat with Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame, and My Favorite Brunette with Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. This scene from The Big Sleep  of Marlowe and Vivian's first meeting differs significantly from the first me...

Fear in the Night (1947), directed by Maxwell Shane, starring: According to Wikipedia, this was Kelley's film debut. The film concerns a bank teller, Vince Grayson, who dreams that he has killed a man in an octagonal room of mirrors --that makes the fight eight times more exciting, right? He awakes with marks on his throat, blood on his wrist, and he finds a mysterious key and a button in his pocket. Needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, he is troubled. He goes about trying to locate, by way of advertisement, a house with such an octagonal room. No luck. While on an outing with his girl Betty; and his sister Lil and brother-in-law Cliff (a police detective), some memories surface, leading him to his dream home -- or nightmare mansion. He finds blood in the closet behind one of the mirrors--the same place he had stashed the body in the dream, and to which the mysterious key fits--fits the closet, not the body. When a local law enforcement officer who's keepin...

Do plentiful pounding pulses of pure pressurized water perceptively and plausibly promote the pondering process? Personally, I possess a presupposition in the positive. Perhaps that's pretty presumptuous of me. Pardonnez-moi .  Of course I do my best thinking in the shower. The acoustics are good for it--and it's not like I have to spend a lot of time washing my hair. I've been struggling with the precise ending of my current novel-in-process, Smoke . I've had great writing ideas during the morning shower in the past; this morning held true to form.  The novel is a detective story/ noir mystery marbled with a little humor. It begins (as appropriate to the genre) when a beautiful woman hires a private detective. She smokes so much that it's even money whether she takes a breath that is smoke-free. The protagonist, who is trying to quit smoking, finds himself getting more smoke around her than when he was doing the smoking for himself. A relationship develops...

The first home repair of the new year: The frail told me that the light in the bedroom had burned out. She had already changed the bulb. The new one didn't shed any more light than an old shoe either. I grabbed the old bulb. It seemed fine to me. I hit the switch. The light pulsed like a warp nacelle, but just one time with each flip of the switch; it wouldn't stay lit. I had heard this story before. I knew the cure. I also knew that it would be the weekend before I could light up my doll's life with 120 volts and a 60 watt bulb. She knew the score. She would live with it until I was good and ready to make Edison's pet dance to my tune.  (Picture from This Man Is Dangerou s--which I also watched on Saturday. It's a great movie--French Noir  featuring Eddie Constantine as Lemmy Caution. I'll do a write up on it...maybe Thursday) It was a Saturday. The sun stared through a cloudy sky like a one-eyed man behind a smoking pipe. There was a foul smell in the ...

The above photo from IMDB of Humprey Bogart and Gloria Grahame was part of the publicity for the movie In a Lonely Place , directed by Nicholas Ray, 1950. Bogart and Grahame were film noir royalty. Grahame usually played a moll who took more hits than Sylvester Stallone's  Rocky . Bogey, or course, delivered a lot of hits. In one scene in this movie, Bogart's disturbed character, Dixon Steele, beats up a young man and nearly brains him with a rock. Grahame plays Laurel, the girl who can't decide whether her lover is a murderer. I haven't had the pleasure of seeing this entire film. I have seen several parts of it, and want to see all of it. Bogey's character is a writer; he is asked what position he works from. He replies that it's usually from the sitting position. The most memorable lines from the film are spoken, and written by Bogart's character: "I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived for a few weeks while she loved m...

Wednesday night, Sleep capriciously refused to abscond with my conscious thought to the land of peaceful dreams. I rose from that bed of unrelenting wakefulness, and reserved tickets for a special event; I also added some hotel reservations. Sleep still maintained her discrete distance. What choice did I have? I turned to film noir. Detour - Edward G. Ulmer 1945 - staring Tom Neal and Ann Savage. Neal plays a man who is hitchhiking across the country to see his sweetheart; he finds misery packaged in a pale sweater and a dark skirt. (That's misery in the skirt, not Neal's character). Tom Neal makes a sympathetic character, but it's Ann Savage's performance as Vera that holds this otherwise forgettable film above of the waters of obscurity. As Vera, Ann is at her most savage. Nearly every time she opens her mouth, it's like having the jagged end of a broken bottle shoved into your guts; every phrase gives the bottle another painful twist. Vera is not just abr...