Jarad Henry's "Blood Sunset"

Jarad Henry is an Australian crime writer. His first murder mystery, Head Shot, which was inspired by Melbourne’s gangland killings, was short listed in the 2006 Ned Kelly Awards for Best First Crime Novel. As a manuscript, it was also short listed in the 2004 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Blood Sunset, his second novel, was short listed in the 2006 Australian Vogel Awards and in the same year won the Fellowship of Australian Writers Jim Hamilton Award.

Here Henry shares some ideas about the star and creative team should his latest novel be adapted for the big screen:

My second crime novel is Blood Sunset, a hard boiled police procedural about a murdered street kid who was involved in recruiting other street kids for a child porn racket. The central character is Detective Sergent Rubens McCauley, attached to the Criminal Investigation Unit in St Kilda, Melbourne's bay side red light district and an area with one of the highest crime rates in Australia. The title refers to the sunsets that occur during the summer months, when crime and violence is especially high.

In July 2008 Blood Sunset was pitched to film producers at the annual Melbourne International Film Festival. My publisher, Allen & Unwin, chose only my book to pitch this year, something I was very flattered by, given they publish over 100 titles each year. Like most writers, I'd love to see my novel made into a film and my characters on the big screen. Of course, there is no guarantee of success even if the book does somehow find its way through the labyrinth of creative steps required before a film is even made, let alone hits cinemas. Having said that, I deliberately write with a strong sense of imagery and cinematic prose, a symptom in part reflective of my age (I'm 30) and the era we live in. With that in mind, I'd love to see the big-bad Russell Crowe play the lead role. He's tough, reliable and carries a lot of depth, very much like McCauley. And they're both Australian!

Behind the cameras and directing the action would have to be modern legends Shawn Ryan and Tony Stark from the hit television series The Shield. The series is raw, edgy and totally convincing. If my story could be blessed with such talent, there is no doubt that Blood Sunset (the movie) would be a winner.

View the trailer for Blood Sunset.

Read an excerpt from Blood Sunset, and learn more about the author and his work at Jarad Henry's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

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Perri O'Shaughnessy's "Keeper of the Keys"

Perri O'Shaughnessy is the pen name for sisters Mary and Pamela O’Shaughnessy, authors of the bestselling Nina Reilly novels.

Here they develop some casting ideas for adaptations of their stand-alone thriller, Keeper of the Keys, and for the main characters in the Nina Reilly novels:

We have sold a few movie options over the years, although none of our books or short stories have ever made it the big screen. However, if we were ever to sell rights to a book that did, we would expect shocks to the concept and the characters. Maybe we would welcome them, since the artist/director/screenwriter should have an opportunity to re-conceive for a different medium.

So here we go with our own dream casting notions for our latest novel, Keeper of the Keys. Ray Jackson, the main character, a troubled architect would benefit from the dimples of Matthew McConaughey. Cute and accessible, we think this actor's got potential as a guy with dark secrets. His missing wife, Leigh, might take good advantage of the talents of Claire Danes. As an artistic furniture designer who has plenty of action scenes, she's also got plenty of drama happening, and Danes seems to be able to bring out the intelligence this character requires. Her pregnant sister Jackie could be Ginnifer Goodwin, the dark-haired sweetie and youngest polygamist wife on HBO's Big Love. For Ray's mom, last but not least, we'd be thrilled to see the Glenn Close of Dangerous Liaisons, complex and unpredictable.

Our next novel, Show No Fear, will come out in early December. It's a prequel to our Nina Reilly series, featuring our series character as a young woman in law school facing the crime that shaped everything she became.

When Nina first appeared, in 1995, we imagined Holly Hunter playing her and her detective/lover Paul van Wagoner played by Nick Nolte. Isn't it funny to think how as time passes, actors get gray just like real people? Midway through the series, we re-cast Nina with Ashley Judd. Now, restarting the series with a woman in her twenties, we're thinking perhaps Julia Stiles. She's got an adorable smashed up face. Put her in big, blowy dark hair and make her a bit more voluptuous, and you would have our character with all her glory, wit, and vulnerabilities intact. Her co-worker and later spouse, Jack, could be Ben Affleck, a man with some humor, attitude, and ideals. As for Paul, well, how about Daniel Craig or Clive Owen (with an American accent, of course)? He should be tall, blond, fearless and muscular without being Tom Cruise handsome. He's a guy that shows some hard knocks in his face.

Read an excerpt from Keeper of the Keys, and learn more about the authors and their work--and about Nina Reilly--at Perri O'Shaughnessy's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

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Steven Wilson's "Armada"

Steven Wilson is Curator and Assistant Director of the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum, which houses one of the most diverse Lincoln and Civil War collections in the country. His books include Between the Hunters and the Hunted, President Lincoln's Spy, and Voyage of the Gray Wolves.

Here he develops some ideas about the director and cast should his novel Armada, set just before D-Day, be adapted for the movies:

I grew up with movies and my brother and I could tell which studio (back when studios were factories) produced a movie by the sounds used from their libraries. Warner Bros. gunshots were distinct from Paramount, as were MGM's from Republic's. It is a little like recognizing a composer from their music characteristics.

Since Armada, was the last of a series (President Lincoln's Spy came out since then), I'm going to cast this book. I gave Tom Wilkinson the role of Captain Hardy. A superb actor, he can play gruff with a great deal of sensitivity. For Edland, I choose John Cusack. They both have something hidden deep within, and both share a profound intelligence. For Jordan Cole I like Dax Shepard. His command presence on the screen is impressive.

My choice for director is John McTiernan. That may be a bit old school, but then, so am I.

I should point out that I use motion picture music to help me set the scene when I'm writing. So I must thank John Williams, Dmitri Tiomkin, Alfred Newman, Thomas Newman, Jerry Goldsmith, and Craig Safan.

Read the prologue to Armada, and learn more about the author and his work at Steven Wilson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

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Timothy Hallinan's "The Fourth Watcher"

Timothy Hallinan has lived off and on in Southeast Asia for more than twenty years. He is the author of eight published novels and one nonfiction work on Charles Dickens. The Fourth Watcher is the second book in the Poke Rafferty novels of Bangkok that began in 2007 with A Nail Through the Heart.

Here Hallinan develops some ideas about the directors and cast should the Poke Rafferty novels be adapted for the big screen:

The Fourth Watcher is the second in a series of Novels of Bangkok (as the people at William Morrow subtitle them), so there are really two challenges: casting the continuing characters and casting the people who show up only in one novel.

One of the most important continuing characters is the city of Bangkok itself. The film(s) would need a director with a strong feeling for this most dizzying of Asian capitals, with its unique blend of spirituality and carnality, its extensive population of ghosts, its invisible circles of power and influence. I think Oxide and Danny Pang, two very stylish Hong Kong brothers and directors who have made several films in Thailand, would capture the city in all its gold-leaf-and-rough-concrete complexity, and they'd be great with the action sequences, although God knows what they'd do to the stories.

The most important person in the books is the protagonist, Poke Rafferty, an American whose 25% Filipino ancestry is evident in his features. I actually had Johnny Depp mind when I started to write Poke, although now, two and a half books later, the identification isn't so strong. But I think Depp would be wonderful, especially because of the intelligence he conveys. Poke is a writer and only a reluctant action hero, so it's important that the actor who plays him seems at least marginally comfortable with the activity of thinking.

Poke's family – his former bar-girl wife, Rose, and his adopted street-orphan daughter, Miaow – are Thai and would best be cast with Thai actors, as would his best friend, the honorable policeman named Arthit. Any movie made from these books would have to feature some Thai actors, and there are some excellent ones to choose from.

The main “one-off” roles in The Fourth Watcher are Poke's morally equivocal and somewhat treacherous father, Frank and half-Chinese half-sister, Ming Li; the shady former CIA operative, Arnold Prettyman; and the way-too-tightly-buttoned Secret Service Agent, Richard Elson. At one point, a film company was fooling with the idea of actually making a movie from the book, and they wanted Gene Hackman as Frank. I personally think Gene Hackman could play Heidi if the makeup people could make the braids work, so I can't improve on that.

Prettyman is an unwillingly retired spook who never, ever volunteers the truth and seems always to be evaluating half a dozen potential parallel realities. Kevin Spacey would be splendid. And Elson is a tightly wound straight-arrow with a byzantine and highly guarded sexual life who would be both menacing and hilarious in the hands of Michael C. Hall of Dexter and Six Feet Under.

Casting Poke's half-sister is more difficult, but the world's most beautiful human being at the moment is the Chinese actress Xun Zhou. She's older than Ming Li, but we could all forget that and just look at her.

Together again for the first time: Depp!! Hackman!! Spacey!! Hall!! Xun Zhou!! Under the direction of the Pang Brothers!! The Fourth Watcher!!! I wouldn't even need popcorn.

Read an excerpt from The Fourth Watcher, and learn more about the author and his work at Timothy Hallinan's website and his blog.

The Page 69 Test: A Nail Through the Heart.

The Page 69 Test: The Fourth Watcher.

--Marshal Zeringue

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A Night To Dismember (1983)

JULY 3, 2008

GENRE: INDEPENDENT, SLASHER, WEIRD
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

It wasn’t long into A Night To Dismember that I realized I was in for something truly special... maybe 2 minutes tops in fact. As I watched a rapid fire collection of scenes with little cohesion speed by, endlessly narrated (by a guy that sounds like Charles B. Pierce) to hide the fact that there was no source audio, I decided that the film was simply divine. And it just got better as it went on, peaking at the halfway mark when the narrator describes a dream sequence thusly: “Vicky felt as though someone faceless was making love to her in bright flashing colors that were changing from one second to the next.” Of course, this is precisely what we are seeing, which leads me to believe that they stuck some guy in a booth and had him narrate whatever he felt like saying as this incoherent and mute film played before his hopefully astonished eyes.

And if you wonder how the narrator (a character in the film) could possibly know what she was dreaming, fear not – he even explains that. At the very end of the film, as a sort of cinematic P.S., he informs us that every single character in the film kept detailed diaries, which he presumably stole.

At first, I actually thought the film was some sort of joke by film students, where they just took assorted footage that they found and assembled a loose narrative from it, similar to what Joe Dante did with The Movie Orgy. But apparently, what really happened was, a fire at the film lab destroyed nearly half the footage, and director Doris Wishman couldn’t afford to reshoot all of it, so she made do with what was left. Apparently, incoherency and ineptitude was her style (I’ve never seen any of her other films – most of which seem to be pornos), so whether the fire story is true or not, I don’t know. It’s probably the only bit of actual trivia to be heard on the entire commentary track, most of which is simply Wishman yelling at her cameraman for ruining the movie and asking him if he likes whatever nonsense happens to be on screen. I can’t tell if she’s seriously under the impression that she’s made a good film, but she’s at least 80 at this point (she was born in 1918 and they reference South Park and Everybody Loves Raymond on the track – dating it late 90s, early 00s) so maybe she’s just senile.

I also love that a film without a single moment of source sound actually has a credited sound man (plus a boom operator!):

Was this before or after Civil War allegedly took his life?

As for the movie itself, you got me. It’s another one of those “evil family members plot to make another family member crazy” movies, in theory. Many scenes don’t quite fit into this plot, but whatever. After a while I stopped trying to understand what was going on and just focused on the movie’s real charms – hilariously dubbed dialogue (which is very rare anyway – most of it is narrated), cutaways to things unrelated to what is going on, frequent murder/nude scenes featuring the absolute worst fake violence ever (one scene involves a guy being lightly tapped with an axe – and then his head just falls off).

The music also deserves a mention. It seems to be all library music, and in several cases, I can only assume they didn’t even get the whole track. At one point, we hear the same 30 second loop 3-4 times over a single scene; it cuts off abruptly and starts over. And it’s not appropriate to the scene either. In fact, none of the music seems to fit with the onscreen action – we have goofy cartoon style music over dialogue scenes, “Sweeping shot of a vista” style stuff over the kill scenes, etc. Again, all part of the unparalleled charm of A Night to Dismember.

Like Cathy’s Curse and Scream Bloody Murder, this is one of those wretched movies that I love anyway, and rejuvenates my drive to do this whole Horror Movie A Day thing. There’s no way in hell I ever would have seen this were I not forcing myself to watch one every day. Bless my random whim!

I want to point that about half of the trailer isn't in the film, and seems to be advertising a movie with a different plot entirely to boot. Again, part of the charm.

What say you?

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Independent, Slasher, Weird,

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Triloquist (2008)

JULY 2, 2008

GENRE: PUPPET, SERIAL KILLER
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Is there a Sniglet for when you are walking around Blockbuster at the same pace as another customer? That happened last night, it was me and this lovely looking woman and her child, browsing from A-Z, constantly getting in each other’s way and saying “excuse me” every 12 seconds. And the woman was obviously a “good” mother, as her kid kept trying to get her to rent R rated films like The Orphanage, only to be shot down (the mother’s suggested alternative? Drillbit Taylor. Poor kid.). Since she clearly wasn’t down with the R rated stuff, she probably assumes I am some sort of sociopath for spying Triloquist on the shelf, laughing maniacally at the hilarious cover, and practically running up to the counter to rent it.

Sadly the cover I find online isn’t the same as the one in the store, so I had to take a picture of it with my cell phone to share with you:

Now, how can anyone see that (not to mention read “From the creator of Leprechaun!”) and NOT want to watch this movie? I dunno, but it has no rating on the IMDb as of yet, and I seemingly was the only one to rent a copy, as there were plenty on the shelves. Being a bare-bones release AND a Blockbuster exclusive (no Netflix!), there should be no reason that every copy wasn’t rented out and being enjoyed by like-minded jerks such as myself.

Surprisingly enough, the movie isn’t as goofy as you’d expect. Sure, it’s filled with lots of corny lines and sight gags, and it’s mostly played for laughs, but there's a melancholy thread that runs throughout the film. The puppet isn’t the only villain here; in fact, he’s almost a good guy compared to his owner, a super hot blond chick named Angelica who’s essentially a psychotic whore (think a late teens version of Baby from Devil’s Rejects and you’d get the idea). The movie is really about her sort of rise and fall, and the end of the film finds her homeless, addicted to heroin, and alone. Not QUITE as funny as the sight of a puppet biting a man’s dick off, is it? Strangely, it kind of works, and there are two reasons why.

One is the above average acting from the two leads, Paydin LoPachin as Angelica, and Rocky Marquette as her mute brother Norbert (who looks and acts like his own goddamn puppet). They are able to bring some sympathy and pathos to their roles, and while this is hardly a Shakespearean tragedy, I actually did feel sorry for them on more than one occasion (junkie mother, abused as kids, etc). The other thing is the soundtrack, which is pretty great for a DTV killer puppet movie. There are a few alt-country style songs and a pretty good score by Geoff Levin (including, yes, "Mockingbird", but actually used effectively!), and the songs are just as melancholy as the film is at times.

Of course, that’s not really the appeal of the movie. Rampant nudity, lots of ridiculous kills (my favorite – the puppet shoots a cop with a shotgun; the recoil sending him flying across the road), and corny jokes that eventually become amusing is what will entice folks to watch this movie, and while the gore/violence is surprisingly a bit tame (this is Dimension EXTREME!, no?), the sleaziness of the whole thing makes up for it. Angelica is constantly offering to fellate people, and there’s even suggested incest between her and her brother.

I also like how they don’t bother trying to present it as a mystery as to whether or not the puppet is alive. After She-Wolf of London, I don’t know if I could take a movie in which the titular killer was essentially a ruse by a very un-supernatural human, and Triloquist delivers on that front. He’s alive, and they run with it.

Now, I know I’ve spent a while praising the film, but that doesn’t mean it’s a masterpiece. The script is needlessly confusing at the end, with lots of things that don’t quite make sense and/or plot elements never clarified. It’s also a bit repetitious – I think there are like 4 different scenes where Angelica kills a good Samaritan and takes his car. And too many of the kills are offscreen – I’d rather they cut one of the car theft killings from the script and used the leftover money to improve the other kill scenes.

But hey, it’s a killer puppet movie, something far too rare these days. It should definitely appeal to those who thought Dead Silence was a ripoff (you fools!), and puts the similar Seed of Chucky to shame in the process.

What say you?

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Comedic, Puppet, Serial Killer,

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Slaughter Party (2005)

JULY 1, 2008

GENRE: COMEDIC, MAD SCIENTIST, SLASHER
SOURCE: DVD (ONLINE RENTAL)

When you have a movie in which a midget (Mighty Mike Murga) is raped by a mountain man in the first 15 minutes, the last thing you should say about the film is that it’s dull. But that’s exactly how I would describe Slaughter Party, a Troma film that seems oddly held back on several occasions and manages to make even nonsense like Terror Firmer look like solid storytelling in comparison.

At no point in the film was there any evidence that I was watching a completed film. Characters come and go without any real rhyme or reason, subplots arise out of nowhere, leaving other plots abandoned as a result, etc. After the life-affirming rape scene, we cut to a nubile blonde going to meet an internet date – who turns out to be the midget we just saw get attacked. How long the two scenes are supposed to be apart is never made clear, but we just have to assume that the raping resulted in Murga turning psychotic and killing girls at random. Hilariously, shortly after this scene we are given a “Three Weeks Later” title to bridge two scenes that clearly take place quite some time apart anyway. Later in the film, we see the killer stalking a group of girls by the lake in the middle of nowhere, and then cut to him inside a suburban apartment, where he attempts to kill a girl who escapes and leads him to... the same damn lake he was inexplicably seen at 5 minutes before. Whatever.

But I usually don’t care about such things when I see a Troma film, because there’s usually a plethora of gore, nudity, bodily fluids, piñatas, etc. But that’s not the case here. The usual Troma lesbian action is limited to a single brief smooch between two of the random girls introduced halfway through the film. The gore is clearly just some fruit punch, and pretty minimal at that. And the star of the film, Sleepaway Camp’s Felissa Rose, doesn’t seem to be aware she’s in a piece of crap, and actually tries to act and bring sympathy to her character. Not what we’re here for, ma’am, but thanks for trying!

She’s not the only one who keeps putting effort into the wrong areas of the movie. The director (who directed it I can’t tell, Lloyd says it’s a guy named Chris Watson, the IMDb says Fred Rosenberg, and the film itself says Buck Jones Jr. Take your pick, I guess) keeps tossing in insert shots of things like cigarettes hitting the ground or whatever – but can’t be bothered to actually show the goddamn killer in this scene:

That’s the most we ever see him during the attack.This film is shot on consumer digital video (hell, might even be analog), so there’s no excuse for shit like that. You’re able to instantly watch what you got and if something goes wrong, like, I dunno, you failed to get the goddamn subject of the scene in the goddamn frame, you should re-tape (not film, it’s tape!) the scene/shot and do it right. It’s one of the things that DV defenders will use to claim their format is superior to film – but this guy couldn’t be bothered.

Strangely, the most amusing thing about the movie is the commentary track. It’s done by actor Ford Austin, in character as the mad doctor (sort of like the track on Blood Simple, only with Troma flair). It’s filled with the sort of anti-PC irreverent humor the movie itself failed to deliver, and he also mocks the film’s meager production value (he points out a particularly overlong shot of 2 guys walking and wonders if it’s there to pad the film to feature length) and numerous plot holes. Hell, just watch the movie with the commentary on to begin with; it’s the only way to enjoy it IMO. There’s also a bizarre interview with one of the film’s other co-stars, some porn jackass who spends the entire time he’s on camera making cookies or muffins or something. There’s also an interview with Rose (pointless) and some other crap that just hawks Troma in general, which I skipped as I assume it’s the same stuff I’ve watched on other DVDs.

It’s actually pretty rare I watch Troma films (I believe this is the first for HMAD), so when I DO watch one, it’s because I am in the mood for their peculiar brand of comedy/horror/crap. Nice job on my part to rent one that even their die-hard aficionados were disappointed with. Oh well.

What say you?

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Comedic, Independent, Mad Scientist, Slasher,

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Andrew Blechman's "Leisureville"

Andrew Blechman has been a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and the Des Moines Register. His work has also appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, the New York Times, and the International Herald Tribune, among others. His first book, Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird, was widely praised in the media and featured on CBS Sunday Morning.

His latest book is Leisureville—Adventures in America’s Retirement Utopias. Here's how he'd like to see it make the journey to the big screen:

I’d love to see Leisureville adapted as another installment of the National Lampoon Vacation series with Chevy Chase. It could be called Permanent Vacation.

Here’s how I see the plot:

After seeing more than half of their neighbors in suburban Chicago hit 55 and take off for a magical retirement community called “Wallyville,” Chevy and his wife finally succumb to peer pressure and make the big move. It appears to be a paradise: 48 golf courses, countless pools, two movie-set-perfect themed downtowns that look like Disney World’s Main Street, and tens of thousands of relaxed retirees zooming around silently on golf carts over specially designed bridges and tunnels. Even the neighborhood looks like something out of Leave It to Beaver with perfectly edged lawns, picket fences, and spotless driveways.

The Griswolds slip into “today’s retirement” gracefully, hitting the links with cocktails, hanging out at a Baby Boomer keg party with Eagle’s music, nude hottub romps – everything you can imagine Boomers doing with time on their hands and no kids to worry about.

Then Rusty shows up in another station wagon, filled with three rambunctious grandchildren. He spends the evening as the kids run around the yard and neighborhood bringing icy stares from Chevy’s new neighbors. Rusty explains that he’s in the middle of a divorce and he’s accepted a security job in Iraq: he needs to leave the kids with his parents for the summer.

The kids have fun until their guest passes (“visas”) run out and the Griswolds are told they must ship them off or be evicted. Chevy tries disguising them as Mexican gardeners and pool cleaners, but finally gives up and is forced to house them in a motel outside the gates each night and pick them up each morning, where they are given a hard time as they pass through “immigration control.”

The Griswolds realize that their neighbors aren’t as friendly as they thought they were, and try to decide what to do with the kids. The climax comes when their neighbors hold a demonstration against them and march on their house. One of the participants has a heart attack and the eldest grandchild performs CPR on him and saves his life. The community is left contemplating its age-segregationist policies and chooses to be more lenient and even make the Griswold grandkids honorary Wallyville residents.

Anybody have Chevy Chase’s email?

Read an excerpt from Leisureville, and learn more about book and author at Andrew Blechman's website.

The Page 69 Test: Pigeons.

The Page 69 Test: Leisureville.

--Marshal Zeringue

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