Never So Few (1959) Frank scribbles notes, some good and some bad, in his marble –ruled book. He is trying to pretend that he is not at this seminar, but perhaps at ladies’ garden club meeting in New Jersey, listening to a speech on hydrangeas. Or perhaps, watching another Sinatra film… John Sturges’ Never So Few (1959, available June 2005, Warner Bros.) pits the Chairman of the Board and a small band of OSS operatives in Burma, WWII. Rat pack buddy Peter Lawford is along for the ride, as is The Great Escape (1963)/ The Magnificent Seven (1960) (both Sturges films) tagteam of Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson. Also notable is Richard Johnson as Sinatra’s never-say-die (until he dies) sidekick. Their mission is to protect and train the local Kachins against the "nips, japs, gooks, and yellows" (namely the Chinese and Japanese) on either side. Of course we all know that turning an unarmed native population into an effective fighting force is easily done, right? The weakness of the film is perhaps its token love story. Sinatra’s tangential love interest in Carla (Gina Lollobrigida), a snooty gold-digger that he wants to change is very often goofy in its surreal 1950s way. After she gives Sinatra’s Tom Reynolds the brush on several occasions, even going so far as to torture him by calling him in on her bath, Tom as classic old time leading man goes ahead and grabs and kisses her. Aha! “I kissed you and you kissed back!” he exclaims and she is suddenly ready to move to the States and drop a few babies. Frank thinks it is safe to say that this technique doesn’t work with most women. He raises a hand and asks host of the sexual harassment seminar he’s stuck in at conference room in a Mt. Sinai hotel. “Not unless you’re Tom Cruise! (Legend R. Scott 1985) He’ll never harass anyone!” she giggles prompting several other DJ’s to raise hands and ask if that was a patently shallow response. “I ‘m sorry if cuteness is a factor,” she frighteningly answers, “Harassment is based on one woman’s opinion at any one moment. And we admittedly see the cute as more harmless than the ugly." Frank groans and slinks behind his little desk. When she causally mentions that sexual harassment charges can also be brought about by a third party independent of the accused harasser and harassee (?). She says that it is only to help in situations when women are too frightened to act for them selves. Jack Hansen, the evening jazz jock to Frank’s left, raises a well-manicured hand and asks if such a clause could lead to slander. “Oh!” she gasps, “That would never happen! I’m sure all women and managers take this topic far too seriously! Silence is most likely fear, not absence of incident.” Now everyone groans. Because it does happen. It had happened. Truth was, despite 25 years both at the console a $45- thou- a year pro was more cheaply replaced by a $20-thou cub like Frank and maybe a minimum wage college kid for weekends. “Allegations,” Frank underlines, on his seminar pamphlet, “Stay on record until proven.” What?! So says Old Man, Sinatra’s Kachin assistant: “America. Very funny place.” A hand goes up. Jack again. “Why is this seminar about sexual harassment and not, oh, religious or racial harassment?” Answer: “Sexual harassment creates a hostile environment.” This time, the black host of the Sunday ‘s gospel hour groans. Sinatra would never have taken this! But then again, Never So Few, does end the way that any good war film doesn’t: with Tom Reynolds' court martial for invading China all by himself. Thematically, this static venue serves to reunite him with Carla, more than to resolve the war story. It has been resolved. Sinatra and McQueen won! Yea. In something like The Manchurian Candidate (Frankenhiemer 1962) Sinatra’s love interest is worked in as key to the plot. Don’t we think quirky Janet Leigh is working for the other side for much of her time in the film? Frankly, with a small bunch of colorful soldiers with a lot of booze protecting a jungle form the reds, there is enough endearing content to get along without the bipolar Carla. Dropping her might make this a more manageable war film. Truth is, here as elsewhere, factual war stories and narrative don’t always blend together well in a Hollywood film. To see love and war mixed well, check out McQueen and Robert Wagner in The War Lover (Leacock 1962). According to this seminar, love didn’t mix well with work, either. No one should be harassed. Still, though, how do these politically-correct enclaves, devoid of proper checks and balances exist? “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Frank curses, "Please keep all women safe and protected.”

Scarecrow (1973) Stafford, Va. Frank slinks around Barnes and Noble clutching the new translation of Historias de Cronopios y de Famas (Cortazar 1962). His dread at the world, often unending, is now unbearable as several husky women in pointy wizard hats thrust copies of the latest Harry Potter at him. Of course, based on what he’d read in the local history section, Stafford has had a history of annoying folks. It was even founded by a true colonial jackass. In 1647, Giles Brent with his Piscataway Indian wife had established a plantation on the Widewater peninsula along Aquia Creek and the Potomac River. Brent had left Maryland after POing his cousin, Lord Baltimore, as well as the whole Piscataway tribe, when he laid claim to half of the colony on behalf of his wife, the daughter an “Indian Emperor.” Peace, Brents’ farm, became the first Catholic establishment in the colony, and the “last stop” for pioneers moving up into the wilderness of the Northern Neck. Baltimore, learning of Brent’s location, began issuing land patents in the adjacent colony to upset Brent’s land claims. Giles Brent died in 1672 on a second farmstead that he named Retirement. Nonetheless, the family remained infamous. Margaret Brent, Giles’s sister, was a prominent advocate for women’s suffrage and referred to as “Gentleman” when addressing the Assembly. Giles Brent II took an active part in the Indian wars, but was arrested in 1677 as a part of Bacon’s Rebellion and the burning of Jamestown. The Brent family continued to aggravate their Protestant neighbors, with hostilities reaching a peak when they received a land grant of 30,000 acres from James II in 1687. The new patent gave the Brents all the land bound by the Potomac, Aquia, Tappahannock, and Rappahannock creeks, or one heck of a chunk of land. This prompted an anti-Catholic crusade led out of the Aquia Episcopal Church, based on rumor that the Brents were to incite an Indian massacre. Apparently, the Episcopals cared for the Brents as much as Frank cared for the members of Hogwarts Academy that were now packing the store. He decides to slip into the movie section where the register line should be much shorter. But to his surprise he finds that by some wizard’s magic, the forgotten Hackman/Pacino epic, Scarecrow (1973), was now out on DVD. At the time both stars were both at the top of their games, with Hackman having just done The French Connection (Friedkin 1971) and Pacino, The Godfather (Coppola 1972). Basically the film concerns the redemption of Max (Hackman), a hard drinkin’ and fightin’ ex-con hoboing his way to Pittsburgh to open a car wash. Along his way he meets up with wisecracking Lion (Pacino), an ex-sailor going to Detroit to see his son. The isolated Max lets Lion in on his plans after some camaraderie over the sharing of his last match and Lion decides along the way he tries to teach Max how to get along with a laugh and not a punch. But they’ll have some super rough times to try to joke their way through along the way. In short Scarecrow is Alice’s Restaurant (Penn 1969) without the hippies stirred around with Midnight Cowboy (Schlesinger 1969) without the boots. Now, not to be mistaken, the film does have a lot of heart, but what it doesn’t have is an ending. The dialogue between Lion and Max is staccato and often funny and touching as Lion breaks down Max’s gruff angry, particularly symbolic and amusing in the use of Max’s ten layer’s of clothing to keep warm. But, the film just unsatisfactorily ends. It just ends. Right in the middle of the scene. Like they ran out of celluloid right there and the director said. “Eh, fuck it. We already got their popcorn money.” A few movies have successfully and cleverly, but abruptly just ended. Blow-Up (Antonini 1966) and Lifeboat (Hitchcock 1944) spring to mind. Of course, look at the story credit of these to films, the aforementioned Julio Cortazar and John Steinbeck, respectively. Back in Scarecrow, the arc of Max ‘s softening has been pretty much resolved probably 20 minutes before the end of the film, and new story conflicts have arisen and are left in the air. The film has taken 112 minutes to make us like Max and Lion, we have seen them with friends and family, through tragedy and good times, but it will not give us another five to let us know what happens to them. The end result, despite excellent performances by both stars, is a rambling narrative with no pay-off. Plus, the real tragedy is Max and Lion are hitching and jumping trains, when apparently it only costs $27.95 for round trip airfare from Detroit to Pittsburgh. Frank’s hardships are also on-going; the movie/music counter at Barnes is manned by two accusatory teens, recommending the new Black Eyed Peas single. They could not understand the shear dread of up-to-the-minute pop culture. Frank shoves his Cortazar and Scarecrow into a bin of VeggieTales discs and shoots out of the store. He is walking as fast as he can now. Hoping that maybe a greasy snack will make him feel better. But this is no food court, and the sign doesn’t offer “chicken wings” but “chic wigs.” Suddenly a plan B begins to form in Frank’s addled brain…

Point Blank (1967) As Frank drives, winding endlessly along Route 330 towards Arrowhead Lake, Iris stretches her pasty, taut and muscular gams and rests them on rest on Impala’s cracked green dashboard. She fishes in the cooler and selects a cherry Little Hug and gnaws at the foil top with her tiny mousy teeth. Whatever happened next, didn’t matter. It was over, of course. That’s just tricks. The relationship was just a spinning scrambled flashback of parties, showers, movies, quiet nights, etc. they all swirled around in Frank’s head as he tried to concentrate on the dashed yellow line. The wins and losses came to him like they did to Lee Marvin as Walker, bleeding and betrayed and near death in an empty Alcatraz cell block. Maybe Frank should have taken a cue from Walker, double-crossed by his wife and her lover, Mal Reese in Point Blank (available July 5, 2005 Warner Home Video). Escaping both death and the Rock, Walker vows to get his 93 grand back, no matter who gets in the way. His wife and Reese are both soon enough bumped off, though (she ODs, he wings naked out of a window in an awful primitive screen effect), Walker finds a long way to go before he gets his money back. They say Lee Marvin, getting into his role, hit John Vernon (playing Reese, his rival) so hard during rehearsal for the fight scene, that the man cried. But, Lee Marvin, of course, is known for his emotional, though stoic, additions to a part; consider his visible rage at Toshirô Mifune, in another Boorman film, Hell in the Pacific (1968) a year later (both actors were WWII vets—on opposite sides). The film positively seethes. Two years later he'd be singing in Paint Your Wagon (Logan 1969). So, nobody's perfect. Point Blank, however, offers a grand slathering of Hollywood noir with a touch of French New Wave, as epitomized by Walkers psychedelic dreams while his wife dies in the next room. As such, it is much closer to something like Pierrot Le Fou (Godard 1969) than a film like Coogan’s Bluff (Seigel 1968), which more directy tries to insert classic tough guys into 1960s counter culture. Plus, it offers great wide shots of Alacatraz and other California locales. These shots alone make the pan and scan TV version simply un-watchable in retrospect. And speaking of late 60s tough guy movies, could “the Organization” Marvin is up against, be the same “the Organization” McQueen is up against (Bullitt 1968)? Maybe not… And in the best scene, as has been said before, Angie Dickinson, tires herself out slapping around Walker. He merely goes for the TV remote. Très elegant! Carroll O’Connor (All in the Family 1971-1979) makes a somewhat disappointing appearance towards the end of the film as Brewster, one of the organization’s headmen. To many, O’Connor is possibly the greatest actor to grace the small screen, particularly in his ability to pull off the complex character of Archie Bunker through the TV series' infamous warm close-ups. How sad to see him as a cartoonish businessman who stays so unnaturally distant from the camera. But Frank and Iris have found a secluded picnic spot near the lake and Frank pulls out a matchbook on which to note his last impressions of the outing: iris steps forward and frowns at the safety on her 9mm. she enters a patch of light streaking through thick tree branches, her freckled skin lights like a planetarium show i digest a freckle on her right bicep my favorite of the set it is over for us her china thighs are rock-solid and also freckled like the cinnamon sprinkled over the whipped cream in that morning’s lattes her hair, a fake, sexy red i imagine what she felt like smooth and cool but, i wouldn’t know —frank

The Green Butchers (2004) Sometimes when you took I-25 thru El Paso after 3 Am, you caught the border at a time when the few patrollers were out taking a smoke or a piss in the desert (or maybe even out taking pot shots at hapless Mexicans with their otherwise un-used service revolvers). That’s a good thing, if you, like Graveyard Frank Trautman, have left your wallet in the back pocket of gray pair of Farrah slacks, currently on a dead man in a shallow grave in East St. Louis. (Long Story). But, reaching Chihuahua to find Miriam accompanied and the tequila watered down, Frank took a decided U-turn and was now, ID-less, and on a sling-shot back thru the eye of the gringo needle. Just before El Kilo, exhausted, and determined to finish the case of Negra Modelo on his passenger seat the hard way, Frank pulls the Impala over as far as he dares to get it off the road. He kills the engine and checks the ample trunk. He isn’t looking for more for supplies: a late model Chevy such as his easily had its boot popped and stuffed with the loser of last night’s cock, dog or gang fight when left unattended. Thankfully, the trunk was clear of all, save a portable DVD player which he had only a vague idea of acquiring in Slidell, Louisiana. And a copy of the Danish film, “De Gronne Slagtere” (The Green Butchers, available Spring 2005 on Columbia Tri-Star), which he didn’t remember acquiring at all. After much attention, director Anders Thomas Jensen, had previously won an Academy Award for the short, Valgaften (1998), a dark comedy about Danish politics. The Green Butchers, of course, is darker still. The title, though, is a ruse; “Sweaty” Svend and Bjarne aren’t new to meat at all. They a butcher’s assistants, ready to start on their own shop. Svend mortgages his house to do it; Bjarne decides to take his brain-dead twin brother (to which he is beneficiary) off life support. While Bjarne picks up a girl in the cemetery (think Camus, L’etranger), the electrician goes missing and, panicky “never been loved” Svend makes a slight adjustment to his marinade recipe. Suddenly, Svend finds the finds the audience he’s been looking for. The wit of the Green Butchers is constant, efficient, and dry and deadpan: Says Holger the Butcher about fate and the ironic sausage: “You get killed and then stuck up your own ass.” Or later, Svend; “I do not want to see any people!” Bjarne: “Then don’t go in the meat locker!” The film is not only genuinely, offbeat funny, but much more “thought-out” than anything similar (cf. Little Shop of Horrors, Corman 1960?). With a reflective back-story abutting outrageous turns of events, the film is exactly right between Marty (Mann, 1955) and Eating Raoul (Bartel, 1982). Everything is too-well photographed for its due; much better photographed than most else in the dark-cannibal-comedy genre. Even the corpses are exquisite, though mostly just-out-off-frame. Even better, Bjarne’s sub-plot leaves us to question cannibalism as an “why the hell not?”-issue. With a brother headed for organ harvesting, the film suggest practicality in Svend’s gory “Chickie Wickies.” Bottom line: unlike thousands of Hollywood flicks, you actually care about Sven and Bjarne. But you probably don’t care about Frank, who is flipping the DVD player shut as the sun ekes back out in the west and various lizards and birds chirp with the burning out moon. He takes an long piss behind what he thinks is a petrified tree, but is really the bucket seat to a 60s Corvette, then he is back on the road toward el monstruo del norte. Gordon Lightfoot, (Sundown) inhabits the radio. He just needs to fill a percoset prescription and then make his way across the Rio Grande with no identification. He may or may not find some locals squatting in the hills to join in or proffer advice. As long as they were there to contribute, like his green butchers, Frank tended not to question folks. Frank had been around a bit and whether huddled on the border or floating in the marinade, all he saw were people. And friends, family or society, Frank was happy with anyone not adding to complacent jackassery back up in Cally…