{"id":30285,"date":"2015-01-18T08:29:45","date_gmt":"2015-01-18T14:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=30285"},"modified":"2019-06-17T14:48:54","modified_gmt":"2019-06-17T19:48:54","slug":"pure-hits-of-storytelling-westlake-oswalt-brackett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2015\/01\/18\/pure-hits-of-storytelling-westlake-oswalt-brackett\/","title":{"rendered":"Pure hits of storytelling: Westlake, Oswalt, Brackett"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To Each His Own<\/strong> (1946).<\/em><\/p>\n

DB bere:<\/p>\n

Old friend and student, and proficient blogger<\/a>, Paul Ramaeker writes:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m in the middle of Slayground<\/em> now. In his Stark guise, Westlake as a writer really is as fearsomely directed and effective as Parker himself. I was thinking about the particular narrative pleasures here, like the way that delayed exposition works with the perspective switches between different sections. There is such precision to the way he builds certain effects in a systematic way, the way that we see Parker making plans, going around Fun Island doing things, but Stark not telling us what, exactly. I really did not get the logic of painting white circles in the house of mirrors–I thought of them as targets. Then, [spoiler excised] it makes so much sense, and becomes such a pure hit of storytelling, producing such a rush of pleasure in the reading.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s the way Donald E. Westlake<\/strong><\/a> worked. With Elmore Leonard and Ed McBain, he was one of the top crime-action writers to emerge in the postwar boom in paperback originals. He wrote a huge number of novels and some screenplays (The Grifters<\/em>, The Stepfather<\/em>). Several films, notably Point Blank, The Outfit, The Ax<\/em>, and Made in USA,\u00a0<\/em>were taken from his books.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve paid tribute to Westlake\u2019s prose in this entry<\/a>, but why not another Richard Stark passage to show how it\u2019s done? Many of the novels start with a “When” clause, and upon relaunching the series in 1997, Westlake picked a dilly:<\/p>\n

When the angel opened the door, Parker stepped first past the threshold into the darkness of the cinder block corridor beneath the stage.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The “When” clause hooks you in firmly, with the last word of the sentence locking in a framework that explains the opening. Here’s a simpler prototype Westlake himself picked, from\u00a0Flashfire<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Parker looked at the money, and it wasn\u2019t enough.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anybody else would have cut the and<\/em> and put in a period. This is better, I think because it quietly leads us to expect something more: a piece of action, a demand for more money. Anyhow, once we\u2019re arguing about whether to put in an and<\/em>, we\u2019re talking about a real writer.<\/p>\n

Slayground<\/em> is one of those nifty experiments Westlake tried, this time putting two books in a divided POV arrangement. Both Slayground<\/em> and The Black Bird<\/em> begin with the same action, a getaway described almost identically in each one. Parker and his sidekick Grofield separate. One book follows Parker\u2019s fate and other follows Grofield’s. I want to read both right now.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Before I do, though, I must signal (a) the University of Chicago Press\u2019s brilliant idea of reprinting all the Stark novels<\/a>; and (b) Levi Stahl\u2019s<\/strong> wonderful compilation The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. This consists of essays, memoirs, and interviews, running from 1960 into the 2000s. There\u2019s even a recipe for tuna casserole contributed by Dortmunder\u2019s girlfriend May.<\/p>\n

You learn a lot about Westlake\u2019s life, of course; for one thing, you learn how Made in USA<\/em> became unseen in USA for several years. A career-survey interview with a convicted bank robber is alone worth the price of admission. Stahl adds in fragments from an autobiography (\u201cI was born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 12, 1933, and I couldn\u2019t digest milk\u201d).<\/p>\n

Westlake was a thoughtful observer of his tradition, and he offers historical surveys and close readings of his hardboiled predecessors. He compares the prose of Black Mask<\/em> writers Hammett and Carroll John Daly, and calls Raymond Chandler \u201ca bookish, English-educated mama\u2019s boy whose raw material was not the truth but the first decade of the fiction. This is not to denigrate Chandler, or at least not to denigrate him very much.\u201d He praises Richard S. Prather for his \u201cbonkers\u201d style (\u201cShe was as nude as a noodle\u201d) and registers his admiration for lesser-known contemporaries like Peter Rabe. He offers the best analysis of George V. Higgins I know, and his appreciation of Rex Stout warms the heart. Acknowledging the cunning ways that Stout hides plot gaffes under Archie\u2019s patter, Westlake notes that perhaps Stout had \u201can affinity with those Indian tribes who deliberately include a flaw in their designs so as not to compete with the perfection of the gods.\u201d<\/p>\n

You also learn about the market. Westlake was a \u201cfee reader\u201d for Scott Meredith literary agency, one of the most prestigious around. He became a self-supporting writer in 1959, when he churned out over half a million words, all published. Writing an Avon paperback in 1960 would earn you $350, or $2800 in today\u2019s money, but writing a serial for a magazine like Analog<\/em> could net $450 for only 18,000 words. There\u2019s a marvelous letter from that year in which a twenty-seven-year-old Westlake complains to a top publisher that he can\u2019t get his best science fiction accepted, and that specific editors traduce the work of writers he knows. Stahl calls it \u201cone of the most spectacular acts of bridge burning in the history of publishing.\u201d Again, the author’s gesture recalls Parker’s chilly recklessness, but with jokes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Popcorn and Red Vines<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his recent interview with the New York Times<\/em><\/a>, Patton Oswalt<\/strong> included the Stark\/Westlake Man with the Getaway Face<\/em> as one of his favorite books of all time. It comes as no surprise that this gremlin polymath gets Stark\/ Westlake. Those who know his fine Zombie Spaceship Wasteland<\/em> will find more of the same in Silver Screen Fiend: Learning about Life from an Addiction to Film<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. As ZSW<\/em> traced his early standup career and its intertwined relation to nerd culture, this quasi-memoir traces his early years in LA, writing for MadTV<\/em> by day, honing his comedy act by night, and watching movies obsessively at all other times.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Despite his fondness for sitting far back (I\u2019m down front) and mixing popcorn and Red Vines (I\u2019ve been a Dots man for sixty years), Oswalt has left us the best memoir I know of being a sheer headbanging movie geek. A sort of nonfiction Moviegoer<\/em> (Walker Percy), or a prose version of Cinemania<\/em>, that disconcerting documentary in which everything reminds you of you, Silver Screen Fiend<\/em> takes us into hard-core hell-for-leather filmgoing.<\/p>\n

Filmgoing<\/em> is the operative idea, not just film viewing. The book is set on the cusp of the DVD revolution, when the big-screen experience was so much better in contrast with VHS. There are descriptions of favorite theatres and fetishized experiences like Cocteau\u2019s Beauty and the Beast<\/em> and a Hammer movie marathon. At the same time, this \u201csprocket fiend\u201d was also a \u201cstage ghoul,\u201d trying to out-kill the other standup comics at the Largo. The two obsessions fed each other, as when Oswalt arranged public readings of the script for Jerry Lewis\u2019 legendary Day the Clown Cried<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Throughout, the movie madness emerges as another channel for the explosive energy of a young man burning with ambition. At the theatre the splendid lunacy might be onscreen, or in the row behind you, where Lawrence Tierney was talking loudly back to\u00a0Citizen Kane<\/em>. The moment pulsates because Oswalt wanted to be in movies too, maybe as a character actor.<\/p>\n

The book hits one of its high points in telling of his big break, in Down Periscope<\/em> (1996), where he utters one line as the camera sweeps past him. He describes the process of filmmaking as hammering slowly away at the movie that isn\u2019t there yet. It\u2019s like \u201cblasting a tunnel through a mountain. Or brushing every grain of sand off of a fossil. You attacked it relentlessly.\u201d Oswalt squeezes pages of entertainment out of brooding over how to deliver \u201cThere\u2019s a call for you, sir. Admiral Graham.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rest assured that every movie you see where an actor delivers just one line? They\u2019ve put this kind of thought into it. Sometimes you can see it. Sometimes they can hide it. But everyone who gets in front of that lens has this inner conversation. I was having mine now. I was about to speak on film.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The moviegoing spiral ends on 20 May 1999, when Oswalt sees\u00a0Star Wars: The Phantom Menace<\/em>. The postmortem at a dinner marks the moment when the addiction subsides. \u201cIt hits me, sitting there with my friends, that for all of our bluster and detailed, exotic knowledge about <\/em>film, we aren\u2019t contributing anything to<\/em> film.\u201d He realizes that film should be one ingredient in the fuel for your life. \u201cBut the engine of your life should be your life<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The epiphany is movingly described. (I wish I could say I\u2019ve learned the same lesson.) Oswalt implies that film frenzy was a phase he went through, and now he\u2019s grown up. (I wish I could say the same for me.) Yet I\u2019m encouraged that Oswalt has not gone cold turkey. He\u2019s passed from gourmand to gourmet. \u201cMy love of movies has turned into a love of savoring them.\u201d And he can\u2019t resist movie comparisons when describing that day-and-date release sometimes called Life. \u201cFaces are scenes. People are films.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the back of Silver Screen Fiend<\/em> are thirty-three pages listing all the films Oswalt saw across four years, along with the theatres where he saw them (New Beverly, Nuart, Tales Caf\u00e9 et al.). Plenty of pure storytelling hits there. Far from makeweight, these pages create a new list of the kind he obsessed over in Danny Peary’s books. How many twenty somethings will start checking off the titles here?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The team<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Charles Brackett, Gloria Swanson, and Billy Wilder.<\/em><\/p>\n

On his very first night at the New Beverly, Patton Oswalt caught, and was caught by, Sunset Blvd<\/em>. and Ace in the Hole<\/em>. He mentions they were \u201cco-written and directed\u201d by Billy Wilder. He doesn\u2019t identify the other half of the co-.<\/p>\n

Nor do most people. In the case of Sunset Blvd<\/em>., that fellow was Charles Brackett,<\/strong> who now stands revealed as not only a gifted writer but the Samuel Pepys of classic Hollywood. \u201cIt\u2019s the Pictures That Got Small,\u201d<\/em><\/strong> <\/a>edited by Anthony Slide,<\/strong> is an absorbing chronicle of a tempestuous collaboration and the lifestyles of an era. A Harvard-educated WASP from Saratoga Springs, Brackett became a novelist, was made drama critic for The New Yorker<\/em>, and sat at the Round Table with the likes of Woollcott and Parker. After some of his fiction was adapted to film, he moved to Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Brackett\u2019s early work seems to have been undistinguished, though I\u2019d defend at least Picadilly Jim<\/em> (1936). Eventually he wound up at Paramount partnering with Wilder, and under the aegis of Lubitsch they clicked for Bluebeard\u2019s Eighth Wife<\/em> (1938) and Ninotchka<\/em> (1939). There followed\u00a0Midnight <\/em>(1939) and Hold Back the Dawn<\/em> (1941) for Leisen, and Ball of Fire<\/em> (1941) for Hawks–an early title of which, \u00a0we learn here, was\u00a0Dust on the Heart<\/em>. Then came Wilder\u2019s directed pictures, from The Major and the Minor<\/em> (1942) to Sunset Blvd.<\/em> (1950). Brackett was active in the Screenwriters Guild, became a producer, and continued to write scripts for his producing projects, including the delirious\u00a0Niagara<\/em> (1953) and the insufficiently delirious\u00a0Journey to the Center of the Earth<\/em> (1959). The Uninvited<\/em> (1944), Brackett\u2019s first solo production, remains charming, and To Each His Own<\/em> (1946) is an interesting wartime weepie, with Olivia de Havilland massively frumped up. Miss Tatlock\u2019s Millions<\/em> (1948) also has its defenders.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cIt\u2019s the Pictures That Got Small\u201d<\/em> is a plump album packed with tiny but revealing snapshots. Although Brackett wrote entries nearly every day, he often made do with very brief mentions. Slide has edited them judiciously and arranged them chronologically, with some stitching to fill in events. A 1936 entry strikes a warm chord:<\/p>\n

I am to be teamed with Billy Wilder, a young Austrian I\u2019ve seen about for a year or two and like very much. I accepted the job joyfully.<\/strong><\/p>\n

By 1943, Brackett is recording something much more rankling:<\/p>\n

My consciousness that, after years of partnership, his first free act was to stab me in the back\u2026my conviction that he\u2019s turned into a second-rate director\u2026my knowledge of the awful thinness of his mind, his stupidly limited interests. Alas, alas. And my knowledge that I am as little stimulating for him as he is for me.<\/strong><\/p>\n

During this supposed phase of creative drought, they were working on The Lost Weekend<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Apart from charting this bumpy collaboration, Brackett gives us a lot of information about how films got made. We learn about studio differences (Paramount less disciplined than MGM) and the importance of telling stories to others, face to face. I found plenty to feed my act-structure appetite<\/a>. I was happy to find how often moviemakers went to the movies. Brackett attends dozens, both premieres and regular shows, and he records how easily screenwriters could summon up an older picture to be screened, even at a rival studio. This from 1947:<\/p>\n

In the afternoon Billy and I saw Mr. Deeds<\/em> at Columbia to check on certain similar situations in The Hon. Phoebe<\/em>. It proved helpful and an excellent picture despite curious non-sequiturs and at least one horrible scene, Cooper absolutely charming. I could see some loathsome Capra characters beginning to unfold, but still in the lovely promising bud stage.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a writer, Brackett is no less captivating than Westlake or Oswalt. We can rejoice in his Algonquin acidity.<\/p>\n

Chaplin seems to me as repellant a human being as I\u2019ve ever been in the room with\u2014a thin, reedy voice, a show-off-hog face, and hysterical protestations of liberalism.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jean Arthur called us, worried about the fact that there\u2019s another woman in the picture [A Foreign Affair<\/em>]. \u201cI have sex appeal,\u201d she said calmly, but inaccurately.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Greeted at the office by a nasty little note from Charles Jackson [author of the novel The Lost Weekend<\/em>]. I had addressed him as \u201cBirdbrain\u201d in a telegram, something I could do to any friend\u2014but an unsafe term to use to a man five feet tall.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And there are flat-out funny stories. Here\u2019s just one, reported by Wilder.<\/p>\n

[Von Stroheim] has always thought Swanson too young and desirable for the role of Norma. \u201cLook at her,\u201d he said. \u201cI would like to fuck her now.\u201d \u201cI,\u201d said Billy, \u201cwould rather fuck you.\u201d \u201cYou have,\u201d von Stroheim retorted.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If it didn\u2019t happen, I want it to have.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In short, three more items for your shelf\u2014repositories of good stories in themselves, prods and teases for your own thinking about story-making.<\/p>\n

\n

The University of Chicago Press has mounted a fine infographic on Westlake\/Stark’s Parker novels here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

P.S. 19 January 2014:<\/strong> Thanks to David Cairns for correcting a slip. My original entry said that Brackett co-wrote Ace in the Hole<\/em> with Wilder. Actually, the collaborators on Ace<\/em> were Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman. Be sure to check David’s excellent Shadowplay<\/a> site.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Down Periscope<\/strong> (1996).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To Each His Own (1946). DB bere: Old friend and student, and proficient blogger, Paul Ramaeker writes: I\u2019m in the middle of Slayground now. In his Stark guise, Westlake as a writer really is as fearsomely directed and effective as Parker himself. I was thinking about the particular narrative pleasures here, like the way that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,7,57,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fans-and-fandom","category-film-and-other-media","category-hollywood-aesthetic-traditions","category-people-we-like"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30285"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42114,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30285\/revisions\/42114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}