TT 304: Cambridge and Georgetown
Boston gig(s) and my take on William Friedkin
On Friday (September 22), I'm part of the grand re-opening of Regattabar, playing trio with Linda May Han Oh and Billy Hart.
Interesting article from Jon Garelick about the club's rebirth in The Boston Globe. It's paywalled so I've posted photos:
If you can’t make the Regattabar, I am doing a free workshop with students the previous night at NEC. It’s open to the public, just go in the main doors to Jordan Hall and ask for Eben Jordan.
If I may be immodest for a second: I get a lot of compliments for how I lead a trio in a casual situation. To me it all seems pretty obvious — certainly nothing I do is that original — but I’ll try to spill a few beans tomorrow in consort with Nick Isherwood and Zhenbang Wu.
After William Friedkin died recently, I watched The Exorcist. What a great movie!! Truly one of a kind.
As a critic, the only cinematic genre I command with any fluency concerns crime, guns, action, and plot. Friedkin made his mark with a classic, The French Connection (1971); later on, some regard To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) as one of the best of the era; there’s also Jade (1995).
Friedkin was obviously awesome, but he also resisted telling a straight story. The plot frequently gets confused, or even lost entirely.
In Heartbreak and Vine: The Fate of Hardboiled Authors in Hollywood, Woody Haut offers a marvelous hard-nosed interview with Gerald Petievich. Petievich wrote the book To Live and Die in L.A., and then co-wrote the script with Friedkin for the adaptation. In the interview with Haut, Petievich breaks down a few of the movie’s more aimless moments.
The story concerns counterfeiting, a topic that is interesting and well done in both the book and the movie. However, in the movie, there’s also a scene with terrorists. Friedkin put the terrorists in for no good reason whatsoever. He just wanted terrorists in his movie — perhaps grabbing that topic from the current headlines — and thus damages Petievich’s tight plot.
Even The French Connection is pretty loose, and that’s before we get to Jade, which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The final frames of French Connection, Jade, and the crime-movie-adjacent thriller Sorcerer are intentionally mysterious and unresolved. It’s like Friedkin just doesn’t want to land the plane, he wants to stay in an undecided position, letting cards fall how they may.
This casually “unplotted” style is a hallmark of certain ‘70s cinema. I am unconvinced that this template works for a crime film, but it is perfect for The Exorcist. After all, there’s not much plot to The Exorcist. I can write the story of whole movie in about two sentences. Instead it is a mood, a wander around the block, a dawning horror. It has no need to explain itself or lock in a puzzle piece. The final effect is mesmerizing.
Recent spate of tough guy books, all re-reads except for the Sallis:
Loophole: Or How to Rob a Bank by Robert Pollock (1973)
One of the classic bank robbery tales; convincing class politics; underwhelming ending.
Charlie Muffin by Brian Freemantle (1975)
Strangely unsophisticated prose from Freemantle but the espionage plot is very strong. Could have made a great movie.
Vertical Run by Joseph Garber (1995)
I ate this up at the time, now it seems crude and rather forced. I’m about done with the hero having war flashbacks these days…
Run by Douglas E. Winter (2000)
Winter still only wrote the one book? Odd, for this made a splash. It’s over the top and tries to do too much, but the voice is strong.
The Wheelman by Duane Swierczynski (2005)
I’m fairly certain Swierczynski knew Winter’s Run; both have a similar high-octane presentation. This was fun to re-read. Yeah, Duane! It’s darker than I remember.
Drive by James Sallis (2005)
I loved the hit movie with Ryan Gosling up until there was scene after scene of extreme violence. That first 40 minutes or so was great, though. The book is a pretty good read, but perhaps Sallis views himself as a highfalutin literary stylist in a way that impedes the momentum of a fairly basic crime plot.
Hello to Vince Keenan: The above capsule reviews are for you. Also Vince gave me good reason to watch Friedkin’s Sorcerer and Jade. If this sort of thing is your bag, make sure you subscribe to Cocktails and Crime. I’m currently dealing with another of Vince’s recommendations, Joseph Sargent’s sensational Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970).
Ethan -- Have you read anything by James Crumbly? The Last Good Kiss? Thinking you might have based on your leanings. Great stuff.
Hey I have a Harvard Square jazz story! Back in the early 80s I was living in central square and there was a jazz club on what was then Boylston st. (now JFK st.), half a block down from the Harvard T stop, and below ground. I cannot remember the name of the place, and, to my memory at least, it is not mentioned in the article you posted. That was too long ago I guess. Anyway, one cold night in what was probably the winter of 1980 (winter in Boston meaning October to May; I'm guessing this was probably November or December 1980) I went to see George Coleman at that downstairs place. Halfway through the set I turned to my right, and who was standing there looking very happy to be hearing George Coleman live but Pat Metheny. That's the end of the story.