Monday Sparks — Writing Prompts: What Are Your Guilty-Pleasure Movies?

As I prepared the heading for this post, my youngest read it and ask if it meant you felt like it was a movie shouldn’t have watched. I explained that a person felt guilty for liking some movies because they aren’t considered “good”, or they are so strange or off-beat that not many people like them. As a classic movie fan, most of my movie-viewing might be considered guilty-pleasure. But in an effort to give others the courage to admit that they like movies critics and/or audiences have rejected, I am listing a few of my guilty-pleasure movies.

Abbott & Costello Movies

On Sunday mornings, when I was growing up, a TV station out of Pittsburgh would run the movies from the 1940’s and 1950’s starring the comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. If for some reason I didn’t go to church, I could watch one of their movies. The team cranked out a lot of film, and some of it is unwatchable, even for a dedicated fan. But some are still sidesplittingly funny. My favorites are Hold That Ghost, The Time of Their Lives, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, in which Bud and Lou don’t meet the scientist but the monster,

Many agree that Meet Frankenstein is Bud and Lou’s funniest movie. It’s as if Universal Pictures took their usual horror script and told all the other actors to play it like a straight movie. But Bud and Lou react and make comments that the audience has been thinking, sending up the conventions of the genre. For example, when Lou figures out Dracula is a genuine threat, he wants to clear out because, as a fat guy, he figures he’s got more blood and will attract the vampire’s attention.

The Incredibles and Incredibles 2

Is it okay for an adult to like kids’ movies? I recently watched The Incredibles and Incredibles 2 with my youngest, and we both thoroughly enjoyed them. That’s part of the reason I like them, because I got to share it with my kid. But I find the super-parents’ dilemma with their kids hilarious.

So what are your guilty-pleasure movies?

June 15, 2019 3

Writing Tip — Maximize Your Setting

If there was one Hollywood director who knew how to maximize a setting, it was Alfred Hitchcock.

I hadn’t realized this until I came across a quote in Halliwell’s Harvest. The author Leslie Halliwell stated that Hitchcock believed “the location must be put to work”. That’s why so many of his scenes are still remembered.

North By Northwest: The hero is pursued by enemy spies. When he finds himself on a lonely road out in the country, a crop dusting plane tries to kill him. At the end of this movie, the villain owns a house near Mount Rushmore. The hero and heroine almost fall off the famous faces, trying to escape.
Foreign Correspondent: This movie from 1940 races around Europe with the hero trying to figure out what Nazi agents are up to before WWII. While sneaking up on spies in a windmill in Holland, the hero’s sleeve gets caught in the gears, and he must free himself, silently, before his arm gets crushed.
Pyscho: Hitchcock used the Bates’s home (see photo) so well that it has become the symbol in America for the kind of rundown, creepy house you don’t linger in front of if you walk past it.

Hitchcock wasn’t the only director to work a location to maximum effect. I recently saw the movie Niagara from 1953. A young couple, taking a much-delayed honeymoon at the Falls, become involved with another couple, an older man married to a much younger, adulterous wife. The director had scenes shot on the boat Maid of the Mist. Two key scenes occur during the walking tour on the Falls. The Carillon Bell Tower, overlooking the Falls, is the setting for a plot point and a murder. After viewing this movie, I felt like I had traveled back in time to 1953 and was taking a vacation with the characters.

One of the reasons I love The Bourne Identity is that the director made such effective use of driving through Europe in winter. It was a setting I hadn’t seen before in movies, and he conveyed the desperate road trip so well that I want to drive across Europe to see the sights.

So wherever you choose to place your stories, be sure to research it well enough to maximize the setting. Some idosyncracy about a particular location can inspire a character, a plot point, or simply elevate your setting from good to great.

What’s a memorable setting from a movie? Or have you written about a unique setting?

June 13, 2019 5

Writing Tips — Favorite Movies: Film Noir

For over a year now, I’ve been faithfully tuning in each week to Noir Alley, a franchise on Turner Classic Movies where the Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller introduces a movie from the classic period this genre, 1940-1960. Since almost all the movies deal with crime, it’s small wonder I like film noir. It’s sort of the tough, blue-collar cousin of classic murder mysteries. If you aren’t familiar with this kind of movie, here’s a crash course in it’s basic elements that I discussed last August.

Along with a distinct visual style which often included low-key lighting and deep shadows, classic film noir contained at least one or more of the following elements:

A weak, male character
A femme fatale — she manipulates the weak male
A private eye — who may be either weak or strong
A determined, good woman — usually, she is trying to rescue the weak male. (These weak, male characters are a a lot of trouble.)
Corrupt authorities — including the police
An innocent man or woman convicted of a crime — see weak, male character
Characters doomed by fate or their pasts
Greed and opportunities to make huge scores
Caper film — from Film Noir by Alain Silver, The audience sees a crime from the criminals POV. And during or after the execution of the crime, Something Goes Wrong.
Couple on the Run — from Film Noir. The couple can be innocent, fleeing from a trumped up charge, or guilty and trying to escape the police.

The setting for most of these is the gritty, corrupt city. A few movies from this time period can be labeled country noir, movies with noir themes set in a rural location — On Dangerous Ground, They Drive By Night, and one of my favorites Inferno. Movies with film noir themes were made after 1960, and still are, but the two decades during and after WWII was when the genre was being created and when it was most popular.

The main reason I love film noir is that it deals with epic emotions, like trust, betrayal, greed, self-sacrifice, and more, in a realistic setting. Producers and directors today seem to think you can only explore these themes in fantasy stories, like with superheroes. Our civilized, technology-crazed society doesn’t seem to leave plausible reasons for a main character to follow an epic course of events.

For example, a story set in America today could have the best friend of the main character (MC) murdered. MC helps the police by answering their questions. As the police conduct their investigation, MC turns to friends, family, and professional counselor to deal with the loss. Some writers could make that story compelling. I’m not one of them.

I would take the film noir route. Because the local authorities are corrupt, my MC would begin her own investigation. When she got too close to the truth, she would have to rely on her own wits because she can’t trust the authorities. Or if MC is a criminal, he battles on his own because the police would do him no good. This isolation of the MC helps generate dramatic story arcs.

That’s why my YA novel and the short story being published in November are both country noir. I love showing readers that dramas with high emotions and higher stakes can take place in contemporary settings. And the rural locations of my stories help isolate my good guys.

Do you like film noir? Or what other crime or mystery movies do you like?

June 11, 2019 0

Monday Sparks — Writing Prompts: Who Are Your Favorite Movie Villains?

A hero looks even better matched with a worthy villain. Would Sherlock Holmes have near the enduring popularity if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle hadn’t invented Professor Moriarity to combat him? A couple of my favorites are:

Supreme Chancellor Palpatine from Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith: The Chancellor is a wonderful villain before he becomes the evil Emperor. I wish the writers had given him more scenes because actor Ian McDiarmid does such a marvelous job of conveying the character’s insidious campaign of seducing Anakin Skywalker to the Dark Side. His scene with Anakin in a theater lets you figure out just how evil the Chancellor is.

Harry Lime from The Third Man: In this film noir, American Holly Martins comes to Vienna right after WWII to meet his friend Harry Lime only to learn that his friend has died in a car accident. Martins suspects murder and conducts his own investigation. The character of Harry Lime is discussed throughout the investigation, and the audience gets to know him from the various descriptions from different characters. It all builds to a intriguing picture of a charming rogue, who, at some point, abandoned the charm, and is now a murderous rogue. I don’t want to spoil the movie, but Harry Lime is one of the all time great villains of movie history.

Who are your favorite movie villains?

June 10, 2019 3