Tag Archives: Newton Thornburg

Moseby Confidential: Arthur Penn’s Night Moves and the Rise of Neo-Noir

Posted on May 27, 2019 by Andrew Nette| 8 Comments

To paraphrase Crocket, the cop character in Michael Mann’s 2006 movie, Miami Vice, I am a fiend for late 1960s/early 1970s American crime cinema. And Matthew Asprey Gear’s Moseby Confidential: Arthur Penn’s Nightmoves and the Rise Neo- Noir, reminded me exactly why.

Moseby Confidential is a monograph about the 1975 neo-noir, Night Moves, starring Gene Hackman as Harry Moseby. Moseby is a confused, disillusioned, deeply insecure, ex-professional footballer turned bottom feeding Los Angeles private investigator. As much to take his mind off suspicions his wife (Susan Clark) is having an affair as the need to turn a dollar, Moseby takes the job of finding the 16-year old tearaway daughter (a very young Melanie Griffiths in her first major screen role) of a washed up Hollywood star.

The case brushes up against the world of professional Hollywood stuntmen before taking Moseby to Key West, Florida, where the young girl is living her stepfather and his hardscrabble girlfriend, Paula (a terrific performance by Jennifer Warren, who Asprey Gear interviews for the book).

Like Asprey Gear, I am a big fan of Night Moves, which was reviewed on this site here back in 2013. I love its strange, discursive narrative and existentially bleak worldview, and its refusal to present its story in a nice, neat package. … Read more

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Posted in 1960s American crime films, 1970s American crime films, Gene Hackman, Neo Noir

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Stick with me son and I’ll make you a star: 5 great Bryan Brown roles

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Andrew Nette| 5 Comments

still-of-bryan-brown-in-fx-(1986)-large-pictureOn a whim several weeks ago I re-watched the 1986 movie, F/X. Although largely forgotten now, F/X was a big deal at the time, at least here in Australia. This was mainly because it starred a local actor, Bryan Brown. Brown was working in Hollywood for much of the latter part of the eighties and an Australian star getting top billing in a Hollywood film was not as common as is now. It must have done well in the US, too, because there was a sequel, imaginatively titled F/X 2, released in 1991 and also starring Brown.

The plot of F/X involved an Australian special effects technician, Roland ‘Rollie’ Tyler (Brown), who for some unspecified reason can’t return to home and is making a living working on various B-grade horror and crime flicks in New York. A cop attached to the witness protection program, Lipton (Cliff de Young), approaches Rollie to help out with a senior member of the New York mob, DeFranco (played by Jerry Orbach) who has turned informant. Lipton believes the best way to ensure the mob won’t come after DeFranco is to stage his assassination and he wants to pay Rollie a lot of money to help with the technical aspects of making sure it looks realistic, including acting as the assassin.… Read more

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Posted in Australian crime film, Australian popular culture, Bryan Brown, Crime film

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Post traumatic noir – a note on the passing of Robert Stone

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Andrew Nette| 5 Comments

cover600spanThe death of US writer Robert Stone on the weekend has drawn me out of the break I planned on posting on this site over January.

Stone was the author of two tremendous works of neo-noir fiction, both of which I read when I was first getting into the genre.

The first, Stone’s debut novel, A Hall of Mirrors, was published in 1967 and partly set in New Orleans, where Stone lived briefly. It dealt with a dissolute, opportunistic right wing radio broadcaster and the desperate, doomed characters he associates with. It was turned into an excellent film called WUSA by Stuart Rosenberg in 1970 and starring Paul Newman, then in the throws of his battling his own alcoholism (I reviewed it on this site a couple of years ago here.

The second, the better known and probably more influential of Stone’s books, Dog Soldiers, was published in 1974. The 1978 film  adaption, Who’ll Stop The Rain (reviewed on this site here), is also very good.

Dog Soldiers concerns a liberal war correspondent in Vietnam, Converse, who disillusioned with what he has seen, decides to traffic heroin back to the US. He enlists Hicks, his friend in the merchant marines, to take the drugs back to Converse’s wife, Marge, in Los Angeles.… Read more

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Posted in 1960s American crime films, 1970s American crime films, Crime fiction, Crime Fiction and film set in Vietnam, James Crumley, Newton Thornburg, Noir fiction, Robert Stone, Stuart Rosenberg

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Pulp Friday: Newton Thornburg’s heist novel, Knockover

Posted on May 30, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 5 Comments

Knockover

“The scheme was so perfect, the take was so big, you couldn’t ask for anything more-but one of them did.

I’ve got a little gem of a Pulp Friday today, the very rare Australian release of Newton Thornburg’s little known heist novel, Knockover.

Although he was a great success in the seventies, the peak period of his literary output, Thornburg kept a low profile in successive decades. So much so that when he died in 2011, it took a month before the first proper literary obituary appeared.

He is best known for the 1976 novel, Cutter and Bone. While I love the book and the 1981 movie version, Cutter’s Way (and which I reviewed on this site here), I have a preference for, To Die In California, a 1973 novel about a father’s investigation into the murder of his son in post-Summer of Love Los Angeles.

Knockover, Thornburg’s second book was originally published by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1968. Thornburg said he wrote Knockover explicitly with the hope of a movie sale in mind. Apparently the rights were optioned but nothing ever came of it. The story revolves around a former advertising executive, Cross, who puts together a team of criminals to pull off an armoured car robbery.… Read more

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Posted in Australian pulp fiction, Crime fiction, Neo Noir, Newton Thornburg, Pulp fiction, Pulp fiction in the 70s and 80s, Pulp Friday, Pulp paperback cover art

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Post-traumatic noir part 2: Who’ll Stop The Rain

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

A while ago on this blog I wrote about the 1981 Ivan Passer movie, Cutter’s Way.

Based ased on the 1976 cult novel Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg, it’s one of the best crime films to deal with the impact of America’s war in Vietnam.

But it gets a run for it’s money by a little known film I’ve recently discovered, Who’ll Stop the Rain (AKA Dog Soldiers) made several years earlier in 1978.

Who’ll Stop the Rain a paranoid, hard-boiled road trip through America’s counter-cultural underbelly and a devastating indictment of the impact of the conflict.

The film opens with war correspondent John Converse (Michael Moriarty) trapped in the middle of friendly fire. His voice over as he surveys the resulting carnage tells us:

“Military command has decided that elephants are enemy agents because the Vietcong use them to carry supplies. So now we’re stampeding the elephants and gunning them down from the air…In a world where elephants are pursued by flying men, people are just naturally going to want to get high.”

A former liberal disgusted by the war, Converse decides to buy two kilos of uncut heroin in Saigon and smuggle it back to California, where he plans to sell it at an enormous profit.… Read more

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Posted in 1970s American crime films, Anthony Zerbe, Neo Noir, Noir fiction, Robert Stone

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