Sometimes Nothin' Can Be A Real Cool Hand

What's a hero?

To some it's a stranger who dives selflessly in front of a speeding Ford and cradles a newborn baby to safety. To others it's a guy who puts out fires. To me, it was a guy who could swallow fifty hardboiled eggs in one sitting and still walk away with his gut in tact. It wasn't the ocean blue eyes or dashing good looks. It was the everyman. The quiet rebellion. The absense of fear in nonconformity. That guy was Paul Newman.

It's funny how you can feel genuine loss for someone you've never met. How you can feel like you've lost a good friend. A loyal friend who's always there, ready and waiting to talk or listen whenever you pop in a DVD to dillute the day's frustrations. A friend who always says the right things. Always says the same things. The things that comfort you. The things that make you smile. The things that make you cry. The things that shape you. The things that can even make you a better person. Paul Newman was many things to many people. I'm sure he was a caring father to his children. A loving husband to his wife. A real friend away from the silver screen. But I'll never know that Paul Newman. I'll only know the guy who never took no for an answer on my T.V. screen. The guy who wasn't afraid to hustle. And I'm cool with that. Because to me, Paul Newman will never be gone. He'll always be tucked away in several spots throughout my movie collection.

A friend of mine once had an encounter with Paul Newman during a Nascar event in Ohio. He scrambled awkwardly up to the cigar-chomping icon and asked in a squeaky voice if he could steal an autograph. Paul looked down at the kid, his mashed cigar temporarily held to the corner of his mouth, and said, "no." My friend and I spoke about why Paul refused to grant his request, even after he'd poured a bleeding heart's worth of praise upon him. He either said, "no" because he didn't buy into his own celebrity. Or he said it because he was being a dick. Whatever he really meant, it probably meant nothing. Some people pull teeth for a living and some people pull favors. Paul Newman pulled the heart strings of millions of moviegoers around the world. Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand.

L.A. by Way of Mosley

Walter Mosley is a cool cat, ya know? My favorite genre is crime/detective fiction. I've read a lot of Chandler and Hammet, who are no doubt masters in their own right, but Mosley just makes it all so cool. So real. So surreal. When I picture a Walter Mosley story, I immediately think of Los Angeles at night. I think of palm trees and Tim Burton-sculpted pine trees backlit by pale track lights. I think of large billboards with the devil's red, thin, mustached face carved into them. I think of Smokey the Bear. I think of Los Feliz. Griffith Park. The Greek Theatre. Glendale. Silverlake. Big Foot Lodge. Red Lion. I think of old Disney Cartoons with rich, moody technicolors and characters with exaggerated proportions. I think of vampiric suburbs where day-sleeping evil awakens to Tom Waits-narrated nights.

I'd read DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS (our first introduction to Easy Rawlins) for a class in college called "Kiss Me Deadly", and was really taken by the moody, bluesy atmosphere Mosley created in his depiction of 1950's Los Angeles. I decided to re-read the book again earlier this summer, as I wanted to use Mosley's unique atmospheric style as an influence in a new crime script I'm writing.

I'd forgotten how great and how fresh a character Easy Rawlins is. He is flawed. He is human. He's relatable. He's an African American man trying to solve crimes for wealthy, seedy white men in an era where African Americans weren't considered equal. He's a guy like us who needed some fast money to pay his mortgage after being fired from a job. We can relate to him. Hammet's Continental Op or Chandler's Philip Marlowe are both hard-nosed, no-nonsense detectives, never refusing to crack wise or dish out a witty retort. They're larger than life. They don't always feel like they exist in our world. They don't encounter problems like we encounter. Easy Rawlins does. He's one of us. He represents the working class. He's a guy you'd easily find in your local neighborhood bar. He has a real reason to take make a bargain with the devil. He either makes it, or he loses his house: the one constant in his life and his mark of stability. He exists in a real world with real problems. It may seem like a slightly heightened world. But that's L.A. at night.

What I like about Easy is that he uses his common sense and street smarts to solve crimes. He wasn't trained to track down criminals or find clues. He just does it. He uses his inside knowledge of his community and its inhabitants to get the job done.

More to come...