GUNCRAZYGRIFTERKILLERSCRYDANGERASTHEYDRIVEBYNIGHT...
Posted: May 18th, 2012, 2:44 pm
Cheerful passholder in the lobby of the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles
with affable author and Brand Manager for TCM in Atlanta, Shannon Clute.
At the Turner Classic Film Festival 2012 in April at the Hollywood
Roosevelt Hotel, authors Shannon Clute and Richard Edwards were
interviewed at a passholders event in Club TCM about their latest collaborative
work, The Maltese Touch of Evil (Dartmouth College, 2011), which is a
thoroughly up-to-date reference work for all readers who love to ponder
the spectrum of film noir, and is a literate and highly documented
source for fans of movies like Gun Crazy, The Maltese Falcon,
The Grifters, The Killers, and the iconic Out of The Past.
A compendium of Clute's and Edwards' popular podcasts enitled Out of
the Past: Investigating Film Noir, selected by Australian Broadcasting
Corporation as part of their Top of the Pods series, and years of
scholarly research, the detailed reader includes chapters detailing the
void in film noir studies, conflicting definitions of what noir means
to different focus groups, specific examples of universally accepted
standard scenes, and how noir films appeal as constrained texts.
Black and white photos specifically illustrate topics like how a "noir childhood
ain't pretty" and what a flawed charater like Walter Neff ( Fred MacMurray)
in Double Indemnity can illuminate with his sweaty, imperfect voiceover.
Each entry is documented with number of the specific podcast episode for
current reference.
Both Clute and Edwards heartily agreed that film noir is a distinctly
American creation even though the process emerged from emigre European
directors like Jacques Torneur, Billy Wilder, Edward Dmytryk, and
Robert Siodmak, and Clute revealed his interest in film noir evolved
from his love of "hard-boiled" fiction.
The book signing was a popular even with noir buffs as passholders formed a
long line to have their texts personalized by Clute and Edwards, and was
the second official panel discussion on Thursday in Club TCM in the Blossom
Room, home of the first Academy Awards dinner on May 16, 1929.