​A very special thank you to Mr. Dan Sanders for his great post last week. Dan’s insights brought a lot of visitors to jplinde.com and I am sure he’ll be back.
 
And now, this week’s feature presentation.
 
“I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema. Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks.”
 
Generally speaking, Martin Scorsese’s right. Most movies nowadays are theme park attractions! And it’s a simple deduction to make that these films are the ones studios believe are going to make the most money. No surprise. The movies audiences seem willing to sit through are the ones with the loudest snap, crackle and POP! It’s quite ironic to note, as attention spans get shorter, this particular cinematic eye candy gets longer; most of these tentpole films clocking in at over two hours. 
 
However, the fault, as Scorsese suggests, is not in Marvel’s films. I believe he may be painting with too big a brush. For the most part, Marvel films are better written than their counterparts. Their characters are smart, have at least some relatable emotional depth and are more complex than merely the dark and brooding of their counterparts. So, let’s release them from blame and focus on better examples of what the famed director might have meant.
 
Case in point.

​The original John Wick is a fantastic film. Original premise, well written and the creation of a world that is both complex and thought provoking. It features great performances with a stunning look and feel. Now, let’s jump ahead and consider John Wick; Chapter 3 Parabellum. Same stunning visual look, awesome stunts and fight sequences and even one exotic location thrown in for good measure. The Producer/writers even went so far to add a female John Wick, Halle Berry, and a couple of extra dogs. But, when it all comes down to it, it is only more of the same; just bigger, louder and featuring bigger pops. A 200+ million-dollar theme park ride. There are more of these type pictures out there, so let’s not place all the blame on Lionsgate. Some of the blame, dear reader, is in our selves.
 
A majority of movies are no nothing more than a sugar diet for the brain. The need to go big or go home has become the order of the day. Modern Hollywood is big business and needs boffo hits to survive. Another way to survive is to become a bigger shark. Disney/ABC, Comcast/Universal, and Paramount/CBS have all merged and their appetite for cash has grown expeditiously.

​Every once in a while, a smaller film squeaks by and surpasses everyone’s expectations. A good example of this is Downton Abbey: The Motion Picture. 30 million to make with a gross of over 200 million. Exception rather than the rule, but still. There is a dwindling market for smaller films.
 
Thank god for Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and others. The smaller picture seems to have ended up with the streaming services and that’s a good thing…for now. But buyer beware. Our diet has the potential to end up on streaming services with producers, leaving, us with nowhere to turn but theatre and literature. Which would not be such a terrible place to end up; if we still have the ability to read or sit still for longer than 5 minutes.
 

Martin Scorcese, 77, Takes a Last Look at Mob Life in The Irishman
​

​Like life itself, almost no one leaves Hollywood on their own terms.  Even the almighty studio chiefs of yore like Warner, Mayer, Selznick, and Goldwyn all got thrown off the lot one sorry day.  Martin Scorcese just turned seventy-seven.  His directing skills, as seen in his new film The Irishman, remain formidable.  But like Clint Eastwood, one can’t expect Scorcese to make the same type of blithely violent films he made in his heyday.  The losses, consequences, disappointments, and world-changes that old age imposes all converge to shift any director’s outlook.  Many of Eastwood’s mid-career films – The Outlaw Josey Wales, Pale Rider, Sudden Impact – reveled in gunpowder justice so completely that some dismissed him as just a Mozart of Revenge Porn.  Then came Unforgiven, when Eastwood was seventy-two.  By the end of that superb Western, Eastwood’s gunfighter William Munny is little more than a rural serial killer, a nineteenth-century Charles Starkweather (the Martin Sheen character in Terrence Malick’s Badlands).  Bill Munny hasn’t just killed baddies who had it coming; “I've killed women and children,” he moans during his last gunfight. “I've killed everything that walks or crawls at one time or another.”  It is a confession, not a boast.  And Clint Eastwood has never directed another Western.
 
What Unforgiven was to Clint Eastwood, The Irishman is to Martin Scorsese.  One gets a strong sense that it’s his last word on what he’s best known for, his final gangster epic.  It’s not his best film as Unforgiven was for Eastwood, but it’s very, very good. 
 
So what changes for a storyteller when they get old?  In Hollywood, the studio no longer automatically finances exactly the film that Mister Legendary Director wants to make next.  And medium-budget dramas, even with Oscar winners, are an endangered species now.  The day may have come where the only home for films like The Report, Marriage Story, and The Irishman are at streaming networks.  So be thankful that Martin Scorcese can still get a gangster pic made with major stars and the great Thelma Schoonmaker editing.  And yeah, it’s over three hours, but c’mon, you’ve binged that long for years on great TV. 

​Most movies set out to either fulfill a dream or a nightmare.  At the root of our love for gangster movies are our dreams of respect, caring family, tough-loyal friends, protection – and above all, absolute vengeance on those who have wronged us.  This last fantasy has always thrilled audiences.  Twenty-five centuries ago, Euripides wrote the tale of Hecuba, a queen whose son and daughter have been murdered by an enemy king, Polymestor.  Hecuba makes a deal with another mob boss – um, I mean an army general.  She lures Polymestor to a sit-down with a promise of huge loot, then Hecuba kills Polymestor’s two young sons and cuts out his eyes.  As Polymestor wails Hecuba growls:  “I rejoice in my revenge.”  Fifty years ago, Francis Coppola’s The Godfather perfected the gangster genre by opening with a peasant’s plea to his Don for vengeance:  A meek funeral proprietor named Bonasera is shattered by the beating and rape of his innocent young daughter by two college dirtbags.  The judge did nothing because the boys were rich, the girl was poor – and she was Sicilian, which in mid-century America made her a lower life form.  The two rapists will be ambushed by Don Corleone’s enforcers, who will maul both men so badly they’ll be hospitalized for months.  Godfather ends with a pageant of revenge:  The Corleone Family wipes out all their enemies in one afternoon, in a brilliantly coordinated strike.  Here is absolute Justice, harsh and Old Testament, meted out to all the treacherous.  The ratty brother-in-law who got Sonny killed is garroted.  A longtime family general trying to set up Michael Corleone is led off to die.  The five enemy Dons who tried to take the Corleone kingdom are assassinated.  The slimy Vegas casino boss who dared slap Michael’s weak brother around in public is paid off with a bullet through his eye. 

​Scorcese’s GoodFellas, the last truly great mob movie that anyone has made, has an incident of revenge redolent of the rape of Bonasera’s daughter in its origin story of Harold Hill, the 1990 film’s central character.  Harold’s future wife Karen has been groped and assaulted by the college boy across the street.  Harold confronts the punk, who is out in his driveway wrenching on his Corvette with two pals.  The three are no doubt considered tough at their frat house.  But Harold Hill was a big-league Mob prospect at twelve.  With Karen watching, Harold pulls a revolver on Corvette Boy, uses it like brass knuckles to beat 400 points off his SAT score, and leaves the other two boys begging Harold for their suburban lives.  In voiceover Karen recalls this brutal defense of her honor: “I gotta admit the truth – it turned me on.”  Just how grimly handsome is Ray Liotta (then just thirty-six) in Harold’s early-adult scenes?  A friend once told me that the only time his wife of three decades ever confessed to lust for another man was as she watched Liotta in GoodFellas.

​In its leads, The Irishman has a Holy Trinity of living mob-movie legends:  Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci.  When I first learned that the movie would be directed by Scorcese and star these three greats, I joked to friends that it felt like 1973 and Cream just got back together.  But of course Irishman is a supergroup reunion forty years on, not five.  This is, again, a gangster picture from a man who’s pushing eighty – and its three stars are 76, 77, and 79.  Nowhere in sight is a princely-youthful avenger like Liotta’s in GoodFellas.  Though the film takes place over forty years, there are no “Young Frank” or “Jimmy at 25” actors, either.  Instead, Scorcese opted for a de-aging CGI technology from Industrial Light & Magic.  (At times the faces look like something off Activision, though it’s definitely a better solution than any makeup artist might have cooked up.)  Most of the film, though, depicts these men from late-middle age up, and it’s hell being old.  These gangsters are feeble, diseased, ugly, and pathetic, dying one by one in hideous, filthy prisons.  In GoodFellas the still-youngish wiseguy inmates make us laugh with their dinners of steak and spaghetti and fresh lobster, smuggled in by bribed guards.  But there’s nothing funny about where Irishman’s hoods do their time.  Few films have conveyed the awful bleakness of incarceration as believably.  Unlike earlier Scorcese mob sagas, Irishman runs on an nonglamorous melancholy, on the strain of being constantly hunted.  We’re reminded of this every few minutes by a classic Scorcese device:  Freeze-frame stoppages, with text superimposed onscreen, tell us how each true-life character eventually died.  “Phil Testa – blown up by a nail bomb under his porch, March 15, 1981.”  “Salvatore ‘Sally Bugs’ Briguglio – shot three times in the face, 1979.”
 
Scorcese made headlines in the fall when he said comic book movies are not cinema, just onscreen theme parks.  His remarks, though justified, showed his age.  The defensive pushback from younger filmmakers like James Gunn had a sour condescension to it.  This eternal disdain of the young for the old is a key element in The Irishman.  Al Pacino is staggeringly good in his portrait of James Hoffa as the classic past-his-prime player, specifically the very last one to know It’s Over.  Everyone else knows it is time for Jimmy to retire and walk away with his money, but not him – and it, well, triggers a sad and degrading end for him.
 
As a parent, a particularly moving aspect of Irishman is how Robert De Niro depicts the gradual but total alienation of the Made Guy, Frank Sheeran, from his children.  Other gangster films like the unfortunate Godfather III have tried to wring drama from this, but it may be the single most compelling element of Irishman.  What De Niro does with this arc is a reminder of his all-time greatness.  You truly feel Frank’s fatherly pain as his daughter Peggy’s respect for him ebbs away year by year, crime by crime.  Anna Paquin plays the adult Peggy, and her scenes with De Niro forge the best cinematic rendition I’ve ever seen of a great truth:  Your kids always figure you out in adolescence.  When they hit their teens you lose your superpowers of authority and awe.  And if you have an addiction or a secret life, they will find it.
 
Much media dust has been raised about the character of Peggy rendered all but mute by Scorcese and screenwriter Steven Zaillian.  But in that time and place and culture, this Silence of the Daughter is entirely plausible.  Frank Sheeran passed his teens in the Depression and turned twenty-one a few weeks before Pearl Harbor.  Of course this generation is revered in movies like Saving Private Ryan, but anyone raised by men of that era knows there was a very dark side to them.  Many had PTSD before anyone knew a name for it.  Therapy was an admission of weakness for most men back then.  The entire energy of a household revolved around these guys when they were home from work.  They resented their children’s money, freedom, sex, college – all the goodies that history screwed them out of.  Many smoldered their way through life, and they could make the next generation feel like absolutely nothing.  More than once as a boy, I’d go over to another kid’s house and before we went inside the kid would whisper to me nervously:  “Hey listen, we have to be really quiet because... my dad is home.” 
 
And for girls, it was many times worse.  Steven Zaillian, who was born in 1953, knows what the hell he’s writing about.  His choice to make Peggy the aphasic Observer does not diminish her character, far from it.  Paquin’s is a terrific performance that sets yet another contrast with Scorcese’s earlier, jauntier assays of mob life.  In GoodFellas young Harold Hill is taught the crook trade by a dozen affable and playful Neighborhood Guys who are far cooler company than Harold’s brooding, abusive father.  Then a truancy letter earns Harold a paternal beating.  When the Guys slap around the mailman to suggest that no more such letters be delivered to the Hills, we barely mind that an innocent man doing his job (and violating federal law if he doesn’t) gets beat up.  And young Harold is more than fine with this solution – hey, school’s out forever.  When Harold walks out of the police station after his first arrest, his Guys are cheering on the steps like the kid just got bar-mitzvah’d (the scene scored big laughs when it showed in theaters).  There is nothing cute or funny, however, about the equivalent scene in Irishman.  Frank comes home to learn that grade-schooler Peggy got angrily shoved by the corner grocer after the girl accidentally knocked something off a shelf.  Frank takes Peggy down to the corner to witness punishment.  We see the little girl’s permanent trauma as, just feet away, her father knocks the grocer’s head through his shop window, kicks him in the face, then breaks the man’s hand as he screams in agony.  Peggy is repelled, ashamed, and doesn’t want Frank to be her father from that day forward, inflicting what will be the keystone heartbreak of his life.  She won’t talk to us either, and it’s truly awful.
 
Every mainstream gangster film, GoodFellas and the Godfather trilogy included, show a terrible reckoning for those who choose criminality.  In The Irishman, though, there are no good old days.  

Dan Sanders is an actor/writer/producer and teacher and holds a Master of Fine Arts in Drama from the University of California-Irvine.

Thanks for stopping by! Only a couple of more weeks until a new year and all new opportunities. I have been posting now for almost a year and it has all gone by pretty damn fast. Thank you to everyone who has stopped by the site to take a look. A special thanks to a few of the guests who have visited as well. Mark Verheiden, Tadd Galusha, Dwayne Epstein and Pacia Linde, you are all tops in my books! Here’s to a great new year with new posts and maybe a few new writing jobs…for all of us!
 
And now, the thrilling conclusion of The Mystery of the Cape Cod Treatment.
 
The unsigned check appeared to be only a minor setback. All that was needed was a quick call to my agent to get that all settled. I was a bit taken aback when I was basically told to call the producer myself. Well, so much for representation. I sucked it up and called. The producer apologized profusely, and I was assured a new and signed check was now in the mail. I was back in business. The 81/2 by 13 yellow legal pads were thrown into the backpack and I raced off to my writing haunt in downtown Portland, the Coffee Ritz.
 
Since I was not really a typist back then…didn’t even own a typewriter, I contacted a friend who agreed to a $100.00 payment to type my opus up. He kept me waiting a few extra weeks, but eventually finished the job and turned the pages back over to me. 
 
Perhaps it was my enthusiasm that blinded me to my lack of competence. To be honest, I’m not sure. But when I realized that the 60-page treatment I had managed to come up with was completely devoid of tone, theme, characterization and general ability, I knew I was in trouble. Not matter, I assured myself. It will all look much better when I pay someone to type it all us. One hundred dollars in hand, I delivered my masterpiece to a friend and he went to work, taking over two months to deliver the goods. When I finally received the pages, I was relieved to find that indeed, the treatment did look more professional. What it lacked in skill, it more than made for with an excellent looking title page. As you can guess, the body of the work was, eh, how to I put this politely, long, rambling and a mess. Armed with this, eh, manuscript, I stuffed it all in an envelope and sent it off to New York. The arranged deal was that I would receive the 2nd payment upon delivery. All told, a total of two weeks would be sufficient before once again, I would be a thousandaire.
 

​Back in the early eighties, there were precious few resources on how to write a film treatment. The ones you did find, seemed to be of differing opinions on style and substance. Some instructed to go long, while others insisted on keeping it short and brief. All of this did not matter to me as I either did not read them at all or simply didn’t pay any attention. Obviously, what I turned in was not very good and the end result was I never heard from that Producer again. As well as I can recollect, I don’t believe I even reached out to see if the producer received it. In the period of the two weeks, I had come to the realization that I did not have the talent or knowledge to tackle such a project. I guess on the positive side, the production company folded shortly after I submitted my work. I often wonder if I had something to do with sending an already teetering company over the edge. Likewise, Manhattan Artists is no longer an Agency (Literary or otherwise.) I’m only left with a copy of the contract and the notorious unsigned check. I don’t know, but from what was learned, I say it has all been worth it.

We have another very special guest next week. Friend, mentor and an all-around fantastic writer, Dan Sanders will be dropping by with some insights on Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman.” There’s only one writer I could think of to tackle this subject and that’s him. But don’t take my word for it. Check out his bio. 
 
Dan Sanders broke into screenwriting on weekly retainer for a man who was considered, in the late Twentieth Century, the undisputed Sleaziest Producer in Hollywood. This man only shot his films overseas and took the passports of anyone he hired for these foreign shoots – so his employees could not leave until final wrap. Deeply PTSD’d by this foray into white slavery filmmaking, Dan did penance in the following years by writing for the BBC and PBS. In recent years he has written for Lifetime Television on a number of projects, currently on one of their patented Christmas films. In the mid-2000s he took a break from writing to play Michael Jackson’s lawyer for five months on a series that was seen in over 100 countries; he still gets mail from a surprising number of overseas King of Pop fans who think he was really MJ’s lawyer. Other current writing projects include a digital feature that will star young comedy and music influencers, and a limited series based on one of the great pillars of the entire science fiction genre – once the rights-holding studio finally fires that Head of TV Production. (Given that their stock’s current value rating is “Charmin,” it should be any day now.) Dan holds an MFA in drama from the University of California-Irvine because he knew he’d better go for the sure money in this hard-old world. He is a longtime resident of Santa Monica.

Next Week: A review of "The Irishman" by Dan Sanders.
 

​Welcome back! We’ve done a bit of holiday decorating and set up the Linde Christmas tree. All of the presents shown above are available physically and digitally (save for my appearances on Comedy Club Network which are digital only). Order early and beat the Christmas rush.
 
And now back to our regularly scheduled blog. The Mystery of the Cape Cod Treatment (Part 2).
 
The pay had been negotiated, half now and half upon completion of the project. Before I had even signed the contract, I hurried over to Powell’s City of Books, in Portland, OR, and purchased a copy of Phoebe Atwood Taylor’s novel. I immediately ripped out the spine and copied each page onto an 8 ½ by 11-sized page so that I would have plenty of room to take notes.
 
I read somewhere when adapting a book to screenplay, you read the material several times. First time is to get an overall idea of what you’re dealing with. Each subsequent read is used to determine what must be kept to keep the story moving along with any bits of pieces that you feel make the novel what it is. Supposedly, you accomplish all this with aid of several colored felt-tip pens. Check. So far, so good. 
 
I read the book three times the first day. To be honest, and I am going completely from memory here, there was nothing that made the material stand out in my eyes. I was familiar enough with the formula, also very familiar with the type of reader this type of material appeals to. The question seemed to be; how do I adapt the work for a modern audience? Perhaps too quickly, I settled on quirky.

​Hitchcock’s “TROUBLE WITH HARRY” immediately came to mind as far as tone and style. There is a definite New England style of laid-back humor to the material which I believed would work for Tavern. I saw the characters of Asey Mayo, a sort of Jimmy Stewart detective everyman and Eve Prence as a fussy middle-aged Nora Charles. The interplay between the two older protagonists could be challenging and fun. 
 

​Now, all of the above I knew. What I did not know was how to successfully convey all of this into a precise and well-written treatment. It should also be noted that even though I had a word processor of sorts (more about that later), I did not really know how to type.  So, there you have it. A would-be writer who was a hunt and pecker with more ambition than brains writing a story that most definitely required more than a rudimentary skill to carry it all off. Sometimes you tackle something with no expertise, and it comes out much better than expected. Other times, well, this is my story. More about that later. 
 
After I had dug-in to the point of being sufficiently overwhelmed, I received my first check from the production company. And, guess what? After weeks of waiting, the check was not signed. 

To be continued...