Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Love Lies Out of Left Field

The other day I saw the teriffic Love Lies Bleeding. It's a refreshing blast of neo-noir that certainly upholds the promise of director Rose Glass' first film, Saint Maud. Set in New Mexico in the late 1980s, the film unfolds with the heightened realism of any topnotch noir, until a key climactic moment toward the end. What happens in that moment I'm not about to give away, though anyone who's seen the film will know exactly what I'm talking about. It's something that in every way, stylistically and otherwise, comes out of nowhere, and it takes the film, for a few essential moments, into another realm entirely. It is also an extremely gutsy choice for the filmmakers to have taken, because it risks provoking the wrong kind of laughter. Don't get me wrong: what you see is utterly surprising and very funny, but I'm sure there are some who will laugh not in pleasurable shock and wonder, but because it may seem silly to them. Or a wrong tonal move. On the contrary, it's a perfect move, and an inspired one at that, and as I watched with a smile on my face, I silently applauded the filmmakers' nerve.

But what made this scene work? What Rose Glass and her collaborators do here is a textbook case of how to do something abrupt and off-kilter and not seem like they're just trying to be "weird". The scene in Love Lies Bleeding works because the out-of-left-field move is symbolically right for the story. It's consistent, on a thematic level (if I can put it in English 101 kind of way) with everything that has gone before in the film and crystallizes what the film is about. That it does this while still being funny, and just a joy of a surprise, only makes it more effective. But it should serve too as a reminder (or a lesson?) to those who play around with off-the-wall moments like this one. If a story is set in one register for nearly its entire length and then switches, however briefly, to something that seems to have arrived, let's say, by way of the author taking mushrooms, that hallucinogen-fueled scene damn well better connect to the rest of the story on levels that make the weirdness feel organic. There's no sense of effort in the Love Lies Bleeding scene, no sense of the filmmakers trying to be cool or cheeky or strange. They do something that gives a wonderful jolt but which, at bottom, serves to emphasize what the story has been about all along. Great job.


The last time I saw such an effective out-of-the-blue scene like the one in Love Lies Bleeding was in the British crime series Giri/Haji. This was a series set in Tokyo and London, and while it only lasted one season on Netflix (enough for a complete unto itself story arc to unfold), it was superb. Violent and bloody, set in a realistic register throughout, with a lot of characters acting at cross purposes and a number of people stalking other people, it took a completely unexpected turn for its most climactic scene in the final episode. As one online commentator and lover of the series says, accurately, "At the emotional apex of the final episode, with our most important characters gathered, when blood is ready to be spilled, we get...a dance scene." It's a three minute scene that coalesces everything in the series up to this point: the plot developments, the character entanglements and the emotional stakes. There's music on the soundtrack, no words spoken by anyone (or on the soundtrack), and it's in black and white. And in the complicated dance itself, in how people move with each other and eye each other, we get a summation of what has happened in the seven and a half episodes thus far and of what may happen before the series ends. It's a remarkable scene, and like the one in Love Lies Bleeding, it's a creative leap into the dark, a choice that trusts its connection to the whole will not alienate, or spur the ridicule of, the viewer. It's a high point of a really good series, and though Giri/Haji was indeed a one-off, that's probably a good thing, because I don't know where its creators would have been able to take its very particular characters and how they would have topped that startling dance scene.




Saturday, March 16, 2024

Reacher Season 2 Reaches Back into Reacher’s Past

By

Scott D. Parker

I’ve now watched the second season of Amazon’s “Reacher” and not only am I caught up, I’m all in.

Let’s be fair: I was all in back in the first fifteen minutes of the pilot episode, when Reacher did the Sherlock Holmes thing to the local police detective. Alan Ritchson’s portrayal of Reacher is fantastic. He has the brawn to take on anyone and be scared of no one. He has the brain to outthink any opponent, usually before they even realize it. But it’s Ritchson’s gentle demeanor that is probably my favorite part of the character on screen.

Season 1 is Reacher the Wanderer, the guy who literally walks the earth (a modern day version of David Carradine’s “Kung Fu”?). In this season, we get strangers who question Reacher’s lifestyle choice. In Season 2, we get Reacher’s backstory in the form of his old army unit.

Getting Most of the Band Back Together

The main plot of Season 2–based on the novel Bad Luck and Trouble—involves a mysterious group taking out the members of Reacher’s old army unit, the 110th Special Investigations Unit. Reacher’s ally from Season 1, Neagley, sends Reacher an SOS (in the form of a particular dollar amount on an ATM receipt). Fearing that the entire 110th is on someone’s hit list, they join forces to figure out who’s behind it all.

As a Reacher newbie, I really enjoy this season specifically because we get backstory. Interspersed with the main plot, we get flashbacks to when Reacher commanded the military police unit. We get to see the big man actually be part of a team of people he can rely on to have his back just as he has theirs.

Particularly funny are all the comments his former soldiers give him in the present. Other than Neagley, we are introduced to David O’Donnell who is now a lawyer with a family and Karla Dixon, a forensic accountant and one who pined for Reacher back in the day. I particularly liked O’Donnell because he’s a smaller guy, married (in direct opposition to his earlier life), and who is perfectly willing to stick his neck out for the team, but knows he cannot withstand all the punishment that Reacher can…but still does it.

O’Donnell and Dixon both haven’t seen Reacher in years and they pepper him with questions about his current life, why, and what his future plans are. His calm replies typically broach no follow-up and they just find it odd. As most of us do, to be honest. 

Seeing these four operate together is fantastic. They’ve each acquired new skills since leaving the army, but they remain steadfastly loyal to each other. That kind of camaraderie is something we all would like in our lives. 

Taking No Prisoners

As you can imagine, as Reacher and his team learn more and get closer to the bad guys—lead by Robert Patrick, a guy who can do smarmy with ease—there are numerous set pieces where the bad guys send out ruffians to take out Reacher and his friends. Love every one of them! It’s great to see the different fighting styles of the four former army cops as they dispatch the bad guy, but not always without injuries. 

A New Ally

Season 2 also features an NYC detective, Gaitano Russo, who initially thinks Reacher and his pals are up to no good but, ultimately, comes around to helping them. Russo is played by Dominick Lombardozzi, an actor I know from “The Wire.” The way Lombardozzi reveals what kind of cop he is and why is wonderful and is a great part of this season.

What’s Next?

I know that Reacher Season 3 has been greenlit so when it debuts, I’ll be there on Day One. Both seasons of Reacher are great and I recommend them.

In the meantime, however, I’ll be doing two things. One, I’ll revisit the two Tom Cruise movies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know they’re not like the books, but I’ve already seen them and enjoyed both. Now I just want to rewatch in light of Ritchson’s portrayal of the character that’s more in line with the books.

And the second thing I plan on doing is the thing Lee Child wished I did twenty-eight books ago: read a Reacher novel or two. Anyone got a Top 5 they’d like to share?

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Tell the best story you can: An interview with Bobby Mathews


Bobby Mathews is a University of Alabama fan, but don't hold that against him.

He won the Derringer Award for Best Long Story with "Negative Tilt," the title track for his new collection. He won awards with the Alabama Media Professionals for his novel, Living the Gimmick, and for his short story, "The Ghost of Buxahatchee Creek."

And, about Mathews's 2023 novel, Magic City Blues, Peter Farris said: "Somewhere at the great poker game in the sky, Donald Westlake, Robert Parker and James Crumley are raising a glass to Magic City Blues."

Now Bobby Mathews is here to chat about that new collection of stories, Negative Tilt.

Steve Weddle
: NEGATIVE TILT, your collection of 28 stories, comes out March 19 from Shotgun Honey. Why these stories? Why now?

Bobby Mathews: Stephen King once wrote that he loved to read Harlan Ellison's short stories because each one was sort of a glimpse into Ellison's art and continued development as a writer — "This is where Harlan is now." That's what NEGATIVE TILT is for me: I look at where I've been, where I currently am, and a glimpse of where I'm going. My hope, of course, is that I'm continuing to grow and learn as I put words on the page.

After the failure of my first novel — a self-published book that I still love despite its many flaws — I stopped attempting to publish and wrote very little for about nine years. In 2020, I sent out a story to a magazine called The Dark City, and it was accepted about three weeks after submission. I placed about thirty stories over the course of the next three-plus years. Many of those stories are included in NEGATIVE TILT, along with some new ones that I hope readers will appreciate.

SW: The title story, "Negative Tilt," features a former newspaper man who now drives a tow truck. Your descriptions of working the tow truck seem very detailed. Have you worked a tow truck before?

BM: I worked for three years or so as an investigator for a repossession company, a sort of advance scout for the tow truck drivers. I'd find the vehicles, assist in tying them down to the truck's boom if I needed — "throwing straps" is the colloquial term — and I'd do the investigative work of field interviews to track down and locate debtors. Like any investigative job, there were long stretches of boredom. But there were also elements of excitement and danger, and the assortment of strange and unusual people I worked with can only be rivaled by the weirdos who gravitate toward newspaper work.

SW: You've used a hotel room as a setting here. What sort of story could be better set in a hotel room than in a home? If there were a submissions call for hotel room stories, what would be obvious? What would you do?

BM: There was a point in my life where I was effectively homeless, and I document some of that in the short story "General Excellence." I would stay in a hot-sheet motel for three nights a week — because I couldn't afford the weekly rate — and crash in my vehicle for a couple of nights before trekking three hours to my ex-girlfriend's apartment, where I would do laundry and try to rest and be "normal' for a day or two before heading back to the job. I drank Faygo sodas because they were cheaper than bottled water or brand-name soft drinks. I ate stuff I could scrounge from leftovers in the office fridge or the cheapest convenience store food I could find. On the job, I was producing the best medium-sized daily sports section in the state, but my personal life was an abject failure. It was a hell of a place to be, and it was unsustainable for long. Those are the kind of details that speak to me, and that's the kind of story I'd submit to a call for hotel/motel room stories.

My experience leads me to believe that hotel room stories are intrinsically about alienation. If you've got a home to go to, a place to land, you're never truly alienated. But once you don't? Anything and everything becomes possible. In that room where there is nothing permanent, it's easy to see how you've hit rock bottom. The choice for a character — and, obviously for me at the time — is whether you choose to stay at rock bottom or choose to rage against the dying of the light. The stories that speak to me the most are ones where the characters long to return to something or to dig their way out to something new.

SW: A review of MAGIC CITY BLUES said: "Some of the best writing is by authors—like Mathews—who have only written a couple of books. Often, by the time authors have written a half-dozen, the sentences start to get bloated and sloppy." Do you think your newspaper experience has contributed to your writing style?

BM: Hemingway famously said "Newspaper work will not harm a young writer and could help him if he gets out of it in time." I didn't get out of it in time. I worked for newspapers for about 20 years, and I still keep a hand in by occasionally writing feature stories and sports coverage for a statewide news organization. The daily writing and editing helps in a couple of ways: First, the job helped me view writing as work and not something that's motivated by a muse or some version of art that I used to have in my head. As a result of having daily deadlines imposed, newspaper writers tend to work very fast and pretty clean, and I produce first drafts that are close to what I want the story to be. But because newspaper work is so fast — and media writing in general has to be even faster now, with immediate publishing to the Web — there is often a tendency to call that first draft good enough. And of course it never really is.

SW: Tell me about a short story you've tried to write but can't.

BM: I started a story a couple of years ago that I titled "The Devil I Knew," drawn from my real-life childhood bully, who was convicted in 1995 for two counts of rape, and is now serving a life sentence in a prison located about 20 minutes from where I live. Considering that we grew up maybe 75 yards away from one another on a dirt road three hours south of here, it feels pretty odd. The idea — a man has been sending his childhood bully postcards from vacation spots around the world in order to stick it to him, a vicious little needling to remind him that he's stuck in prison while life for other people moves on. The story starts when the narrator eventually confronts the bully in person but is now physically safe from him because of the prison security apparatus separating them — not too bad, though it's probably been done by much better writers than me. But what keeps me walking away from the story is that I see the racial power dynamic of a free white man and an incarcerated Black man, and can't unsee it. Maybe I could flip the race of the narrator and the bully and make it work — that feels like the simplest solution — but the simplest solution isn't always the best.

SW: As a reader, what do you want from a short story?

BM
: I want to be entertained, of course, but I also love being surprised by something new. I think about Jordan Harper's story, "My Savage Year" in Southwest Review. It's the best short story I've read in the last five years, at least--maybe longer--and every bit of it is a surprise and a pleasure to read. A weird thing to say about a short story where one character annihilates his family, but there it is nonetheless. I love reading stories where not only is the tale itself terrific, but where you can marvel over the craftsmanship of it. James D.F. Hannah's story, 17-Year Cicadas is also an absolute rocker of a noir story and shows the kinds of things that writers are bringing to the genre now. Paul J. Garth and Hector Acosta had two phenomenal stories in an anthology called The Eviction of Hope. Neither is a mystery story, but both are deeply noir, and they bring something new to mystery/crime genre. I think--hope--many of us are more interested in writing about why someone makes the choices they make rather than paint-by-numbers whodunits.

SW: As a writer, what are your goals in telling a story and how do you know when you've been successful?

BM: When I started writing, my first goal was just to be published, you know? Once you hit that goal a few times, though, your outlook changes to something like "I want to write a good story," or "I want to write a story that's worthy of being included with some of my heroes/influences" or "I want to write a story that blows everyone out of the water." My goal with short stories right now is to pursue the craft in the best way I know how and tell the best story I can. The hope that goes alongside that goal, of course, is that people will find those stories and the tales will resonate with them on some level, whether it's mere entertainment or something on a deeper level. For me to know I'm successful, I need to be able to read the story back and not find holes in it, to know that I've touched on something that I wanted to say or an experience I wanted to share or found an emotional gear that I didn't expect.

SW: Finally, is there a character in one of these stories that you'd like to develop further?

BM: The lead character in "A Little Push" is a hitwoman masquerading as a true crime podcaster in order to get near her target. There's potential there, I think, for a follow-up. Stories or a novel, I'm not sure. I like the idea of this nameless woman immersing herself into a world so fully that she leaves a void with the people around her once she fulfills the contract and does her final disappearing act, and I hope to revisit her character at some point.

***


From the Publisher

An out-of-work journalist finds a second life ‘stealing cars’; A grad student finds out that theft is easy, but getting away with it is another matter entirely; A long-lost love can’t be rekindled in a remote hotel room, but a long-held ember of anger can be reignited; A tale of murder and mayhem in the Big Easy …

In NEGATIVE TILT: Stories, award-winning author Bobby Mathews shares twenty-eight tales that run the gamut, from a literary punch in the gut to unrequited and lost love to fast-and-hard crime fiction to out-and-out horror that’s hard to turn away from.

***

“This gripping, wide-ranging collection encompasses backwoods vengeance, Parisian tricksters, a mirror that reflects the crimes of the past, and so much more. Bobby Mathews’ versatility is matched only by the humanity he invests in even his most broken, desperate characters.”

Scott Von Doviak, Edgar Award-nominated author of Lowdown Road and Charlesgate Confidential

“Most crime writers come on hard, like they want to show the world how tough they are. Bobby Mathews is a different kind of cat: in Negative Tilt, he wants to show you how even the worst of us have a vulnerable heart. This insightfulness and empathy make him one of the best writers working today.”

Nick Kolakowski, author of Payback Is Forever and Love & Bullets

“Negative Tilt is more than a collection, it’s a body, sprawled out on the table, open and sensitive and bleeding yet furiously, gloriously, alive. With a reporter’s eye for detail, a barbarian’s taste for chaos, a poet’s sense of soul, and a conman’s mastery for turns of phrase, Bobby Mathews announces himself as a vital voice, not just to crime fiction, but also as an heir to Portis, Woodrell, and Hiaasen.”

Paul J. Garth, author of The Low White Plain