This blog was created as a companion piece to New York Noir, back when I thought that the turnaround time on the episodes were going to be a lot faster. That has absolutely nothing to do with anyone involved with the project, including myself, but chalk it up to my own foolishness/selfishness as a writer.
The series, however, moves along nicely. Red L recorded the second episode, “The Laundry Room,” several weeks ago and submitted the final version to iTunes. I’m excited to hear it, and for you to hear it as well. It’s a much more focused piece than “Rain” is, with only a few characters and a pretty straightforward story. I’m told that many of the tonal challenges present in “Rain” were solved, which I’m looking forward to. The first episode turned out pretty fantastic, but I’ve come to believe there are some wild variations on what exactly “noir” means in terms of performance in it.
Turns out that for that first episode, each actor brought their own take on the material and each had their own private definition/understanding of noir before recording, as did the director, as did, obviously, yours truly. That bit about the actors comes from a long chat/interview I’ve been conducting with actor Kristin Witterschein, who played Deidre in “Rain” and is the lead in “The Laundry Room.” When the episode goes up on iTunes — hopefully this week — you can look for that interview, which will be just as much about acting in general as the show itself, here. I love talking to actors about acting, and Kristin’s a very smart actor.
I’ve also turned in the script for episode three of New York Noir, called “Lovers in a Dangerous Town.” It’s another smaller piece that I can’t really discuss until you hear “Laundry Room.” And although I go back and forth on that title, it does have sort of a classic noir/pulp title that I like. I can almost hear the 30s equivalent of Don La Fontaine delivering it as it’s written across the screen in huge font. Red L has also given me the assignments for the next two episodes, which will be written/recorded/published across this summer. I’ve already begun to do research for those.
Part of that research includes catching up on noir I’ve missed, and since I’m taking a sabbatical from some of the movie boards I visit, I’d like to start to use this blog to talk more about films, noir, and writing in general, so hopefully (hopefully) you’ll start to see more of that, beginning tomorrow with my thoughts on Carol Reed’s The Third Man. Later, I’ll discuss Touch of Evil, House of Games, and Pickup on South Street. My thoughts may be brief, but they will be fierce. Riiiiiight.
Okay, so, I was in the middle of prepping this post about The Third Man, complete with photos, when the modern-day equivalent of hearing somebody’s voice come through on the telephone line* told me that it was Sydney Pollack’s time. That means I heard about it in an internet chatroom. He was 73.