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Author: Thomas Parker

Don’t Mess with Mary: P.L Travers’ Mary Poppins

Don’t Mess with Mary: P.L Travers’ Mary Poppins

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Saving Mr. Banks poster-small

Saving Mr. Banks (2013)

I don’t know what this year’s big Christmas movie will be, but a few years ago, the unavoidable holiday hit that was in every theater was Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks, which told the heartwarming story of how Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) pulled out all the stops in persuading Patricia L. Travers (Emma Thompson) to permit him to make a movie featuring her creation, Mary Poppins. I didn’t see the movie, though from everything I heard it was both a thoroughly professional entertainment and a disgraceful whitewash of the events it purports to dramatize. (If you haven’t seen Harlan Ellison’s hilarious takedown of the film, it’s ready and waiting on YouTube, anytime you can make sure that the children are safely out of the house.)

Travers always regretted the necessity of giving in to Disney, but necessity it was; she badly needed the money, and Walt knew it. Considering the circumstances, she drove as hard a bargain as she could, fighting tirelessly to preserve the essence of her creation, even as she knew that she was doomed to fail, as fail she did.

Nevertheless, the movie that resulted from Walt’s blandishments, 1964’s Mary Poppins, is reckoned one of Disney’s greatest accomplishments, both artistically and commercially, winning five Oscars (including a best actress statuette for Julie Andrews’ portrayal of Mary) and grossing close to one hundred million dollars on a six million dollar budget. When Walt was right, he was right.

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I Was Paper Trained by Philip K. Dick

I Was Paper Trained by Philip K. Dick

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Blade-Runner-2049-Hero-small

My oldest son Sam loves the movie Blade Runner above almost any other, and so he was at least provisionally interested when the recent and long-delayed sequel, Blade Runner 2049 hit the theaters. Myself, I didn’t care much one way or the other. I like the original movie well enough (though it’s not the touchstone for me that it seems to be for many others) but as for the sequel, well… the two hours that will forever go down in infamy as Prometheus did a lot to damage my moviegoing relationship with Ridley Scott, which was never that warm to begin with. (I know Scott was “just” the executive producer on 2049, but still. Once someone has charged you twelve dollars for the privilege of farting in your face, you don’t forget it.)

In any case, the merits of the movies are beside the point. It has long irked me, as a science fiction fan and as a father, that Sam’s enthusiasm for Blade Runner has always been untempered by any encounter with Philip K. Dick’s actual novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or indeed, with anything by the man who I regard as the greatest of all science fiction writers. Before you call Child Protective Services, please know that I didn’t fail in every way as a parent — Sam has a wife and a home and a job, he can tie his shoes and put together a coherent English sentence, he’s kind to animals and considerate to everyone he meets, at least until he finds out who they voted for, and he’s a hell of a cook. He’s a fine and productive person and my pride in him is unbounded… but really, c’mon — Phillip K. Dick!

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Three Fifths of a Great Horror Movie: Dead of Night

Three Fifths of a Great Horror Movie: Dead of Night

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Dead of Night Poster

Well kiddies, it’s October and we’re now well launched into what John Keats called the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness and AMC calls Monsterfest Month. There’s no reason it can’t be both, is there? The whole point, you see, regardless of whether the weather is misty or not, is to read as many horror stories and watch as many horror movies as you can before midnight on the 31st while still holding onto your job (to say nothing of your marriage or other significant relationships).

The stories are no problem — as Black Gaters in good standing, I’m sure you all have shelves that are sagging under the weight of countless horror anthologies, so chilling choices abound. The movies pose a different problem, however. While you can read a good story in twenty or thirty minutes, a movie requires a commitment of an hour and a half or more. So at this overbusy time of year, why not increase your fright efficiency and watch a movie that gives you three, four, or five stories in one sitting?

Horror anthology movies used to be quite common. American International Pictures did some in the early sixties featuring Vincent Price (of course — I think AIP must have had the poor man chained in the basement) — 1962’s Tales of Terror (Poe stories, because studios like nothing so much as an out of copyright author) and 1963’s Twice Told Tales (this time Nathaniel Hawthorne was the writer receiving no royalties), and Amicus Productions (a kind of poor man’s Hammer, if you can imagine such a thing) specialized in them in the late sixties and early seventies, cranking out Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965), Torture Garden (1967), The House that Dripped Blood (1970), Tales from the Crypt (1972), Asylum (1972), and The Vault of Horror (1973). You don’t see this kind of film so much anymore, though their memory is kept alive by the umpteenth yearly iteration of The Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror.

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How I Spent My Summer Vacation

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

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A Scanner Darkly Dick-small The Deep Range Arthur C Clarke-small The Killer Inside Me Jim Thompson-small

On May 25th I finished my thirteenth year at the small private school where I teach fourth grade. I love my job and I love my students, but remember the transports of joy that you felt when you were a kid, when the dismissal bell finally rang on that last day of school? I can assure you that your happiness was as nothing compared to the incandescent elation teachers feel on that final afternoon of the second semester.

At my school, we get eight weeks off, and I spend them much as I did when I was in school myself — I make a big stack of paperbacks and I read as many of them as I can before the next school year begins. Last summer, for some perverse reason I no longer remember, I changed my routine a bit; instead of tearing through the usual pile of science fiction/fantasy/mystery yarns, I decided to take on a different kind of book: David Foster Wallace’s postmodern magnum opus, Infinite Jest. Though it is itself marginally science fiction, Wallace’s massive novel is about as far removed from the kind of genre reading that usually fills my vacation as it is possible to get. I originally had some notion of doing a fair amount of my “normal” summer reading alongside of Infinite Jest, but it didn’t work out that way. I’m glad I read the novel, but it absolutely exhausted me; after hewing my way through thirty or forty pages I barely had enough physical and mental energy to hoist myself out of my chair, much less crack open a gaudy-covered Ace reprint of Radium Raiders of Deneb by Lester Cragwell Griggs.

If you’ve never tackled it, reading Infinite Jest is like driving coast-to-coast on a state of the art superhighway… that has a speed bump every fifty feet, for three thousand miles. I did manage to get Son of Tarzan read in between bouts with Wallace’s knotted prose, but the two books didn’t mix well, and left me feeling slightly seasick, not to mention somewhat confused about the nature of reality.

In any case, this year I was determined to return to sanity and my standard procedure and see if it’s possible to overdose on the heady fumes that waft from the pages of forty year old paperbacks. I now submit the results of my experiment for your edification… or, if you wish, to act as a grim warning.

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Jerry Lewis (Julius Kelp, Buddy Love), March 16, 1926 – August 20, 2017

Jerry Lewis (Julius Kelp, Buddy Love), March 16, 1926 – August 20, 2017

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Jerry Lewis-small

The book has finally closed on the eight decade long career of Jerry Lewis, the American actor, comedian, and filmmaker, who died on Sunday, August 20th, at the age of ninety one. Jerry Lewis is one of those colossal, divisive figures like Lenin, Mao, or Meryl Streep; few people are noncommittal about him. Ever since he shrieked and jerked his way into the public consciousness with his partner Dean Martin, first in nightclubs and on radio, then in a series of highly successful movies, and finally, after an acrimonious split with Martin, on his own as an actor and director, the standard responses have been either overboard adoration or utter loathing, a split that even effects entire nationalities — the French have a much snickered-at (at least among Americans) reputation for their extreme and almost universal love of Lewis, while Swedes and all other Scandinavians can’t stand him. (I made that last part up, but it’s probably true.)

This might be of only passing interest to Black Gate readers, except for one thing. In 1963, Lewis co-wrote (with Bill Richmond), directed, and starred in what is arguably the best version of that much-filmed classic of dark fantasy, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Lewis altered the title even more than most adapters do, calling his movie The Nutty Professor, and that’s not all he altered.

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So You Want to Be a Movie Star – Really?

So You Want to Be a Movie Star – Really?

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Joan Crawford

Joan Crawford

So you want to be a movie star? Big house, swimming pool, fancy cars, lavish parties, gala premiers, fawning flunkies, fame, fortune, the envy and adulation of millions — all the accoutrements, privileges, and perquisites of a luxurious lifestyle undreamt of by lesser mortals? It’s quite a life, I hear.

But of course, there’s always the flip side (everything has a flip side), when the years start to mount up and more and more choice parts go to fresh young things with a little more rubber on their radials, and the waiting time between films grows longer… and longer… and you, a big talent, a serious thespian, a major star, finally find yourself slinking onto the sound stage to take up your role in a low-budget exploitation movie. You can’t even salvage a little dignity by hiding somewhere in the middle of the credits, can’t pretend that you’re doing a campy cameo as a favor for an old friend. Nope — honey, you’re the headliner, the main attraction, that’s your name up there in big, bold print, right up there for everyone to see on the posters of Strait-Jacket… and Berserk!… and… please, God, no… Trog.

Yup. It’s a hell of a life, being a movie star. Just ask Joan Crawford.

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Reading for the End of the World

Reading for the End of the World

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The Dead Zone-small The Dead Zone-back-small

Back in 1977, near the high water mark of an earlier age of apocalyptic expectations, Elvis Costello crooned a song about “Waiting for the End of the World.” It seemed to make sense in that era of turmoil and unrest at home and abroad, but the American landscape of the last year or so makes the turbulent 70’s seem like an age of cool, good humored rationality. (It wasn’t — trust me.)

I, along with Little Orphan Annie and MacBeth, still expect the sun to come up tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, but even so, it does indeed feel as if we have arrived at the end of something, and business as usual just won’t do anymore; adjustments are called for in many aspects of our lives, including (of course!) reading. Extraordinary times call for extraordinary literary measures. Therefore… to the barricades — uh, bookstores!

In the spirit of the incipient panic, withered expectations, and rampant paranoia that seem to dominate our current national life, I offer twelve books to get you through the next four years (however long they may actually last): a reading list for the New Normal.

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A Sure Cure for that Listless Feeling

A Sure Cure for that Listless Feeling

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Pick a book, any book

As we segue (stagger, stumble, reel, crawl, stop-drop-and roll) from winter into spring, we are faced as always with the never-ending question: “What in the world am I going to read next?”

Everyone will solve this dilemma in their own way. Dart and ouija boards, animal entrails, tarot cards, various dice systems, and the blind recommendations of pimply, pasty complexioned clerks in chain bookstores have all been resorted to by readers desperate for guidance. For many people (Black Gate followers no less than anyone else, judging from many recent posts), year-end “best of” and “top ten” lists are indispensable tools for keeping up with the best current writing… but what about the vast reservoir of older books?

If the very thought of all the classics and near-classics that you’ve never gotten around to doesn’t make all your courage drain away in an instant and set you fleeing for the hills, never to return, I have a… well, I won’t say a “modest” or “reasonable” proposal, because, as you will see, there’s nothing modest or reasonable about it — it is, rather, unashamedly megalomanic. In fact, it could be considered quite literally insane — but it works for me, and so to help keep the voices in my head under control, I would like to share my madness with you.

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Haunted: Always, Sometimes, Never

Haunted: Always, Sometimes, Never

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haunted-the-old-fashioned-way

Haunting — The old fashioned way

Many years ago, in the days of my misspent youth, I toiled for four years at California State University, Long Beach, as a theater major. As such, I of course spent most of my time on and around the department’s two stages. What with the vicissitudes of costume fittings, lighting adjustments, and walking on saying, “What ho!” twenty or thirty times until the director was satisfied, I often found myself in the building quite late at night, which led to a discovery — theaters are damned creepy places. They are, in fact, haunted. (The clunks and thumps and creaks and pops I heard were not from causes as mundane as the huge building setting or from the big glass windows cooling and contracting after the heat of the day — absolutely not.)

On reflection, I have come to think that all places, of any sort, fall somewhere on a supernatural sliding scale — always, sometimes, or never haunted. Indeed, this realization has led to a family game that my children and I often play — naming a place and stating its haunted status and, in case the others disagree, making a persuasive argument for your position. I know it sounds like an odd way to pass the time, but you get tired of Yahtzee after a while.

What are the factors that influence the likelihood of a place being haunted? If we’re talking about buildings, then function is very important, especially if the structure has any intrinsic relation to death or the supernatural. Thus it is far easier for a funeral home or church or morgue to be haunted than it is for a factory that exists for the purpose of extruding plastic into molds for Star Wars toys. (Now if two or three workers should fall into a vat of molten plastic, well, their co-workers might get a little uneasy walking around the isolated areas of the building alone at night. Just how uneasy would have to be determined by several other factors.)

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A State of Suspension: Iain Banks’ The Bridge

A State of Suspension: Iain Banks’ The Bridge

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the-bridge-iain-banks-small the-bridge-iain-banks-abacus-small the-bridge-iain-banks-uk

Iain Banks, the Scottish science fiction writer, established himself as a major presence in the genre with his Culture series, the first of which, Consider Phelebas, appeared in 1987. Set in a far future, post-scarcity universe teeming with human and alien societies, the Culture books are wide screen space operas with a decidedly sociological-political perspective. Banks wrote a new Culture book every few years until there were ten volumes. The final one, The Hydrogen Sonata, appeared in 2012, shortly before Banks died of cancer in 2013, at the age of 59.

In 1986, right before beginning the series that would dominate the rest of his career, Banks published something rather different: The Bridge, a book that stands high in the ranks of a significant sub-genre of fantasy, those stories that deal with pre or after life states, or that take place in the nebulous regions between life and death.

The Bridge begins as a nameless man (we eventually learn that he is an affluent Glasgow professional named Alex) has a moment of inattention while driving back from a weekend of nostalgic dissipation; as he gazes at the Forth Railway Bridge that crosses the Firth of Forth just west of Edinburgh, he fails to notice the shifting traffic patterns in front of him and crashes his car. He is trapped in the wreckage of his vehicle, praying that it doesn’t burst into flames before he can be rescued. Crushed and bleeding, he lapses into unconsciousness… and awakens, whole and uninjured, on the bridge.

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