INDIAN HILL

  In 1997 , Hard Eight brought a fresh look to film noir with rich lighting, crisp dialog, a classic femme fatale and wonderful acting with Philip Baker Hall, John C. Reilly and Gwyneth Paltrow. And Samuel L. Jackson, doing what he does best.    I almost forgot how beautiful the interior shooting is until I watched this scene again on YouTube.  Philip Baker Hall, the fixer, walks through a casino in a long tracking shot past neon striped bars, below the blinking lights, gliding past regulars locked into crap tables and roulette wheels. Hall strips down his work to simple actions, patting his lapel after buttoning his coat, his stride and confidence underscoring a feeling of danger and the perils of a casino night.    The music, a clean shimmering vibraphone.    No dialog. Hall takes us there.    I want a drink, a cigarette, and Gwyneth Paltrow to serve it to me.   Noir is inevitability, demons forcing bad choices, guns, booze, sex, cold liquor over crushed ice. Smoky

     Fong’s was a low-slung outpost on the eastern edge of Pomona, one of the oldest Chinese restaurants in town.  Santa Ana winds and the blistering summer sun had weathered its red and black paint.  Fong’s neighbors, a plumbing supply yard and a used truck-radiator shop, shared a gravel driveway that led away from a pot-holed street.         The door opened into a mist of fried sesame oil and soy sauce and a clamor of tea cups, Asian cooks banging woks with metal spatulas behind an old Formica counter that ran across the front of the room.  I sat at the counter next to a man who slurped hot and sour soup from a bowl without a spoon.  A woman on the other side of me pulled open a fortune cookie then smashed it on the small white plate upon which it had arrived.       A red vinyl-backed menu covered in clear plastic had two pages; Lunch, and Dinner that started at 4:30 PM.  A man put a stainless teapot in front of me and held a note pad in his hand.  I ordered the whole fried fish.  H

I was close, that is enough.              My friend lent me his Nikon D200 with a bagful of lenses for a month before he’ll try to sell it to me.   In the San Gabriels, the sun was bright in the  morning, perfect for shooting some test shots.         On Glendora Ridge Road I heard it before I saw it, and by then it was too late. Saying ‘throated Italian tuned exhaust’ is like trying to explain the sound of a glacier calving in the Kenai Fjords; if you haven’t felt it, there’s no way. It was red and it had the prancing horse label, Ferrari, and almost before I could raise the chunky Nikon to my eyes, it was gone. Mount Baldy            The Ridge road rips along the top of the San Gabriel Mountains between San Gabriel Canyon and Mount Baldy. Western view from Padua                 Winding down Baldy Road I stopped at the Padua Theater and shot some scenes that looked very Southern California for January 2.   It was warm and sunny and the terrace spread ou