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 choice...

     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 s...

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             ...

                 I can remember getting into the Jeep and maybe driving down around West Covina, past the Home Depot and the bowling alley, back up to the 210, maybe getting off at Foothill and driving east thinking of stopping at Kohls.   I drive over to Montclair Plaza and go into Barnes and Noble.   When I’m coming in the front doorway, there’s an alcove there with discount books.   A black woman is looking at some volumes, wearing a black t-shirt with the words ‘Man Up’.   It’s a Nike shirt.   I say ‘Nice t-shirt’ to her and she smiles.   I go in and head to the magazine section looking for a truck magazine, something with modern, new trucks, but all they have is the mags that tout the huge diesels and crawlers, the monsters.   I look for the automotive book section, but it’s been moved.   Fiction, that’s where I go.   I pick up a copy of ‘Tale Of Two Citi...

       I sleep very well and it is dark gray this morning.  Cold, wet, damp, it rains last night and the morning has layers of slate-colored clouds rolling low across the southern sky and the black birds are unsure---to fly and hunt or stay close to home and hunker in the trees and wait out the weather.  I want to get outside and stand in a field.  Feel the crisp cool air before it turns too hot in the summer, gather the last breaths of winter up and pack them tight in an overcoat, button up, feel the freeze until my toes are tight and drawn up against a thick wool sock inside a boot that sheds water and moisture, standing there breath freezing and flowing out through cold nose and damp mouth.  There aren’t enough of these mornings.    Cold and breathy, wet and grey, dark holding out the light until late in the day, these wet days are the rare glimpse of the weather patterns that are forever lost to Southern California.  ...

One night I was sitting on the bed in my hotel room on Bunker Hill, down in the very middle of Los Angeles. It was an important night in my life, because I had to make a decision about the hotel. Either I paid up or I got out. That was what the note said, the note the landlady had put under my door. A great problem, deserving acute attention. I solved it by turning out the lights and going to bed. — opening paragraph of Ask the Dust by John Fante

She was beautiful . . .I was doomed.   He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being. L'âge de raison ( The Age Of Reason ) (1945)