Film Pairing — Famous, Contemporary Fictional Lawyers, From Books To Screen

I never saw what the deal was with Matthew McConaughey. Perhaps it was because he played unintentionally unsympathetic characters in the kind of movies I wasn’t inclined to see anyway. However, twice that I know of, McConaughey gave performances so clearly on the mark, I can’t imagine another actor pulling them off as well. Both times — in roles years apart — he played an attorney. Both films were based on characters and stories created by deservedly best-selling novelists, who — surprise — liked the movies made from their books. And both times the actor, most famous for taking his shirt off in films, didn’t need to carry the films on his bare shoulders, but could rely on a highly talented supporting cast.

The first is A Time to Kill, based on John Grisham’s novel by the same name. We go back to 1996. A black man kills the two white men who raped and killed his daughter. The movie controversially sets up the conflict of letter of the law against righteous revenge. Are we a nation of laws? We’d like to think so. But what if the law won’t exact justice? Is vigilantism ever justified? The film was panned by some critics because the film appeared to take a side in the argument.

On the other hand there is no argument about the cast. It is stellar. Samuel L. Jackson played the pivotal role of father. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for “Best Supporting Actor.” One could make a case that it should have been for “Best Actor.” Among the others who contributed to this solid drama were: Kevin Spacey, Donald Sutherland, Kiefer Sutherland, Sandra Bullock, Ashley Judd and Chris Cooper. The background, as you might have guessed, is the Deep South. The KKK is featured. The problem is that while the white sheets rarely make appearance these days, the attitudes haven’t disappeared. The film remains timely.

The second feature is The Lincoln Lawyer (2011). An older, somewhat weathered as well as appropriately wizened McConaughey plays Mickey Haller who plays all sides to get what he needs. One has the sense that the only people he won’t game are his daughter and his private investigator, played by William Macy. On the other hand, Haller lives and works in a world where trust is dangerous and playing it straight is unprofitable. Again McConaughey is backed up with a talented cast. In addition to the always incredible Macey, we see Marisa Tomei, John Leguizamo. Bryan Cranston does a great job of playing a tough, veteran, cynical cop. And Ryan Phillippe creates perfect pretty boy sociopath.

Haller is the lawyer whose office is in the back of Lincoln Town Car. He is the creation of best-selling crime writer Michael Connelly (see last week’s post) and this is the first of what promises to be a major series of books and if the news last updated in August holds true, will follow Grisham’s The Firm onto the small screen in a series proposed for ABC-TV.

Finding an appropriate drink to accompany the movies is made difficult by the small-town Mississippi setting for A Time To Kill and the L.A. fast lane for The Lincoln Lawyer. I’m thinking that we look at something good in hot weather. Never mind that many are still enduring March, that cruel month. How about a gin and tonic? If you’re feeling particularly Southern, put in a mint leaf.

Blatant Promotion — The Last Self Promo (For Now)

Excerpt: San Francisco’s North Beach isn’t a beach. It once was. But a portion of the Bay was filled in to make room for more buildings. Now it is a low-rise village tucked in between Chinatown, the Financial District, Jackson Square, and the lofty neighborhoods of Russian Hill and Telegraph Hill.

North Beach is half-tourist and half authentic San Francisco. The neighborhood wasn’t made to look like an old Italian neighborhood. It is an old Italian neighborhood. True, modernity crept in as families died off. A hardware is gone. So are a few family-style restaurants. But the chain stores were kept at bay. There are no Olive Gardens or Starbucks. No Borders. No Banana Republics. No skyscraping office buildings or condominiums.

The Beat Generation was born here and so, perhaps, was the idea of Americans hanging around in coffee houses. It was and still is, in a sadly decreasing way, the neighborhood of poets, artists, writers, philosophers and strippers. Most of the Beats are very old or very dead now.

One of them, old and very recently dead, floats in a shallow pond on a small triangular island at the intersection of three streets. A few feet away from the pond, across one of those streets, was the victim’s favorite watering hole, the Washington Square Bar and Grill. Lovingly called the ‘Washbag’ by its colorful and often celebrity clientele, the landmark has died and been reborn a few times. The cosmic jury is still out on Whitney Warfield.

Synopsis: Sweet William, a handsome, charming and discreet professional companion to the wealthy, needs help. A famous, but not beloved, novelist is found dead. William is the prime suspect. His only salvation is to uncover the real murderer. He can’t do it himself and he can’t go to the police. But, he can provide a list of suspects — prominent figures connected to San Francisco's legendary North Beach — whose secrets may be revealed in the victim's soon-to-be published tell-all.

Private investigator Carly Paladino agrees to take him on as a client. But the question remains: Was the devilish gigolo telling the truth or did she fall under his spell?

Whatever the case, Carly and her streetwise and skeptical partner, Noah Lang, stir up serious trouble when they try to find the manuscript — and the murderer. Much like North Beach itself, the suspects are trying to preserve the image they want the world to see. And it seems one death is not enough to conceal some very inconvenient truths.

Not quite a cozy, but this second in the San Francisco mystery series is a light-hearted tale. Death in North Beach is a “round up all the suspects at the end” kind of mystery and an exciting tour of the City by the Bay.

What The Critics Said:

This is a witty, very engaging entry in what promises to be a thoroughly entertaining new series. — Booklist

The interplay between Carly and Noah is delightful – talk about opposites! — George Easter, Deadly Pleasures

This is a perfect rainy day book! — Ruta Arellano, Sacramento Book Review

Good, dirty fun – with a delightful icing of San Francisco details. — Rap Sheet

The Carly Paladino and Noah Lang Mysteries have “the makings of a superior series. Tierney, author of the Deets Shanahan series, has a winner here.” — Library Journal

Death in North Beach is available in hardback, paperback and e-book at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Book Notes — The Deeply Flawed Protagonist In The Deeply Flawed World

An author/blogger, awhile back, wondered why so many book bloggers and reviewers talked so much about dead authors and popular authors when there were many fine, very-much alive current writers who could use a little attention. Being at least an alive current writer I second that emotion and have tried on this blog’s Book Notes and Old Gold to provide a little balance in that regard. However, this post will violate that spirit. I’ll be referring to such literary ghosts as the long-dead Sophocles — hard to get deader and more famous than that — the not-so-long dead Jean Anouilh and the also very much alive, but incredibly best-selling Michael Connelly. How’s that for name-dropping?

In 1943, Jean Anouilh’s adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone was performed in Nazi-occupied France. For those who might have forgotten, Antigone is the story of King Creon’s attempt to celebrate the life of one of Antigone’s dead brothers and bring shame on the other by creating a politically helpful fiction about their deaths. One arbitrarily chosen brother was to be made a hero and the other a villain. Theoretically, Creon’s motive was to prevent a brutal civil war — and protect himself. His argument was that he would create this myth for the “greater good.”

Antigone would have none of it, favoring a full vetting of the truth no matter where it led. The Nazis were sensitive to propaganda, but apparently not as quick to pick up nuance. The German censors were fine with the production because they believed the story favored support for authority. The French, however, saw it differently, interpreting it as a play honoring the pursuit of the truth, justice and the French way, at any cost.

How does Michael Connelly figure into all of this? We’re coming to it. Let me throw another Greek into the mix first. The dialectical method is attributed to Socrates and involves argument as a means to get to the truth. At best, and honestly pursued, the Socratic method seems to be an effective (and potentially entertaining) way to arrive at the truth or as close to it as we can get. Not only is our justice system based on this principle, but it also appears to be the means, conceptually at least, by which we elect our government. The idea of having a public debate in the race is to have the views of the candidates’ proposed policies compete in the public marketplace for support.

The domination of this form of decision-making has evolved, through the inclusion and continued expansion of the media (the chorus) in America’s 21^st Century. As the methods of communication have evolved to the point of absurdity through the unchecked use of contributions and the unlimited reach of technology, the end state of the art appears to have dissipated into not a clash of best ideas, but a clash of the best dodgers and persuaders. Reporting of the clash does not help us parse the logic, but focuses on the headlines rather than the story. It has nothing to do with honor and truth. The focus is on whoever is wielding the power most effectively. And in the modern age, whether one is an attorney attempting to win a case or a candidate trying to win an election, money is a greater factor than ever before. Talented attorneys and their staffs are for those who can afford them. In court, experts on contentious issues are bought and sold in a kind of auction for the truth. You bought this expert. Opposing council bought another. The same happens on the campaign trail when the surge of an emerging candidate can be stopped with a blitz of negative advertising.

With the U.S. Supreme Court having provided personhood to corporations and equating money with freedom of speech, proponents of one side or the other have the means to overwhelm the opposition with not just facts, but partial truths, innuendos and often outright lies — whatever they can get by with. Given the lack of regulation and oversight, a condition ballyhooed by some, business may now do that with their customers. Financial institutions, after they’ve purchased all the available legislators and when forced to be “transparent,” can do so, for example, by publishing hundreds of pages of small print to discourage anyone from reading it. Lawyers have been using this technique against the opposition for years. You want disclosure, by God I’ll give you disclosure. In fact, banking as a political force, has shown that it largely beyond the reach of the law. Government bailouts were not used to save banks, it seems, as much as it was to enrich the perpetrators of the fraud, for example. And you see these are the folks who finance the campaigns of those who create and enforce the laws.

And (Whew! Finally) it is in this American world that Michael Connelly’s Lincoln Lawyer series operates. Clever Machiavellian approaches to government and business may be as old as, well, Machiavelli. But now such amoral cleverness is not really exceptional. It is the everyday way we pass laws and sell widgets. And Connelly’s lawyer is the modern semi-hero, after all. Mickey Haller, the ethically challenged protagonist of Connelly’s lawyer series is not Harry (Hieronymus) Bosch, Connelly’s fame-establishing central character. Though the half-brothers’ voices are similar, their actions are not. The brooding Bosch is uncompromising. The pragmatic Haller understands the twists and turns he must make to succeed. Bosch is so upright he is almost prudish. And Haller is so sly he’s almost sleazy. Though I am a fan of both, for me Haller is more complex and more interesting character. Bosch is the 20^th Century hero. Haller is the 21^st Century American protagonist. As crime stories go, Haller is neither the lone cowboy whose honor may not be bought. He is also not the noir central figure who pays dearly when the drama ends for his past bad acts. He is engaging in the prevailing greed-polluted dialectic we call “business” and “governance” and surviving. America is more Creon’s domain than Antigone’s. We may not want to believe that. We may want to believe that good will conquer evil if only we were pure enough. Mickey Haller takes the world as it is not as we want it to be.

In The Fifth Witness Connelly turns his keen reporting skills and his experience with the court system and police departments into a something “ripped from the headlines,” but it is in some ways less than that. How compelling can foreclosures be? I wondered about that when the subject of the book was first mentioned. The truth is we don’t exactly get an expose of the thrilling world of accounting tricks. How much of that kind of detail could we stand? In fact, we don’t get an indictment or expose of the world’s finance industry and the compromised morality in which businesses and its leaders operate, which is what I expected. But I had no right to that expectation. It is a murder story.

Connelly, on the other hand has created something important, I think. While I may have looked for THE book of its times — say the early 2010’s version of Bonfire of the Vanities — he has created a thoroughly fascinating and relevant protagonist, a tightrope artist, a survivor in morally ambiguous times, one that is definitely of his times.

Film Pairing — Nothing Sacred, Only Profane...And Provincial

The star of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) is Savannah, Georgia. And the best parts of the film are the scenes that reveal the lovely, eccentric nature of its inhabitants. It is a town that seems unconnected to the rest of the country in time and place.

This is also a place where its people are privately wild and tolerant, while publicly genteel and proper — a kind of exaggeration of the stereotypes of the South in general, where I often think of people preaching abstinence while keeping pints of Southern Comfort in their underwear drawers.

Based on the best-selling book of the same name by John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good an Evil is the real-life story of Jim William’s trial in which he is accused of murdering his down-low lover. Kevin Spacey plays Williams, a self-made, rich collector of fine antiques. Jude Law plays the “low-class” kept-boy who may or may not have tried to kill Williams before being shot himself. John Cusack plays the author who is trying to make sense of it all — the bigger-than life characters and the meaning and pay back of doing evil. Kim Hunter appears briefly to steal a scene or two and Savannah’s own, real Lady Chablis plays Lady Chablis, thereby gaining well more than 15 minutes of deserved fame. Clint Eastwood directs this slightly too-long, slightly uneven telling of Berendt’s story. But in the end — largely because of the society that is so colorfully portrayed — this is a worthwhile film and a great match for the more subdued and possibly more provincial characters in Six Degrees of Separation.

Wrong, it seems, is not always easy to discern. That is one of the similarities in the two films. So is the fact that both are based on real-life events. I would also make the case that, in many cases, Manhattan is as, or is more provincial than the rest of the country. Here, in Six Degrees of Separation (1997), we also have a film about closed societies, the nature of crime and the misrepresentation of reality. In the midst of it all, perhaps there is a thought-provoking question about the spirit and letter of the law.

The film is based on a successful play by John Guare and in that adaptation, there is a kind of formal theatricality that permeates the film. Don’t let that put you off, however. There are rich performances, especially Stockard Channing’s. And it’s a joy to watch an obviously talented young Will Smith interact with such accomplished veterans as Donald Sutherland and Ian McKellen. Also, such real-life New Yorkers as artist Chuck Close and actress/socialite Kitty Carlisle make cameo appearances.

The story is about a pretender to the 1 percent and pretender to celebrity. Smith plays the young con, who in this case, pretends to be Sidney Poitier’s son in order to access Fifth Avenue families. His interaction with various folks didn’t always provide a pleasant outcome. Was this interloper responsible for greater good or greater evil? The answer, to me, was properly unsatisfying.

Seems to me that the bawdier landed gentry in Savannah probably drink something different from the upper crust of the Upper East Side. Savannah is known for its hard drinking and its permissiveness on the subject. Much like New Orleans, one may legally walk about the historic district with a shot or two of Southern Comfort, providing it is in a paper cup. But let’s keep it light for the dinner party crowd in New York. Maybe a civilized fresh peach spritzer (or a Chablis) for the first film and a bottle of expensive Cabernet for the second.

Opinion — Blatant Promotion, (Next To Last) Death In Pacific Heights

EXCERPT: PACIFIC HEIGHTS IS THE PLACE WHERE MANY OF SAN FRANCISCO’S OLD MONEY FAMILIES LIVE AND DIE. Among its many mansions, Pacific Heights has two beautiful public parks. Alta Plaza, the more regal of the two, has formidable grand steps leading up to a windy hilltop park, where it occupies four, square blocks of expensive real estate. Lafayette Park, smaller, more friendly, sits at the edge of Pacific Heights where home values begin to diminish little by little as the neighborhood descends east to Van Ness Avenue.

On the rare occasions when the sun is out and the temperature is above 65, sunbathers occupy the western slope of Lafayette Park, as do dog walkers and children with their nannies. The eastern slope has more trees, more brush. There are places to hide in the night as a few sleeping homeless would attest. This morning, a dead body will be found there.

SYNOPSIS: A turn of events, personal and professional, causes Carly Paladino, a high-ranking investigator for a large and prestigious San Francisco security firm, to reevaluate her life. She decides, with uncharacteristic impetuosity, to strike out on her own. Her first job involves the death of the young daughter of an old and moneyed Pacific Heights family. An itinerant young man has been arrested for the murder, but Carly sees things that make her wonder if the murderer is really someone inside the Hanover mansion

Noah Lang has been hired by lobbyist who claims his wife is having an affair. While Lang is staked out at lobbyist's home, the woman kills herself — at least that's what the police think. Lang isn't so sure and wonders if he was hired to provide an alibi for a murderous husband?

It is the Hanover case that brings the two very different private eyes together.

What the critics said:

Leaving her job at a large security firm, successful PI Carly Paladino is hired by a wealthy San Francisco family to find their missing daughter. Noah Lang, a far cry from her former employer, offers her space to set up shop, and they form a partnership that has all of the makings for a superior series. Tierney, author of the Deets Shanahan series, has a winner here. — Library Journal

This reviewer really enjoyed this book and can't wait to read the next book in the series. — Marc Filippelli, Sacramento Book Review

Given the writing muscle of the author, Ronald Tierney, who's also given us the long-running and acclaimed series about septuagenarian shamus Deets Shanahan, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship. — Thrilling Detective

Interesting and fully realized characters flesh out clever plot lines. — George Easter, Deadly Pleasures

...highly entertaining. [Noah Lang and Carly Paladino] ...could easily become a 21st-century version of Nick and Nora Charles. — Sacramento News & Review

Death in Pacific Heights is available in hardback and trade paperback through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and many fine bookstores.

Opinion — The Art Of The Flaneur, Conclusion

One of the most fulfilling explorations for the flâneur — the words sounds like an insult — in San Francisco is the discovery of long, steep, often hidden stairways that lead to more celestial neighborhoods. Often, along these stairways are homes with no access to streets, simply to the steps. Only a flâneur, which is essentially a person who takes walking and observing seriously, would undertake this kind of energetic exploration.

Probably the most famous of the city’s stairways are the Filbert Steps, which lead up to Telegraph Hill, a few blocks from the grand Embarcadero and from an area inhabited by converted warehouses and relatively new offices, including the Levi Strauss &Co corporate park. Featured in many films, the climb seems to go on forever — not for the frail elderly to be sure. Homes of an eclectic nature line both sides of the stairway and wild, if not feral, cats romp about. And speaking of celestial, two other long stairways stand out. The Vulcan Steps may be the longest. Like the Filbert Steps, homes, with fantastic views, line the long, steep stairway. With no streets or alleys for the homes on the steps, I often wonder how refrigerators are delivered. Many of the homeowners on the path make sure the climb (or descent) is filled with flowers and plants. Not far from the Vulcan stairway is the Saturn Stairs. At the bottom one is just a few blocks from the Castro. At certain times of the year, the blue blooms on the ground cover and the blue blossoms on the trees provide an incredibly dramatic view. Benches exist on two levels for the weary to sit, meditate and look out over the neighborhood below.

There are dozens more, most of them less grand, but often just as mysterious. Sometimes they are impossible to miss. Just as often they are unannounced, which means the walker must look for the entrance. Certainly folks in cars will not notice them. These stairways are in both the wealthiest of neighborhoods and in the more modest areas. And in fact, many individual homes have steep sets of stairs up from the sidewalk and street to their front doors — sometimes landscaped, sometimes curved, sometimes narrow. San Francisco is a city with more hills than Rome. Wherever you look as you walk, you see levels of the city. In fact, the city is not just before you as you walk, it is also above and below you. The walks are full of incredible surprises. There will be moments when you believe you’ve landed on some cold, stark Atlantic coast. A few moments later, you’ll think you’ve suddenly found yourself in the tropics.

This is what the city is about. One moment you are in China and, after taking a few more steps, you’ve landed in Italy.

On a closing flâneur note: The other night, a dark, drizzly evening, a friend and I visited Glenn Park, another little neighborhood city visitors are not likely to know about. We celebrated a birthday dinner in a warm, crowded little French restaurant. The windows were all fogged up. We could make out the blurred light from the streetlamps outside or the taillights of a passing car. Inside, there were the usual sounds of clinking glasses and silverware amidst pleasant aromas and undecipherable conversation.

Dinner was prepared by Parisian expatriates whose accents provided a bit of romance to the English language. Afterward, we braved the chilly dampness for a walk around this tiny slice of the city. The business district was little more than a couple of restaurants (Chinese, Japanese, North American, Italian and French) a bookstore, a great food market and a cheese shop. A few blocks away was the hub for the city’s Metro and Bay Area Rapid Transit.

Not far from this cozy little intersection were modest but handsome homes on the streets that went back down into the city and another street that curved up and around the rest of the hill. My friend remarked, as we walked in the drizzle, catching the reflection of golden light from the damp puddles at the curb, that a person who lived in Glenn Park could pack a little suitcase and walk a few blocks from their home to the station. BART, in a matter of minutes, would take them to San Francisco International for a direct flight to anywhere in the world. If they wanted something more authentic than the French restaurant in their neighborhood — though I can’t imagine why — in a few hours they could be sitting in restaurant in Paris, the ultimate flâneur’s delight.

CAPTION: (TOP) Humphrey Bogart as an escaped convict with a fresh new face traipses up the Filbert Steps in the movie, Dark Passage. (BOTTOM) A house on the top of Hill Street, the rise between Castro and Noe Valley neighborhoods.

Film Pairing — Cry Danger, The Big Combo

The two main attractions to noir, for me, are the stark, shadowy cinematography and the crisp, tough dialogue that often accompany them. Cry Danger has the banter — some of the best of the genre. The Big Combo has the photography. Maybe only Night of the Hunter catches the dark world of crime on celluloid as well.

While I was growing up I remember watching Four Star Theater. The idea was that four major stars would take turns making high-quality dramas for TV, still in its infancy. There was some confusion in the launch, but in the end the four big-screen Hollywood stars that would grace little ole network TV were Dick Powell, David Niven, Charles Boyer and Ida Lupino. For some reason I never looked forward to the Powell installment. He always struck me as an announcer-type, the emcee introducing Jack Benny. A leading man? I didn’t understand it.

What I hadn’t seen was Powell in his heyday. After Cry Danger, it’s clear I must go back and see Powell in all this early movies. He was the perfect wise-ass hero, delivering one-liners as well as anyone. The film, (1951), set in Los Angeles, is about a guy released from prison who wants to find the money he was accused and convicted of stealing. Richard Erdman is a witty, cynical alcoholic conman who becomes Powell’s best and most trusted friend. The femme fatale is Rhonda Fleming. We also see a slim, or relatively slim William Conrad play one of the bad guys. The film has guns, blond bimbos, big old Nash automobiles, and trailer courts. What else could you want?

The Big Combo, a name that unfortunately makes it sound like a special from Pizza Hut, was made a few years later in 1955. It stars Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, Jean Wallace and Brian Donlevy, who gives the best performance of the film as an aging tough guy. Conte, as a heartless gangster, does a good mean and his destruction is police lieutenant Wilde’s obsession. As good and evil battle it out, the big star of the movie is cinematographer John Alton, who makes what little illumination there is in the film glow as if it were more spirit than light. Earl Holliman and Lee Van Cleef play minor thugs who share a bedroom. There were a few other moments that must have given the overly prudish 1950s censors pause. Then again, they may have missed the subtle, scandalous innuendoes.

Though less than clear about which big city was the setting for the Big Combo, it was definitely a big city — a Chicago or New York. Cry Danger was definitely L.A. That being the case, maybe we soften the hard liquor a bit. Maybe it’s a whiskey and soda over ice kind of thing.