Fair Food Nation comes together to celebrate International Women’s Day in style with massive march demanding Ohio State University “Boot the Braids”!
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Saturday, March 09, 2019
Fair Food Nation comes together to celebrate International Women’s Day in style with massive march demanding Ohio State University “Boot the Braids”! Coalition of Immokalee Workers
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Murder Anyway You Cut It- With The French Film Tell No One In Mind
Murder Anyway You Cut It-
With The French Film Tell No One In Mind
By Zack James
Phil Larkin, the locally
well-known private investigator from Gloversville about sixty miles west of
Boston, loved to go to the National Private Investigators Association (NPIA)
annual conventions not so much to inspect the inevitable new technological
gizmos which were touted as the P.I.’s next best friend by their producers but
to gather up old acquaintances and over a few whiskies to find out about some new
interesting case one of them was working on (they are not all interesting by any
means whatever the individual P.I. might be hyping about by virtue of his or
her prowess in solving the riddle of the age –usually some missing husband who
was ready to go home after a couple of months with some floozie who took all
his dough and blew for places unknown). Or about a case they might have heard
about. That is how he heard from his old friend Artie Shaw about the Beck case,
the case that had half the public coppers, gendarmes they call them there, in
France baffled and Artie too until things fell into place by virtue of that
over-rated prowess that every P.I. hung out like a shingle in front of his or
her shabby sixth floor office in some seen its day office building filled with
failed dentists, cheapjack insurance agents, seedy repo men and discount wholesale
jewelers.
(By the way for those who
are confused, or only know of the more famous American Forensic Investigators
Organization (AFIO), the one the famous detectives Jack Dolan, Robert Parker,
and Shane Chandler, the latter a distant relative of the crime writer Raymond
who practically invented the hard-boiled detective genre that has misled
several generations of readers and average citizens about the real lives of
P.I.s, belong to, the NPIA and AFIO work two very different tracks. The AFIO
had split, an acrimonious split, from the NPIA over the issue of working with
the public coppers. The NPIA historically had deferred, meaning “butted out on,”
once a case went onto the police blotter. The AFIO made up of a bunch of
“hot-doggers” who spit on the public coppers and their half-ass work went on
the premise that all cases were better done through private hands. Phil an old-time
public cop himself would have been railroaded out of business in Gloversville
if he had made step one to mess with the open police cases in that town. Every
NPIA member in attendance could hardly wait for the banquet that closed each
convention to hear the words, to hear the deep dark secret of the profession
that the difference between the actual numbers of cases between the two
organizations was minuscule or NPIA’s were better. The reality was that despite
the few headline cases like the Galton kidnaping and ransom case which some guy
named Ross MacDonald solved after Lew Archer practically rolled out the red
carpet for him there was as much co-operation between AFIO and public coppers as
the NPIA.)
Artie, originally from
Boston, had worked with Phil when he had started out on a couple of cases, key-hole
peeping cases which in the 1950s was bread and butter work for most private
detectives in the days when getting a divorce was heavy lifting without an army
of reasons adultery being the primo reason a court would accept. Phil
eventually moved on from that work saying to anybody who would listen that he would
rather try to solve mass murder cases, solve serial murder stuff than have to
swallow the lies associated with guys and gals shacking up. Less strain on the
nerves. Artie, knowing his limitations, always stuck with key-hole peeping which
is how in a roundabout way he got the Beck case. The wife of a big Boston
international banker had hired him to get the goods on her husband and his
French mistress whom said banker had established in a Paris apartment for when
he travelled there on business. Artie, really a pro then at getting the dope,
getting the photos necessary to close a divorce case in court, rapped that one
up tight, no problem. What Artie had found out in Paris as the 1950s turned
into the 1960s was that there was still much key-hole peeping work to found
there through the still pretty much intact cumbersome French Napoleonic civil code
and so he stayed around there to pick up the pieces, especially when that
Boston banker’s divorcee wife set up herself in Montmatre.
That banker’s ex-wife connection
got him the Beck case, got it to him at least indirectly through her lawyer in
Paris who was also the lawyer that this Doctor Beck had retained once he got
into serious trouble, or rather his sister, Anne, a devotee of the horsey
set, but loaded with dough from her husband’s fortune had retained. The case
would have seemed to be on the face of it way over Artie’s head as it involved
a “cold case,” a case that the French gendarmes had closed up tight. But the
ex-banker’s wife and Beck’s lawyer both agreed that a non-French P.I. would
have less hurdles to cross than some Parisian private dick who was bound by law
to turn everything over to the coppers under penalty of losing his or her
license. (Artie was working off his U.S. permit courtesy of influence with the Paris
public coppers by a friend of that banker’s ex-wife).
Artie had moreover gotten
on the case after the thing had been dead for about seven, eight years. Years
after this Doctor Beck was cleared as far as could be of his wife’s murder out in
the country while they were out for a swim on the lake. The doctor’s story then
had been that he had been knocked unconscious by a party unknown and dumped in
the lake when he heard his wife’s screams. Except he was found on the dock. As
such things went the public coppers had to let it go when they couldn’t shake
his story and his wife’s father, a public copper himself, identified his
daughter’s body and vouched for his
son-in-law.
Then a couple of bodies
surfaced in that same area and a couple of cops from the old case started to
put two and two together and come up with the doctor. The frame was on but the
point was how was Artie to get enough evidence to get the doctor off the hook.
As it turned out a couple of pieces of evidence surfaced that got the ball
rolling. The doctor’s wife, who along with his sister were seriously into
steeplechase horse shows, had been beaten badly by someone a few weeks prior to
her death. The coppers figured that Doc Beck did the deed, a wife-beater not
uncommon among certain high- profile types. As it turned out the wife, Margot was
her name, had had his sister take photographs of the wounds but had also swore
her to secrecy that this horse set guy, this Phillip Neuville, the son of Baron
Neuville, a guy with a pile of money as well had done the beating when she
confronted him with evidence of child sexual abuse of a bunch of kids who
worked the stables as a part of program she was involved
with.
That confrontation as it
turned out resulted in the death of young Philipp. The photographs were taken after
the Doc’s wife had killed the bastard. Case closed. Artie in clover and more so
when they decided to make a film of the cold case turned hot and Artie was
taken on as technical adviser for the P.I. angle. Here is what I wrote when the
movie hit the screens in America:
Nowadays in order for a
thriller to pass muster there have to be many little twists and turns or else
the film get very tedious, get very boring, never gets, as a friend of my who
is into both written and cinematic thrillers has suggested, off the slow-moving
track which spells death to the film, makes one reach for the remote very
quickly. That is not the case with the thriller under review, the French
film, Tell No One, although frankly I thought that the film would
in its opening scenes succumb to that slow-moving death every thriller has to
dodge.
Here are the twists in this
“cold file” case. Doctor Beck’s wife, Margot, had been killed, senselessly
killed by a serial killer, several years earlier and he was just beginning to put
his life back together when a whole ton of hell started coming down on his
head. Reason: a couple of male bodies filled with bullets had been found out in
the country where his wife had been killed. Beck had just barely gotten out of
the clutches of the law back then since the law thought under the odd-ball
evidence in the case that he was the mastermind behind the deed. He had been
mysteriously found unconscious on the dock despite his allegations that he had
been hit and fallen into the water by the killer being a chief reason that he
had been suspected by the cops.
Lots of things begin to pop
up that have the cops interested in reopening the case, hoping to see the big
frame placed around his head. Unaccounted for bruises to his wife’s face on photos
that survived, a gun found in secret place in his house, the murder most foul
of his wife’s best friend are just some of the examples that dog him. Put those
together with Beck’s taking it on the lam to figure out what the hell was going
on and for the average cop never mind what country he or she works in and you
have and open and shut case of consciousness of guilt and an easy and early wrap-up
to the cases.
But hold on. This Doctor
Beck actually loved his wife, was not faking the trouble he had trying to put
his life back together. Something else was going on, some nefarious plot to get
him to take the big step-off and let him rot in prison forgotten after a while.
Not only was something going on in the frame department but the good doctor was
getting information via his e-mail that his wife was still alive. So two trails
of events were going on at the same time (always a good sign in a thriller):
the net tightening over his head by the coppers and his frenzy to find his wife
knowing now that she is not dead. That’s all I will tell you because I have
been asked to “tell no one” in order not to spoil the ending, okay. Except old
Doc Beck was not crazy, was not wrong in assuming that nefarious forces were
out to get him although it would take a while before he learned that it was
because of something that Margot had knowledge about shortly before her “death”
which had people in high places ready, willing and able to do her in. Watch this
award-winning film.
Happy Birthday Townes- It Ain’t The Singer It’s the Song-Townes Van Zandt’s A Far Cry From Dead (1999)-A CD Review
Happy Birthday Townes- It Ain’t The Singer It’s the Song-Townes Van
Zandt’s A Far Cry From Dead (1999)-A CD Review
CD Review
By Zack James
A Far Cry From Dead, Townes
Van Zandt, Arista Records, 1999
Recently in reviewing a
bluesy CD by outlaw cowboy singer Willie Nelson (at least that designation was
the basis for my introduction to him back in the early 1980s) I mentioned that
I was reminded by my old high school friend, Seth Garth, that back in those
late 1970s and early 1980s I was drawn to such outlaw cowboy music that had
broken sharply with the traditional stuff out of Nashville that I could not
abide., always associated with the Grand Ole Opry and stuff like that, redneck
music.
I also noted that just
then, just that late 1970s, early 1980s, rock and roll was taking one of its
various detours, a detour like in the late 1950s when the soul went out of rock
for a while before the storm of the British invasion and “acid” rock saved it
which I could not follow, folk music, the social protest kind anyway that had
attracted me in my youth was fading fast even among aficionados as more mundane
concerns filled that niche, and the blues was losing its star mostly black
performers by the day and the younger crowd, mostly black, was leaving the
field to white aficionados like Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughn and heading
to what would become hip-hop tradition so I was up for listening to something different.
Something that might catch my ear for roots-based music, the music of the “big
tent” American songbook beyond Tin Pan Alley.
What Seth hadn’t remembered
was the genesis of that outlaw cowboy moment. My finding of an old used record
by artist under review Townes Van Zandt at Cheapo’s Records in Cambridge (still
there) of all places to find such music. And of course once I get on to a sound
I like I tend to look for everything I can find by the artist (film-maker or
writer too). Done. But more than in that outlaw moment I actually saw Townes in
person at, well, several places over a couple of years, but all of them in the
heart of “outlaw country” music, ah, Harvard Square. So in those days I was not
alone in looking for a new sound since all the venues were sold
out.
What drew me Townes then,
and drew me to this CD recently although it had been put out in 1999 a few
years after his untimely death in 1996 was he command of lyrics that “spoke” to
me, spoke some kind of truth of things that were bothering me just then like
lost loves, not understanding why those loves were lost, and about just trying to
get through the day. Yeah, that gravelly voice on that first record kind of fit
my mood then, and it still sounds good although unlike that first live in Houston
album this one is much more a produced product of the studio. Still the searing
burning messages and lyrics are there for to help you get through those tough
days that creep up and pile up on you. Listen up.
“Breathing While Black”- The More Things Change The More They Stay The Same- Novelist James Baldwin Puts His Ear To The Ground On The Question Of The Prison Industrial Complex-“If Beale Street Could Talk”(1974)- A Book Not A Movie Review
“Breathing While Black”- The
More Things Change The More They Stay The Same- Novelist James Baldwin Puts His
Ear To The Ground On The Question Of The Prison Industrial Complex-“If Beale Street
Could Talk”(1974)- A Book Not A Movie Review
Book Review
Frank Jackman
If Beale Street Could Talk,
James Baldwin, Dial Press, 1974 (also can be found in a three novel late Baldwin
novels edition by the Library of America)
If I didn’t know better I
would have thought that the book under review the late James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk was written
based on events in the black community in the last few years in the era of the Black
Lives Matter movement. I was surprised when I looked at the copyright date that
it was published in 1974 after the heyday of the black liberation struggle took
a back seat, rightly or wrongly and I would argue and have elsewhere wrongly, to
other identity politics. There is more though about the genesis of this review before
we get into the story line maybe a little strangely since it was released as a
movie in late 2018 (grabbing Regina King an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress)
that I did not go get the book after seeing the movie which as of this writing I
have not done yet. Rather once I heard Regina King giving an interview to NPR I
think about the movie I grabbed the book. See James Baldwin and I go back a
long way to the days when he wrote Go Tell
It On The Mountain and the fiery The
Fire Next Time reflecting the ups and downs of the black civil rights
struggle, a struggle which animated my own youthful political awakening in the early
1960s. See James Baldwin like Frederick Douglass, like Malcolm X as well was a
truth-telling, a “speak the truth no matter how bitter” man about the real underside
of race in this country bedrock founded almost from day one of the continent on
racial oppression.
Let’s get to the story and
you can judge for yourselves whether this could have been written of late,
could have been grabbed out of today’s headlines or maybe better in the age of
the “war on drugs,” really the age of putting a big bullseye on the back of every
young black man (and some black women too) targeting him (or her) for some time
in the modern plantation, the prison industrial complex. This story by the way
takes place not on Beale Street, the blues hub in Memphis, the stopping place
on the Mississippi where the country blues of the Mississippi Delta started the
transformation into the Chicago and other Northern urban centers electric blues
made famous by the likes of Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf, but in Harlem (and
in passing the edges of Greenwich
Village) in New York City. Harlem then as in history a key black cultural oasis
and living space for many members of the diaspora.
At heart, beyond the political
points, this is a love story between young up and coming Fonny trying to
break out of the course society has set for him and Tish who will do anything to
stay with her man, with Fonny. As far as I know this is the only Baldwin novel with
a female narrator in the person of Tish. She is the conduit for what we know
about the relationship between her and Fonny, between her and her own family and
between Fonny and his estranged family. And Tish tells her story well with no holds
barred from the serious friction between her and her sister, between Fonny and
his “saved mother and sisters” and sinner father to how she became pregnant by
Fonny “out of wedlock: as they used to say when that was a big thing before unwed
single mother parent became just another acceptable social category.
Telling the details of some
aspects of black family live with its ups and downs, its codes and it natural
distrust of the white man is only part of the story though. The romance novel part
if you like. That part ends abruptly when proud young black Fonny, and as importantly
his own man, having moved downtown (the edges of the Village part, from the description
maybe the now expensive Soho area but then just empty lofts in the factory
district) is accused by a Puerto Rican woman of raping her and he is carted off
to jail (one can imagine if it had been
a white women he might have not gotten that far). The rest of the short novel
is spent trying to get Fonny some rough justice when the cards are stacked
against him from being the sole black man in a police line-up when the woman
was asked to identity her assailant, having
had a previous run-in with the local racist white cop, problems with raising money
for a lawyer, a good lawyer to have even a fighting chance to beat the rap, and bail (as well as funding a trip to Puerto
Rico for Tish’s mother who has taken in Fonny as family to get that woman who fled
back there to change her testimony) and the suicide death of his father who had
lost his job on the waterfront after being accused of stealing material (which he
sold to raise money for his son’s case). Then there is very pregnant although loyal
Tish as the story ends with the approaching birth of a new black child.
All I know is this. If
James Baldwin were alive today he would be screaming to high heaven in support
of the things that matter to Black Lives Matter. Thanks Brother.
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