Tag Archives: Hollywood

The Past is Epic

Don Winslow’s City of Dreams is the second installment in the Danny Ryan trilogy. As with City on Fire, the first installment, Winslow continues to be inspired by Homer and Virgil, as he sprinkles quotes from the Iliad and the Aeneid throughout. For example, City of Dreams opens with this from the Aeneid: “Of wars and a man I sing, An exile, driven on by fate.” Referencing these ancient epics might be a gimmick, but it works because the quote describes Danny Ryan as much as it does Aeneas, though I would argue the series, so far, has more in common with the Odyssey. Let me know when I start sounding pompous. Oh, wow, that was fast.

The story opens with a potential bang. It’s 1991 and Danny Ryan is in the California desert. He’s on his knees and someone is holding a gun to his head. So suck it, Homer, that’s how you start an epic. Virgil, meanwhile, is wondering how we got here. Fortunately, there’s a flashback to provide that answer.

Danny and his small crew of Irish mobsters are fleeing Providence, Rhode Island, after losing a gang war to the Italians. His wife has just died of cancer, so his infant son comes with him. His elderly, alcoholic father is along for the ride too. They make it to San Diego doing off-the-books jobs. Life is tough, but at least he’s still alive. Soon a shadowy government figure gives him an opportunity to make some real money – the kind that could provide him a new life. It sounds too good to be true. No one ever gets a new life, right? “You might get a fresh start, a second chance, but your old life stays with you.” Danny should say no but he says yes. And so the story goes until Danny lands in the desert giving the side eye to that pistol.

The futility of trying to escape your past is the major theme here, and many of the characters, at least the ones who didn’t die in City on Fire, return. To the reader’s delight, that includes Danny’s mother. She’s a modern-day goddess who knows the secrets of many powerful people.

Lots of things happen, and lots of poor decisions are made as Danny travels to the desert. His brief foray in the movie business is chief among those poor decisions. To Danny’s great surprise, Hollywood is making a movie of the gang war he barely survived. Anyone who’s seen a Martin Scorsese movie knows Hollywood “gets off” on the “exploits of real-life gangsters.” There’s much humor here, but for Danny there’s also unneeded publicity. More poor decisions are made.

Hollywood is all about reinventing yourself, and Danny tries but he’s no movie star. He runs all the way to the city of dreams to get away from his past, “But nothing is more persistent, more patient, than the past. After all, the past has nothing but time.” City of Dreams is a great read and a welcome installment in the Danny Ryan trilogy. It does exactly what it’s supposed to do; it leaves the reader wanting a third installment.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

What Are You Worried About, Darling?

O.K. You’ve produced a movie and it sucks. At an epic level. It’s the next Garfield. Rotten Tomatoes refuses to review it because there are not enough rotten tomatoes in the world to throw at it. What do you do?

Saffron:  Are the two male leads super hot and androgynous?

Producer:  Of course.

Saffron:  Can you get them to spit on each other at a film festival? 

Producer:  No.

Saffron:  Can you get them to pretend to spit on each other?

Producer:  No, only one of them will agree to that?

Saffron:  Can you just say they spit on each other?

Producer:  I can do that.

Saffron:  O.K.  This is manageable.  What about the female leads?  Can they stop talking to each other and act really pissed off when they see each other?

Producer:  That started nine months ago.

Saffron:  Perfect!  Things are looking up.  Can you leak that to the press?

Producer:  Of course.

Saffron:  Did the director get romantically involved with one or more of the stars?

Producer:  Of course.

Saffron:  Excellent.  Did they have so much sex it disrupted filming?

Producer:  Actually, there were several complaints about that.  The director is several years older than her male lead.  It made me uncomfortable.

Saffron:  Wait a minute!  This is an older woman with a younger man?

Producer:  I'm afraid so.

Saffron:  Fantastic!  You're golden.  That is all anyone will talk about.  Your movie is guaranteed to make a lot of money.

Saffron Crow, Foreign Affairs Editor and Movie Consultant.

The Maidens – Do You Dare Defy a Goddess?

If you like Dan Brown and Paula Hawkins (and many people do, myself included), you will enjoy the first 87% of Alex Michaelides’ The Maidens. It’s a fast-paced suspenseful mystery in the Gothic setting of present-day Cambridge University where the sexy ancient Greek literature professor, Edward Fosca, leads a cult dedicated to the goddess Persephone.

It’s a small cult. Only six of his “special” female students are in it. They are the maidens, and they’re special because they’re super hot. They have strange rituals, and we’re pretty sure R-rated sex is involved.

Tara is a maiden, and she is friends with Zoe. Mariana is Zoe’s aunt. Zoe calls Mariana and tells her she’s scared, but she won’t say why. The following day Tara turns up murdered in such a grisly fashion Hollywood must have directed it.

Mariana jumps on the next train to Cambridge. Meets a clumsy, creepy guy. Then meets Professor Fosca on campus and immediately decides he’s the killer – instead of Clumsy Creepy, who keeps showing up at strange times and odd places. Professor Fosca has an airtight alibi, but Mariana isn’t concerned about that.

So Mariana must be a brilliant detective if she’s going to solve this mystery. Nope. She’s a group therapist. But to be fair, the Cambridge police appear to be on holiday, so Mariana might be the best option. Except she is still mourning her beloved husband. He died a year ago. And she has big-time daddy issues. Does her grief and the trauma of her childhood blind her to the possibility that Professor Fosca is not the killer? While she’s trying to sort that out, two more maidens die ritualistically, and Hollywood officially has a joy boner.

This novel has literary pretensions. There are brief discussions of Euripides’ plays. Every once in a while Tennyson is mentioned. Mr. Michaelides has read a lot of literature, but he’s not interested in writing it. He has a MA in screenwriting, and he is clearly trying to write a Hollywood blockbuster. To his credit, he may have done just enough to have succeeded. Time will tell.

Unfortunately the last 13% of the book is a rushed mess. It will leave you feeling confused and cheated. It seems like Mr. Michaelides was having a good old time writing this book and then realized his deadline was the next day so he hurriedly pasted together an ending. One so implausible Dan Brown would blush. An ending so unsatisfying it just might be a misdemeanor in Virginia.

It’s as if a Greek goddess, perhaps Persephone herself, appeared in his bedroom just before he wrote the final chapters and said here’s your ending. And Mr. Michaelides said this makes no sense. To which Persephone demanded do you dare defy a goddess? He did not.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Anthem: Coming Soon to Netflix

The back cover of Noah Hawley’s Anthem informs the reader “[t]his isn’t a fairy tale.” The admonition is repeated inside the covers as well. This is either clever misdirection or false advertising, because the story has a wizard, witch, Orcs, goblins, ghosts, and trolls. Despite the presence of strong female characters and an appealing ethnic diversity that looks like America, this tale is as conventional as it gets: a ragtag group of heroes goes on a quest to save a damsel-in-distress. So don’t be deceived or misdirected. This is a fairy tale, and it was written with Hollywood in mind.

Now wait a minute, Gladiola. How can you say that? You don’t know the writer personally. You haven’t pissed with his penis. To which I reply: true, gross, and that’s not how the saying goes.

This is how I know. All the adults are evil and selfish, and the ragtag heroes are sexy teenagers. But, wait, there’s more. Unlike any teenagers you or I know, they immediately cooperate with each other (even though most of them have never met before) and (though they have no training in combat) they are able to take on a group of professionally-trained mercenaries. Sounds like Hollywood’s youth fetish to me. Plus, Mr Hawley’s background is in television and film.

All this should not suggest the story is bad. As a traditional quest narrative, it succeeds. It’s a page turner. But it is also a vision of contemporary society as seen through Hollywood’s dark, expensive sunglasses. Everyone is one dimensional. The heroes have backstories designed to pluck every heartstring three or more times. All the monsters are irredeemably evil and pulled from today’s headlines. The wizard is a pedophile modeled after Jeffrey Epstein. But he is so sexually cannibalistic, Epstein’s perversions appear quaint by comparison. One family resembles the Sacklers of Purdue Pharma infamy. But the fictional version is so greedy and selfish, the Sacklers come across as pickpockets. Donald Trump does not appear in the story, but he is constantly referred to. Except here he is not a sore loser ex-president, he is a God King – something only Trump himself would believe.

Mr. Hawley never preaches. His skills are more formidable. He screams. He rubs the reader’s face in bromides – all of them variants of WHAT IS WRONG WITH ALL THE ADULTS IN AMERICA! Many things, obviously. But perhaps not as many as Mr. Hawley would have us believe.

I am not discouraging you from reading this book if you are so inclined. It’s a fine fairy tale. However, you could simply wait for it to come out on Netflix.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor