1/19/08 Youth Run Wild (1944) – dir Mark Robson

A film about juvenile delinquency with a script written by John Fante?



On paper 'Youth Runs Wild' looks promising. But high expectations get doused early when a montage of sensational newspaper headlines, ("Juveniles Hold Up Gas Station", "Juveniles Cause Dance Hall Riot", "Scores Injured in Fight in Public Ballroom") is followed by a scene marred by 'cute kid' shots. Nothing kills a film faster than a cute kid appearing when one isn't needed.



Frankie and Sarah are high school age neighbors who hang out together a lot. After Frankie goes truant from school for a couple of days to earn some cash to buy Sarah a birthday gift his parents forbid him from seeing her anymore. This sets both off on a, ummm, road to ruin.



Frankie gets caught up with some bad kids and takes part in a tire-stealing scheme

Sarah, defying her parents, runs off to the amusement park with her girlfriend


"you don't have to explain nothin'... it's written all over your face in big letters and it says 'no good'".

Sarah ends up leaving home and taking work as a dance hall waitress


"I'm not a kid anymore, I understand a lot"

Frankie shows interest in becoming a machinist. And does what any self-respecting man would do when he gets rebuffed by Sarah while trying to rekindle their romance... he starts a fight.



Indirectly, Frankie's actions cause serious harm



But, in an obnoxiously propagandaist turn of events, he accepts reform. Sarah, too, decides to turn her life around and chooses a path that any honorable woman would approve of.


"i've got places to go and things to do"

After the studio cut and re-shot parts of 'Youth Runs Wild' Producer Val Lewton fought to have his name removed from the credits. Who could blame him?

In its time (the mid 40s) James Agee wrote a positive review of this film in The Nation. 60+ years later I can't be as forgiving.

1/12/08- Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

I put off reading Denis Johnson's "Tree of Smoke" until I could allot it a substantial chunk of time. Totally unnecessary (the delay not the reading).



"Tree of Smoke" contains multiple storylines that span 20+ years of time and make full use of 600+ pages but the actions are not dense and the dialogue is natural.

It's dialogue strewn with references to some of my favorite authors (E.M. Cioran, Henry Miller, Georges Simenon, Graham Greene, etc). Dialogue that comes from characters who may be misdirected or waylaid by doubt, but who are rarely ignorant of their ways.

"Tree of Smoke" is a novel about a CIA Psy-Op agent in Vietnam. And what may or may not be an intelligence-gathering operation. But it's more about people then about plotting. People who do an awful lot of fucking, drinking, sweating and eating but who also have a spiritual hunger that's caused them to have done a lot of thinking.

Intense, everyday people who've turned to belief systems (Catholicism, Calvinism, Chinese medicine, the Muses, and the Four Truths of Buddhism among others) in an attempt to turn apprehension and experience into something noble. Or at least justifiable. Some succeed at this, more fail.

Historical references to Vietnam are present, but minimal. So minimal that what is described could have happened (or even BE happening) in just about any war.

EXHIBIT A
"Tree of Smoke-(pillar of smoke, pillar of fire) the 'guiding light' of a sincere goal for the function of intelligence-restoring intelligence-gathering as the main function of intelligence operations, rather than to provide rationalizations for policy. Because if we don't, the next step is for career-minded power-mad cynical jaded beaurocrats to use intelligence to influence policy. The final step is to create fictions and serve them to our policy-makers in order to control the direction of government." --Tree of Smoke (p254)

The first Denis Johnson novel I bought (Already Dead) I read twice because I had to figure out why I disliked it so much. The second (Resuscitation of a Hanged Man) I read twice because its notions of faith and hope stabbed me and I had to open the wounds again to see just how deeply I'd been cut. I'll read 'Tree of Smoke' again... knowing how it all ends might make it even better the second time around.