The Writer's Life 12/22 - Psychos & A Brainy Beauty

Just a day after finishing a novel about a screenwriter's struggles, Starbucks Nation by Chris Ver Weil, I watched a movie on the same subject, Seven Psychopaths (2012), courtesy of Netflix. Since I was so taken with writer/director Martin McDonagh's In Bruges (2008), I sought out his other works. I was mildly disappointed this time, very disappointed when I watched multiple Oscar nominee Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017). As the title suggests, Seven Psychopaths is one of the more violent films I've seen in a long time. It owes much to Sam Peckinpah in that respect, and to Quentin Tarantino in dialogue. Colin Farrell stars and does his typical stellar work, as do Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Christopher Walken, the ubiquitous Zeljko Ivanek, Tom Waits and the great Harry Dean Stanton in a part without dialogue. Although I was never bored during its less than two hours running time, I didn't get what it was trying to say. Apparently, most of the folks who rated it at IMDb did. 218,000+ forge to a consensus of 7.2 on a scale of ten. Since I was certain there was more to the story than what Alex in A Clockwork Orange (1971) refers to as "a bit of the
ultra-violence," I googled for interpretation and found these excerpts at moviesandmeaning.com: "... a parable that should resonate with anyone who values scriptural, fictional, and historical investigations of what violence can do to the soul, and the responsibility of storytellers to honor their power for what it is... The line between our culture’s addiction to fake-violence-as-entertainment and its addiction to real-violence-as-a-way-of-solving-problems is so blurred that it’s sometimes difficult to tell when a filmmaker is getting off on the depiction of bloodshed or posing questions about the future of the human race and life on earth." I agree with the first part of the latter statement, but don't agree that our culture is addicted to real violence as a problem solver, although there are a handful that do, which accounts for the term psychopath. Apparently, the film is for folks a lot smarter than me. The not so magnificent seven turned a modest profit at the box office, returning $19 million on a budget of $15 million. I bet word of mouth has led to a big windfall in DVD sales, rentals and streaming. Anyone squeamish about bloodletting should pass.

While researching the flick, I was intrigued by an actress with whom I was unfamiliar, Christine Marzano, who plays a hooker. She's a Brooklyn girl, a graduate of Edward R. Murrow H.S. in Midwood, and she earned a degree in psychology from Princeton. Although the name suggests the brainy beauty is of Italian descent, she has dual citizen with Ireland. Her bio cites her award winning skills as an Irish dancer. She has 14 titles under her name at IMDb. One of her summer jobs was lifeguard at Coney Island. I wonder if any males pretended to be drowning on her watch. Here's a pic:

The proof copy of Inside Out arrived yesterday evening. I already know I will be ordering a second. In the first 44 pages I found 12 errors, including two line breaks. I'm pretty sure they occurred when I reduced the font from 12 point to ten. They were too glaring to have missed.

The floating book shop did well today. Here's what sold: A book on woman's health, one on Alzheimer's; one on Israeli issues; one in Russian; Michael Crichton's Sphere; Stephen King's Eyes of the Dragon; and five DVD's. My thanks to the buyers, and to Boris, who not only bought but donated three books, two in Russian.

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